Eee well nethen lad, tha'd not like my accent either, as I'm from 't' same place as 'im, ony 'e talks a bit more posh like. Tha' knows?

Ha, no offence to the Bolton accent, just that coupled with the annoying personality of Vernon is too much for me to bare. I've had an argument with a friend of mine from yorkshire so many times. I hate vernon kay, and his argument is.. "He's much better to have on't tv and radio than that Fern Cotton." As annoying as Fern is, I still despise Vernon.

Vernon's quite a posh boy from a well to do family, his wife isn't even from Bolton but now seems to have adopted the accent too.

Peter Kay and Paddy Mcguinness are at least just ordinary lads made good. I still think Mcguinness is lacking any discernible talent other than being Kay's sidekick, but Bolton accents seem to be in vogue with the TV people at the moment so he get's the gigs.

The first Bolton accent I noticed on TV was Fred Dibnah in 1983. I once worked with a girl from Ashton in Makerfield who had a similar accent. I like the accent, in fact I like most regional accents. I hope we don't all come to speak with one homogenised accent in the future. I think it's the personality of the speaker that's really the problem, not the accent.

I usually get mistaken for a Wigan-er by those not acquainted with the north. I can't say that I like all accents though, the two that spring to mind that I don't like are the scouse and Birmingham ones. I often wonder what other countries other than English speaking ones think of their own regional accents?

Does for example a man from Munich sound better or worse than a man from Berlin?

They all have them. It's hard for foreigners to distinguish. I did notice that in Brittany they say 'way' for oui, whereas in Normandy they say 'wee'. But one word doesn't make an accent. I only speak schoolboy french Then we'll get onto dialects.

French certainly has many dialects/ accents, My Dad, Who is from Mauritius, says "Way" for Oui, etc. It's strange and hard to imagine different dialects/accents in another language.

Amen.

That's me that is. I like Christmas, I just hate that it's been taken over as a way of making money. I also feel hugely guilty that I don't go to church* or take part in religion, yet have the bare faced cheek to hijack thier celebration for myself every year, as do millions of other people. Easter is the same.






*I'm not interested in hearing the origins of Christmas or 'discovering' which religion actually invented it, ok?

'Guilty' about the 'bare faced cheek' of using Christmas when you aren't religious?! Nah, don't, no way. It's a wonderful time of year and a wonderful occasion - a family occasion, or whatever else you want it to be.

Let's keep it magic, but not in the literal sense.

About the man from munich and the man from berlin. Interesting question. Putting it simply
ther are two basic german accents.the southern(bayerish) and the northern(haut deutch). And they are very different. The southern sounds sloppy and languorous and not very nice. Haut deutch on the other hand is crisp and sharp and actually when spoken well is a beautiful language, strange tho that may sound because we all have that sound memory of the third reich. Berrlin is a special case due to its history after ww2 when it was an island in east germany and to complicate matters students who attended uni in berlin were excused military service so there was a huge influx of students into berlin just to avoid the draft so berlin deutch is different. Apart from that i love our regional accents especially the geordie birmingham scottish etc. Being a londoner ive got your average london accent. What i can't stand is the BBC standard pronounciation and the embarrasing hiding of regional accents eg Michael Gove education secretary very scottish but what a contrived accent(no offence) even that bird who does desert island discs and countless others.