“In the context of the recent changes, this has meant that the new pronunciation has spread rapidly to the rest of the country. Our accents are not governed only by social trends and external influences. He points out that there’s a tradition of mockery of West Brit accents that runs up to the present day with comedians such as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly. 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Do they actually sound Irish, in a way that our grandparents would have recognised? The Dundalk accent has always been the worst, to me. Even as a Dub, I think inner city skanger Dublin accent is the worst. Saoirse Ronan’s changing accent is proof of an important truth. In Britain, the highly clipped diction known as received pronunciation (RP) gradually fell out of favour in the 1960s and 1970s. Certain left-wing TDs who attended fee-paying Dublin schools now have accents designed to fit better with their political position. It's difficult because the consonants are quite soft and the vowel sounds are pretty elaborate. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, Press J to jump to the feed. It’s become the language of media discourse, which makes sense because it’s constantly looking for affirmation. He points to the last 25 years as a time of rapid social change. There is hope for the junkies though: Ratz from the flatz went on to be Roose Bolton. Some say a Dublin twang for sure, while others swear it's Dundalk. She had just decided she wanted to speak with that accent, because she liked it. “She said ‘Oh my God, I love your books. So does this mean that Irish English will disappear under a wave of homogenisation? “She was smart, studying pharmacy. That’s changed a lot now.”. inner city dublinese is horrible in fairness. It's very well-known that although Ireland is a small island, there are more accents than there are people. “At the start of the boom you had things which have since disappeared. They’ll try things on for size, keep some bits and discard others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_McElhatton. Throw in a smidgen of junkie and you have the worst accent in Ireland. To comment you must now be an Irish Times subscriber. The agents of change, says Hickey, are young women. Add to that an increase in prosperity and a dramatic rise in the number of people entering third-level education. As some have pointed out, Saoirse Ronan’s accent in Brooklyn hews closer to 21st-century south county Dublin than 1950s Enniscorthy, but that works perfectly well for the purposes of the drama. “And it processed them into people who speak with this total abdication of an accent. Patches of Dublin are home to the dialect described, but definitely not all. “The local Dublin working-class accent has been very stable for a long time,” says Hickey, who distinguishes between the traditional local accent and non-local “advanced” English, spoken by the middle-class, where all the changes are happening. “There is a sense in which people decide to project their own personas, and to have control over that,” says Hickey. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Your Privacy Controls. But BBC English had an influence. I actually don't mind it. “They brought this posh woman in once a week to teach all us kids from council estates in Ballybrack how to speak like a posh English person. The Limerick Junkie has a particular tone that wouldn't be out of place in a torture chamber, wat are you saaaayyyeeeeein I get you a bullit now in a minit if ur gettin smart wit me. It’s neither a northside-only, nor an inner-city-only phenomenon, but it rather seems to be a class dialect, which is odd in some ways, but not unique to Dublin. We and our partners will store and/or access information on your device through the use of cookies and similar technologies, to display personalised ads and content, for ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. They are ultimately personal to their users, who may alter them at will. So don’t panic. It’s not just in the Lego Movie that everything is awesome these days. The established middle class where I grew up in Waterford were incredibly snobbish and superior. The next time you hear a group of schoolchildren talking, take a moment to tune in to their accents. “One thing about the younger generation of film actors is they are much more casual,” she says diplomatically, when I ask about some of the accents in the recent RTÉ seriesRebellion, which seemed jarringly contemporary to me. The changing accent is by no means confined to the capital, though it is usually where changes first occur. It’s interesting that the two examples Howard gives are of people from outside Dublin.