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.

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.

TH-Stopping

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

Wine-Whine Split

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

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.

Words like STRUT

This sound uses some lip rounding.

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).

Words like MOUTH

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

Words like CHOICE

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

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