No matter what people tell us, we know — we know that we’re not getting Scottish accents.
If you’ve heard the accent, you know it’s not just a matter of putting on a Mike Meyers brogue and going with it. Especially the Glaswegian accent — it’s complex and nuanced, and really hard to imitate — not that we’re trying. Not just anybody can sound Scottish. We know that.
Or, rather, we did know... Last week in London, D. hailed a cab after he and T. had parted ways at Victoria Station. D. gave the driver the address to where he needed to go, and the man flicked a glance in the rearview mirror. “From Glasgow, then, are you?” the driver ask. Gobsmacked, D. said, “Yeah, I’m at the Uni there,” and the driver nodded in satisfaction. “Aye, thought so,” he said. “I’m from Kilmarnock.” (A city just South of Glasgow)
Okay, D. thought. This guy’s obviously been in London way too long.
He thought nothing more of it, until we finally got out of London two days later. Exhausted and glad to be heading for home, we hailed a cab from Queen Street, and flopped in. “Where to?” asked the driver, and D. gave the address. T. stared at the passing landscape while D. had a vigorous conversation with the driver about the perfidy of taking people to the airport when they wouldn’t be able to catch a flight (which another cabbie had just done, causing our cabbie to stop next to him at a light and harangue at him out of the window — always an adventure around here), then suddenly realized that we were getting on the freeway. “Wait! Where are we going!” he asked. D. and the driver had a brief discussion on the address again, and the driver smacked himself in the forehead. “I heard it wrong,” he admitted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s the accent,” T. told him. “Sorry. The American accent will mess you up every time.”
The driver twisted around to peer at David. “American?” he asked. “Where’re you from?”
We did our usual California-by-way-of-San-Francisco talk, which helps people orient themselves to the inevitable conversation about “how-on-earth-did-you-leave-the-weather-there-for-here?” — but the driver skipped that. “Thought you were Glaswegian,” he said.
“WHAT!?” D. blurted.
“Just thought you were talking polite,” the man mused. “From California, huh?”
We did the “how do you like the weather” talk after that, but D. was still stunned. “He thought I was from Glasgow,” he mused. “I didn’t think you could just pick up that accent!”
T. is sure it’s not possible. But when her sister demanded, “Say London again,” when they were chatting on the phone last week, she winced from the accusation, “You sound Scottish!”
“You wouldn’t know what Scottish sounded like if it bit you,” T. told her sister smugly, but even she’s beginning to wonder…
LOL! It’s official, then. You must really have an accent.
Paz
You guys already had quite the accents when I visited you in 2008! So I’m sure they’ve gotten a wee bit stronger since then! But you’ll, like, oh my God!, have a California accent in 2 minutes when you move back. Don’t worry.
I love it. You’re really settling in. I’d love to hear you talk – but I’m sure if it’s in California the old sounds will come back way too fast.
Wow, that’s bizarrely fantastic! I have already been called Scottish with a Canadian accent, but when I call and talk to friends and family back in North Amercia, they get a kick out of my “Scottish” accent. I don’t know what they are talking about, but I am defintiley picking up and using new vocabulary. I have even, unknownly starting using, “och no” (don’t know if that’s how you spell it).
I think I am just picking up what I hear everyday and assimilating it a bit. It is certainly an adventure!
Usually D. gets the “Oh, thought you were Canadian,” thing, which he figures means he doesn’t sound like he’s from Brooklyn or something. West Coast Americans generally are fairly unaccented — no particular twangs or drawls, so the Canadian confusion made SOME sense. But really — Glaswegian??? Really????