What about Alan Rickman? He has some pretty weird rolling Rs going on.
They would be the rolling Rs of RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), although having an Irish dad and a Welsh mum would have helped.
Probably not, actually. Parents’ accents generally have very little if any effect on children’s. If he spent a significant amount of time in Ireland or Wales growing up, maybe.
It’s an enduring image though, surely? – Rickman impersonating his mum while hacking away at Robin Hood.
Maybe he took too closely to his part of Eamon de Valera.
That’s a pretty frightening thought, actually.
Can anyone suggest a good example (actor, public figure, etc.) of a Norfolk accent? (I just read of someone having a “harsh Norfolk accent” and now I’m curious.)
Regarding parents’ accents and their influence…I was born in Philadelphia and raised nearby, and I’ve always felt (though can’t prove, of course) that I was protected against developing a nasty Philadelphia accent by having a mother from Nebraska. I don’t say “wooder” for “water,” for example, because my mother doesn’t say “wooder,” and she’s the person I heard speak the most when I was a child. (On the other hand, my father is from northern Italy, and I couldn’t mimic his accent if I tried.)
Yes it is. In fact I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t got a clear enough mental image of de Valera’s accent to know how good/bad a job he did in that film.
Back to the OP (or from the sublime to the ridiculous perhaps), I notice that there’s another accent we haven’t covered: Mrs Slocombe in Are You Being Served had a West Yorkshire accent with fake gentility laid on by the trowelful. Patricia Routledge has a similar sort of accent but from Wirral, West Cheshire.
I just ran a search on IMDb for actors from Norfolk, but although there are plenty of references, I wouldn’t say any of them had a distinctively Norfolk accent. I wouldn’t have though the word “harsh” would apply to it either. The only person I can think of with a Norfolk accent is Bernard Matthews, who’s a famous turkey farmer over here who appears in TV commercials for his own products, and is very unlikely to be familiar to an American audience.
If you’ve seen The Vicar of Dibley, Alice’s accent will give you some idea of what it sounds like, but as far as I know she’s not from that county.
Another person who had a strong Norfolk accent was the Singing Postman - Allan Smethurst who made famous the song " Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy ?". (sic)
For those with Real Player this web site gives some examples of the Norfolk accent / dailect :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/have_your_say/dialect.shtml
Wow, thanks, Rayne Man! Great examples!
everton, one of my local TV stations airs the Vicar of Dibley on Saturdays, so I’ll make a point to watch that, too.
You’re right – “harsh” is not a word that comes to mind after hearing the soundclips on the BBC site. Maybe the description I read was using “harsh” as in “strong”…eh, who knows.
Glad you liked the examples Gallows Fodder. That BBC site also raises the difference between accent and dialect. To my mind accent just means the way the spoken word sounds but dialect means the use of different or modified words in every day speech to replace the usual ones.
I probably ought to add that the examples Rayne Man linked to are the real McCoy, but Alice in TVoD was just the best approximation I could think of on the spur of the moment. I recall jjimm explaining that the show is set in the Cotswolds on the other side of the country. The accents in the west and East Anglia are similar to a degree.
Don’t anyone forget about Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead. Great Bristolian accents there, loverrrrr.
It’s really shitty that all the awesome diversity of UK accents are almost invisible over here, because of the way they train actors to speak recieved English. Very boring. Is it because they think we won’t understand it?
actually, I know people who had trouble understanding Trainspotting. (I know, not English.)
Know any good movies featuring non-recieved-English-speaking-English people that we could get over here?
One oldish film I can think of is Kes , set in Yorkshire ,which used a lot of non-professional actors. I am almost sure that when this film was released in the US sub-titles were used
The Full Monty: set in Sheffield, Mark Addy and William Snape have authentic South Yorkshire accents and Robert Carlyle does a decent imitation of one, Tom Wilkinson is from up the road in Leeds but has had a lot of it trained out, ditto Hugo Speer (Harrogate). Paul Barber is from Liverpool and couldn’t be from anywhere else.
Yesterday, my wife and I had a BBQ with some friends. One of them is from England. He maped out where he’s from in relationship to other English towns. He’s from Balper Derbyshire, and when I asked him what kind of English accent he speaks with, he said it was a Derbyshire accent.
That got me to thinking, it seems that for the most part, what accent an Englishman/Englishwoman speaks with, is the same name as the town or region they live in or grew up in (I.E. London Accent, Liverpool Accent, etc…) Is that pretty much the case?
No it varies quite a bit, but if somebody was to explain their accent to you they might identify it by place to avoid complicating the issue or to make it easier to remember where they claimed to be from.
A person from Liverpool might be described as having a Scouse accent; someone from Newcastle-upon-Tyne* might be said to have a Geordie accent; a Londoner might have a Cockney accent etc.
'scuse the spelling nitpick, but I suspect your friend was from Belper.
*There are several places called Newcastle. N-on-Tyne is the biggest and best known, and is usually just abbreviated to Newcastle.
Ok, now I’m curious…does anyone know what the accent from Kent is like? Specifically Cranbrook, Kent (which is near Tunbridge Wells, I think). That’s where my dad’s family is from originally (we’re talking way back…our ancestor from England was a Puritan who came over here only a little while after the Pilgrims and lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony) and I’ve always sort of wondered what sort of place it was and how people talked and lived and all…someday I want to go over there and see if there are any Starrs left, all these years on 
A few others:
Bend It Like Beckham: The central character is played by Parminder Nagra who is from Leicester and has an East Midlands accent.
Anita and Me: Story about a young Indian girl growing up in the Black Country area of the English West Midlands in the '70s. The “Me” in the title is played by Chandeep Uppal, who has a strong Black Country accent.
The 51st State: Partly set in Liverpool; Ricky Tomlinson, Michael Starke and Paul Barber (again) have authentic Liverpool accents and Robert Carlyle attempts one (with less success IMHO than he achieved in the To Be A Somebody edition of Cracker).
Billy Elliot: Set in Newcastle, most of the characters either have (or attempt) Geordie accents. Billy’s and his gradmother’s are genuine, his elder brother’s isn’t, nor is his teacher’s. His dad is from Glasgow.