With you being (presumably) American I concede… He still sounds like a Cockney putting on an accent to me…
I can’t think of many believable accents either way outside of Spinal Tap…
I had to do an impromptu accent on TV in front of millions of people once. And I am NOT an actor. It was really tough. I think I did it pretty well, but no one could understand what the hell I was talking about. It was a northern Minnesota accent and that is certainly not my normal way of speaking. I was overheard talking about how bad the accents were in Fargo and one thing led to another…
The vocabulary thing is huge. Garius used the word soda as an example of a word that would give you away as American, yet if you said “soda” where I live people would peg you as an outsider right away. People say that in Milwaukee and St. Louis but not in Minneapolis or Chicago.
Yes, I am an American. And it’s been a long time since I saw the movie, but I don’t remember thinking that there was anything British sounding about his voice. I have seen parts of his other movies where he’s talking normally and he sounds very different.
If I ever see the movie again, I’ll try to look for any signs of an accent, other than the one he’s faking.
I’d wondered where she was supposed to be from. I’ve lived within 40 miles of Manchester for 12 years of my adult life and never met anyone who spoke like she does.
Some of these criticism seem to be missing the point, which is that, in comedys, often the accents are meant to be bad. Do you really think the guys in Monty Python are trying to do good American accents? Of course not: it wouldn’t be as funny if they actually sounded American. Same goes for the oft-maligned Dick van Dyke Cockney accent. Let’s face it, people, that bad accent is what makes that entire film. It’s the best thing in it, and it would screw the whole movie up if he actually sounded like he was supposed to.
I stand corrected. I guess she does a good enough American accent to fool me!
That woman out of Frasier, to my mind, sounded like she had an accent half from Huddersfield and half from, maybe, Barnsley?
Very odd.
And I think Vera in Coronation Street had a Manc(ish) accent, but there weren’t many.
Vera’s from Leeds, Andy, although I know what you mean. The people on that programme I’m certain are Mancs (based on accent) are Curly, Kevin, Steve, Karen, Martin and Les.
I think you’ve got Daphne’s accent about right, but it roams around all over the Pennines and back home to Surrey now and again.
Another small thing that bugs me about foreigners in TV shows is how they make small mistakes in dialogue (such as wrong or non-existant slang terms). If I was an actor I wouldn’t be able to resist telling the writers that “my character wouldn’t use that word”. Frasier’s full of them, but I’ve noticed the same thing in American characters in British-written shows. I’ll have to make a list next time I watch it and post a few.
As a Northumbrian (and Geordie) I’m mildly surprised that anyone in America could even recognise a Northumbrian accent (let alone understand it). Who are you using as a model?
What’s odd about accents on Frasier is that, while Jane Leeves is not from Manchester and may not do the accent well, John Mahoney IS from Manchester and sounds perfectly American. I suppose living his adult life in the US has helped. I would think he could’ve helped her over the rough spots, though.
Maybe one reason Connery gets away with keeping his accent when playing Americans is that, as a country of immigrants, we are real used to Americans with foreign accents, especially if we or are parents or grandparents are Americans with foreign accents.
Dave Allen did a good American accent. Probably because he’s Irish and Irish actors usually do fine. Why that’d be I can only assume is because of the large number of Irish immigrants when our accents were developing.
As for the flat Midwestern accent, with its painfully deliberate pronounciation of every letter and syllable, I suspect developed because of the large masses of non-English speakers who came here in the 19th and 20th centuries. The only way the Germans could be understood by the Swedes or the Poles was if the speaker spoke carefully and pronounced words by the book (literally, the book here being a dictionary).
As I said…
The accents that grate worst on my nerves are bad English accents done by English people - Jane Leeves in Frasier, Helen Baxendale during her stint in Friends, ANY impersonation done by Bobby Davro (if you don’t know him, be grateful). I do think, though, that Rob Llewellyn does a fine transatlantic voice as Kryten in Red Dwarf. Alexis Denisof’s English accent is closer to the mark than James Marsters, to my ear. Of course, early British films (up till the ‘sixties at any rate) had nary a “real” accent to be found anywhere in them with the possible exception of Alistair Sim. I don’t know whether American films were guilty of the same crime; it would explain the skewed impression of other countries’ accents anyway…
I have often wondered about Robert Redford’s accent in " Out Of Africa" The character he was playing (Denys Finch Hatton ) was , of course, British . Redford does not attempt an English accent at all put plays the character in what appears to be his normal voice . I suppose he thought he could not do an authentic accent. Now if they had chosen a proper British actor , say someone like Charles Dance , we would have ended up with the real thing.
Ooh ooh ooh! The actor in HBO’s Band of Brothers who played Captain Winters… Ah. Damian Lewis a luscious redhead. ::drool:: I had no idea he was British when I saw that miniseries. He did a fantastic job with his American accent.
And on vaguely the same subject, anyone see Johnny English yet? John Malkovich does The. Worst. French. Accent. Ever.
in The Musketeer he didn’t even bother trying.
Incidentally, in my observation people who are doing “An American Accent ™” end up doing a New Yorker, Valley Girl, or Southerner.
Speaking of slang and phrases and so on, is it an untrue American stereotype, or did at any time British people use words like “Pip-pip”, “Tally-ho”, and “Cheerio” and that sort of thing?
well, there are a lot of different new york accents. not only do different boros have different accents, different neighborhoods do as well. for flushing, queens, think of fran drescher. actually, queens is one of the most common accents women use for new york. for the bronx, think nathan lane. for brooklyn, think jerry stiller. long island and yonkers are a lot like queens only less noticible. staten island also has its own accent but i cant think of a good example. manhattan’s got a mix of everything listed above and more.
my father used to work with a man from baltimore who spent his entire life there and could tell anyone from there where they lived, within two or three blocks, based on their accent.
i also am a member of the chameleon club, although it’s gotten much worse since i started learning to speak with other accents. i’ve been working on new zealand and southern england, using interviews and such as a basis, because i love the way both of them sound and i’d like to be able to fool people, being from the states. i’d also love to be able to distinguish between different british accents, but all i can do as of yet is tell north-ish and south-ish, and scottish from english from welsh from irish.
but whereas i went to high school in new york city and it took me three years to assimilate and start saying ‘koaffee’ (coffee) and ‘steahs’ (stairs), i went to illinois for two days recently and found myself having to fight the immense urge to use the midwestern accent after one night.
eh. it’s okay. not too fantastic, but i’ve heard worse.
i saw it. and one might think that living in france would make him good at faking the accent…
Heh. Though I have a certain soft spot in my heart for Rogue, seeing as how she’s a fellow Mississippi Queen and all, I must say Anna Paquin’s accent was dodgy at best. It started out okay – the first scene she has a fairly soft Southern accent. During her scenes with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) the accent starting fading to a neutral American, and at one part when she tells him to put on his seatbelt and he rebuffs the advice, they both seem to slip back into their natural (Kiwi and Aussie, respectively) accents.
Through the rest of the movie she’ll get going good with the Southern accent, drop it for neutral American, then seemingly remember it a couple of scenes later, then slip back into Kiwi, then throw on the drawl again. Became rather amusing.