British Accents

[vprasad]

Many years ago, one of my highschool teachers informed me that the Brits did not always have their accent; they had no accent whatsoever until it was mandated by one of their monarchs (Victoria?) that everyone speak the way they do now. For the life of me, I cannot find anything to validate this claim. So, did the Brits always have their accents?

[SuaSponte]

Another argument for mandatory testing of teachers.

Foist, there isn't one "English" accent. In fact, I'd dare say that some UKers have trouble understanding some other English accents.

Prolly your HS teacher got tripped up by "Queen's English". It's possible (someone out there know), that the spellings of English words were standardized by a Royal Academy or some such, and given the royal imprimateur, but I doubt it. In any event, that would only apply to the written word, not spoken.

Queen's English (and it depends on who's on the throne - under Charles, it will be called King's English), as a spoken dialect, is what you used to hear on the BBC, although I believe BBC has switched over to the Thames dialect, which is notable for its frequent ellisions. This is considered the "proper" English amongst the upper classes, but has not formal royal approval.

V.

[ruadh]

Your teacher is an idiot.

For one thing, everybody has an accent.

For another thing, which British accent was (s)he talking about? Cockney, Estuary, Geordie, Scouse, Midlands, Glasgow, Manc, etc?? There is no one "British" accent. There are many.

For another thing, your teacher is an idiot. (I know I said that already, but it really can't be repeated often enough)

Victoria may have mandated everybody talk in a certain way (and I'm sure tom of tomndebb will be around to provide the details of said mandate, if it existed) but without question there were accents beforehand.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Being a big fan of "Britcoms", I like to "spot the accent". Take the show "Good Neighbors (AKA "The Good Life" in the UK), Margo and Jerry have that "snooty" sounding accent, while Tom and Barbara have a much "warmer" accent.

Perhaps one of our British posters could give us a lesson in "spotting the accents"?

[astro]

This sounds like the perfect opening for a Kipling "Just So" story akin to "How the Elephant Got his Nose" etc.


Now kids who like to hear a story tonight?

"We would!. We Would!"

Ok! OK!... Now listen carefully. This is about how the British got their accents.

Long ago there was a great and powerful wizard with a mischievous assistant...

[dtilque]

What your teacher was talking about is Received Pronunciation (RP). This is not the same as the Queen's English, which is just a way of refering to standard English in England.

RP is a dialect based to some degree on that of Queen Victoria. It's spoken by only a small fraction of the English, but they are mostly upper class and so are unduly influential.

[BiblioCat]

Another argument for mandatory testing of teachers.


You mean when I was told that blood is really blue (just look at your veins!) but only turns red upon hitting the oxygen (when you are cut or otherwise injured) my teacher was WRONG????
Wow, the things I learn on this board.....

[StompyGodzilla]

Being a big fan of "Britcoms", I like to "spot the accent". Take the show "Good Neighbors (AKA "The Good Life" in the UK), Margo and Jerry have that "snooty" sounding accent, while Tom and Barbara have a much "warmer" accent.

Perhaps one of our British posters could give us a lesson in "spotting the accents"?


There's loads of different ones, as has already been pointed out. My husband's a Geordie, for instance, i.e. from Newcastle. Anyone read the magazine comic Viz? That's out of Newcastle. Yes, they really talk like that. Divvint kna why, but what's the marra wivvit, like? It's alreet. (Can't understand a word my father-in-law says when he's had a few. Can hardly understand him sober.) Then you have the equivalent of 'redneck country hick' accents, like Cornwall, for instance. Oi be drinkin' zoider, etc.

Then you have me. I talk normal.

I've never understood why they renamed 'The Good Life' in the States. Was PBS afraid that the title might be seen as endorsing dropping out of the rat race? I've also never understood how Benny Hill could ever, ever have been on PBS. Hey, if it's British, it's culture.

General point of weirdness: A German TV company is negotiating with the BBC for the right to remake Fawlty Towers. One does wonder how 'that' episode will be handled, as it's hard to imagine Germans rolling about hysterically on the floor at the sight of Basil goose-stepping.

Stompy

[C K Dexter Haven]

Ever see a play/movie called MY FAIR LADY? Or PYGMALION, for that matter, but I don't set high standards.

You'll recall Henry Higgins claim that he could identify people's origins by their speech, mainly accents? And that within London, he could do that within a matter of blocks?

OK, so enough of this "only one accent" or "tell us all the accents".

[Mr. Blue Sky]

StompyGodzilla (love the name, BTW):

"The Good Life" was renamed because there was an American show with the same name (in 1973 IIRC, starring Larry Hagman) and the PBS programmers didn't want to confuse anyone !?! The US show only lasted a few weeks and was probably forgotten by the time the UK show came here.

[Surgoshan]

Your teacher WAS wrong, Cecil says so...

