Pet Shop Boys Community

His accent has a fair bit of Geordie in it. As I live in the North East maybe I pick up on it more, but it's incredibly well spoken Geordie. My own accent is similar only with a hint of Yorkshire rather than Geordie, I live further south than Newcastle. It comes from my mother beating (not literally) correct pronunciation into me when I was young.

Your Funny Uncle wrote:Maybe those who speak in a BBC style accent, known as received pronunciation, as Neil does to a degree,are clear, but England has a very wide range of accents. Most foreign people have terrible problems understanding a Newcastle accent, for example. Every corner of England has a different accent, and that's before you get to Wales, Scotland or Ireland...

Not forgetting that different areas of the country often have local words that mean nothing in another.

Neil doesn't really have a local accent as such now, if he ever did. It's not Cockney (London) and it's not Geordie (Newcastle) as such and personally I'm hard pushed to hear much in the way of either in the way he speaks.

It is amazing how many local accents there are here and how they differ from region to region. In some cases it's from town to town and 5 miles can mean the difference between one accent and another.

I have now lived away from my home town of Doncaster for a lot longer than I lived there, but whilst I haven't picked up any local accent, my Donny twang is a bit more dilute these days. Still, I top myself up with regular visits back home!


StevePSB

pierre wrote:I'm baffled by the way Neil sings You're a threat in Integral. I'd expect a sound 'ea' like in 'head' and to my ears it sounds more like "You're a thirst". Is it a local pronunciation or should I change my set of ears?

He's doing it all correctly. You're just hearing them with Belgian ears. In fact 'thirst' should be prounounced 'Therrstt'. In 'head' should be pronounced 'Hide' as in 'eye. Everyone knows this.

To my English ears Neil's pronunciation when singing sounds more or less standard. He's Posh Geordie with the odd bit of London thrown in. He seems to have some "long a" issues though - sometimes it's "dance" and others it's "darnce". As a northerner myself, I have to say that the former is better.

Syncratic wrote:He's doing it all correctly. You're just hearing them with Belgian ears. In fact 'thirst' should be prounounced 'Therrstt'. In 'head' should be pronounced 'Hide' as in 'eye. Everyone knows this.

??????? Your penultimate sentence probably misses a word and I hope that word'll make the meaning of your post clearer because you totally lost me there. I'm quite sure I know how 'threat' and 'thirst' are usually pronounced ('Thirst' sounds like 'first' and 'threat' sounds like 'fret'). My problem is that the way Neil sings 'threat' doesn't sound anything like that. I clearly hears a 's' just before the 't' for instance. This said, I'm probably too used to BBC-English and I doubt Jeremy Paxman would have pronounced 'threat' in the same way Neil does it in the song.

I've always thought the english are harder to understand than americans. americans generally have a drawl that slows down their speech patterns and makes it easier for the listener to keep up. the english just fall all over their consonants and swallow the vowels. Higgins was half-right.

In the song he also pronounces the word 'integral' two different ways.

Inty-grill and In-tegrill.

And what about the way he pronounces the word 'suits' in The Survivors?

Chutes?

The English often substitute an A at the end of a word for ER.

I noticed Neil doing this on Luna Park - in LunER park...

I always thought the stress in 'integral' should be on 'te' not on 'in'... anyone else?

I think "inte-grill" is British and in-teg-ral" is American.

Crap joke warning :

Wouldn't "George-Foreman-Grill" be the american?

No Muscle Mary wrote:The English often substitute an A at the end of a word for ER.

I noticed Neil doing this on Luna Park - in LunER park...

yeah! and this is most obvious in Casanova-er in hell.

in the BBC Radio2 concert, Rufus W sang it right - Casanova-h in hell.

pierre wrote:

Syncratic wrote:He's doing it all correctly. You're just hearing them with Belgian ears. In fact 'thirst' should be prounounced 'Therrstt'. In 'head' should be pronounced 'Hide' as in 'eye. Everyone knows this.

??????? Your penultimate sentence probably misses a word and I hope that word'll make the meaning of your post clearer because you totally lost me there. I'm quite sure I know how 'threat' and 'thirst' are usually pronounced ('Thirst' sounds like 'first' and 'threat' sounds like 'fret'). My problem is that the way Neil sings 'threat' doesn't sound anything like that. I clearly hears a 's' just before the 't' for instance. This said, I'm probably too used to BBC-English and I doubt Jeremy Paxman would have pronounced 'threat' in the same way Neil does it in the song.

What would I know, I'm English, Paxman is Scottish, and we Brits also don't do irony. And BBC English is fairly regional, as opposed the 1950s. Just listen to how Paxman pronounces 'yes'.

I personally think Neil pronounces 'Integral' incorrectly but I'm nitpicking now.

gomorrah wrote:

No Muscle Mary wrote:The English often substitute an A at the end of a word for ER.

I noticed Neil doing this on Luna Park - in LunER park...

yeah! and this is most obvious in Casanova-er in hell.

in the BBC Radio2 concert, Rufus W sang it right - Casanova-h in hell.

The "uh" sound is known as the "schwa" in lingustics. Neil pronounces it like most English people would, to be honest. Lun-uh, Casanov-uh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa

Dipso wrote:

gomorrah wrote:

No Muscle Mary wrote:The English often substitute an A at the end of a word for ER.

I noticed Neil doing this on Luna Park - in LunER park...

yeah! and this is most obvious in Casanova-er in hell.

in the BBC Radio2 concert, Rufus W sang it right - Casanova-h in hell.

The "uh" sound is known as the "schwa" in lingustics. Neil pronounces it like most English people would, to be honest. Lun-uh, Casanov-uh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa

thanks, I know about the "schwa" sound. but what I was pointing out was that like many English-speakers from England, Neil pronounces end-vowels with an 'er' at the end. this is especially noticeable when he follows it up with a word that begins with a vowel or a vowel sound as in: Casanova-R in hell. when he sings, I can clearly hear the "r" in between "Casanova" and "in". as far as I've noticed, Americans don't do this. but I must say that this quirk's rather endearing in the Brits.