Like Wow! I took a look at the Valley Speak website and here is what happens when you translate the Straight Dope Home Page into Valley Speak:
:eek:
I loved to hear all the Monty Python guys do American accents and come out sounding like John Wayne. Except John Cleese. He always did this weird, gruff, manly man voice.
As for cockney rhyming slang, and not to perpetuate stereotypes, but an English friend of mine opined that most rhyming slang was invented by East London criminals in order to make a kind of code that the police wouldn’t be able to understand. Anyone ever heard this?
Other cockney rhyming slang he taught me:
Having a giraffe: Having a laugh
Whistle (and flute): suit
Except your own ridiculousness. That’s our job, and you’re heavily outnumbered by experts. Your job is to provide the evidence one way or another.
Oh, thank you! I knew “butchers” meant “have a look around,” but I never knew why.
But I do know about raspberry tarts!
I, as a born-n-raised Californian, must agree. I have only one question: How the hell do you pronounce those three words differently?
They, uh, all rhyme with bury, berry, and Barry, right?
everton - ease up. It was a joke. In fact, I thought it was a joke about me and my fellow americans.
We know we’re the young upstarts, but we get tired of being reminded every fifteen minutes.
And, iamthewalrus(:3=, I don’t get it either. “Merry” is pronounced “mehry” (sort of), which is different from “Mary” or “marry” which sound exactly alike. 
Yeah, s’cuse me - that sounded much harsher than intended after a re-read.
[nitpick]
Alas, no. St Mary-le-Bow is in the middle of the City of London. Not the East End at all.
[/nitpick]
Short of calling you and pronouncing them, I don’t know how to explain the difference without using the phonetic alphabet, which I’m assuming you’re not familiar with. It has to do with where the vowels are said in the mouth.
If one makes the distinction, the vowel in “merry” is said as it is in the word “errand”.
“Mary” and “marry” can have a distinct vowel difference. The vowel in the former is said as it is in “air”, and because nothing else is coming to mind the vowel in “marry” is pronounced similarly way that Brits say “Harry”. Go see the Harry Potter movie and listen to how it’s said- it’s ‘Arry’ without the “H” sound.
The distinctions can be at best subtle- a lot of people won’t necessarily hear it, and it is true that a lot of people don’t make the distinction between the three anyway. But for those who do, (I do, and I’m from the East coast) that’s pretty much how it’s made.
That’s the best way I can explain it without getting too technical. Any other ling dopers are invited to make corrections, as I’m not entirely sure how coherent this explanation is.
Thought I’d posted this already yesterday, but the board must have crashed:
The A in ‘Mary’ is the A in “bear”.
The A in ‘marry’ is the A in “hat”.
The A in ‘merry’ is the A in “bed”.
Doh.
The E in ‘merry’ is the E in “bed”.
For an example of Brits doing American accents, see the seen in Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life where John Cleese is playing a waiter shilling off conversation tips to a couple of tourists (Eric Idle and Michael Palin) . All three are doing some rather… um … interesting American accents
Now that’s interesting… maybe I should try paying attention when I hit preview, hmmm?
What I always wondered was, do non-English speaking people do “mock English”? You know, total gibberish that sounds like English if you’re not familiar with the language? Sort of like the Swedish chef on The Muppet Show, or this article from the Onion, where the author “can totally speak Spanish.” I always wondered what attempts at English would sound like.
Quite accurate, really.
Actually, Jo-Beth and Sue-Ellen sound more like soccer moms to me. But this could be some sort of generational conflict between me and Michale Ellis. Yesterday’s bimbos are today’s PTA members.
133+, probably.
A friend from college who was from a totally Welsh-speaking part of Wales said her 5-year-old sister, who couldn’t yet speak English, mimiced English people with the following phrase:
In the NY Times this weekend there was an article about all the recent mass-gunnings-down in Europe. It was noted that the French “refer to high-crime areas with such phrases as ‘a real Bronx,’ or ‘a Chicago’” . . .
“Chicago!” How quaint. I wonder if they know Prohibition was repealed?
I generally just point at Dave and laugh.