Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 May 6

= May 6 =

Prime Minister with non-English accent
Has there ever been a British Prime Minister with a Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish accent? 86.130.77.121 (talk) 18:06, 6 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Accents are tricky, and any answer may come down to subjective judgement. I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest though that Lloyd George had more than a trace of a Welsh accent, albeit one heavily influenced by received pronunciation. Listen to this British Pathé recording from 1931. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:14, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm listening to a bit of Gordon Brown and there seem to be hints of a Scottish accent (a pretty flat "know", for instance), but disappointingly weak given that he was born in Glasgow and to my knowledge spent most of his life in Scotland. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:36, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * To me, an Englishman who lived in Scotland for several years, Brown's Scottish accent was always pretty obvious. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.213.18.208 (talk) 19:36, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd say that Ramsay MacDonald had more of an accent than Brown. Like Lloyd George though, strong RP elements too? It is entirely possible that both Lloyd George and MacDonald's accents varied noticeably with register. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:01, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Tony Blair is also Scottish. Discuss.  Hayttom (talk) 01:06, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * "Discuss."
 * All right, although it doesn't directly answer the original question (i.e. I'm probably starting a diversionary tangent), over half a dozen British Prime Ministers since 1900 have been Scots, although most of them with Received Pronunciation from family, public schools or Oxbridge (e.g. Macmillan, Blair and Cameron):
 * Arthur James Balfour
 * Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
 * Andrew Bonar Law
 * James Ramsay MacDonald †
 * Harold Macmillan
 * Sir Alec Douglas-Home (Lord Home)
 * Tony Blair
 * Gordon Brown
 * David Cameron
 * † My parents liked to quote Ramsay MacDonald's appreciation of Robert Burns on the record you can hear here (10 min. total) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbVGIqxhe0s The accent (perhaps because of the subject or the audience, no doubt on Burns' Night) is, to my ear, far more Scottish than anything else. —— Shakescene (talk) 02:50, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You can hear the voices of 15 UK Prime Ministers at this Sporcle quiz (plus pointers to others going back to Gladstone in the comments section): https://www.sporcle.com/games/dolebanana/righthonourableprimeminister
 * You can also hear samples (at least one full sentence) of Gladstone, Asquith, Lloyd George and everyone from Baldwin to Theresa May here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP0h4AP0Voo.
 * —— Shakescene (talk) 03:20, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, David Lloyd George had a recognisably Welsh accent.  Alansplodge (talk) 11:13, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * David Lloyd George was born in England, but should certainly be considered Welsh. He is the only PM whose native tongue was not English. Hayttom (talk) 13:42, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I watch the speeches, interviews and conversations of Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron on Youtube and none of them sounded Scottish. 86.130.77.121 (talk) 18:59, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It would be extremely surprising if any of Macmillan, Douglas-Home or Cameron had a Scottish accent considering they were born in London. Blair was born in Edinburgh but his family moved to England when he was 5 and he spent most of his time before that in Australia. Brown did have a Scottish accent. Valenciano (talk) 19:51, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Not sure how David Cameron made that list, except by part of his ancestry, which includes many nationalities. --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 19:55, 9 May 2023 (UTC)


 * That was a list I composed from my own mind and memory, rather than from any authoritative source. However the Wikipedia article about David Cameron does say this:
 * Cameron's father, Ian, was born at Blairmore House near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and died near Toulon, France, on 8 September 2010; Ian was born with both legs deformed, and underwent repeated operations to correct this. Blairmore was built by Cameron's great-great-grandfather, Alexander Geddes, who had made a fortune in the grain trade in Chicago, Illinois, before returning to Scotland in the 1880s. Blairmore was sold soon after Ian's birth.
 * Cameron has said, "On my mother's side of the family, her mother was a Llewellyn, so Welsh. I'm a real mixture of Scottish, Welsh, and English." He has also referenced the German Jewish ancestry of one of his great-grandfathers, Arthur Levita, a descendant of the Yiddish author Elia Levita.
 * —— Shakescene (talk) 18:17, 11 May 2023 (UTC)