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While lifting a pint of your hedonistic green beer, wouldn’t you like to make a toast with an Irish lilt? To sound authentic on St. Patrick’s Day – better than your stab at impersonating the Lucky Charms leprechaun – you can download lessons from a Hollywood voice coach. David Alan Stern runs Dialect Accent Specialists, and for $15.95 you can order his “Acting with an Accent-Irish” package of nine mp3-sound-file lessons.
You’ll first be introduced to the general Republic of Ireland accent, called Hiberno English. Then you’ll focus on regional dialects for Dublin, Cork, and Northern Ireland. Stern’s got it down to a science; you’ll learn how to reshape your mouth to produce the right sounds, muffle your vowels by pushing your tongue against your palate, and master your diphthongs.
Stern formed his company in 1980 in Hollywood to coach actors in roles where they need to speak with an accent. The impressive list of actors he has worked with includes Julia Roberts, Sally Field, Daryl Hannah, and Olympia Dukakis, all of whom he helped sound legitimately Southern for ‘Steel Magnolias’ — Dolly Parton was already in the know. He worked with Forest Whitaker for a Missouri accent in ‘Bird’ and a British accent in ‘The Crying Game,’ as well as many others.
If you want to learn more dialects after St. Patrick’s Day, Stern applies his expertise to all kinds of accents. You can Zoom or Skype with him one-on-one if you’re as bent as a shillelagh on sounding accurate.
A skillfully-honed brogue may be just the thing to celebrate the saint who came to Ireland as a kidnapping victim, escaped, and later returned to use the shamrock as a metaphor to explain the Holy Trinity. Or maybe it’ll just help you say “Cheers” in Gaelic: sláinte!