A bad Irish accent? You should hear mine…
Before I mercilessly pillory Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan for their risibly bad Irish accents in the trailer for their new film, Wild Mountain Thyme, I should probably out myself as somebody who positively delights in risibly bad accents.
You know that annoying person who takes on the accent of the place they happen to be? That would be me. And the one who won’t – can’t – stop, even when it’s, say, a wedding or a wake and either way entirely inappropriate? Also me.
I can spend days pretending to be from Limerick or Dublin, which segues nicely into Jamaica – not as unfeasible or un-pc as it sounds, given forced emigration to the Caribbean was so high in the 17th century that a quarter of Jamaicans now claim Irish ancestry.
On holiday this year, my husband almost crashed the car due to my deranged (I like to think he meant pricelessly funny) impersonation of a New York taxi driver demanding we
Brogue: Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt in ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’
stop for “cawfee on rowte to Joisey”. Totes hilarious.
Back in Ireland, I become so darn Irish (think Chicago on St Patrick’s Day, except greener) that other Irish people can’t actually understand me. Which brings me back to Emily and Jamie, whose woeful brogue has gone rogue.
Given Jamie is from Co Down in Northern Ireland, he has no excuse for not getting to grips with southern vowels down the road. As for Emily, I can only sigh with disappointment because she and her husband actually have a holiday home in West Cork.
Supporting actor Christopher Walken also deserves a dishonourable mention in dispatches for his attempt to strangle the language of
W B Yeats and George Bernard Shaw.
Fortunately, the Irish think it’s hilarious, as attested on high by The Irish Times headline: “What in the name of holy bejaysus is this cowpat?” And on low, by the viewer who asserted that “these accents constitute a hate crime”.
Poor Emily. Maybe she’s too A-list to have immersed herself in rainswept Ireland for too long. But if she wanted to mug up on her Irish lilt, she could always have holidayed somewhere almost everyone speaks with a Cork accent – the Caribbean island of Monserrat.