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbloodrd.html

[handy]

I can't hear the accent but one time I ran a joke thru the jive translator on the net & sent it to my friend. She actually thought I was trying to write something with a brit accent & accused me of making fun of him. Here is what it would translate the above to:

De Baaaad Life" wuz redojiggerd cuz' dere wuz an Amerikin show wid de same dojigger (in 1973
IIRC, starrin' Remus Hagdude) and de PBS honky codemers dun didn't wants' t' confuse anyone !?! De US
show only lasted some few weeks and wuz probably forgotsten by de time de UK show came here.

[StompyGodzilla]

De Baaaad Life" wuz redojiggerd cuz' dere wuz an Amerikin show wid de same dojigger (in 1973
IIRC, starrin' Remus Hagdude) and de PBS honky codemers dun didn't wants' t' confuse anyone !?! De US
show only lasted some few weeks and wuz probably forgotsten by de time de UK show came here.


Crikey, that's spooky. Just like having Margaret Thatcher in the room with you.

[astorian]

Ever hear of a British movie called "Riff Raff"? It was about a band of English punks... and their lower-class accents were so strong, the film was released in the USA with SUBTITLES!!! A movie in English actually needed subtitles!

As has been mentione many times earlier, there's no such thing as AN English accent, there are dozens of them. A Cockney fishmonger sounds nothing like an Oxford don, who sounds nothing like a Liverpool sailor, who sounds nothing like a Yorkshire farmer. But somehow, when any of those blokes comes to America, people hear only "an English accent." And usually, when an American hears "an ENglish accent," he assumes the speaker is classy, educated and sophisticated!

Peter Noone, the old singer of Herman's Hermits, often laughs that, in Britain, his accent immediately gives him away as a blue-collar nobody from Manchester, whereas Americans usually treat him like an aristocrat. Michael Caine remarks with much amusement that he has the British equivalent of a thick Bronx accent... but American studios regularly give him roles as princes, dukes and intellectuals!

Along the same lines, Louis B. Mayer didn't want to give Rex Harrison the role of Henry Higgins in the film version of "My Fair Lady." He offered the role to Cary Grant! Grant scoffed at the offer, saying "Doesn't that idiot know that I have the very accent Eliza Doolittle is trying to get RID of???"

[manhattan]

Your teacher WAS wrong, Cecil says so...

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbloodrd.html



Good on Surgoshan for checking the archives. But it's worth noting that this item was not by Cecil Adams, but rather by SDSTAFF Hawk.

[ruadh]

Ever hear of a British movie called "Riff Raff"? It was about a band of English punks... and their lower-class accents were so strong, the film was released in the USA with SUBTITLES!!! A movie in English actually needed subtitles!

Well, it's not unheard of for British films to be released in the US with some of the dialogue dubbed. Trainspotting comes to mind; one of the co-stars of Kevin and Perry Go Large (I'm not sure if that's out in America yet) also had to redo her lines for the US release. I think it's kind of surprising it doesn't happen more often, actually.

[casdave]

I can travel ten miles and pick out a differant accent from Leeds to Castleford, another ten miles and I'm in the Barnsley accent and it is totally differant, go south fifteen mlies and it's a Sheffield accent, so in thirty five miles I can easily distinguish four accents.

More than all that I can tell with a reliable degree of certainty if the speaker has been in jail or in the armed forces, I can tell what sort of background they are likely to have or even if they are trying to disguise it to appear as if they are of 'better stock'.

Many of the words spoken in the Northeast such as around Newcastle and Berwick are Norse in origin and are not easily understood by the rest of the UK, in fact in a recent book by Melvyn Bragg (once said to be Britain's cleverest man) he points out that a speaker in the northeast would have been able to communicate with an Icelander or Norwegian as recently as 1945 but all accents have become slightly milder since then, probably because of broadcast media.

The role of accents in the UK is well understood by advertisers who will use certain accents in certain products like a mild Scottish accent is often used for financial products, a Yorkshire one will often be used for a commonsense type of portrayal such as in blue collar adverts whereas the Birmingham accent was until recently percieved as being a bit thick and not desirable.
Liverpool is supposed to be lively and streetwise, bit of a jack the lad.London as in the East end is meant to be a bit crooked and a little devious.

All that is total rubbish but that never stopped the advertising industry.

Much as you should respect teachers this one is just plain wrong unless you are slightly mistaking the context of what was said, this is only a get out for said teacher.

I believe a US poster a few months ago said that several accents around your country can be directly traced back to surprisingly small localities in the UK which, when you think about it, is to be expected as immigrants of a type would be very likly to settle in the same areas.You only have to look at ,say, Asian communities to see what I mean.

The closest natural accent in the UK to the Queens 'English is supposed to be around Stirling - in Scotland but as far as I'm concerned I have no accent, it's all those on the BBC and the Government spokespersons who have!

[BiblioCat]

I believe a US poster a few months ago said that several accents around your country can be directly traced back to surprisingly small localities in the UK which, when you think about it, is to be expected as immigrants of a type would be very likly to settle in the same areas.

I live in Baltimore, Maryland (outside the city) and the "Baltimore" accent has been described as part Cockney and part US Southern. Makes for quite an interesting sound. True Baltimoreans say their "o" 's like Eliza Doolittle, like an "aow" sound.

