Zoochatters and their accents

Think Paul O'Grady, he's Birkenhead.

 

He just sounds like a camp Scouser to me!

 

St. Helens sounds fully Lancashire to me - the same as Preston, Wigan, Blackburn - I can’t tell the difference at all.

I’m not sure I actually know what a Cheshire accent is, either! Does it sound quite posh?

 

I'd say a Cheshire accent is relatively posh, yes.
Paul O'grady's accent is quite typical of Birkenhead I feel, however that is much more Scouse than most of the rest of the Wirral.
Perhaps the 'Wirral accent' is best viewed as a clinal intergrade zone rather than a distinct species of it's own

 

Travelodge recently had a vote for the Nations Favourite Scousers and the top 4 were used to name the 4 floors of their new hotel at John Lennon airport, numbers 5 to 7 were used to name their 3 meeting rooms.

Floor 4 is now the Paul O'Grady floor despite him not being a Scouser! (Also in the top 10 was John Bishop who grew up in Runcorn...)

 

Three different people in three different places on three different occasions.

 

It does make me laugh a bit when people assume that anybody from the Merseyside region is a Scouser. You’re only a Scouser if you have a purple wheelie bin!

 

I guess I haven’t experienced much of the overall Wirral accent as I have only lived here for 11 months so far and as yet haven’t had a lot of opportunity to get out and see much of the wider area.

Paul O’Grady’s accent I would say is absolutely indistinguishable from a Scouse accent, which is definitely inkeeping with my experience of Birkenhead - I hear next to no difference at all for the most part.

 

Speaking as a Wallaseyan (indeed an Old Wallaseyan), I had met some people who can detect the accent from that top corner of the Wirral. I have lived elsewhere for nearly 40 years, so I have lost most of mine, although I hope I am still mildly northern. People's sensitivity to accents varies considerably, the most sensitive can become dialect coaches for actors, although I don't think any real person can match the skills of Prof. Higgins in Pygmalion. I didn't think I had much of an ear, until I started to watch Bake-Off and quickly realised that Paul Hollywood is from Wallasey too

 

Interesting! You must have a really good ear! I haven’t noticed much difference between a Wallasey accent and a Scouse accent, either!

 

I taught for some years in Greater Manchester. On the first day of teaching Year 2, a boy came up to me and asked how to spell "her". Odd, I thought, and asked him what sentence he was trying to write: "I have brown her". Teaching in a northern accent is much easier than one from the southwest when it comes to phonics. It tells you everything you need to know about who wrote the current English curriculum for primary schools where they have words like 'bath', 'fast', 'pass' and 'after' as words that don't follow the phonic rules. Most of the country says "er, yes they do!"

 

European girl at the hostel got excited over my southern accent. No one has ever told me I have a southern accent, but I guess living in Texas, it's a normal thing not worth mentioning.

 

What’s hot he feud around @Brum? Why do y’all snub him.

 

So y’all just piss him off basically?

 

Don't forget 'You really pissed that up'!

 

It's all in good fun @ZooBinh and not everyone snubs me, just Thylo and Funky so far, other ZooChatters don't have the same aversion!

 

Not to be rude @Brum, but I find myself laughing every time I hear them snubbing you.