Check this out! Amy Walker speaks in 21 different accents. Although, if you take the California and especially the Seattle accent, it sounds more like how I speak than the Toronto accent. The vowels are a bit off in the Toronto accent–I think our vowels sound more like those in the Seattle accent–but she got the pronunciation of the word ‘Toronto’ perfect.
I’ve heard it. She’s not perfect, but she’s impressive nonetheless. Did you find the companion video of her friend attempting this? I don’t see it on the YouTube channel, but she’s a fellow comedienne whose accent never changed the entire time.
Her Texas accent is comically overdone.
Oh Jesus. Her South Carolina is horrific.
You’re right. But, with that said, I knew it was supposed to be the Texas accent when I heard it. And, I think that a lot of Texans exaggerate their own accent to reinforce their roots around outsiders. So, it actually became an accurate impression in a roundabout sort of way.
Her Southern US accents were terrible.
The only accent that I thought was horrible was her Charleston. The rest seemed fair to brilliant. I can see how her Texan would seem overdone to actual Texans, but as an impression it was spot-on IMO.
I also thought it was funny that her Seattle basically sounded to me like no accent at all. Was that the ‘standard American TV English’ accent?
I wondered why she bothered with Seattle? Like holding up a glass of clear fluid and saying it’s imitation water. Are all Seattleites soft-spoken, educated people who fastidiously pronounce their t’s? Maybe the yuppies downtown, but the working-class ones tend to honk as they talk (maybe a traditon of making themselves heard over the sheet-metal work at Boeing)
It seems like Seattle is an example of accentless standard American English. It could be Omaha, too. She does a pretty good job with it. Her Charleston is horrible. I know people from Texas who talk like her Texas accent. I know everyone in Texas doesn’t sound like that, but some do. I wish the samples were a bit longer. It’s hard to tell from the one or two sentence examples just how good she is with the accent.
The Sydney one sounded off to me (note my location - not from Sydney). The other Australian one was rather over-the-top.
Her New Zealand accent is bang-on for a middle- to upper-class white woman in her twenties.
Her Toronto accent sounds far more like a rural Minnesotan. If it is close to anyone living in Canada, it would be small town Ontario, not Toronto - even then, it’s far more Brainerd than Bobcaygeon. She does get “Toronto” and does a Canadian raise, but it’s out of place and generally she sounds too singsongy, e.g. too Minnesotan.
Anywhere you go, one of the biggest linguistic divides is between urban and rural. People born and raised in Toronto sound very different from people born and raised in little villages in southern Ontario. Similar distinctions can be found in any urban center and its supporting rural areas - New Yorkers, obviously, sound very different from people way out on Long Island (or, for that matter, from each other.) Philadelphians have their own sound distinct from rural Pennsylvania or further out into New Jersey. There’s a world of difference between Beverly Hills and Bakersfield. So believe me, when you’re trying to sound like you’re from Tinysville, Ontario and say it’s Toronto, it’s very jarring. It’s like doing a Yorkshire accent and saying “I’m from London.”
I’d have to assume the other accents are similarly unconvincing to anyone who’d know them.
That said, it’s hard to move from accent to accent like that. She’s very talented, it just needs more work.
Her Toronto was way off. The South Carolina one was a decent impression of Scarlet O’Hara, but that’s not a contemporary South Carolina accent. Her Texas accent was spot on though. Lots of Texans speak with non-regional diction, but I’ve heard plenty of Texan women who sound just like that. Anyone know where she’s actually from?
The Texas accent sounded too… deep, like she was trying to hide her identity over the phone. Like, given how I’d heard her talk, the pitch was just too low (then again, even though I’ve known many girls from Texas who didn’t match this assumption, I always expect a girl with a Texas accent to have a bit more scratch and cat in her voice.
The Charleston one bugged me, but I don’t know a lot of folks from the South to compare in any case. However she ended her intro in Californian was the only bit that sounded off to me.
Have I mentioned that I’d REALLY like to meet Amy Walker in Belfast? Wow.
Considering that there are at least five Texas accents, …
She sounds like a Cali girl to me.
She’s from Seattle… she said so in response to one of the comments. So that’s why she did that one. It’s her natural voice.
I didn’t even recognise the Scottish one as her trying to be Scottish… cringeworthy.
The London ones sounded okay to me, but then, most London accents I hear are actors on TV hamming up their accents for whatever character they’re meant to be, so I’m not the best judge!
The cockney one is quite good, though needlessly attitude-ridden.
The Irish accents are dreadful. So’s the Scottish.
The other English ones are vaguely OK - overly posh though. Though of course no English person would say “London, England”.
Strange, that’s one I thought was off. (And LA & Texas & Brooklyn)
But they were distinct.