Accents of the Doctor

A bunch of clips from the "Fires of Pompeii" episode of Doctor Who. The Doctor and Donna go to Ancient Rome and due to the translation prowess of the Tardis, everyone seems to speak in English. The funny thing is that when either Donna or the Doctor says something in Latin, it sounds like Welsh or Celtic to the Romans.

When I hear the various English accents in Doctor Who I can recognize that there are differences, but I have no context for them regionally/geographically. So I read the comments of this post from Language Log about the 10th Doctor's northern accent with some interest. Besides the comment that made mention of the Doctor Who episode above, I found this one, which I thought was funny:

 And this one, which made me repeat 'pen' and 'pin' to myself until I couldn't even tell if I was speaking English any longer:

I'd heard about the pen/pin merger and come across it most in my mother's speech (her family is from the Texas/Arkansas border and thereabouts). For myself the merge of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before the nasal stops ([m], [n], and [ŋ]) doesn't seem to be an established rule. I call my cousin /bɛn/ and I write with a /pɛn/, but I order from a either /mɪnju/ or /mɛnju/ at /wɪndi:z/. It seems like I switch between them. This may be a result of living in very international environment as a child and a pretty diverse area culture/language/accent wise here in south central Texas, or maybe because my father's side of the family has a kind of 'chicano' accent (yes, my grandma pronounces 'chair' kind of like 'Cher').

I don't remember how my friends up in upstate New York pronounced words like 'pen' or 'Wendy's'. The only example of glaringly differing accents I remember is the Reese's episode I had as a freshman. We were in the drama house watching the local improv group and my roommate said, "It smells like Reese's in here!" She pronounced it /ri:si:z/. In the noisy room I misheard her and thought she said, "it smells like feces in here!" I'm sure my reaction puzzled her. (I pronounce it /ri:sɪz/, by the way, like the commercial.)