It is/was [1960s] common for British rock singers to sing with an American/Mid Atlantic accent, or what they conceived to be one. There are numerous exceptions to the rule, however.
Winchester’s accent isn’t remotely typical of a Boston accent. His character speaks in a Boston Brahmin accent. Here’s an example. It’s more of an “upper crust” affectation that isn’t really heard much nowadays.
This is a far more typical Boston accent, and while it’s decidedly non-rhotic it is still discernibly American.
to me honestly this sounds like japanese. maybe speaking english maybe not hard to say. certainly i want to pick out english words in the jibberish.
but for some reason it sounds like the jrock or whatever jpunk whatever videos my friend shows me.
at least, on some level.
It may remind you of Japanese popular music because some Japanese groups actually sing in very bad English, or Japanese with the occasional barely intelligible English word or phrase. When a Japanese group is performing on TV they often run the lyrics across the bottom of the screen, and it can be pretty surprising to see English words appearing down there when what you’re actually hearing bears little resemblance to the English language.
I’m told some groups actually sing in English-esque gibberish, but my Japanese isn’t anywhere good enough to be sure this is true.
Recently I’ve been re-reading some books I have on the Beatles–my sole concession for any type of “celebrity” oriented material. When asked for their impressions of America after their first visit, they mentioned the various American accents as one of the things they liked about the country. Most notably this impressed them on TV and radio, because presumably at the time everyone in British broadcasting spoke about the same way.
It might have been the sound quality’s fault, but I nearly wore out my copy (back in the VHS days) of Monty Python And The Holy Grail by repeatedly backtracking over various bits of dialog, to be able to understand it word for word. Still a great movie, though, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t follow it anyway. I just didn’t want to miss a word of it.
Actually I never had any trouble understanding any of their movies, or most of their TV show. Only on occasions when they were doing what I assumed were greatly exaggerated regional British accents did I ever have trouble. I have had trouble with other U.K. Television and Films with presumably pretty much the same variety of accents. I’m not a superstitious man, but this reaffirms my belief there is just something damn special about Monty Python 
Your post and Spectre’s following one reminded me of something. Once upon a time I took a music class on “rock & roll.” When we came to the Beatles, the professor played a few song snippets and asked us if we noticed anything weird. Nobody did. However, they were German language tracks of their songs from their Hamburg phase. Their strong English accents made the German sound more like nonsense English to the uninformed.
i don’t know i can’t say for sure but i think its something to do with how it sounds. like some part of how i guess (in my experience with japanese music videos on youtube) they make these sort of low noises, like ‘o’ noises and things extra low.
i don’t think it necessarily reminds me of japanese people speaking english, but just that sound set.
that said, i definitely want to pick out english words, as i said. anyway, yeah.
another anecdote on the subject: my friend is in germany right now and she was saying she ordered a beer at a bar in german and some german guy next to her laughed at her german. i guess presumably because of her accent. maybe her delivery was off though, i don’t know, but either way that doesn’t sound as if he were attracted.
shes from philly whatever that means for her accent.
I am a USAmerican speaker who speaks enough Spanish to get by.
I can tell the difference between my friend’s Venezuelan accent, a Mexico City accent, a rural northern Mexican accent and a Castilian one. I assume that those whose second language is English can tell some difference in our accents as well. It may be fairly general, but it should be apparent.
Further complicating matters is the fact that there could be three different “types” of English in a Japanese song:
1.) Actual English. They’re just throwing an English word in there 'cause it sounds cool.
2.) 外来語 gairaigo, or “foreign loan word.” This is a word originally from another language that’s been adopted into Japanese. E.g., ビデオ *bideo *(video) from English or パン *pan *for bread from Portugese. Its meaning would be obvious to a native speaker of the language it was borrowed from.
3.) 和製英語 wasei eigo, or “Japanese-made English.” This is when a word is coined in Japanese using one or more English words, but separate from their meaning in English. A native English speaker might not be able to tell the Japanese word’s meaning independent of context. An example would be キッチンペーパー kitchinpēpā (“kitchen paper”) for paper towels, ヘルスメーター *herusu mētā *(“health meter”) for bathroom scales, and ワンパターン *wan patān *(“one pattern”) for something repetitive.
