[tangent]
What’s up with that dubbing in news features? Guy from midle east country speaks Arabic. Fade out original sound and start dubbing in English, with a guy faking a heavy Arabic accent.
This bugs me just as much as Germans in WWII movies speaking English w/German accents, when they’re talking among themselves (Vee haf vays to make dem tahk).
True; sorry, bad choice of words on my behalf. I did not mean for it to be regarded as disparaging the speaker. However, I do not find that it is the listeners fault either, unless they’re being an ass about the whole thing.
Many people from my neck of the woods generally do not have much experience with different accents. Therefore, they have difficulty, not just with english speakers from different countries, but also various US accents. IOW, some have just as much difficulty understanding someone from England as much as someone from rural Kentucky.
Can’t see how, being neither in England or English.
The big difference with accents in a large city populated by diverse immigrants is that although they are starting from a different language, they are all rapidly heading towards the same agreed position; American English with an accent that is fairly standard across the entire continent.
However, this isn’t a contest. My point remains that, through the facts of larger population size and smaller divergence in accent, the average American does not encounter as many accents in their everyday life. Hence they are not as practiced in understanding them.
Actually looking at the thread title and the reference to foreign english speakers makes me realise that the most common use in Australia appears to be Kooris. Not very foreign at all. It always makes me uncomfortable whenever the person is a local resident because of the thought that they may see their appearance.
Can I get subtitles for this post?
There is a scene in Tomb Raider II where luara Croft is talking in spanish (at least it sounded like spanish) to a family but when they put the subtitles on the bottom; guess what? THEY WERE IN SPANISH TOO!!!
Did I mention this was an American movie…
I saw it on pay-per-view if that makes a difference…
Have you ever watched Billy Elliot? If you’re an American, try it without subtitles and report back.
I seem to remember that Kes ( A Kestrel for a Knave) was given subtitles when shown in the US because of the Yorkshire accents.
mogiaw,
But have you ever heard Ozzy Osbourne speaking? Good God on a tall ladder, son!
I’m moving this to GQ, where it probably should have started in the first place.
Lynn
Hmm. Having watched a lot of PBS and Monty Python as a kid, I can get most British accents easy-peasy, and most other accents without much trouble. I got about half to three-quarters of what Brad Pitt’s character said in Snatch.
And, while she was certainly in the minority, my best friend at my very rural high school (and she was born and raised in that backwater burg) could fake an English accent so well she fooled an Englishman once.
Usual nitpick: Brad Pitt’s accent was supposedly Irish (traveller), not British.
“Subtitles on Australian television are commonly used for the Koori Aboriginal people–who are the very definition of native. It makes me uncomfortable when subtitles is used for a local resident, because the individual in question may see their television apperance and be offended by the use of subtitles.”
Like, duh. 
Huh. Funny, I thought I’d been hearing regional accents on this continent for the last 35 years or so…
What’s on the TV tends to flatten out (when it’s not outright Canadian like Peter Jennings), but radio and actual speakers in a region do have differences, sometimes very significant. There is a distinct Chicago accent, for instance. My relatives in Missouri also have their own dialect. When we moved from St. Louis to Michigan the locals in my new neighborhood made fun of the “funny” way I talked (schoolchildren are like that). And people meeting my mother in law from Appalacia have occassionally asked for subtitles in face-to-face conversation. Not to mention the distinctive cadences of Michigan’s upper penisula (Yuper). Large portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Aside from the Missouri dialect and Chicago accent the others are rarely heard in broadcast media. Garrison Kellior’s Prarie Home Companion had the Minnesot’an accent. The History of English had the Appalacian one - with subtitles.
And certainly the experience of living in an urban area like Chicago not only exposes you to more American accents, but a large number of foreign ones as well. When I lived in Rogers Park, Chicago we had (at best estimate) about 56 ethnic varieties in the neighborhood, and on a summer afternoon you heard languages from every continent, including such rarities as Hmong. The local elementary school was called “the little UN” because more children spoke English as a second language than as a first, and among them spoke nearly seventy languages. Mind you, that wasn’t a downtown neighborhood but one on the outskirts of the city.
If anyone have received the impression that we all speak alike over here (native or not) I must apologize for the inaccuracies perpetuated by our admittedly wanting in quality broadcast media.
A foreigner living in the US will pick up the regional accent to the degree their speech acclimates at all. A Chinese living in South Carolina will pick up one of their accents (Southern, Tidewater, Appalacia) rather than the Midwestern or Canadian heard on the TV news. A Mexican living in Boston picks up Bostonian. And so on.
As for the OP - I think the subtitles for accented English is for those for whom English is not a native language as well as for those who come from more isolated areas of the country and are less famillar with various accents. I know when I was in France, those speaking anything other than the dialect I had learned in school were difficult to understand. If you had, say, a Spainard or German speaking French it would be extremely difficult for me to understand. Their accent plus the French was often a double-barrier I couldn’t get across.
Is that “card” a reference to your Green Card? OOOOH! Big deal!!
If it is, you are a “card-carrying Alien” – and NOT an American.
[nitpick]
There are bunches of distinct “local” accents in the Chicago area. I grew up in Evanston, a neighboring suburb, and we spoke differently from the kids in Skokie, the next suburb over. And then of course there’s Mayor Daley, who has an accent (sometimes a whole dialect) pretty much all his own. (Every time I hear him say “dem,” “dese,” or “dose” instead of the proper pronouns, I bringe, although I swear he’s gotten better in recent years. Anyone know whether he’s been working with a dialect coach?)
Have you considered that it might be the real accent of the bilingual Arab translator?
I should probably let Mehitabel speak for himself, but I don’t see why you think that’s a reference to a green card.
I’ll bet it’s one of those “race cards” y’all talk so much about down there.
Dat way o’ tawkin’ is a BRIDGEPORT accent. Mah husband does a good one, having grown up at toidty-fust and da railroad tracks. About tree blocks from Da Mayor, in fact.