How realistic was Scotty's accent?

Nearly all Dwarves are Scottish.

 

That sounds like racial profiling.

 

I used to have neighbors who had come over from Scotland. I sometimes had to ask the mother to repeat herself (her daughter and I were classmates in school, so we'd visit back and forth sometimes), but I understood her most of the time. In all honesty, it's the Newfoundland accents I find quite hard to understand sometimes, and whenever I get into a conversation with one of the recent immigrants from various African countries here, there are times when I have trouble following what they're saying.

Marina Sirtis' "Betazoid" accent was okay in the first season or two, but she got progressively sloppier with it until in the movies her accent bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one she used in the TV series. By the time she was occasionally guesting on Voyager, she was basically drawling her lines. It was grating to listen to.

I saw several of the documentaries on TV in the marathon when the Space Channel showed Day of the Doctor. I found David Tennant's normal accent quite pleasing to listen to.

 

"Weegie"?!!?

 

Someone from Glasgow, I'm guessing.

 

Yes, a soap dodger.

 

When the British newspaper The Guardian (previously The Manchester Guardian) reviewed the first episode of Frasier, it ended with something like: "There is also a character called Daphne. She claims to be a psychic from Manchester. At least one of these claims is a definite lie."

 

Not to be confused with the famous freelance news photographer.

 

Did they ever give him English subtitles in some parody or other?

 

"Captain, there's a problem down in Engineering."
"Engineering? What is it?"
"It's the big room down in the secondary hull where the engine controls are. But that's not important right now."

 

Well, my niece is on her way to spend a semester in Scotland. I hope she took the time to learn the language!

 

I've found with accents it can take you some time to get attuned to them. I recall a friend from many years ago whose grandfather moved over from England (I don't recall which part) after his wife died. After I was introduced to him I was missing a lot of what he was saying even though I knew he was speaking English. It took me a few weeks (because I didn't see him every day) to get attuned to his pronunciation and speech patterns, but after awhile I could understand him without a problem.

And I've found that pattern repeat every time I've encountered someone with (what is to me) a strong accent.

 

Charitably, we might excuse Leeves by saying maybe she 'deliberately' was not playing a Manc accent for the sake of being understandable to the American audience. Although one might then say that none of the American audience seem to have ever had trouble understanding Christopher Eccleston...

 

She wasn't trying to sound cockney; she was trying to sound like she was from Manchester. John Mahoney (Martin Crane), who really was from Manchester, tried to help her with the accent.

 

^ It isn't that he tried to help, it's that he evidently failed -- her real voice keeps coming through. Her "Manchester" accent is awful.

 

There are Scottish actors and musicians and other people who don't even sound Scottish when they speak and some like Karen Gillian(amy pond)had thick accent.scotty's accent is ok.

 

A lot of people say Sylvester McCoy sounded Scottish in Doctor Who, but my American ears only hear a bunch of rolled R's among generally English vowels.

Now, David Tennant in Broadchurch on the other hand... thot's a theck Scottish accent.

 

I don't think so ... but Germans sometimes do that ... wery vell ...

 

Regional variants. Like everywhere, including many different parts of the USA of course, different places in Scotland have got totally different, sometimes completely unique variants of the accent. In fact it isn't like there's just 'one' Scots accent, and that's it.

(The only accent I've ever had trouble hearing variants in is the Aussie accents. Not saying there aren't geographical regional variants, but it doesn't come across to me as obviously as with other world accents. There just seems to be a 'general Aussie accent' to me, regardless of where they hail from.)

Did we ever learn canonically from where in Scotland it is that Scotty is supposed to be from? I know he mentions going on pub crawls in the city of Aberdeen in one episode ("Wolf In The Fold"), but of course that wasn't a clear indication that he's actually from there...