Comment by bartislartfast | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bartislartfast | Hacker News Reader

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There are so many "English" and "Irish" accents it's hard to really say. I would say Liverpool accent sounds a lot like a hard inner city Dublin accent already. And it makes sense, with these cities having so much history, trade, and traffic.

Likewise, Scottish / Northern Irish accents are more similar to each other than accents in the Southern end of their own respective landmasses.

But in this case, it's someone far, far away from Ireland* developing an "Irish" accent. I would be very interested to know if that accent sounded geniune to someone Irish or if the accent was an SNL style Irish impression, ie what the patient _believed_ was the accent.

* although it is worth noting, despite the distance, the Newfoundland accent is absolutely indistinguishable from a genuine Irish accent. Any time I hear Newfoundlanders speak I'm stunned at how they sound like they live a few miles away from me.

[example - this guy could be my nextdoor neighbour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YlyT9bg4o8)

> although it is worth noting, despite the distance, the Newfoundland accent is absolutely indistinguishable from a genuine Irish accent

That makes sense, because Newfoundland was settled by the Irish[1]. I guess the Irish accent in Ireland hasn't changed much since then, and the settlers accent didn't change either.

It's said that "Americans preserved British English" from the 1700s[2], and it's actually the British accent that changed.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Newfoundlanders

2: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-p...

> It's said that "Americans preserved British English" from the 1800s[2], and it's actually the British accent that changed.

I might well believe that, but then the question is, which American accent is the British one? Alaskan? Texan? Mid-west?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangier,_Virginia is the usual factoid

> That makes sense, because Newfoundland was settled by the Irish

I did a walking tour when I visited St John's, Newfoundland. The history recounted during the tour was that the merchant ships would leave the Southern English coast (Southampton, Portsmouth etc) and stop off by the Southern Irish coast to fill the ships with cheap labour. At the end of the season, the merchants filled the boats with produce from the season (furs etc) and many of the Irish workers would be left behind rather than use up precious cargo space. I've no idea how close to the truth that "history" was.

Note that TFA says that the man in question lived in England at some point in his 20s, so not that “far away”, in terms of amount of exposure to various Irish accents. Also, it doesn’t say whether it was an accurate or consistent accent. He could have just been doing the accent of the Lucky Charms guy.

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