Paddy McGuinness

[percheron67]

I switched BBC 1 on early and am waiting for Casualty. The programme on at the moment is hosted AGAIN by Paddy McGuinness. He is rarely off the screen and I cannot understand it! He has a simply dreadful dialect and will keep sounding a hard G in singing. Apart from that he yells at the top of his (Very unattractive) voice. How on earth does this man keep a job on television?

I don't particularly like or dislike him but I think he's great in Top Gear and love his accent.

I have slept on it and still don’t understand the finger singer thing.

Me too 😬. I really need to hear someone who pronounces them so they don’t rhyme so I can understand. Or I need to clean all that cotton from t’mill out of my ears.

I’m from Greater Manchester, I’ve worked with plenty of People from Bolton, and worked there and while it’s on the broad side I don’t think his accents fake. It’s a strong one but I’ve heard plenty like him.

He is a bit cringe these days but that’s tv for you. But I met both paddy and his wife in a professional role years ago and they came across quite lovely to be honest. He was much more toned down.

I posted a video a few pages back where they are pronounced differently

@Franklyyes

Saw him live at a local theatre - he really wasn’t funny. Also Find it odd that his wife regularly posts lingerie photos and then talks about challenges with their children with asd

And??

Isnt he just the latest token northern presenter with an accent to make the BBC feel better about itself?

Is the finger and singer thing that they sound different? Im up north and they are different in my accent but not in some others. Either way it doesn't bother me... If everyone spoke the same way it'd be boring. Love a thick accent.

Is that the video where the lady is saying “singing” ShutUpAlex?
Watching that I can hear how we say sing-ging. I still can’t compute how an accent would pronounce singer and finger to not rhyme though, it’s baffling my little Northern mind.

@percheron67

Ballonsand boobies. Thank you. Ones I can understand!

Accents you can understand? How about you learn to understand them. As a person from the Lancashire area and no longer living there, I love to hear northern accents on tv. Growing up, National tv programs only had Southern accents, never my own. Obviously Coronation Street but that is set in Manchester.

I was delighted when Jodie was chosen to play Dr Who and the world gets to hear a Yorkshire accent.

Paddy's accent is just a strong Bolton accent. As a child my parents bought The Sunday Post which had "The Broons" cartoon in it. It is actually "The Browns" but said with a strong Scottish accent. I loved trying to decode what they were saying.

@LizBennet

Is that the video where the lady is saying “singing” ShutUpAlex? Watching that I can hear how we say sing-ging. I still can’t compute how an accent would pronounce singer and finger to not rhyme though, it’s baffling my little Northern mind.

It’s because finger is always pronounced with the hard g. So sing- er or sing grrr But finger is always fing-grr

This thread has made me aware of an anti northern sentiment here in the south though which is really eye opening. Pronouncing words like singing with a hard g is what people here do to take the piss and to sound “thick”. In fact, I’ve now realised that most people when taking the piss will imitate a northern accent. How bizarre I’ve no noticed it before.

Aah I still need to hear them spoken 2021namechanges, thank you for trying to explain though without the snarkiness.

@LizBennet do you say a hard g at the end of the word too?

@LizBennet

Here. Can you hear the difference?

streamable.com/wt2sp2

If I was just saying it in normal speech ShutUpAlex I’d just pronounce it “singin”, dropping the g. If I was “trying to talk posh” I’d say it with a hard g at the end, yes,

Aah yes waterlego, I can hear that difference.

The difference in that video is tiny though, and all this over a slight change in pronunciation.
Paddys accent is typical broad Bolton, I think it's just that he's quite shouty that makes it seem stronger.

@LizBennet ah ok, that won’t work then

I do love a “how to pronounce” thread on here though 😂

@YesThisIsMe

The Finger/Singer debate is a recurring problem on MN. What complicates things is that some people (mostly midlanders but also some northerners) can’t hear the difference at all - something about their infant language acquisition means they can’t distinguish the sounds as adults, like the Japanese with r and l (or most anglophones with a whole bunch of sounds from other languages).

DH is a midlander and although he actually says finger and singer more or less correctly in the southern style he can’t hear any difference between them and gets quite cross when I say that there is, even if I give examples face to face. He’s a decent mimic and competent linguist, so not normally lacking in this stuff but he’s got a total blind spot on this one.

This was the point I was making. It's all to do with how you were taught sounds phonetically in your regional accent.

So many appalling digs at the North here, honestly never realised people felt like that. I’m from Greater Manchester originally, family from Manchester and Lancashire. Have lived Down south and around the world and haven’t encountered these attitudes. Tbh my worst fear would be living in the South, especially with attitudes like this. If the Northern accent is associated with being thick, what about cockney etc..?! To me, that’s a really unattractive way of speaking, normally I wouldn’t have said that, but since the knives are out for The North.
Paddy’s accent is a pretty normal sounding Bolton accent to me. I don’t think he’s a ‘Token Northern presenter’
Disgusting comments.

@Herewegoagainok

I've never known there was another pronunciation of singer other than to rhyme with finger and yes the explanations on this thread have been crap. Stop saying it's wrong to pronounce it with a hard g as though the alternative is a soft g like giraffe. I've now discovered there are differences I hadn't known before and yes, I've moved out of my village or whatever patronising shite someone came up with. The real reasons I've never noticed are more likely due to the map a pp posted which showed that the rhyming pronunciation is actually very common, the fact that the word singing isn't a usual topic of conversation i'd have and the fact it's quite a subtle difference in accent as opposed to the various other more obvious ones I have when I visit different areas.

This is spot on.

It's not his dialect that bothers me. It's that he has zero personality which is surprising for someone for who that's meant to be the primary requirement for their job.

Our findings seem to support those of Wells (1982): singer and finger rhyme for 97% of northern speakers, and for 90% of those in the West Midlands. This is in contrast with the South, where only 54% of speakers reportedly rhyme these words.

I appreciate I am late to this but it really isn't rocket science. I am from Liverpool, lived in Bolton for a while and gradually moved South. I have lived in the middle of the country, east and west, for most of my life. I say the hard g. I can't hear a difference in pronunciation when my SW born and bred DH says singer and finger. He may here a difference, buy I don't.

And Paddy's accent is identical to my cousin's. So it's not fake, just broad.

The insistence that some posters are being obtuse because they don't hear a difference, or need to leave their village, is a great example of the MN cohort majority being very Southern. Well suck it up Buttercup, us northerners are here to stay 😁

Ps. I'm sure all of you slagging off the accents don't all talk like the Queen...