Oh yeah, one more important vowel difference between American and RP.
The “long o” vowel is heavily diphthongized in RP, but only slightly in General American. RP speakers don’t just let go of the o vowel when they’re done saying it, but but let it trail off into a strong offglide. It’s like o followed by oo-ww. In fact, the really snooty RP o doesn’t even have any o in it at all. It starts with a neutral central vowel like an elongated schwa or even an open eh … then the oo-ww offglide. eh-oo-ww.
Italian is the international gold standard for “pure vowel” sounds. No offglides in Italian. Just the plain o and that’s it. American o has a slight offglide, but is much closer to an Italian pure o than the RP sound.
Garrison Keillor, in The Book of Guys, has a hilarious essay telling how in high school he imitated a recording of Sir John Gielgud reading Walt Whitman’s “O Captain!” Gielgud had the plummiest of British accents. When saying “oh!” he stretched out the syllable into a veritable polyphthong. “Aaeooouuuwwwww…”
Many of us American linguists have tried to teach ourselves little-
known languages from odd corners of the world. Most of the teach-yourself books for these unusual languages were written by British authors for a British audience. Consequently, when explaining the pronunciation of foreign sounds, they give examples of dialects from various parts of Britain. For example, “You have to pronounce this sound somewhat as a Yorkshireman would…” or “This is approximately the sound heard in Devonshire speech…”, etc. Americans are then at a loss, not having any idea how these far-flung corners of Britain speak. We mostly get to hear the homogenized BBC accent, which I have heard was artificially contrived so as not to sound like any genuine regional accent.
You might want to pick up/order a copy of Lonely Planet’s British Phrasebook I picked one up a few years ago in Harrods bookshop, and have seen it around the states in travel bookstores a few times. I find it very interesting as it is written to shop you the whole aspect of British (including many dialects) along with Welsh and Scottish. There are many phrases as well as customs too. I find it very interesting with a good dose of humor in it.
I thought he might be, because his Bad English Accent is so different from a BEA done by Americans, who all tend to make the same mistakes, mainly by being to exaggerated.
Actually, if you’re talking about ordinary-Brits-on-the-street, most of them sound like an Irish person with a mouthful of marbles when they try to do an American accent. Even trained actors can’t always pull it off – I’ve been to an RSC performance where one of them tried and failed miserably. Emma Thompson does a fairly good American accent in Primary Colors, but there’s one longish monologue toward the beginning where she slips a bit.
I think it’s almost as hard for Brits to do an American accent as the other way around, it’s just that they sound OK to other Brits because it’s harder to hear mistakes in an accent that isn’t your own.
Agent: Say, Sean, we’ve got a role here for a Tough Irish-American cop. Can you do that?
Sean: Well, how about I interprete that with a Scottish accent?
Agent: Perfect! And how about this Soviet navel officer?
Sean: I could do my Edinburgh accent for that.
Agent: Genius! They’re also looking for an secret agent. No nationality specified, so you could really let your imagine fly with that one!
Sean: Scotsh with a tendanshy to shhhh my eshhhes?
Agent: I love it! American academic?
Sean: Well then, tailor-made for my American-born-and-bred-in-Scotland accent. I’ve been practicing that one!
Agent: Oh my gawd, you are so versatile! How about alien from Planet Zog whose mother is South African, father Indian and spent his teen years in Japan?
Sean: Tricky. … Sound anything like this?
Agent: Perfect! Rather like a Scottish Edinburgh accent!!!
Sean: What about the Braveheart role?
Agent: Sorry, it fell through. They prefered Mel’s accent. They were looking for a mangled American-Austrailian interpretation.
Ralph Feinnes in Red Dragon was very iffy.
The wierder the character got, the more pronounced his English accent became.
As you are from Norn Irn, Dunmurry, why not try watching one of the English soaps?
You would be able to hone your skills three nights a week or four if you wanted a Yorkshire accent and tuned in to Emmerdale.
