# Dick Van Dyke's legacy: worst accents in movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 1, 2004, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880 "2004-08-01T22:56:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2004, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/121 "2004-08-07T18:51:11Z")
Don’t forget that ole Penis van Lesbian himself won the Black Shield of Falworth Award. No one who ever saw that movie will ever forget a young Tony Curtis (Playing an English knight) say: [Perfect New York City accent] Yonda lies da castle of my faddah [/PNYCA] :smack: ---
**Author:** ![TitoBenito](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2acd7d/32.png) [@TitoBenito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TitoBenito)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2004, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/122 "2004-08-07T20:38:58Z")
The English actor Mark Addy in the Show “Still Standing” is supposed to be a working class American but he comes off sounding more like Nathan Lane trying to sound British. To me his accent reminds me a lot of the quasi-English accent high school kids use when performing Shakespeare. Addy’s vowels are all wrong and way to long. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2004, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/123 "2004-08-08T02:45:24Z")
Of course Bjork was supposed to be an immigrant, but she spoke British English rather than American English in the movie. I suppose she could have learned that before she came here, but her English was so bad that it didn’t seem she had studied it anywhere. Alone, that wouldn’t be too bad, but most of the characters in the movie were played by Europeans and the accents were all over the place. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2004, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/124 "2004-08-08T02:49:04Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > No one who ever saw that movie will ever forget a young Tony Curtis (Playing an English knight) say: > [Perfect New York City accent] > Yonda lies da castle of my faddah > [/PNYCA] > :smack: Urban legend. > [@Leonard Maltin](#): > > Bolstered by the Universal publicity mill and growing fan support, Curtis got his first lead in [The Prince Who Was a Thief](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043935/) (1951, opposite another Universal contract player, Piper Laurie). His accent was all too apparent, though the legend that he said “Yonda lies da castle of my fodda” is simply untrue. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2004, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/125 "2004-08-08T04:04:28Z")
> [@Captain Lance Murdoch](#): > > Of course Bjork was supposed to be an immigrant, but she spoke British English rather than American English in the movie. I suppose she could have learned that before she came here, but her English was so bad that it didn’t seem she had studied it anywhere. I teach English as a foreign language, and believe me, there are people who have studied English for years and speak less fluently than Bjork’s character. And if she had studied English formally in Europe, it almost certainly would have been British English rather than American English. > [@](#): > > - > > Alone, that wouldn’t be too bad, but most of the characters in the movie were played by Europeans and the accents were all over the place.\* Most of the characters in the movie were European immigrants. Bjork, her son, her best friend Cathy (Deneuve), her semi-boyfriend…none of them were supposed to be Americans. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2004, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/126 "2004-08-08T04:10:43Z")
> [@Captain Lance Murdoch](#): > > Of course Bjork was supposed to be an immigrant, but she spoke British English rather than American English in the movie. I suppose she could have learned that before she came here, but her English was so bad that it didn’t seem she had studied it anywhere. Alone, that wouldn’t be too bad, but most of the characters in the movie were played by Europeans and the accents were all over the place. Which of course was perfectly in keeping with what Von Trier was trying to accomplish. ---
**Author:** ![MidnightRadio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@MidnightRadio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MidnightRadio)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2004, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/127 "2004-08-09T05:02:56Z")
> [@Captain Lance Murdoch](#): > > Of course Bjork was supposed to be an immigrant, but she spoke British English rather than American English in the movie. I suppose she could have learned that before she came here, but her English was so bad that it didn’t seem she had studied it anywhere. Alone, that wouldn’t be too bad, but most of the characters in the movie were played by Europeans and the accents were all over the place. Like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie and I don’t remember how well her character spoke English, but Björk herself speaks it fluently (most Icelanders do, I believe). Anyway, does anyone know the answer to my question? Was Björk trying to sound Czech at all or did she just have an Icelandic accent in the movie? ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2004, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/128 "2004-08-09T15:05:28Z")
> [@MidnightRadio](#): > > Like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie and I don’t remember how well her character spoke English, but Björk herself speaks it fluently (most Icelanders do, I believe). Anyway, does anyone know the answer to my question? Was Björk trying to sound Czech at all or did she just have an Icelandic accent in the movie? Bjork had the “Bjork” accent, which sounds like nothing else, as far as I can tell. La Deneuve actually managed to affect a reasonable-sounding “Slav-speaking-English” accent, which was helpful for reminding me that, oh yes, these people are supposed to be Czech. To me, it sounds like Bjork’s long soujourn in the UK has rendered her accent something of a Cockney-Scandanavian hybrid. I’ve heard plenty of both Scandanavians and working-class Londoners speak English, and Bjork sounds like neither completely, to my ears. Anyhoo, I don’t think she attempted to sound like anyone other than herself when acting in “Dancer in the Dark”. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2004, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/129 "2004-08-09T16:53:15Z")
One of the clues that Von Trier handed the audience about what he was trying to say with \*Dancer in the Dark \*was that the accents didn’t necessarily make any sense. In addition to which, as a pretty hardcore Bjork fan, I didn’t really notice anything different about her accent in that movie from the way she usually speaks English. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2004, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880/130 "2004-08-31T14:05:16Z")
> [@Cardinal](#): > > How was Gwyneth Paltrow in “Sliding Doors” and “Shakepeare in Love”? I don’t trust myself to catch foreign accents unless their horrible. Just caught Gwyneth in Sliding Doors. The film suffers from all Anglo-American ventures, with a sprinkling of ludicrously placed British swear words to give it street cred. Thus, we have Gwyn’s character ‘bloody hell’-ing and ‘wanker’-ing (particularly cringe-worthy, that one) to establish her cool Britannia credentials. As for the accent, she sounds as if she’s got cotton wool in her mouth. But what’s completely baffling is why she chooses to do a British accent with a lisp. As I wecall, she’s much more conwincing in Swakespeare in Love. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-van-dykes-legacy-worst-accents-in-movies/257880.md?page=6)