[StompyGodzilla]

I can travel ten miles and pick out a differant accent from Leeds to Castleford, another ten miles and I'm in the Barnsley accent and it is totally differant, go south fifteen mlies and it's a Sheffield accent, so in thirty five miles I can easily distinguish four accents.

More than all that I can tell with a reliable degree of certainty if the speaker has been in jail or in the armed forces, I can tell what sort of background they are likely to have or even if they are trying to disguise it to appear as if they are of 'better stock'.



We'll just call you 'enry 'iggins, shall we?

:D

Just you wait. Just you wait.

[ruadh]

The role of accents in the UK is well understood by advertisers who will use certain accents in certain products...

Bit of a hijack, but in Ireland one of the mobile phone networks had a great ad in which a girl out on a date spots a better looking guy, slips him her phone number and he rings her up - only to reveal a very thick "culchie" (sheep-country hick) accent. Cue the girl hanging up on him and the guy thinking he should have sent a text message instead.

In America his accent would probably be considered charming!

[Crusoe]

Apparently, I read some years ago, the "proper" English accent is supposedly an East Midlands dialect. Queen Victoria (IIRC) tried to make it the "standard" for spoken English.

- mattk (with a completely neutral Home Counties / London accent)

[Alphagene]

Another argument for mandatory testing of teachers.
Welcome future teachers! Now, before we start paying you shit money, we need to make sure you know the complete history of British accents. Hello? Where'd y'all go?

[DippyMonger]

Interesting to point out that apparently Australians (that's me) have the slackest of all English speaking accents. For example, take the words "saw" and "sore".
Australians pronounce those words exactly the same, but Americans pronounce them differently. Americans (most of them) emphasise the R in soRe, but Aussie's don't. Weird huh?

[TomH]

Welcome future teachers! Now, before we start paying you shit money, we need to make sure you know the complete history of British accents. Hello? Where'd y'all go?

How about, "we need to make sure that you know better than to repeat arrant nonsense in front of your class without making at least some attempt to check your facts against a reputable source."

A Cockney fishmonger sounds nothing like an Oxford don, who sounds nothing like a Liverpool sailor, who sounds nothing like a Yorkshire farmer.

And a Yorkshire fishmonger sounds nothing like a cockney sailor or an Oxford farmer ... (etc.) Most English accents are a function of the speaker's regional origin and social class. For example, the speech of a middle-class person from Leeds might sound very different from that of a working-class person from Leeds, but it would also sound very different from that of a middle-class person from Birmingham.

I can tell what sort of background they are likely to have or even if they are trying to disguise it to appear as if they are of 'better stock'.

When I was at school (in Sheffield) one of the teachers habitually adopted a "posh" voice in front of the class. She would pronounce glass as "glarse" and bus as "bas" and so on. The problem was, she didn't know when to stop, so she would end up saying--I kid you not--"batcher" for butcher and "pat" for put. She once described the place they have the film festival in the South of France as "Carnnes".

[SuaSponte]

As the original poster of the "Another argument for the mandatory testing of teachers" quote, I feel the need to defend myself (well, I really don't feel the need, but I'm kinda bored today).

Maybe the appropriate test should be psychological - see if the potential teacher has the self-confidence amd humility necessary to say to a student, "Well, I'm not sure of the answer, but I'll look into it this weekend and get back to you."

God, how much incorrect crap I have in my brain foisted upon me by teachers too lazy, too arrogant, or too ideologically constrained to actually learn their subjects, I cannot begin to tell you.

V.

[Suspicious mind]

It's interesting that someone who has trouble distinguishing different UK accents should be able to do so with the characters from The Good Life. Maybe the 'warm' and 'snootiness' comes from the acting. To most English people, Penelope Keith, Paul Eddington, Richard Briars and Felicity Kendal have very posh home counties accents (although if you listen carefully you can pick up the fact that FK was brought up in India).

BTW: What is this thing that American people have about Benny Hill? Whenever they want to criticise our humor they always use him as an example of British comedy. As far as I'm aware, they haven't shown The Benny Hill show in Britain since the 1980's (when it was on ITV), and it's almost unanimously regarded as total dross. Do you really still get it on American TV?!

[wolfman]

Subtitling English into English is just slightly annoying, but dubbing is beyond stupid. Personally I'm still pissed that I have to watch Mad Max with the idiodic dubbing(I think the main Mad Max's voice is the same guys they use to dub most foreign porn into English).

P.S. Does anyone know If anyone sells an undubbed DVD version of Mad Max for NTSC 60 yet?

[Alphagene]

God, how much incorrect crap I have in my brain foisted upon me by teachers too lazy, too arrogant, or too ideologically constrained to actually learn their subjects, I cannot begin to tell you.
If the course was one on dialects and accents then I might be more critical of her, but you can't really expect a high school English teacher to know the entre history of British dialects. I doubt most university English professors would know that just off the cuff.

Yeah, she probably should have told the student she didn't know or she'd have to look it up. But as long as we keep hiring our teachers from a pool of mortal human beings, they are going to make occasional mistakes.

