I adore British, Scots, Irish, and Welsh accents. I can usually distinguish between the “big” categories and am learning a bit about regional accents from BBC America programs (The Catherine Tate Show has been very helpful ).
I’d like to hear from UK’ers about American accent(s). Is the sound of American English interesting to listen to? Can you distinguish between regional accents? I would guess that Texas, Deep South, and New York accents are relatively easy to differentiate, but can you catch the subtleties of, say, Southern Californian and Minnesota accents?
I think there are only a few stereotypical American accents that absolutely anybody here can identify:
generic
Noo Yoik
southern
Those with a more acute ear might be able to distinguish between generic southern and Texas (not sure that I can). I can spot a Canadian accent quite easily. Minnesota, I imagine that’s a bit like the film Fargo, although I have no idea how authentic those accents were. As far as southern California goes, most people know about Valley Girl speak, but isn’t that more of a vocabulary thing than an accent? Except maybe “rilly” for “really”?
I like American accents, but they are very familiar to us from TV and film and they don’t have the exoticness that other foreign accents have.
Yeah I can pretty much spot a Boston or a NY accent. I can also (mostly) differentiate between American and Canuckian. Other than that I can’t really tell them apart .
I dated a girl from New Orleans who said I have a ‘surfer’ accent. (I’m an native Southern Californian.) To me a ‘surfer accent’ sounds more Valley, so I think she’s wrong. No one in SoCal would ever mistake me for a surfer. ‘Dude’ is a part of my vocabulary, however.
Boston is very distinctive.
New York is unmistakeable.
Deep South - really obvious.
Texas - obvious.
Minessota - from Fargo.
California - just about recognisable.
The rest… a melange I’m afraid. And I’ve spent a long time in the US.
That said, I really wish that someone would explain most of the above to British BBC actors. Why they don’t recruit American actors for the parts I don’t know. It makes my skin crawl when I hear any and all of the above massacred.
What is the Boston accent, then? I didn’t notice anything special about the accents of the characters in Cheers, for example. If it’s supposed to be the Kennedy/Mayor Quimby accent, I was given to understand that that is not, in fact, a typical New England accent but instead something unique to the Kennedy clan.
OK. Well, I personally wouldn’t be able to place Cliff’s accent more accurately than “blue collar northeastern American”. [ETA] So I could have believed he was from NYC or New Jersey.
I remember hearing somewhere that the Boston accent is the closest British-esque accent we have here in the US, particularly because of the dropped "r"s.
The Kennedy “accent” is entirely their own. I’ve never heard any Bostonian (or New Englander, for that matter) speak the way they do.
Most actors, I think, do a horrible interpretation of the accent (I’m looking at you, Cliff from Cheers). If you want to hear a pure Boston accents, rent <i>Good Will Hunting</i>.
Boston has a few distinctive accents that serve well as birth control. I would say that the majority of people in the Boston area have a semi-generic accent especially the more affluent areas but there are a few hot-spots like Revere and South Boston that are worthy of serious linguistic study. I have known exactly one person, an older female that I used to work with, that talks like the Kennedys. It must be almost extinct but I assume the Kennedys have speech coaches or something. As you move out into the suburbs, the effect fades fast into more generic American and the huge student population tends to keep things under control in parts of the city.
As a canadain, I can usually hear some regionalism in american accents… The west coast “slow speak” is really different from the Noo Yak “fast talk” and the Texas “Laconic Drawl” if different from the Alabama "Slow soft consonant drawl. Lets not even get into the Oklahoma “Twang”…
One thing I get always confused at is the “Bronx” and the "New Orleans’ speech patterns… Not until I heah summun sey “Yous been vera kin too uzall, tank yoo huny” do I realise that a bronx-er would never call us “huny”…
That is actually an acute observation on your part and it has been the subject of academic study. IIRC correctly there are about 7 distinct New Orleans accents and after living there, I can account for most of them. There is one that sounds very similar to particular New York accents but it isn’t that common. The most common distinctive New Orleans accent is the “Yat” accent which comes from the peculiar phrase “Where You At” as a standard greeting. There are variations based on race.
I think the Dick van Dyke award goes to the cast of Monty Python in The Meaning of Life, in the sketch where Death visits the dinner party.
But really, almost any show made over here with local actors playing Americans will do. British actors appearing in US productions as American characters seem to try a bit harder, perhaps they get voice coacing.
Let’s see, I can tell West Texas from East Texas, Southern Louisiana from the rest of the state (not inluding Nawlins, which is a whole other country). Of course since I now live in Texas and work with a bunch of guys from Louisiana, I might have a slight head start
).
