‘Ats us nai’: an accent tour of Northern Ireland

Jill and me at Giant’s Causeway, on the north coast of Northern Ireland

I’ve recently come back from my first trip to Northern Ireland.

It’s famous for many things – beautiful scenery, the Giant’s Causeway (pictured, above); the Titanic was built here, Game of Thrones was filmed here; it’s the home of actor Liam Neeson, footballer George Best and musician Van Morrison; if you’ve been living in the UK for more than a few years you’ll probably have heard about its turbulent politics and history.

And then there’s the accent.

Or, I should say, the accents. Because there are a lot of them, for such a wee country.

(Fun fact: Northern Irish people say ‘wee’ a lot, even when they’re not talking about things that are small.)

For an accent nerd like me, this is thrilling. Even though I only briefly explored one corner of Northern Ireland, I heard a lot of different accents – and a lot of different opinions on accents: how they sound, why they sound like that, and whether they sound ‘good’ or ‘nice’, ‘broad’ or ‘mild’…

Wherever I go, I find that nothing gets people talking like talking about how people talk!

I even tried out a Northern Irish accent of my own… more on that later.

And I learned a lot about what it must be like for those of you (whether you’ve worked with me or you haven’t) who are trying to change the way you sound, or who want to.

First stop: Belfast

When it comes to accents, there isn’t just one ‘Belfast’ accent, even though this is a small city of only 350,000-odd people.

My partner Jill grew up in south Belfast, which is different from West Belfast (a 15-min drive away) and different to East Belfast (15 mins in the other direction) and COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (says Jill) to the accent in Holywood (a whole 30 mins north by car) and the Malone Road area – the latter is only 7 minutes from where she grew up.

Now of course Belfast is infamous for being a divided city – neighbourhoods are either Catholic, republican, and culturally Irish, or Protestant, loyalist, and culturally British. Historically, the two communities did not mix. And segregation tends to preserve and sharpen differences in accent. If you rarely leave the community you grew up in, when are you going to encounter people who sound different to you, who might influence the way you sound?

Then there’s another dividing line in Belfast, and it’s one that applies everywhere: rich and poor (or rather, rich and not-rich).

It was Jill who pointed out to me that ‘strong’ Belfast accents tend to belong to working-class communities, whether Protestant or Catholic. And what I thought of as ‘mild’ accents - like that of the suburb of Holywood in the north, or the BT9 postcode in south Belfast – are ‘posh’.

This social and linguistic dividing line is noticeable all over the UK – in most large towns and cities, you’ll find ‘townie’ accents in working-class areas that are nothing like the plummy tones of the residents of the detached houses on the edge of town, whose children go to fee-paying schools.

But in each case, whether the speaker is proud of it or not, an accent tells other people something about where you’re from.

Your accent is a calling-card for your neighbourhood, and the people you share it with, or used to share it with.

That’s one reason why there’s so much emotion tangled up with accent. It’s deeply personal to you, the speaker, but it’s deeply connected to your feelings about the people and place that bestowed that accent on you.

            I also met a number of people whose accents were very individual and unique: a friend of Jill’s who was originally from Wales, spent his youth in N.I., and now lives in Kenya, sounded almost English. Another friend who’d lived in Scotland and England for years and moved back to N.I. with his Danish wife, also had a subtle, hard-to-place sound.

Accent-wise, they’re a product of their surroundings, as much the aunts and uncles are who’d lived in Belfast all their lives.

Your accent is a reflection of who you are. That’s something to embrace and celebrate. But if your past is getting in the way of your future, and you want to change how you sound and how you feel when you speak, I can see why you would want to make those changes deliberately and consciously, instead of letting them evolve gradually like Jill’s friends’ accents have.

Half-jokingly, Jill asked me to sum up Northern Ireland in three words, and one of mine was ‘pride’. (the other two were ‘windy’ and ‘beef’, since you asked).

Even when they’re making jokes about the place – and Northern Irish people are always laughing at themselves and everything around them – they’re proud.

The ones who’ve left and settled elsewhere, like Jill, are proud to come from this place, and the ones who have always been here are even more so. And they’re very proud of their distinctive accents.

The people I work with on their accent and speech habits are often no different. Sure, I get some people who describe their own accent as ‘awful’ and want to ‘get rid of it’, but mostly, people are proud of their background and don’t want to erase it; it’s part of who they are.

In everyday life, however - at work, as professionals - they’ve got things they’d rather talk about than their accents. They don’t want clients, patients or stakeholders going, ‘sorry I didn’t catch that’ or ‘… can I just ask, where is your accent from?’

So that distinctiveness that can sometimes lead to defensiveness.

As I’ve found when I try to speak with my own version of a Northern Irish accent.

What happens when I try to do a Northern Irish accent – in private 

In my first ever conversation with Jill, I put on a Northern Irish accent to try and impress her. The reaction?

