Ok, I'll listen to these clips myself, although I don't think I can give a valuable insight/comment as I'm not familiar wih the language. I wouldn't expect Irish pronunciation to be like English. Irish Gaelic is quite a thick, soft language to my ears, like velvet, so it's possible that people are making a comparison of that softness with certain English accents. It is possible that they listen to the Irish 'r', and decide that it more similar to the English 'r' than it is so the rolled 'r' in Scottish Gaelic or Welsh (and I can see why they would think this, even thought I know the Irish 'r' is far thicker than the English one). To me, if I had to compare it to another language, I would chose Persian combined with a Scandinavian sound (when the male sport presenter is speaking). Persian isn't as soft, but I can hear similarities in some parts.
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The elderly ladies don't have an English intonation, that's for sure. In fact, in some parts, they sound like they have a north Welsh intonation...........just a tiny bit, although we lengthen are put more stress on certain parts of the sentences. It's very interesting, considering that some people think that the people from the Llyn Peninsula in Wales are descended from an Irish tribe who sailed across the ocean to settle there. It could be why I see my looks and the facial features & colouring of people from that area reflected in a lot of Irish people I've seen.
I think a lot of languages overlap to a certain extent, out of coincidence if nothing else. We're all human beings with similar mouths so I think it's natural that the same sounds crop up again and again. I can totally see why people would think that Welsh sounds a bit like Swedish or Norwegian (even I think this), mixed with a bit of Hebrew, even though they're really different.
People like to create patterns and find similarities, because it allows them to identify the subject and compare it with something they are already familiar with. If you heard only Spanish and English all your life, but then one day you heard Swedish, that person might say 'well that's similar to Spanish', not because it is really, but because that is all they know, so they're making comparisons with some thing they already know.
For me both native speakers, and non-native speakers from other countries have valid viewpoints, but I would say the native speaker standpoint is a bit more informed. For example, I would say I have good eye for colour, as I paint, and I notice that a lot of people either identify something as blue or green. They like to push colours into neat little boxes that are familiar to them. When I look at the same colour, I would say it's neither blue or green, but something in the middle. I wouldn't like to call it blue or green because that would be inaccurate. For me, it's like saying that an orange dress is red, or it's yellow, when it's not - it's orange!
I think English would have been influence by celtic sounds. You can see the movement of the celts in place names - fro example Cumbria in England comes from the same word as 'Cymru' - the welsh word for 'Wales', which means 'the land of comrades' 'friends/companions' in Brythoneg. As they were pushed more and more westwards, it's not surpsing that they would have left a trail of their accents behind them.
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Where did you go L'Irlandais? If you went to the north west (Gwynedd, or maybe Ynys Mon), then yes, the accents you heard there would have been very different from what a lot of people hear on TV, or the BBC. That's because the media and news industry is based down here in Cardiff, so you're more likely to hear the typical valleys or Cardiff/Barry accents than you are any other. I think most English people I've met think we all sound like we're from the valleys for example. A sad thing for me :/
To put it bluntly, we from the north don't get out much, and there aren't as many of us! That's why you don't hear out accents as often on T.V!
People have asked me before if I'm Polish, or they think I'm Scottish. Someone asked a previous colleague of mine if she was Russian (she has a very strong accent)..... so that's how unrecognised our accent is!! Lol.