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There has been a question in my mind for a while that I want to ask now plus one that I thought of yesterday.
1. In film reviews, I've heard they say, that a character might have a British accent, in an American movie, to sound classy or knowledgeable or sth. Is it really so? Do Americans, I mean, have such an attitude in real life?(Is my use of 'I mean' in commas correct?:-))
2. I've also heard that the British are so biased about their accent, so far as to not accept American as one. So, those who have British spouse, etc, haven't they ever been despised, not necessarily by their spouse, or...?(Especially that people from different counties in the same country usually do have such reactions.)
(I would always appreciate being told of my mistakes in sentence making, word usage especially, etc.)
I used to date an English woman, and she never gave me any kind of hard time about my American accent.
The thing that bothers me most is when people in one country assume that everyone in the other has the same accent. An acquaintance of mine had a list of 85 different American accents and could define the distinctive characteristics of each; I'm told there are more than that in the UK.
Even people in the same country can underestimate the amount of variation. Stan Freberg, in his autobiography, tells about a time he asked Daws Butler for a "southern" accent for some character, and Butler asked him which kind of southern accent he wanted. Freberg said the character was from North Carolina, whereupon Butler rattled off samples of about half a dozen different ones and asked him to pick one.
To question 1- Except for the artist Madonna, who does many other peculiar things anyway, I cannot name a single American who purposefully adopt an English accent. Where they use English accent in movies, I am sure it's because the story requires it for that character, not because they want to project some 'class' with it.
Heya there,
Replying as a British person, here there is generally the attitude that if a British actor is cast with an English accent in America they'll be playing a bad guy. It's a bit of a running joke. Of course there are exceptions but, especially in the action genre, that is the perception.
For the second, a large amount of the TV and nearly all the films we watch here are American (for myself it probably accounts for 80-90% of what I watch) so there's not a huge negativity about American accents. However there are some derogatory associations with America (the stereotypes of large food portions, extreme dumbing down and lack of wit and sarcasm) which the accent is the first clue of and so it can draw that mocking in comedy. I've never seen a serious derogatory comment about the accent(s). For people born in the UK after the 70s general American accents are probably more familiar and 'normal' to them than the more pronounced regional British accents.
Rafee, speaking as an American, there is definitely a perception that British accents are refined, classy, educated, high-class, something in that range. I don't mean that anyone would admit to believing intellectually that people with a British accent are smarter or better than those without, but certain British accents have that effect on us subconsciously, sort of like a Peruvian accent on Spanish speakers.
That, in my opinion, is exactly why Brits think they're cast as the bad guy so often in American movies. In older American movies, a goatee was an infallible signal of a bad guy; later on, it was a rich, educated man who plays Bach on a pipe organ. In the '80s it was a Catholic priest. More recently it's a British accent. In all cases, the point is that the story-teller wants to give us, as the villain, a man we might be inclined to trust and/or look up to, so that we'll be surprised when it's revealed who the bad guy is.
I'm a Brit living in America.
I use my voice every day in my work; and Americans often say to me that it isn't my work that is good, but my accent!
(They have no perception that this is actually rather a put down, implying that if I had a different accent, that my work wouldn't be as worthwhile!) I'm often forced to gently point out that I am also good at what I do at "home" in Britain.
It amazes me that many of my American acquaintances cannot tell the difference between my accent (mostly BBC received with a hint of Welsh lilt, and some West country burr when I'm upset or very relaxed) and any other British accent.
I have a good friend whose British accent is South Midlands, very different to mine, and yet people think we talk with exactly the same accent!
As someone who studies folklore and regional differences, I can pick out regions of the North East USA; and I can get quite specific about Pennsylvania, having noticed distinct county differences between northern Pa, certain counties of NE Pa; Scranton (which is a gorgeous accent/word mixture); southern Pa, and western Pa.
To my ear, Georgia/North Carolina/ Virginia also have their distinctions...although I'm not familiar enough to distinguish county from county. -----yet---
And of course the Western states, particularly Oregon, have their own "voice"
After 20 years working in the USA, I must say, that I am more than a little tired of hearing
"I LOVE your accent....where are you from??" something I get almost every time I open my mouth.
The only other major challenge I get is when ordering water in a restaurant or shop. Why water?? I have no idea....but it stops 'em every blinkin' time!!!
Yanks—almost all Yanks, as far as I can tell, except sometimes when singing—change a 't' to a 'd' between two vowels before an unaccented syllable. We pronounce "water" /'wAdr/, for example, and "humanity" /hju'm&n@di/. When the 't' starts a syllable that is accented, it stays a 't', as in "return" (/r@'trn/) and "fourteen" (/fOrt'tin/). Interestingly, Aussies and some Brits change the 't' in the teens to a 'd', though we do not in the States; I don't know what that's about.
Fiona, all over the world the percentage of people who have a real ear for accents is pretty small. Sounds to me like you have it; go ahead and enjoy it, but just know you're in the minority (/mI'nOr@di/) without assuming that the folks around you are merely inattentive. I have that ear too, but I couldn't tell you what color my wife painted the living room. A man who wouldn't be caught dead wearing the color combinations that I put on unreflectively in the morning might not be able to identify at lunch the flavor that he loves in the cafeteria's mushroom soup; and the diner who can distinguish between tarragons grown in France, Arkansas and the pampas may not discern that afternoon that the reason his coworker is tense and irritable is something his wife said to him on the phone. There are all kinds of awarenesses, and most of us are missing important ones.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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