If we start calling people lazy, arrogant or constrained because they accidentally pass on false information as truth, then every poster to this forum has been lazy, arrogant or constrained at some point in their posting career. Plus, I'd have to accuse my mother of being a horrible parent because she told me that I was damaging my eyes by reading in dim light. What a bunch of incorrect crap.

Mortal human beings are occasionally wrong. That's why we have the Straight Dope.

[TomH]

And did anybody see the last episode of Frasier that was broadcast in the UK (the one where Daphne elopes with Niles on the eve of her wedding)?

It was never explained why Daphne, who is clearly from Lancashire / Manchester, as is her mother, should have a brother who is clearly from south London and another brother who sounds like a New Zealander.

[StompyGodzilla]

BTW: What is this thing that American people have about Benny Hill? Whenever they want to criticise our humor they always use him as an example of British comedy. As far as I'm aware, they haven't shown The Benny Hill show in Britain since the 1980's (when it was on ITV), and it's almost unanimously regarded as total dross. Do you really still get it on American TV?!


Coolness, dude. I wasn't criticising British humour per se. My point was only to express surprise that the Benny Hill Show was ever shown on PBS. PBS is the Public Broadcasting Station. It depends on grants and donations to survive, and normally shows only programs of an educational or quality nature.

They also showed Fawlty Towers, the Good Life, Monty Python, the Goodies, the Young Ones, loads of excellent BBC series,
etc -- so you can see why Benny Hill stuck out like a fairly sore thumb. I would sit there staring at the screen thinking, "Why? Why?"

Stompy

[Suspicious mind]

They also showed Fawlty Towers, the Good Life, Monty Python, the Goodies, the Young Ones, loads of excellent BBC series,


These are all as you say 'excellent' in their own way, but what about stuff from the 90's? Do you get any of the following?:

The Fast Show
League of Gentlemen
Knowing me knowing you with Alan Partridge
Father Ted

Also, I notice that whenever I look up Rowan Atkinson's name on the http://www.I get inundated with references to Mr Bean. Now, Mr Bean is okay I suppose, but as far as I'm concerned Rowan atkinson's finest thirteen and a half hours were as Edmond Blackadder, so what's all the fuss about Mr Bean?

[Saltire]

League of Gentlemen will be on U.S. cable in a week or so, apparently. I haven't heard of the others.

I agree about Blackadder. But unfortunately, Mr. Bean got a feature film, and Edmond, Baldrick, and the gang did not.

"I have a plan so cunning you could brush your teeth with it."

[StompyGodzilla]

I've never seen Mr Bean. I agree, Blackadder was totally brilliant, but I only saw it once I moved to the UK.

The other shows mentioned may well have been shown on PBS, but I don't recall having seen them.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

"The League of Gentlemen" is about to start on Comedy Central, although it's currently available on BBC America. I agree that Rowan Atkinson's "Blackadder" is far superior to Mr. Bean. As for the "Good Life" comments I made earlier, what I meant to say that Margo & Jerry's accents SOUND "snooty" while Tom & Barbara's SOUND "warmer" and I'm sure a lot of it comes from the acting.

Take "Red Dwarf" for example. There's an obvious difference between Rimmer and Lister. It took awhile to get accustomed to Lister's accent. I haven't heard the actor outside of the show, so I don't know what he sounds like when he's not acting.

How do UK citizens feel when their accents or localities are being protrayed in film?

[ruadh]

Father Ted


Won't be hearing many British accents in that one ...

[Suspicious mind]

He (Craig Charles) was first known as a kind of 'humorous' poet, and sounds exactly the same in real life. It's a 'scouse' (Liverpool) accent.

[TomH]

Mr Blue Sky,

Rimmer and Lister have completely different regional accents: Craig Charles is from Liverpool and Chris Barrie is from the south east of England (probably Greater London). In terms of accent, Paul Eddington and Richard Briers in The Good Life are virtually indistinguishable. They both speak with the standard “neutral” received pronunciation (RP) that actors of their generation were taught at drama school, as does Felicity Kendall. The programme is set, IIRC, in Surbiton, which is a short distance south-west of London and RP is a standardised variant of the dominant accent in the south east of England. Penelope Keith, on the other hand, has a posher accent than the other three, which is detectable in the vowel sounds in words like “house” and “glass” which are slightly more complex and drawn-out.

How do UK citizens feel when their accents or localities are being protrayed in film?

I very rarely hear my own region’s accent (South Yorkshire) on film or television. The only films I can think of that have featured a South Yorkshire accent are Kes, The Full Monty and Brassed Off. It annoys me that London is so over-represented in the British media, and that many foreigners’ concept of what constitutes a “British” accent is RP or London.

I think that Hollywood’s over-use of British (particularly English) actors as villains is beginning to border on the racist. It seems that every second or third Hollywood movie features an English villain. The most egregious example was Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, where all the characters were supposed to be English (or Anglo-Norman), but only the villain was played by an English actor. Hannibal Lector is American in both books and English in both films (played by a Scottish and a Welsh actor, respectively). There are plenty more, more recent, examples.

