How is Nevada supposed to be pronounced?
Americans suck at pronouncing place names, much to the amusement of locals.
“Leominster.”
“No, Leominster!”
"Worcester.’
“No, it’s Worcester!”
“Mackinac Bride.”
“LOL, it’s Mackinac Bridge!”
I think the Australian actor portraying Oswald in 11.22.63 was trying to imitate him rather than attempt a general, regional American accent, but he wound up sounding like he was making fun of deaf people.
The second syllable is “a” as in “cat,” not as in “car.” E.g.
See also: Oregon.
I don’t fault anyone from far away for not knowing things like these or for the many manglings of N’Awlins, but when the show takes place in or near a certain area, they’d better make sure they have it right.
Massachusetts is its own zone of creative pronunciations.
That’s true. If the show takes place there, it better be pronounced right by the locals.
And I do pronounce Nevada right. Whew! I have heard people say Nev ah da. Pretentious bastards.
I’ve been to Mackinaw (city) dozens of time, Mackinac (island) a handful of times, and across the Mackinac (bridge) another handful of times, and I’ve never heard anyone anywhere around the area pronounce Bridge as “Bride”.
I concur. To me his American sounds pretty much exactly like Peter Gallagher.
Americans can sometime screw up American accents.
Justified had some horrible southern accents from Raymond J Barry and Michael Rappaport. Constantly over pronouncing till it becomes a caricature.
Conversely, Aussie Damon Harrimon’s accent as Dewey Crowe is pretty good.
At the time of filming they probably expected the audience to be almost entirely British so even if they were trying for authentic accents they would have thought that 99.9% of the audience wouldn’t have noticed or cared.
The guy at 2:10 has an awful accent.
I think it was a typo.
Everyone knows Fargo and those Minnesota accents. But not too long after that film came out, one called Feeling Minnesota appeared, starring Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz. It was also set in Minnesota, but Reeves and Diaz made not the slightest attempt to portray a Minnesota accent, nor did anyone else in the movie. If it had not come out so close to Fargo, that probably would have gone unnoticed, but as it was, the difference was like night and day.
It’s not wrong to pronounce it Nevahda. I’d actually go the other way completely.
Do you pronounce New York the way New Yorkers do? Or Boston the way Bostonians do? I (as a New Englander) emphatically do not, and would consider it to be mocking if somebody without that native accent did.
By that same logic I pronounce all place names with the standard American accent (ie: network news anchor) and consider any regional pronunciations of place names by people not of that region to be either pretentious, mocking, or somewhere in between.
So for me it’s Nevahda and Colorahdo all day every day. And Paris, not PairEE. etc…
I’m not optimistic about Benedict Cumberbatch’s accent in Doctor Strange. He seems to be imitating Hugh Laurie’s House. But then I thought Hugh Laurie’s accent was horrible, though as a non-American myself that may not be fair of me to judge considering the praise he gets for it.
The American spies in “Delta and the Bannerman” do some pretty horrible American (New York) accents, but since that episode is pretty comedic, I suspect that it was deliberate.
That sketch is pretty much my benchmark for terrible American accents.
The accents in that episodes would be terrible, even if it was American. It’s a light episode set in New York…they’d have ridiculous New York accents whether it was filmed in Cardiff or LA.
Since Canadian accents have already come up, I cracked up when I first heard Kryten’s accent in Red Dwarf (Llewellyn’s version, obviously) was meant to be Canadian.
Yeah you are way off. I was able to hear a few small issues with his accent in the beginning and then nothing, but I was looking for it. Most people who were not familiar with British TV had no idea he wasn’t American. The little bit I saw of Cumberbatch in the trailer didn’t sound great. More like when a comedian exaggerates an American accent.
From The Wire I thought Dominic West’s accent was pretty bad. Idris Elba was perfect.
The gold standard in Damien Lewis starting from Band of Brothers.
Alicia Vikander’s accent was all over the place in Jason Bourne, but that was not the least believable part of her character.
Heh! Just who I was coming in here to mention—although I first heard it only second hand, via an internet review.
That actually reminds me of something I’ve noticed in a few different Commonwealth actresses (mostly Australians, and one Bermudan) trying to pull off American accents—they all tended to sound really “breathy,” and oddly pitched. Like…imagine the sound of polishing glass, combined with the voice of the Sandman from the old Real Ghostbusters cartoon.
It never sounded so much like “foreign trying to sound American” as much as “American who has a weird voice.” Odd.
Yep, that’s the best way to describe Liam Neeson when he does an American accent, like in Taken.
I pronounce the name of places where I live the same way that other people who live here pronounce it…
That’s fine, but did you intentionally avoid quoting the part that said it’s a glaring error when the show takes place in an area where people should know better?
NI > American accent is less of a stretch than Australian > American, so I’m not sure he needs to try as hard, or much at all.