“Se sbagli, è sacrilego!” Il problema della TV con accenti irlandesi | Televisione
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/30/tv-problem-irish-accents-house-of-guinness-helen-mirren?CMP=share_btn_url
di leodaora
“Se sbagli, è sacrilego!” Il problema della TV con accenti irlandesi | Televisione
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/30/tv-problem-irish-accents-house-of-guinness-helen-mirren?CMP=share_btn_url
di leodaora
11 commenti
>Brad Pitt as an IRA gunman in The Devil’s Own, for instance, was so bad that the year after it came out, the Troubles finally ended.
I do understand the pain you irish feel in that matter, i hate it when germans try to talk like austrian on film or TV.
The only one who ever got it right was Daniel Bruhl in Rush.
Everything else is awful.
And yes i agree fake irish accents are awful, there are plenty of talented irish actors they could hire.
Anyone following Larry and Paul, they don a very funny Irish accent theme inspired by Peirce Brosnan and Helen Mirren.
The accents are not meant to pass the test for Irish people…they are meant to be more in line what people in America and elsewhere think Irish people sound like.
Haven’t seen House of Guinness, which is what this article is promoting, but I did see a couple of fellow Redditors say it had shocking Irish accents!
There are some excellent Irish accents in film and TV. Jared Harris in The Terror, Brian Cox in Deadwood (though maybe that’s cheating as they both have an Irish parent and at least in Harris’s case, an Irish passport). Cate Blanchett in Veronica Guerin.
And then of course there are too many horrible attempts to list.
I will say, Irish and Yorkshire accents are very hard for Americans.
I do not know why but both of them will inevitably slide into Scottish for all but the best accent imitators in America.
I think it has to do with exposure. Americans are exposed to and notice Scottish accents more than Irish or Yorkshire. Scottish accents are also more recognisable. Many Irish accents feel lighter, closer to standard American or standard Southern English than Scottish accents are. All but the thickest Irish brogues are missed by most Americans. They recognise there’s an accent not their own but they can’t identify what makes it different from standard Southern English.
If I put a sticker on the map for everywhere Americans thought my Belfast mum was from, there’d be no map left.
I’m not saying this true, especially the part about “lighter” but it is the perception.
Norton says twice in the article that the accent isn’t that hard, it’s the pressure to get it right that makes it difficult
That’s bollox, maybe it is the case for him but many actors clearly do find the accents hard and it’s not because they’re crumbling under the pressure of it
Am I the only one absolutely sick of our preciousness about the accent?
There seems to be a law in Hollywood that Irish characters must always be played by British actors. And British actors never get an Irish accent right – they always do something that is a dead giveaway, especially the intrusive “r” (e.g. “Chiner and Indier” instead of China and India) which sticks out like a sore thumb for me and I suspect most Irish people. This is such a deeply ingrained habit with British people in general, they aren’t even aware that they’re doing it and get mad at you if you point it out. I once had a disagreement at work with an English guy, and he kept saying “there’s a floor in your argument.” It took me longer than it should have, to realize he meant “flaw”. But when I pointed it out to him, he swore up and down that he wasn’t doing it.
I don’t really care about how badly non-Irish actors do the accent, what gets on my tits is the home-produced drama where all members of the same family and the locals in their rural village have 25 different accents between them.
I saw Norton on Graham Norton the other night. He explained how he’d been coached for the accent, literally breaking it into syllables. He’s not had.
As bad as Helen Mirren’s Irish accent is, Pierce Brosnan’s attempt at a Kerry accent was egregious.