OFF: Ficton & Nektar

[Paul Mather]

On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 04:26, Henderson Keith wrote:

> >Keyboards, played apparently by a Welsh hobbit,
>
> :)
>
> He has the strangest accent of any person I've ever heard.  I can only
> understand about every fifth word!  I thought he was from Liverpool,
> hearing some similarities to other Liverpudlians I've heard (Lister
> from Red Dwarf is one, yeah?), but perhaps north(?)* Wales is just a
> more extreme version of this bizarre accent.  ?
>
> *He doesn't sound like Terry Jones, who I use as a Welsh example, but
> then I don't know what part of Wales Jones hails from.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Terry Jones was born in Colwyn
Bay, North Wales.  That is just a little east of the popular seaside
destination of Llandudno (just one stop over on the North Wales Coast
main line).

I lived for several years in Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, which is further
west along the coast in North-West Wales.  I remember when living there
the locals used to refer to South Wales as "English Wales."  Perhaps
that had something to do with North-West Wales having the highest
concentration of native Welsh speakers.  If memory serves, it was
something like 60% in the county of Gwynedd.

So, unless Terry's accent was particularly diluted or mangled through
schooling and later life, he perhaps is a good Welsh example---unless
you're looking for a South Wales example. ;-)

(Note that Liverpool is near North-East Wales.)

Cheers,

Paul.
--
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa