# Faking foreign accents **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 1, 2004, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529 "2004-09-01T03:01:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/21 "2004-11-21T18:47:38Z")
> [@Jomo Mojo](#): > > Most of Maryland (outside Baltimore) uses a Tidewater accent, which is basically Southern. Certain islands in the Chesapeake, however, have their own accent. The uplands of western Maryland begin to merge into the Appalachian dialect. I’m from Prince George’s County, Maryland, and I do not have a southern accent. Nor did most of the people I know from the other DC-suburb counties in Maryland, apart from a small handful of very poor, rural people. > [@](#): > > Gary Oldman is the Accent King of the world. Nobody else can do such a wide variety of American and other non-British accents and get them all right. Well, we’ve discussed this before, and I will say again that his American accent in _True Romance_ was very obviously (to me) not a genuine American accent. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2004, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/22 "2004-11-21T22:11:19Z")
I agree with Ruadh. When I compare the accent of where I grew up (rural northwest Ohio) with where I live now (in Prince George’s County), nobody where I live now sounds Southern. Indeed, the only difference between the rural northwestern Ohio accent and the accent of the most of the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area is that the accent here sounds slightly more big-city East-Coast than the accent where I grew up. There are parts of southern Maryland and parts of the Baltimore metropolitan area that sound borderline Southern, but that isn’t most of Maryland. In any case, five-sixths of Maryland by population is Baltimore and Baltimore-Washington suburbs. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/23 "2004-11-22T00:38:43Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > You do know that the character of Daphne is a complete joke in the UK, due to the accent not remotely resembling _anything_ real? Whether it was originally a knowing nod to an anticipated British audience familiar with bad accents coming from American mouths, or just ineptness, I don’t know. But Jane Leeves certainly knows and accepts how silly it is. How could I know that? All I know is what she herself said in interviews about it. ---
**Author:** ![DooWahDiddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@DooWahDiddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DooWahDiddy)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/24 "2004-11-22T02:53:39Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > You do know that the character of Daphne is a complete joke in the UK, due to the accent not remotely resembling _anything_ real? Whether it was originally a knowing nod to an anticipated British audience familiar with bad accents coming from American mouths, or just ineptness, I don’t know. But Jane Leeves certainly knows and accepts how silly it is. I don’t understand what you’re saying here. Jane Leeves _is_ British. She doesn’t have an American mouth; she’s [from Essex](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005137/). Am I being whooshed? ---
**Author:** ![KP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a9adbd/32.png) [@KP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KP)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/25 "2004-11-22T03:36:37Z")
Ironically, John Mahoney, who convincingly plays Frasier’s (American) father was actually born in Liverpool, of a Manchester mother, and (according to an interview I saw early in the show’s run) grew up speaking with the rxact accent Essex-born Jane Leeves seems to be muffing. He trained himself out of the accent as an adult, when he served in the US Army. My head hurts. This is worse than a “time loop” plotline from a bad SF show. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/26 "2004-11-22T03:48:59Z")
I’m pretty good with accents, and I think Jane Leeves is exaggerating the accent deliberately, because a sitcom is basically just a stageplay, where you exaggerate most things for effect. But she sounds like a lot of the Manchester accents in _Coronation Street_ to me. Which is more than can be said for many of the actors in _Coronation Street_. Oh, and of course there’s her character’s brother, played by Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia, whose accent is not too bad, but obviously not from Manchester. He’s more cockney, which is much easier an accent to do than almost any other UK one. And when it comes down to it, 99.9999% of Americans can’t tell a scouse accent from a west country accent. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/27 "2004-11-22T03:58:27Z")
I rewatched “The Treasure of the Sierra Madra’s” last week on AMC and couldn’t believe how good the Mexican accents were. Bandito to Humphry Bogart: \*\*“Badges, we don’t need no stinking badges!” \*\* I could have shown I was in Monterrey. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/28 "2004-11-22T07:11:44Z")
> [@DooWahDiddy](#): > > I don’t understand what you’re saying here. Jane Leeves _is_ British. She doesn’t have an American mouth; she’s [from Essex](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005137/). Am I being whooshed? What he’s saying is that her accent is nowhere near a genuine _Manchester_ accent. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/29 "2004-11-22T07:41:47Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > But she sounds like a lot of the Manchester accents in _Coronation Street_ to me. Which is more than can be said for many of the actors in _Coronation Street_. Corrie may be exageratedly Lancashire at the expense of the true Mancunian accent - but trust me, _nobody_ in Manchester sounds like her. Oh, and of course there’s her character’s brother, played by Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia, whose accent is not too bad, but obviously not from Manchester…And when it comes down to it, 99.9999% of Americans can’t tell a scouse accent from a west country accent. [/QUOTE] Don’t forget the final episode, with Richard E Grant and Robbie Coltrane - if that wasn’t taking the piss out of the ridiculousness of the regional-accent-farce, I don’t know what it was. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Llama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@The\_Llama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Llama)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/30 "2004-11-22T07:42:03Z")