As for spectacular errors in regional accents, see my comments on Frasier, above.

[AWB]

TomH:As for spectacular errors in regional accents, see my comments on Frasier, above.

It's possible. My wife is from deep in the heart of Maine. Her parents, sister, and brother all have strong Mainer accents. But hers is non-existant most of the time; every once in a while a word'll come out with a missing or extra "r".

Other people move and pick up the regional accent. A New Jersian friend of mine didn't have an accent to my ear (I'm from Colorado) until she started drinking.

So possibly all the Moons grew up in Manchester, but picked up the South London and NZ accents when they moved.

P.S. - My wife laughs any time they try to simulate a New England accent on TV (usually shows set in Boston). There was a recent "The Practice" where the young defendant was speaking with an over-the-top accent, I suppose, to indicate that he wasn't middle-class.

And on Cheers: Cliff had the only NE accent, which faded as the series progressed. And Carla had a more New York Italian accent, yet she was raised in Boston.

[mothra]

For another thing, which British accent was (s)he talking about? Cockney, Estuary, Geordie, Scouse, Midlands, Glasgow, Manc, etc?? There is no one "British" accent. There are many.



Actually Geordie is not merely an accent, it is also a dialect of the Tyneside and Nothumberland regions and contains a large number of words that are not part of standard English for example, 'bairn' and 'hyem' (respectively 'child' and 'home') which derive from Old English and Norse. There are also some severe pronunciations differences, for example, "Are ye gannin' oot on the toon the neet?", which roughly translates as "Will you be venturing into the city this evening?".

In Newcastle upon Tyne (there are other Newcastles in the UK) you will find two distinctly different patterns of speech - the Geordie dialect is as described above, however there is another more intelligible accent called a 'Geordie accent', 'Newcastle accent' or 'Tyneside accent' (take your pick). This is standard English with a toned down version of the pronunciation used by true Geordies.

[BiblioCat]

And did anybody see the last episode of Frasier that was broadcast in the UK (the one where Daphne elopes with Niles on the eve of her wedding)?

It was never explained why Daphne, who is clearly from Lancashire / Manchester, as is her mother, should have a brother who is clearly from south London and another brother who sounds like a New Zealander.


This reminded me of something I read, and had to go find the book. In "Frasier", by Jefferson Graham, it gives biographies of the cast memebers (and the characters, also). Jane Leeves was born in London, but raised in East Grinstead, Sussex. She moved to the US in 1984.
John Mahoney (Martin Crane) was born in Manchester. He came to the US after high school and joined the army and worked to lose his accent.
The writers made the character of Daphne from Manchester as a nod to his hometown.

[everton]

From astorian:
Along the same lines, Louis B. Mayer didn't want to give Rex Harrison the role of Henry Higgins in the film version of "My Fair Lady." He offered the role to Cary Grant! Grant scoffed at the offer, saying "Doesn't that idiot know that I have the very accent Eliza Doolittle is trying to get RID of???"

Cary Grant may have been a little harsh on himself there. He was born in Bristol (where they don't talk anything like Eliza Doolittle) and in any case his accent had lost all traces of its origins by the time My Fair Lady was made. Perhaps he had to work hard at losing his West Country burr and didn't think he'd finished the job? He always seemed to me to have one of those mid-Atlantic ones that sounds English to an American but more American to an English person.

Ironically Rex Harrison was from my home town of Liverpool, and if he'd had the usual accent of that city Eliza would've ended up sounding like Lister! ;)

By the way, is there any truth in the rumour that the title of the film came from an American attempt at pronouncing "Mayfair Lady" like a Cockney?

[everton]

from Kinsey:
Jane Leeves was born in London, but raised in East Grinstead, Sussex. She moved to the US in 1984.
John Mahoney (Martin Crane) was born in Manchester. He came to the US after high school and joined the army and worked to lose his accent.
The writers made the character of Daphne from Manchester as a nod to his hometown.
Thanks for that Kinsey. I did see an interview with John Mahoney where he said he was originally from Manchester.

I'm sure that Jane Leeves wouldn't fool anyone from Manchester that she was from that city. If you want to hear a Manchester accent you should listen to the Gallagher brothers from Oasis (not that I'm recommending you to listen to them talk of course ;)). She's clearly a southerner attempting to talk like someone from more or less the Lancashire area.

It's true that people's accents can be influenced by travel, but you'd have to be separated at birth to finish up with the range of voices in Daphne's family. It seems more likely that the producers wanted to make her brothers sound rough and picked some accents that fitted the bill. Although it sounds ridiculous to us Brits, how many Frasier viewers would be expected to tell the difference anyway?

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally posted by StompyGodzilla

BTW: What is this thing that American people have about Benny Hill? Whenever they want to criticise our humor they always use him as an example of British comedy. As far as I'm aware, they haven't shown The Benny Hill show in Britain since the 1980's (when it was on ITV), and it's almost unanimously regarded as total dross. Do you really still get it on American TV?!


