I don’t get the references to Dick van Dyke, although I have to admit it has been decades since I’ve seen reruns of that sitcom. What accent was he not doing very well?
From Mary Poppins. As Bert his English accent was awful.
In Mary Poppins, Van Dyke does one of the worst Cockney accents in history. Although, to be fair Audrey Hepburn’s Cockney accent in My Fair Lady was also championship-level awful.
Dick van Dyke has mentioned that his accent coach for the role was Irish. That would explain a lot.
Blast it, Jim! I’m a doctor, not a linguist!
A good accent coach can come from any country. Just because he was Irish doesn’t mean he would automatically be disqualified from teaching a cockney accent.
Dr. Ombogulonga, my Cajun dialect coach, said the same thing.
Did Geoffrey Rush have a bit of an Australian accent in The King’s Speech? I assume he did, but I couldn’t find it. Americans are notably bad at that, though.
The implied joke there is that an Irish vocal coach would have an incentive to make the English look ridiculous.
Cardinal, are you joking, or are you asking a genuine question? Rush is Australian.
On the other hand, her American accent in Breakfast At Tiffany’s was pretty passable, though it was hard for me to tell if it was a good Okie accent or not, considering she only spoke with an American accent for a few lines (and maybe a song, I’m not sure if she was singing with an American accent or if that’s just what Audrey Hepburn sounded like while singing). In that film, she played an Okie girl who learned how to fake a British accent by studying French (centuries before Jean Luc Picard did the same thing).
Moon River, from the aforementioned film. She has a couple of spoken lines at the end.
The one looking ridiculous is Van Dyke and he’s not English.
I used to detect hints of Irish and so assumed he was doing a generic West Coast accent - Argyll or Ayeshire or something. But if “the good people of Aberdeen claim Scotty as their own” then it is not a good accent.
Aberdonian is about the toughest Scottish accent I have come across, comparible to the most hard-core Glaswegian.
I used to go up to Aberdeen on business regularly when I lived in London, I found the taxi drivers especially difficult to understand as they tended to be all true Aberdonians. Now I live in Edinburgh I have got my ear tuned in better but still find Aberdeen tricky but the more working-class Dundonians also have some very ‘different’ vowel sounds.
i knew he was a scot and couldn’t wait to hear his american accent in ‘the good wife.’ bingo. he convinced me he was american.
now david tennant’s american accent… utterly atrocious. this from an otherwise brilliant actor. i hope to hell he either gets to use his natural accent in the upcoming ‘fright night’ remake, or he’s done a boatload of work with an accent coach since the ‘rex is not your lawyer’ audition clip that made its way onto youtube…
fright night: david tennant in leather and criss angel makeup… yum…
Personally though, I find his Scottish accent unconvincing.
Completely serious. I don’t care where he’s from, as many actors can do a very good imitation accent. I’m asking if the character is supposed to be classic Australian, in which I don’t think anyone I know got the point (“that doesn’t sound like Steve Irwin”), or if Rush played it as an Aussie who had taken pains to speak with RP. Did he go whole RP, or can RP-ers hear the Aussie in there?
I don’t think he was trying to make a “point” regarding Australianness or even “classic Australianness,” whatever that is. He is an Australian actor playing a role based on a historic person who was born in Australia and moved to England in his 40s. Logue’s accent would have been Australian modified by both his education and his contact with English people, especially those of the upper classes.
The accent used is a point in the film, not matter what. If Tom Cruise is playing Maverick, then his standard American accent is exactly what he’s trying for. Admittedly, this was not hard to do.
So: Rush’s accent in The King’s Speech sounds to Brits like an Australian modified by years of RP practice? Can you hear the Aussie in him?
And when Kirk Douglas uses his own accent to play Spartacus, there’s a point there?
Rush is an Australian actor playing an Australian. I don’t see any reason to believe that there is a “classic Australian” point to be made.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
An authentic Cockney accent would have been incomprehensible to the target audience. I still watch a lot of British movies with subtitles on.