#2 and #3 would get a Japanese-ized pronunciation. #1 may sound more like English or only use Japanese phonemes, depending on how fluent the vocalist is.
It took me forever to realize the witch says “It’s a fair cop” after they weigh her on the scales.
And then I had to Google it to find out what it meant!
I watched an episode of the Mentalist where a bloke pretending to be American is sussed by the hero.
Nice try but you must suppress your glottal stops he says.
Glottal stops are where we say "War ur"instead of “Water”.
Except that I couldn’t make out any glottal stops in his conversation and when he starts speaking in his “own” English accent he’s from the North of England .
Its people from the S.E. and London who use G.Ss
But his accent wandered from Lancashire to the N.E. and then sometimes to Southern Scotland, he made Russell Crowe look like an actor.
A bit of an own goal by the writer when he makes a point of the accent at all.
I’m American from the Midwest, and I studied abroad in Ireland, so I kind of got to view my own accent from an outsider’s perspective. At first, when talking to Irish people, I would always admire how lyrical and elegant their accent was. When I replied, I felt like I was barging in with my dumb boxy accent. I also felt like I sounded dumb because I spoke very slowly and, being midwestern, very bland and - I don’t know how to put it - rigidly.
By the end of the four months, I felt differently. I perceived my own accent the way (I suspect) most foreigners perceive it, confident and extremely casual. I also thought maybe the Irish didn’t perceived their own accents as stylized and elegant, but maybe folksy and old-fashioned (just maybe, I didn’t ask anyone).
Perhaps this is more telling of how much less intimidated I was by the country over the course of the semester than anything to do with accents, but it’s my two cents. Also, my friend’s family was stationed in Britain nearly 20 years ago. He said that British people thought Americans all sounded like movie stars, which had never occurred to me before he told me. I had always been enamored with any British accent and figured everyone knew they were vastly superior to American ones.
When I was in Ireland, someone asked me if I was from around there.
I’m from California.
I’m still scratching my head over that one.
Same thing happened to my mother, brother, and me one time we were in Ireland–an American couple asked if we were Irish.
It’s a little hazy, but I think when I was in Japan someone might have thought I was Irish or British, too.
I call Taiwan China. That said, I’m an American who was in Taiwan with my girlfriend who is a native of there. We were walking through the city and came upon a school kid and she asked him to show off his English. (We’re both teachers) I eagerly listened and heard a genuine American accent from this kid–it sounded like gangsta’ dialect. Her kids, to whom she teaches Mandarin here in the U.S., get the Chinese tones and accents far better than I do after knowing her for like 10 years and trying her native tongue whenever I can.
Spanish or British accent is really sexy among girls but not so much guys.
In the US to hear strong accents you have move to country,town or small city.The big cities be more Hollywood like and diluted with all the people moving there, less native to the city more people from other countries and other states.
A couple of anecdotes about when I spent a year in Japan:
For a while I taught English pronunciation at a school in Shibuya. Most of the native-speaker employees were American, but one was British, and quite fussy about all the differences. I never found out if this just left the students confused, or if they had special classes just for those who were going to be dealing with Brits instead of Americans. I also taught pronunciation to some very small groups studying with a private teacher, and a few of those high school students were very, very good.
I spent some time up in Hokkaido with a farm family who had 4 (very sweet and charming) children; the eldest was in 6th grade and so was starting to study English. One day he gave a sort of demo of English to his siblings, but instead of using English words he did a couple of minutes of nonsense sounds that he thought sounded like English. I was fascinated - it sounded very guttural, but not like German, sort of softer than that.
Sorry, neither of these anecdotes speaks to the sexiness or otherwise of my American English, if that was the question. I never had any particular reaction that gave me a clue whether anyone found it sexy. Occasionally some stranger on a train or something would ask if they could practice their English on me (I always agreed, even though they were almost universally awful). It was better than staring at the advertising or the backs of houses.
I’m Canadian and the above describes my impression. IRL, and I’ve worked with a lot of Americans, at minimum there’s a detectable drawl.
I once asked a Brit to imitate my Canadian accent and her imitation sounded like a cheesy imitation of a southern US accent.