‘Oh no… Anthony… that’s not good at all… you sound like you’re from Donegal’

(* Donegal is in the Republic of Ireland, on the border with Northern Ireland. I was close!)

Then in Belfast, among Jill’s family, I was occasionally was brave enough to try out a sort of generic ‘Norn Iron’ accent – but again, native speakers were often guarded in their reactions…

‘yeah… that’s not bad…’

‘It’s good but you haven’t quite got it’

‘I don’t think he sounds Northern Irish at all’

(this last one from Jill’s mum – said with affection though)

I’ve noticed this many times. Having an outsider try to ‘do’ their accent often makes people a bit uneasy. Either the native speaker is trying to find a polite way to say ‘hmm nice try but that was a terrible attempt at my accent!’ or they’re unsure whether the outsider might be mocking the accent.

And let’s face it, sometimes they ARE mocking it.

This is such a common experience for people I do accent reduction with – colleagues and friends will laugh and do their accent back to them, usually badly. Research published last year by Queen Mary University London found that 1 in 4 people in Britain have been mocked for their accents at work.

And whether or not it’s done in a friendly way, it’s a sign that when you speak, they hear your accent first; what you have to say comes second.

It can be frustrating, can’t it?

What happens when I try to do a Northern Irish accent – in PUBLIC

So yes, then I decided to try out my Northern Irish accent when Jill and I were out in public, and see if I could pass for a local.

It’s not just because I’m a bit cocky when it comes to my ability to ‘do accents’.

Jill and others talked only half-jokingly about taking me to republican areas of Belfast or the countryside where ‘you’ll have to hide your English accent’.

It meant that even in safe areas, I was suddenly very conscious of sounding different, and wondering if I’d be treated differently because of it. So I wanted to blend in.

It gave me a very keen insight into what daily life must be like for people who have a different accent to those around them – or who feel that the way they sound, whether it’s very hesitant or flat or excessively quick, will make others pre-judge them.

It was in a café on the north coast. I ordered our lunch and drinks:

‘Can eh have one CHECKIN Caesar sandwich and one fal-AHH-fel sandwich and thayse two wee boadles of fezzy drenk’

Northern Irish readers: how did I do? Check out the audio below:

I was interested to find that I was a bit hesitant when I came to actually open my mouth. I mumbled more than I usually do. I was kind of grateful to get it over with, actually!

I thought, ‘the longer I speak the more likely I am to give myself away’. So I kept it brief.

I was worried that if I didn’t nail it, the café worker would think I was mocking him.

I was, simply, anxious about sounding fake.

How excruciating it must be, if you have a different accent and you’re trying to adapt it, to feel that way, every time you speak in public.

This led to a second insight: trying to actually go for it and speak with a different accent - trying to change the way you speak in your everyday life - takes a lot of courage!

‘What if people think I’m trying to be someone I’m not? What if I get this or that sound wrong and I give myself away? What if I just sound weird, and other people pick up on it?’

That negative voice is so strong and persistent.

I understand how much courage it takes to make changes to the way you speak, and to stand by them. To speak in this new way, to notice how others respond and to be unapologetic: ‘yes that’s how I sound now’.

It was also interesting that Jill, standing next to me in the queue to order, found the whole moment a bit mortifying:

‘I can’t put my finger on how, but the way you sounded wasn’t quite right – so I was embarrassed at what the guy behind the counter might say. He’ll probably just think ‘huh, a weirdo from somewhere in Belfast’

I’ve never been damned with fainter praise…

Accent reduction: ‘how will my friends and family react?’

There’s a whole other dimension to changing the way you sound: the reactions of your family, friends and close colleagues.

Will they think you’re trying to be someone you’re not? Will they support you, or make it harder for you to change by making you feel like a fake?

One of my current clients says she can’t possibly make the vowel sounds I’m suggesting she make, because her family tease her for sounding ‘posh’ and ‘old-fashioned’.

This is why I tell people that I don’t see it as my job to tell you how you should speak. I can offer you a choice, and guide you towards a sound that still feels authentically ‘you’, but more confident – not swallowing your words, like I was when I risked getting found out for trying to pass myself off as Northern Irish.

Most people I work with aren’t show-offs like me, who put on an accent for fun.

They just want to be clearly understood and be allowed to be themselves and get on with things, without being defined by their accent or overlooked because of their speech habits.

I’ve been doing this work for many years now. But rarely do I find myself in a position like the one my clients are in – the person who feels like the odd one out, the one who’s self-conscious, the one who’s not confident to speak.  

I hope – no, I know – it’ll make me a better, more sensitive, teacher and coach for people who want to be more confident in their accent and speech.

Thanks for reading. As they would say in Belfast, ‘ats us nai’.

…no? No idea?

‘That’s us now’, meaning ‘we’re done’ or ‘we’ve arrived’. I’m going to use this from now on - In the Belfast accent, of course. Jill will be thrilled…