Coolness, dude. I wasn't criticising British humour per se. My point was only to express surprise that the Benny Hill Show was ever shown on PBS. PBS is the Public Broadcasting Station. It depends on grants and donations to survive, and normally shows only programs of an educational or quality nature.

They also showed Fawlty Towers, the Good Life, Monty Python, the Goodies, the Young Ones, loads of excellent BBC series,
etc -- so you can see why Benny Hill stuck out like a fairly sore thumb. I would sit there staring at the screen thinking, "Why? Why?"

Stompy

About the only thing I thought was funny on Benny Hill was
when he'd slap the little bald guy on the head. About the
lowest of BH's low humor, but what can I say? I like the
Stooges, too, as well as most of the other much better Britcoms that have been mentioned here. I guess I take my
humor high and very low, but not just low or middling.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

As an American, I always perceived Monty Python and Fawlty Towers as presenting a wide range of accents, and going a long way to explode the "British==Aristocratic" myth. With
some exceptions, most of the hotel-guest actors on Fawlty
Towers come across as typically middle class people, without
"toffee-nosed" accents. Actually, Mr. Hutchinson, that notorious spoon salesman in hotel inspector's clothing, had
an interesting accent that almost sounded American at times.
Can any of our resident Brits tell us what kind of regional
accent Mr. H. had?

[everton]

From javaman:
Can any of our resident Brits tell us what kind of regional
accent Mr. Hutchinson. had?
If memory serves, Mr Hutchinson the spoon salesman was played by Bernard Cribbins (who is a Londoner) attempting to speak with a Yorkshire accent. Your own comments describe his level of success pretty succinctly.

[everton]

From TomH
Rimmer and Lister have completely different regional accents: Craig Charles is from Liverpool and Chris Barrie is from the south east of England (probably Greater London).
Just for info, Chris Barrie was actually born in Belfast! Hard to believe huh? I don't know how old he was when he moved to England.

[everton]

StompyGodzilla to casdave:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can travel ten miles and pick out a differant accent from Leeds to Castleford, another ten miles and I'm in the Barnsley accent and it is totally differant, go south fifteen mlies and it's a Sheffield accent, so in thirty five miles I can easily distinguish four accents.

More than all that I can tell with a reliable degree of certainty if the speaker has been in jail or in the armed forces, I can tell what sort of background they are likely to have or even if they are trying to disguise it to appear as if they are of 'better stock'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We'll just call you 'enry 'iggins, shall we?

Having been to college in Sheffield I can confirm that the accents do change over that distance.

I bet most people from the UK would be able to spot the local variations within, say 100 miles radius from their home hown, and pin down a neighbour's origins to the nearest town or city. I'd put money on being able to tell a Bolton accent from a Burnley one or a Blackburn accent from a Salford one. Or am I just another 'enry 'higgins?

People from my home town (Maghull v. near Liverpool) sound nothing like, say Ormskirk or Preston which are only a few miles away. In fact you can hear the accent change more from Scouse to Lancastrian every mile up the road. Of course it gets harder the further from home you go. I bet very few English people could tell a Glasgow accent from an Edinburgh one for instance, which a Scot might be able to tell apart quite easily.

People's accents do vary for more than just geographical reasons, but it isn't always a matter of social class or education. My brother has a stronger Merseyside accent than I do, but we were brought up together, went to the same schools and were both educated to degree level. Our dad was from Bootle, a very blue collar part of town, but he didn't have a strong accent either. In fact none of my uncles sounded like Brookside cast members.

[Skwerl]

Originally posted by mothra
There are also some severe pronunciations differences, for example, "Are ye gannin' oot on the toon the neet?", which roughly translates as "Will you be venturing into the city this evening?".


And I would've thought it to mean "Are you going out on the town tonight?" Silly me. :)

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally posted by oedipus
StompyGodzilla to casdave:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can travel ten miles and pick out a differant accent from Leeds to Castleford, another ten miles and I'm in the Barnsley accent and it is totally differant, go south fifteen mlies and it's a Sheffield accent, so in thirty five miles I can easily distinguish four accents.

More than all that I can tell with a reliable degree of certainty if the speaker has been in jail or in the armed forces, I can tell what sort of background they are likely to have or even if they are trying to disguise it to appear as if they are of 'better stock'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We'll just call you 'enry 'iggins, shall we?

Having been to college in Sheffield I can confirm that the accents do change over that distance.

I bet most people from the UK would be able to spot the local variations within, say 100 miles radius from their home hown, and pin down a neighbour's origins to the nearest town or city. I'd put money on being able to tell a Bolton accent from a Burnley one or a Blackburn accent from a Salford one. Or am I just another 'enry 'higgins?

People from my home town (Maghull v. near Liverpool) sound nothing like, say Ormskirk or Preston which are only a few miles away. In fact you can hear the accent change more from Scouse to Lancastrian every mile up the road. Of course it gets harder the further from home you go. I bet very few English people could tell a Glasgow accent from an Edinburgh one for instance, which a Scot might be able to tell apart quite easily.

