Northern Irish Accent Intonation

Here's an introduction to the upward lilt of the Northern Irish accent - maybe not what you'd expect from an Irish accent if you're used to thinking of the Lucky Charms stereotype:

Irish Valley Girl? Totally.

Northern Irish Intonation

What's up with the accents up there or the dialects if you prefer that term. So, anytime that you're looking at an accent or dialect, you're generalizing a bit. Throughout most of the north of Ireland, what you get is an intonation pattern that lifts at the end.

So there's an upward movement at the end. It's what a lot of us will think of as the Valley Girl talk where it'll move up at the end, but instead of sort of being able to float up at the end, there actually seems to be a little bit of a drag up at the end. It's as though you can't quite release it to go up, but there'll be a tendency for almost every phrase to have a little bit of an upward movement to it.

So you'll get that that seems to be almost like it could get freed up, but it doesn't get freed up. Instead, it kind of gets pulled down again. So it's as though you're trying to go up and you're being pulled down at the same time being pulled down. And that's that Northern Irish accent.

Dublin Irish Intonation

You'll also hear something very similar to that when you get into Dublin. the Dublin accent, especially the working class more northern Dublin accent, will have a very similar sort of lift to it a lot of the time that you'll hear that thing that almost sounds like you're asking a question over and over again.

If you realize not all questions go up, you do realize that, don't you? Do you realize that? Do you realize that there, that went up, right? So, questions tend to go up at the end, much like this more Northern Irish accent.

And then the Dublin Irish accent will do very much that same sort of upward movement when we're talking about working class Dublin. When you get into South Dublin, it tends to be a little bit posher. You'll even get into what's commonly called the Dublin 4 accent that tends to go down at the end instead and sounds much more like an American intonation.

And I've talked about that a little bit when I was talking about Western Irish and Southern Irish accents as well.

Dragging Intonation

So, there's a quick intro to the intonation pattern for Northern Ireland. Make sure that you're going up at the end. And the other thing to make sure you're doing is feeling that kind of drag as you go up. Then eventually once you master that, you want to be able to do some other things as well because otherwise you may get locked into one way of doing it. And if you just touch base with it every so often, that'll keep you locked into that Northern Irish accent.