Thanks, Chris. I watched him last night and the accent didn’t seem as strong on the tv as it did on the youtube clip. I think I was listening a lot closer because the clip was so compelling and he was emoting a pretty serious point.
The hardest and most distinctive accent I experienced in Scotland was at a place called Peebles. Our rental car broke down and the AA man showed up. This was funny for our part. The guy looked like our local comedian Robin Williams. When he opened his mouth, he sounded like Robin Williams in the Popeye movie. His accent was “half-swallowed” down his throat, like a growl. Amazing. I could barely understand him but he was a super nice guy so it was embarrasing as hell. I didn’t hear an accent anything like it for the rest of the trip (we were in Edinburgh area and Stirling, didn’t make it west to Glasgow).
I wonder if in Scotland, like in America, the accents are getting ironed out and regularized by tv exposure. Or that a certain accent is being favored.
There is a school of thought that the abundance of English accents on our TVs is introducing more english phrases into our speech. Especially with the likes of Eastenders (lots of london cockneys) being shown almost every night.
Also with the number of people from south of the border and abroad now living and working in our cities I think the accents in the likes of Edinburgh and Aberdeen especially are becoming more mild. However if you go into the country and the surrounding towns the accents are still generally strong. Lots of people from the central belt (Glasgow and Edinburgh) have trouble understanding people from up here as there’s a lot of words and phrases we use that aren’t used anywhere else in the country.
There was a funny moment recently when the BBC broadcast a documentary series on north sea fisherman based in Peterhead and Fraserburgh (both fishing towns situated just north of Aberdeen). The programme was broadcast across the whole of the UK and despite the fisherman speaking English the show was broadcast with subtitles so the strong doric accent could be translated for English viewers.
I remember one such program with subtitles, myself. I think the speaker was from John O’ Groats. He was speaking another language altogether, to my ears.