People's accents do vary for more than just geographical reasons, but it isn't always a matter of social class or education. My brother has a stronger Merseyside accent than I do, but we were brought up together, went to the same schools and were both educated to degree level. Our dad was from Bootle, a very blue collar part of town, but he didn't have a strong accent either. In fact none of my uncles sounded like Brookside cast members.
Speaking of Northerners, I recall from hearing Beatle interviews that even within the group there was a variation.
When they were kids John's aunt thought George's accent was
low (pres. meaning more Scouse), maybe Paul tried to talk
a little "higher", and the scousiest sounding of the lot
was the fired drummer Pete Best, regardless of the fact that
he enjoyed a significantly more comfortable upbringing than the others.

[sailor]

Fawlty Towers is great but they only show very few episodes (maybe all that were ever made) but my all time favorite is Keeping Up Appearances. That really shows the difference between how different social classes speak (even if they are sisters) :-)

I used to like Rumpole of the Bailey but they have not shown it in a long time.

[TomH]

People's accents do vary for more than just geographical reasons, but it isn't always a matter of social class or education.

I think it depends very much on the individual, how deeply ingrained the accent is in the first place and to some extent on deliberate choice. I am sure that some people either lose or retain a distinctive accent because they want to. I know somebody with a distinctive Scots accent who has lived all her life since the age of about four in the South of England.

Fawlty Towers is great but they only show very few episodes (maybe all that were ever made)

IIRC, they only made twelve, which is one of the reasons it was so good. It was recently voted the best British TV programme of all time in a poll of TV professionals by the British Film Institute (http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid%5F911000/911085.stm).

[Duke]

Originally posted by TomH
I am sure that some people either lose or retain a distinctive accent because they want to.
[/B]

Agreed. You wouldn't believe how hard people try to lose their accents, especially northern ones, when they come here to Oxford. Several times I've asked students here where they come from, to be answered in a half-northern, half-southern accent, "Newcastle...Leeds...Bradford (etc.)" This would definately fall under class differences, I believe.

It's interesting that only those from Northern England do it. Scots, Welsh, West Countrymen and Northern Irishmen usually make little attempt to modify their accent here.

[APB]

How exactly would Queen Victoria (or any other monarch) have mandated a particular accent? The idea that RP derives from her accent would only have made sense if the claim was that those around her copied it out of snobbery. It however seems most unlikely that the members of her court, all of whom had a strong sense of their own social standing irrespective of their royal offices, would have bother to do anything so obviously unaristocratic. Most English peers in the nineteenth century no doubt believed that their existing accents were entirely acceptable. Most of the rest of her subjects would have had no idea how she spoke.

The origins of RP are usually attributed to the influence of the major public schools and to Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

[TomH]

Originally posted by Duke
You wouldn't believe how hard people try to lose their accents, especially northern ones, when they come here to Oxford.

I don't know which college you're at, but my experience at Oxford was the reverse of that. People who had been to expensive private schools affected to speak with "working class" regional accents. The most popular was a kind of non-specific South London / Estuary accent, usually favoured by those from the more affluent parts of the home counties, so you had people from Surrey who went to Eton speaking like petty criminals out of The Bill ("Leave it aaht, John; cor blimey, you're 'aving a larf, en'cha" etc.). IIRC, people from Wadham and Balliol were particular offenders in this regard.

Everybody from anywhere vaguely in the North-West of England affected a heavy Manchester or Liverpool accent. One guy I knew had been at Epsom (though his parental home was in Manchester) and he spoke like Liam Gallacher (though this was just before Oasis became famous).

Then again, I was at a College which took a large proportion of people from state schools in the North of England; and at a time (late-1980s) when Manchester was seen as the bright centre of the cultural universe by everybody under the age of 25.

[ruadh]

Originally posted by TomH
I am sure that some people either lose or retain a distinctive accent because they want to. I know somebody with a distinctive Scots accent who has lived all her life since the age of about four in the South of England.

I used to work with a guy in California who'd moved there from England at the age of nine, and never lost his accent. When I mentioned to him how unusual this seemed to me (most people, in my experience, tend to lose their accent if they move to a new area before they hit puberty), his reply was: "The chicks dig it."*

*Ironic, because his is Home Counties, which has got to be one of the least attractive English accents.**

**No offense to any Home Counties dopers ;)

[MJH2]

When speaking of BritComs from the '90s, let's not forget "Absolutely Fabulous", sweetie darlings!

Returning to the thread topic: I read somewhere (recently) that the dialect spoken in the remote areas of the Eastern Shore of Maryland is considered to be the closest thing to Elizabethan English which exists in the present day. Not clear whether this was strictly in North American terms, or world-wide.

(For those of you who don't know, the Eastern Shore is that piece of Maryland across the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore and Washington, D.C.)

[ruadh]

You're probably thinking of Tangier Island, in the Virginia waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The local accent is frequently mythologized/romanticized as being close to Elizabethan English - mainly by the local tourist industry. Linguists who've studied the area acknowledge that the accent bears a similarity to that of Devon and Cornwall, but none would never refer to it as "Elizabethan".

