Fake English Accents...WHY???

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

At the busy office where I work, I often speak to a doctor on the phone. For months, I had assumed that she was from England, due to her slight British accent. Then, the other day, she called me up and asked me to connect her to a long distance number. I stayed on the line and listened to part of her conversation. She had called her mother in Arizona and her “English” accent mysteriously disappeared as soon as her mother said hello.

That got me to thinking. I’ve known of a couple of people over the years that have faked English accents.

Madonna also does it. Have you heard her speak lately? You’d think that she was born and raised in the UK, except for the fact that it’s a bad fake accent.

There’s also a local car dealership that has a lot of radio ads. The lady in the ads has a distint English accent. I guess I’m just wondering how the English accent came to be associated with being pretentious? And doesn’t Madonna realize that everyone knows she’s from Michigan?

2

Maybe the doctor in question lived in England for a time and the accent isn’t fake. My (American) aunt and uncle lived in London for many years and their three kids were all born there. My aunt, uncle, and the two older kids all had for years and years even after moving back to the US, accents that slid around the spectrum from American to British.

As for Madonna, who the hell knows what Madonna is ever doing?

3

Because they’re fun, of course. Besides, as David Letterman once said, even the squeegee guy would sound important with a British accent.

4

When I was in college, there was another student with an English accent. Since she was an American, born here, the obvious question was where did she get the accent. She claimed to have been raised by a British grandparent, and to have thus learned the accent as her primary speech pattern. Unfortunately for her, there turned out to be another student at the same school who had been in high school with her. She hadn’t had the accent while in H.S.! Bottom line, she wanted to draw attention to herself and thought the accent made her cool, or sophisticated, or some such thing.

5

Madonna is a special case (that is, an attention whore). If she thought shaving her head and painting a crying clown on it would keep her in the spotlight for a few more months, she’d do it.

6

In the summer of 1992 (while I was in college), I went door-to-door for an environmental group (Maryland PIRG, if that means anything to anyone). I spent 4-5 hours a day knocking on doors, delivering the same stupid speech over and over. So, one day, I decided to spice things up by using a British accent: I’d lived in Yorkshire for a couple of years in the mid-80s, but hadn’t “used” that accent in a while, so I walked around the neighborhood for a few minutes, talking to myself to get the accent back. Once I had a handle on it, I went back to knocking on doors. It’s amazing how many people listened to the entire spiel just because of the accent! :slight_smile: I definitely got a better reception from people, and even got comments on it – one well-meaning woman told me that I must have lived in England during my “language development phase.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was 12 when we moved there. :smiley:

I think that’s the last time I was able to recall the accent correctly. But then, it’s also the last time I walked around talking to myself in a fake British accent. :wink:

7

Huh, that’s my ex, only he used an Irish accent. And claimed that his family was from Ireland, and spoke Gaelic before English. Then I met his mom. Solid Bronx accent. :rolleyes: What was worse, he continued this charade far after I knew.

And worse than that, that I stayed with him for a year after I knew. :smack:

8

If you’re interested, there’s athis American Life episode with an interesting segment about a teenager who fakes a british accent for two years.

9

Perhaps it’s just the doctor’s version of her “refined telephone voice”. My mother has always used a more rounded and carefully enunciated tone when she’s talking on the telephone.

10

Ditto for my mother, I think lots of people have a “posh” phone voice. The odd thing about fake British accents is that nobody in Britain sounds like that, when people do British accents on American T.V. or in Hollywood films they tend to try and copy the Queens accent, which is an accent shared by the Queen and about 5 other people and always sounds ridiculous. 99.9% of people in Britain sound absolutely nothing like the British accent I hear portrayed in American T.V. and films.

11

On the flip side:
A girl in high school spent six weeks on exchange at a school in Hawaii. When she came back, she spoke in a broad American accent for precisely one week, long enough for all the other students to give her serious grief about it.

12

While Madonna is, of course, an attention whore, I’d have said she was a special case because she does actually live in England with her English husband, and has done for long enough to have picked up a bit of the accent naturally. Certainly that’s what it sounded like to me the last time I heard her speak.

13

Because you all secretly want to be British. :smiley:

14

I agree - and I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that Hugh Grant is really American :wink:

15

Speak for yourself – when I fake a British accent, I come out sounding like Neil Tennant, which is quite frankly all to the good. :slight_smile:

16

Mrs Bucket. My Nana had a very ‘British-posh’ “lady of the house speaking” voice. It just sounded proper to her. Her and many of her generation.

17

BTW there is no single “British” accent- received pronunciation is probably the closest thing.

It IS possible to speak in a different accent to your usual without being aware of it, and to switch back and forth depending on context without any conscious decision to do so. Not everyone is actually TRYING to sound posh!

My mother is Zimbabwean, my father is Northern Irish, but spent a lage part of his life in Dublin and London. The accent I use to speak to my parents is the one I consider to be my “natural” voice. It’s a Zimbabwean-tinged English accent.

When I went to primary school, I started talking like all my friends- a broad Northern Irish accent. However, I only spoke like that to my friends, never at home.

I never knew this until it was pointed out to me by one of my friends. We would give her a lift home from school, and while I would talk to her with a Northern Irish accent, any comments addressed to my mother were in my “home” voice. Quite weird to any third party listening in, I’m sure, but I’m completely unaware I’m doing it.

Now I’ve lived in Dublin, I speak with a soft Southen Irish accent to my patients, a Northern Irish accent at home with irishfella, and I still talk on the phone to my mum and dad with my Zim-ish accent.

NONE of these changes are conscious, although if asked to “put on” an accent I could.

My brain’s default is to respond in the accent of the person I’m speaking with. After a month is Australia none of the patients believed I was from Ireland, and after 3 weeks in India I was saying “ha and nay” instead of “yes and no” and interspersing “tikke” and “acha” into my sentences.

When I met Kal and Washte a few years ago, they said I sounded like I was from Surrey…but that’s only because I can’t do Nottingham!

Don’t assume everyone is putting things on, some of us just find that our accent is more free-floating than others.

18

Possibly, but I’m betting she’s playing it up a bit.

19

I’d love to see an interview that goes something like this …

20

Couple of observations…

I’ve noticed that when I’ve been reading a lot of British material I catch myself slipping into British constructions, if not the actual accent. I’ll say things like “The team are…” and so on. If someone’s exposed to an accent every day, like Madonna who lives there, they might well pick up a trace of it.

The other thing is that there are a lot of different American accents and even more British accents. Some of them are similar, and not always the ones you’d expect. Recently I heard a woman talking, and for a few seconds I thought she was English. Then I realized she was American, probably from someplace like Virginia. She had a semi-Southeastern accent, but with a mid- and even north-Atlantic influence.

Also, if you watch old Hollywood films from the 1930s and 1940s, the women tend to enunciate in a way that resembles some aspects of British pronunciation. This is especially noticeable in the way Rs are dropped at the ends of words. I don’t know why they did this, unless it was to indicate that, at that time, dropping Rs was a sign of posh speech.