How to Speak With an Irish Accent
The Irish accent has captivated American audiences for years. Many people try to speak with an Irish accent each year around St. Patrick's Day, and some actors and actresses will work hard to develop one for a leading role. Follow these steps to learn how to speak with an Irish accent.
- Difficulty:
- Moderately Easy
Instructions
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1
Think about the way you speak. If you analyze how you use your words, you will be better equipped to change things about the way you speak later.
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2
Soften your vowels. Americans have a tendency to harden the sounds of their vowels, as in the long sound of vowels when they are followed by another vowel. To speak with an Irish accent, you will need to soften the sound of your vowels. For instance, the letter A when pronounced by Americans is phonetically "aye." However, someone with an Irish accent would pronounce the letter "ah."
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3
Focus on your consonants. To pull off any European accent you need to enunciate better. The first rule in enunciation is to focus hard on your consonant sounds. Instead of softening your consonants, like you would for a vowel, you want to harden the sound.
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4
Make your speech more musical. To have a convincing Irish accent, you cannot have a deadpan American delivery. When an Irish person speaks there is a tone and inflection in their voice that is musical. Watch a few movies and listen for the vocal patterns.
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5
Practice. The more you try to mimic an Irish accent, the better you will get at it.
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Tips & Warnings
When beginning, think about every part of speech independently from speaking as a whole.
Listen for the musical delivery of the Irish accent. If your voice sounds musical, you are doing it right.
Don't get discouraged. Your accent will be awful at first. But with any luck, it will improve.
Take special consideration to who is listening when practicing so that no one is offended by your new way of speaking.
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Comments
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celine with suckhard..hey :)
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is it true what it suggets?
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Encore..............
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Tread carefully when following the advice of an ehow article. The only legitimate purpose for this would be for acting, and it fails at that.. Still, this is one of ehow's more hilarious articles.. I agree that this borders on the offensive because of it's brevity.. An improvement would have been to finish with a link to another ehow article on self defense. Still, I love listening to someone with a legitimate Irish accent, and am proud of my ancestry (sorry, “chillmyster”, wherever you are now)..
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Has this writer ever been to Ireland? This article is filled with generalizations and inaccuracies and borders on condescending. (If it sounds "musical," it must be Irish? Yikes.) Stephanie, it's Irish, not Gaelic, and it won't just come to you. Geoffrey, there is no "gh" sound in the Irish language -- get your facts straight before you laugh at people. FINALLY, please, Contributor, rid yourself of the "blarney" stereotype -- it's insulting.
