Categories
Accent Breakdowns Colorado Shakespeare Festival Production Materials

Irish

One Man, Two Guv’nors
CSF 2023

For hints on using this resource, please see How to Work on an Accent.

Listening Sample

“Paddy”

Bill O’Herlihy
(b. 1938)

Bill O’Herlihy

Key Sounds

Consonant Sounds

Strong Rhoticity (R Coloring)

Irish accents pronounce R in all positions, often with the tongue tip angling upward.

Practice Irish R

  • The worst burnt sirloin.
  • Better, stronger, faster.
  • Clearly fearless.
  • Upstairs Downstairs.
  • A large star chart.
  • Play the chord on the organ.
  • Sherlock searched for the murderer.
  • Future conservative leader.
  • They persevered as a volunteer.
  • Swear with flair.
  • Sparklers for the garden party.
  • Norman drove from Yorkshire to Orkney.
  • The early bird catches the worm.
  • Tears for Fears appeared in Tangiers.
  • A square hairline.
  • Skylarks darkened Denmark’s skies.
  • Corgis have short legs and long torsos.
L-Fronting

Irish accents employ a “light” front L sound in all positions, where the back of the tongue remains low in the mouth. This is different than many American accents, where the back of the tongue raises for L in final syllable position.

Practice Front L

  • That motel pool has style.
  • Is that a metal kettle on the griddle?
  • They’re always too late to make a deal.
  • Can I help you feel your feelings?
  • Evil people repulse Ursula.

*These phrases are borrowed from Speaking Clearly by Hahner, Sokoloff, and Salisch and American Accent Drills for British and Australian Speakers by Amanda Quaid.

TH-Stopping

TH sounds may be pronounced as D and T (e.g. “these things”–>”dese tings”)

Practice TH-Stopping

  • Neither his father nor his mother bothered to clothe him, though they thought he was thoughtless about his appearance.
  • Length, width, and breadth are the three fundamental measurements lathe operators can’t do without.
  • As the throng gathered together, they withered at the sight of the thing’s clothing.

*These phrases are adapted from Speaking Clearly by Hahner, Sokoloff, and Salisch.

Wine-Whine Split

Words spelled with WH- use a voiceless consonant sound, sometimes transcribed as “hw”.

Practice the Wine/Whine Split

Whether the weather be fine

Or whether the weather be not,

Whether the weather be cold

Or whether the weather be hot,

We’ll weather the weather

Whatever the weather,

Whether we like it or not.

Aspirated Plosives

Plosive consonants P, T, and K may include a bit of extra air escaping. Listen for this feature in all the other audio examples!

Vowel Sounds

Words like PRICE

The vowel sound in words like PRICE begins further back in the mouth than in many other varieties of English.

Practice PRICE Vowels

  • High and dry.
  • In spite of myself.
  • The spice of life.
  • Fine Key lime pie.
  • A bright night light.
  • Your guide to Fine Dining .
  • Your final lifeline.
  • Wild Mountain Thyme was on Prime.
Words like STRUT

This sound uses some lip rounding.

Practice the STRUT Sound

  • Fun in the sun
  • Some fun summer lovin’.
  • Percussionists love the drums.
  • Umbrella weather in London.
  • The Hungarian ski-jumper tumbled.
  • A peanut, coconut, and fudge donut.
  • The skunk stunk up the stump.
  • An unlovable fussbudget.
Words like FACE and GOAT

These groups of words tend to use a single steady vowel quality rather than diphthongs (vowel sounds that glide from one quality to another).

Practice the FACE and GOAT Sounds

FACE

  • A great place to stay.
  • The rail at the tail of the sailboat.
  • Today’s the day!
  • No pain, no gain.
  • Don’t cut the main brachial vein!
  • They’ve won the space race.
  • He claims to feel ashamed
  • Why did he call the investigator A Famous Shamus?
  • Drain the rain gauge.

GOAT

  • Don’t go home.
  • Row, row, row your boat.
  • Moan and groan on the phone.
  • Toby’s bespoke smoking jacket.
  • Onyesha loves coconut crab from Mozambique.
  • Moe totaled the Toyota he got in Tokyo.
  • If I sew the rosehips, will they grow?
  • The Edo shogunate lay siege to Osaka.
  • I was thrown by your iPhone’s ringtone.
Words like MOUTH

The vowel in words like MOUTH starts rather close and back, similar to the GOAT vowel in the same accent.

Practice the MOUTH Sound

  • The wallflower hid in the clock-tower.
  • The cowboy planted the sow-bread cyclamen.
  • Get out of town!
  • Somehow they allowed those eyebrows.
  • The rowdy crowd cheered for the driver Niki Lauda.
  • The turnout for the workout was outrageous.
  • Say howdy to the cowgirl on the loudspeaker.
Words like CHOICE

The diphthong in words like CHOICE begins in a rather open and unrounded mouth position.

Practice the CHOICE Sound

  • An Android exploit.
  • An embroidered poinsettia.
  • His career was destroyed by steroids.
  • We sang the introit joyfully.
  • They caught typhoid from eating bad oysters.
  • The Royals demand loyalty.
  • What’s a Deutschmark coin worth?
  • Alloy rims with Uniroyal tires.
The NORTH/FORCE Split

Many Irish accents differentiate between the vowel sound in words like NORTH and the sound in words like FORCE. In these accents, the NORTH vowel is more open and less round, and the FORCE vowel is rounder and more closed.

For many speakers, it can be challenging to know which words are in which group! Many are included on this alphabetized list, and your dialect coach can also help determine which sound to use.

As this is a fairly complex linguistic phenomenon and “Paddy” is a made-up persona in the world of the play, it may be worth pondering how familiar our Francis is with the ins and outs of “Paddy’s” accent, and even how “good” he is at it!

NORTH
FORCE

Practice the NORTH and FORCE Sounds

NORTH

  • Assorted sorbitol candies.
  • Play the chord on the organ.
  • Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn.
  • Northwestern Cornwall.
  • Norman drove from Yorkshire to Orkney.
  • Corgis have short legs and long torsos.
  • Lorna was addicted to porn.
  • The contortionist wore a corset.

FORCE

  • The storeroom’s trap-door.
  • The courtier’s sword.
  • Exported pork.
  • Sworn into the court.
  • Deported from Borneo.
  • A portrait of Roger Moore.
  • Is snowboarding a sport?
  • The notorious historian taught a course.