I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread where people could describe their regional quirks and stereotypes. A resource for creators who want to add a bit of regional flavour to characters they're creating.
For instance, say I wanted to create a character who was from Blackpool, or Swansea, or Darby, or
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Those places aren't really well represented in the media, and I've never met anyone from these places, so I have no frame of reference for those characters. I'd be interested to learn about people from those places and I'm sure some of you other aspiring writers would too.
Me, I'm from Derry, Northern Ireland, Northwest part of the Island. If ye want yer character dee be a Derry Head, remember dee use 'dee' instead of 'to', and that the only time it's called Londonderry is when Prodestints arguing over what the town is called, or if yer on the telly, the rest of the time everyone calls it Derry. We have a lot of armchair experts and tend to be argumental (emphasis on mental). Most of the Teenagers tend to be either wiggers or goths (although they will insist they are not goths, they're emo/metal/punk what have you. I don't care).
A few other things: there's a tendancy to contract everything we say. Our traditional greeting; 'What's the craic?' is pronounced 'Scrakk' and our traditional farewell 'See you after a while' has been contracted to 'see ye after' which is usually pronounced 'shafter'. If you are trying to emphasize that you will see the person very soon (or in certain cases when you haven't seen said person in a long time and definitely want to get back in contact with them), you would say 'Shaft her hard'
I am from Glastonbury.
Imagine if you will... a Wurzel.
There are two types of people in the town. Hippies and Wurzels. I am a hippie. For shame. Although I do know how to work the internet.
Actually, forget everything I said and watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7gPoU8TFcE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7gPoU8TFcE)
This is more or less what people are like 'round my way
East Lindsey - we sound like we're from Nottingham with the occasional rural accent slipping through. We swear far too much. We say sen instead of seven. We're mostly chavs and extremely obese. My hometown of Mablethorpe or 'Mabo' is also known as Village of the Daleks because of the amount of disabled people getting around on scooters. Some of them soup the scooters up so they go faster. It's very flat - when I'm home I can see the next town from the back garden. The next town is nearly 20 miles away. We are the home of the flattest half marathon. 100K people come to look at the baby seals at RAF Donna Nook bombing range at this time of the year. They block the access routes but the council won't build an actual road. The population goes from about 10K to 80K every single week during the summer tourist season. We still have 'Leicester Fortnight' when everyone from Leicester seems to descend on us. It used to be when the factories all shut for the holidays but has no explanation now. All teenagers hate living there and want to leave - the bright ones go to College/Uni. I could go on for hours.
I get rather homesick despite all this.