[London_Calling]

Yep,yep, I spent a little time on the Outer Banks (flat, windy, good fish and interesting as ye ole Barbary Coast, har, harrrrrrrr) and the locals there definately speak modern East Coast American. Didn't hear a single Shakespearian-esque accent in Burger King.

[Scribe]

The talk about British actors trying to change their accents reminds me of a story I wrote not too long ago about a Canadian acting coach who was doing very well teaching Canadian actors to speak like Americans so they could get more parts on the US TV shows being filmed up here. He told me about the various ways Canadians sound different than Americans, and I must confess that I'd never noticed the differences before.

(hijack ends)

[TomH]

I used to work with a guy in California who'd moved there from England at the age of nine, and never lost his accent.

I think for most people it's to do with preserving what they perceive to be their "cultural identity." Shane MacGowan is a good example -- he was born and brought up in London, he went to Westminster School (one of the top public schools* in the country) but he still has a distinctive Irish accent. Just like your man in the USA.

My own accent changes according to the time of day, the person I'm talking to and whether there's an R in the month (mild, Alan Bennet, Yorkshire to BBC English), so I'm always a bit suspicious of people who cleave fiercely to the accent of a region they haven't lived in since early childhood.

(*Public school = expensive private school, for the avoidance of any doubt among US readers.)

[ruadh]

Originally posted by TomH
Shane MacGowan is a good example -- he was born and brought up in London, he went to Westminster School (one of the top public schools* in the country) but he still has a distinctive Irish accent.

Are you absolutely sure about this? I remember hearing that he was actually a Londoner as well, but there was a recent big story about him in one of the Irish papers which said he was born and brought up in Tipperary, and moved to London only at some point in late childhood (probably still early enough that he should have lost the Irish accent, though).

[TomH]

I'm not absolutely sure that he was born in London, but I am absolutely sure that he went to Westminster School and spent much if not all his childhood in London.

[London_Calling]

My vague recollection is that Shane was born in London but then his parents went back to Ireland in his early childhood. Of course, much depends on the record company admin who wrote the press release I’m probably remembering reading – anything written after a lunchtime livener can be fraught with factual inexatitude.

Wasn’t it Mick Jagger who went to Westminster (and then briefly the LSE) ?

[TomH]

Wasn’t it Mick Jagger who went to Westminster (and then briefly the LSE)?

I believe he went to a grammar school in Dartford, but he was at the LSE.

[casdave]

Since you tend to grow up with the accent of those around you I would have thought that most of Shane's accent comes from his parents.They may well have been part of a semi-closed Irish community in London too.

[ruadh]

Children get their accents from their peers, not their parents. This is virtually axiomatic. Unless the community was so closed that all of Shane's friends, neighbors and schoolmates spoke with Irish accents, it's highly unlikely he would have retained his "naturally".

[everton]

From TomH:
When I was at school (in Sheffield) one of the teachers habitually adopted a "posh" voice in front of the class. She would pronounce glass as "glarse" and bus as "bas" and so on. The problem was, she didn't know when to stop, so she would end up saying--I kid you not--"batcher" for butcher and "pat" for put. She once described the place they have the film festival in the South of France as "Carnnes".
Have you heard that bloke from the Rugby League, Maurice Lindsay? I believe he's from Hull but he's tried to 'posh up' his accent with hilarious consequences. My favourite thing he says is the Bradford Belles (= Bulls). Side-splitting.

I also heard there is a sentence you're supposed to be able to say to prove whether your accent is "naturally" RP (you always spoke like that) but it's a dead giveaway if you learned a "posh" argot from a voice coach because you get vowels in words like "butcher" mixed up the way your teacher did. Any dopers know what it is?

[TomH]

Unless the community was so closed that all of Shane's friends, neighbors and schoolmates spoke with Irish accents, it's highly unlikely he would have retained his "naturally".

Where I live in London, the local newsagent stocks all the Irish local papers, the pubs all show Sentanta Sport and we have a branch of the Bank of Ireland (we even have a dance hall). I doubt that there is a more "Irish" area of London. Even so, people who speak with an Irish accent are in quite a small minority.

[ruadh]

Kilburn?

[TomH]

Yes.

[everton]

Originally posted by Mr. Blue Sky
...How do UK citizens feel when their accents or localities are being protrayed in film?
Yes, it can be annoying that British actors often play crooks, but perhaps Americans should feel more insulted than us - clearly Hollywood and the TV industry in the USA thinks you're a bunch of morons who can only accept steroetypes of some kind. Most nationalities seem to be treated in the same shallow way, it just so happens that the British stereotypes you've been fed on are 'The Aristocrat', 'The Punk Rocker', 'The Effete Homosexual', and especially 'The Sinister Bad Guy'.

You'd be even more insulted if you saw the stereotypes we get of you!

But do the Hollywood execs know their audience? Do they know anything? They don't seem to know much about the UK. Don't forget, these are the people who (when Sense and Sensibility became a minor hit) asked for the author's fax number unaware that Jane Austen had died in 1817 :).

If you agree, you might like to check out this thread:

Hollywood/Madison Ave & Tokenism & Minority TV (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=21871)