I'm intrigued by the pronunciation patterns of the Canadian journalist Lyse Doucet, who is the BBC's Chief International Correspondent. If you don't know her - and have a few moments to spare - there's plenty of footage of her online.
My question is this - is Doucet's a standard accent from New Brunswick? I've heard quite a few Canadian accents, but I've never heard one like hers before. To British ears, she sounds more Irish than anything else. She's a highly distinguished journalist but, unfortunately, many BBC listeners fail to absorb a single word she says because we're so fascinated by her peculiar accent!
To my Italian ears, she has an American accent, but sometimes she seems British. I think it's a mix of both accents. I don't know Irish accents, though. I've discovered that she is from Acadia, a colony of New France. About her accent, she said: "my accent has been an issue from the day i started..but as the years have gone by...it seems that listeners/viewers have got used to it, and the bbc has become a place of many accents..my accent is probably a blend of all the places I have lived in the past 30 years but I still sound like my mother..".
I think she has a touch of the "newfie" accent, minus the slang, of course.
I have no idea where her accent's from, and I hadn't heard of her before, but I searched her name on YouTube and to me she sounds a bit like Sarah Palin, haha.