I was floored when I saw Damian Lewis (the guy who played Captain Winters in Band of Brothers) in an interview. I couldn’t believe he was british. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/31 "2004-11-22T11:39:56Z")
I never knew that Anthony LaPaglia was an Aussie until I read about it in some interview. I fell in love with him in “Betsy’s Wedding” and then in the TV series he did being a lawyer that I cannot remember the title of at all. Brad Pitt comes to mind for accents. Say what you will about him ( he’s gorgeous) but you gots to watch him in **Snatch** for his wonderfully incomprehensible gypsy accent. It is meant to be that way and it is a gas. He also did a dead on German accent in “Seven Years in Tibet” and a pretty good irish accent that didn’t sound like a leprechaun in whatever the movie he did with Harrison Ford that tanked. ---
**Author:** ![mike1dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@mike1dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mike1dog)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/32 "2004-11-22T12:59:58Z")
Speaking of Harrison Ford, his Russian accent in K-19, The Widowmaker made me cringe. I don’t know if it was authentic or not, but the whole idea of Russians speaking English with Russian accents on a Russian sub seemed kind of ridiculous to me. If you’re not going to do it in the original language why even bother with the Boris Badenoff accent? ---
**Author:** ![Argo84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b19c9b/32.png) [@Argo84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argo84)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/33 "2004-11-22T14:46:07Z")
I thought Tom Wilkinson did a terrific American accent in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. ---
**Author:** ![Shrinking\_Violet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Shrinking\_Violet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shrinking_Violet)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/34 "2004-11-22T15:40:06Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > An old girlfriend of mine in Denver, who was a professional voice coach, taught actors and actresses how to speak in foreign accents as part of her work. She specialized in accents most commonly used in the theater; Brooklyn, Boston, a few Southern US accents (New Orleans, urban South, rural deep South), Irish, a few UK accents (Recieved Pronunciation, Cockney, **Liverpool** ), and Australian. She’d have to do some research if she got a rare request for a regional dialect not often used in live theater, like Canadian Prairies, Pittsburghese or South African. _Bolding mine_ I think most _Brits_ would have difficulty with that one, unless they’ve got a rotten, stinking head cold. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/35 "2004-11-22T16:16:21Z")
I live just outside of Merseyside and can’t do a Scouse accent at all. ---
**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/36 "2004-11-22T16:47:18Z")
The only time I speak with an accent is when I am trying to communicate with someone whose language I do not speak. For some reason, it seems like a Spaniard/German/Chineese/etc person will understand English if it is spoken with a half-assed accent. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/37 "2004-11-22T20:54:23Z")
> [@KGS](#): > > Nitpick: It’s true that Sellers had difficulty learning the Texas accent; however, the real reason he quit the part was because he broke his leg. (Which is also why the character of Dr. Strangelove is confined to a wheelchair.) > > Nick Nolte in [Lorenzo’s Oil](http://www.myelin.org/themovie.htm) had a TERRIBLE accent, although I did read somewhere that that’s how Augusto Odone actually talks! (But I doubt he drops the accent and launches into Nolte-speak whenever he gets angry…) More nitpick (and completely off-topic)… IIRC, the “Major Kong” scenes were the last to be filmed. All of Sellers’ other roles, including Strangelove, had already been filmed before he broke his leg. (And remember, Strangelove does STAND UP at the end… “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!”) ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/38 "2004-11-22T22:46:22Z")
> [@vetbridge](#): > > The only time I speak with an accent is when I am trying to communicate with someone whose language I do not speak. For some reason, it seems like a Spaniard/German/Chineese/etc person will understand English if it is spoken with a half-assed accent. 🙂 I know a South African family who have a wonderfully-trained dog, but it’ll only obey commands said in a South African accent ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/39 "2004-11-22T23:23:49Z")
> [@vetbridge](#): > > The only time I speak with an accent is when I am trying to communicate with someone whose language I do not speak. For some reason, it seems like a Spaniard/German/Chineese/etc person will understand English if it is spoken with a half-assed accent. 🙂 How true. I work with lots of Japanese folks and am quite reknown for my command of jinglish. Slow broken Englsh with few small words and simple hand drawn sketchs. Some people think that when I speak like that I am being disrespecful, but it has worked out many times to be the only way to get a point across. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2004, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529/40 "2004-11-22T23:33:23Z")
Speaking of _Dr. Strangelove_ and faking foreign speech… Does the Russian ambassador speak _real_ Russian in that movie? When he’s on the phone to the Kremlin? If so, is there a translation around? The actor (Peter Bull) is British, but of course he theoretically might know Russian. Or he might have memorized his lines phonetically. Or the speech might be gibberish that only sounds like Russian. But I thought I heard a few authentic words in there — not that I know more than about three. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faking-foreign-accents/262529.md?page=3)