What English do you read, write, speak?

[Vorpal]

I used to work with someone who sounded just like Eric Idle. I kept expecting him to break out in song.

[reohn2]

My "problem" is I like to be thought of as me

Spare a thought for the poor **** who gets told he sounds just like....... Alan Carr.

A fate worse than death

[reohn2]

I used to work with someone who sounded just like Eric Idle. I kept expecting him to break out in song.

I've tried all my life to be idle,but poverty got in the way of it.
Now I can afford to be idle,I'm too old and knackered to enjoy it to it's full potential

[Cyril Haearn]

I used to work with someone who sounded just like Eric Idle. I kept expecting him to break out in song.

I've tried all my life to be idle,but poverty got in the way of it.
Now I can afford to be idle,I'm too old and knackered to enjoy it to it's full potential

If someone asked me who I am like, I might cite Hugh Grant, seems fairly harmless
Could be a subject for a whole new thread

[old_windbag]

I'm sure many are likened by their other halves to a broken record .

[PDQ Mobile]

This touches onto another interesting facet of language.

We are as a species just amazingly good at recognizing a single individual through the sound of his voice not just his dialect and delivery but the actual harmonics of the vocal tract/nasal cavity.

These structures are very individual, resulting in very slightly different sounds, a bit like differing musical instruments from the same maker.

For example, a familiar voice from the past will be almost instantly and correctly identified.
Richard Baker for example.
Or a recording of a deceased relative of friend, arguably a better identifier than an old photograph!

Some speakers are obviously more similar than others. however we seem quite astonishingly finely tuned to hear very tiny differences.

[old_windbag]

It's also very good signal processing how we can, in a crowded room with many conversations going on, home in or filter the conversation we wish to tune in on. To hear what they are saying behind our back . Thats very advanced signal processing that we take for granted.

[al_yrpal]

One of my fellow apprentices was from Wigan. His nickname was Bumble. Why? He was a bit of a loudmouth and when he spoke it sounded like "Bumble Bumble Bumble". Teenagers are often cruel.

Al

[Cyril Haearn]

This touches onto another interesting facet of language.

We are as a species just amazingly good at recognizing a single individual through the sound of his voice not just his dialect and delivery but the actual harmonics of the vocal tract/nasal cavity.

These structures are very individual, resulting in very slightly different sounds, a bit like differing musical instruments from the same maker.

For example, a familiar voice from the past will be almost instantly and correctly identified.
Richard Baker for example.
Or a recording of a deceased relative of friend, arguably a better identifier than an old photograph!

Some speakers are obviously more similar than others. however we seem quite astonishingly finely tuned to hear very tiny differences.

How and why did we develop this ability? To perceive Sabre-Tooth Tigers in time maybe
But trained actors can fool us, I read about one who delivered a perfect speech in Danish although he could not speak the language at all

[pwa]

I've been told by people I sound like him,not an attractive claim to fame

If that is the case you should be well proud. A great personality( on screen anyway ) and TV needs people like him. I watched him since his first tv appearances in the late 70's and winced at his death defying chimney climbing and laddering methods.

But behind all of that a very skilled engineer and technical artist. To some degree we now have Guy Martin sort of following in his footsteps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFz96-aKw5A

A great regret of mine is not tootling down the road from over-hulton and seeing his steam driven "garden". Thats how they all sounded at the place I worked.

I once got stuck in a queue of traffic behind Dibnah's traction engine. If you think modern diesel engines are bad, you should have been there to breath in some of what came out of that thing!

[old_windbag]

I once got stuck in a queue of traffic behind Dibnah's traction engine.

Fortunately he didn't stick it into reverse . When I was a kid in the 70's I actually saw the council rolling tarmac with a steamroller( traction engine type ). Still to this day I use that term when describing a road roller, I'm sure many of my generation and before maybe do. They also had those single cylinder whacker/thumper that was so well toyed with on "shed and buried", quite a scary thing as a kid.

[mjr]

I love hearing different accents when travelling, they are part of the place just like buildings or landscapes

My Oxford English (or accent-free as it has wrongly been called) is not like Mr Rees-Mogg speaks, he is in a different league

Yes, RP ain't Oxford English. Some of my family speak with pretty close to true Oxford English but I think I've ended up speaking some sort of East/South Midlands dialect, sometimes referred to as northern with a southern sound... it's fairly fast and blunt, with lots of shortened past tenses (spelt not spelled, snuck not sneaked, frit not frightened, dreamt not dreamed and so on) and many place names are cut down. I think you can hear the faint influence of both the harsh (IMO) Birmingham accent and the consonant-dropping North London one, but not much.

This may be of interest given the thread topic.

http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialect ... h-dialects

I think I've seen that before and curiously, I think the closest to mine is the Wilmcote, Warwickshire recording, rather than any of the counties I've actually lived in. It may be because many of the recordings are from urban areas.

[Cyril Haearn]

I speak Oxford English, or used to
Is there a Cambridge English?
Or has Oxford *won* this one?

[PDQ Mobile]

[quote="Cyril Haearn"]
How and why did we develop this ability? To perceive Sabre-Tooth Tigers in time maybe
But trained actors can fool us, I read about one who delivered a perfect speech in Danish although he could not speak the language at all[/quote]
((Sorry quoting not working properly on my device))

Again it's quite interesting and debatable.
That someone can master the phonetics of another language but not speak it at all is clearly possible.

It is more difficult to change the fundamental and harmonic frequencies of the voice box that you were born with.
I had a debate with someone once who thought by merely talking in a high squeaky voice she could fool anyone who she was.
I was less certain as the fundamental characteristics of the voice remained much the same.

As for Sabre Toothed Tigers, well the ability to recognize any individual in the confines of darkness, (cave etc) has clear and significant advantages.
It's a help on the phone too!!

[old_windbag]

I've never conversed with a sabre-toothed tiger on the phone. But have spoken to an elephant on a trunk call.