I can’t understand a word they are saying

I can’t lie; communicating with my neighbours is problematic despite having been here a good number of years now.

I don’t mean the demanding little old lady next door, I mean everybody near to where I work.

All of them.

The accent in North Liverpool is particularly strongly Scouse compared to other parts, and if I hover near to couples or groups of people engaged in jolly banter I can’t understand a bloody word they are saying.

Yes, I’m the outsider, it’s not their problem, it’s mine.

On the plus side of course, they are speaking a form of English. Having moved up from East London, where English is a minority language, it makes a pleasant and refreshing change to hear English spoken around me. It’s just so unfair that I can’t understand it … yet.

So, let’s break this accent down. Firstly, I notice that everybody sounds angry and pushy, and there’s lots of phlegm (it must be the influence from the nearby Welsh people, or maybe it’s the abundance of Dutch porn). Some say it’s a derivitive of Irish that got ‘bastardised’ by the heavy pollution of the 1700s and 1800s giving everybody a permanet nasal twang due the constant chronic blockages of the sinuses. I feel that might be a bit of a made up urban legend myself, but it’s certainly true that to sound Scouse you need to block your nose whilst similtaneously trying to speak through it.

Whatever the truth of its origin is, I imagine even the phrase “I love you” is spat out with a snarl in Scouse (and followed by a punch in the mouth?).

Secondly, I notice that there are completely different frequency ranges used depending on how emotional the speaker is feeling. Scouse women are particularly good at this, able to speak across 5 different octaves in one sentence.

Let me explain. If a Scouse woman is old, or is speaking in a sexy or loved-up kind of a way then she will be making a deep throaty voice. It comes out sounding strikingly similar to the tone of the roars of King Kong, just quieter. Well, slightly quieter. The older a Scouse woman is, like my neighbour who is at least 100, the deeper they get. Having said that, even teenage girls round here can get pretty low. Apparently.

It is the teenage Scouse female that can pitch up to that frequency that shatters wine glasses from 20 metres. They can smoothly elevate from bass to soprano over 5 angry sentences.
Broadly speaking, the deep throaty voice is for when they are relaxed (or being sexy). Then, the more agitated they are, the higher the tone becomes. Most teenage Scouse females are angry and agitated most of the time, so very rarely do you hear the strange King Kong sound. More typically it’s a slightly elevated demanding whine. It rapidly increases to the frequency range only audible by bats and dogs if the demands of the Scouse female are not being immediately met.

I’ve concluded that the reason why every other male in Liverpool is being dragged along by an out of control snarling and frothing at the mouth dangerous dog is because the dogs are being tortured by hundreds of female Scouse voices that only they can hear. The Scouse male may even have picked these ugly and frightening animals (the dogs I mean, not the women) to alert them to exactly when it is that Scouse women are talking.

The Scouse male cannot compete with the Scouse female. Although he will be equally angry and agitated (maybe because the Scouse female’s voice is making his ears physically bleed and they hurt?), his tonal range is limited. She can get far deeper than him, and definitely has the exclusive use of quite a few full high octaves that he can only dream of. This disadvantage is why he will usually lose an argument to the screeching female.

Next, I notice that most commonly used words and phrases will be shortened to a single word and it has to end with an ‘eee’. A ‘Fish and Chips shop’ is a ‘chipeee’ for example, whilst ‘Electricity’ is ‘lecee’ and an all day bus ticket is a ‘zoneeee’. They have weird words like ‘barm’ for things that every other part of the UK calls bread rolls and buns, which is even more confusing.

Add all this together, mix it with one poor bewildered isolated liccle moi, and you have a major issue. Well, not you. It’s me.

Why are there not workshops and courses designed to help settle newcomers into the Liverpudlian way? I think we should be told! (in Queen’s English please).