Accent
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notwitty — 17 years ago(April 09, 2008 03:30 PM)
My father was in one of the non coastal US States a few year ago, I think it might have been Texas. Long story short, he was asked if he was Australian, to which he replied 'no, I'm British'. Now, I know that that uneducated individual is not representative of all Americans but it does happen on more than one occasion. I've been out there and asked if I was an Australian.
No surprise. There are a few people around where I live that can't understand certain regional American accents, let alone "foreign" ones. -
saoirse9 — 18 years ago(October 03, 2007 06:00 PM)
Thousands, actually. NYC alone has at least half a dozen disctinct accents, though they seem to be dying out rather quickly. There used to be even more.
And I strongly disagree witht he statement regarding Americans inability to distinguish accents in "northern germanic europe"; no one would ever mistake a Londoner with a Berliner. Utterly ridiculous to think otherwise.
Now for non-native speakers of Englishthat's an entirely different story. -
EnglishST — 17 years ago(April 20, 2008 08:47 AM)
"it isn't a southern accent at all. it's just a normal accent that any normal person could have" define the word normal accent? theres no such thing of a normal accent in England, England is made up of many accents, do your research on England before you start talking about it
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Mymessages74 — 19 years ago(September 26, 2006 05:39 PM)
I'm not bothered what type of accent she originally had - which was a perfectly fine accent. The thing that irritates me is that she is putting on a false one now. She never spoke like that before. It's ridiculous to expect viewers to believe that you lose your accent so quickly. Those that do are just pathetic.
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Mymessages74 — 19 years ago(November 01, 2006 09:59 AM)
Well she had her original accent until very recently and it seems she has decided to suddenly lose it. I know people who've moved to other countries and still have their original accent 40 or more years later. People tend to only lose their accents if they are very young when they move areas/countries etc. I could understand the odd word changing but accent change is a gradual thing - not an "overnight" event. It would appear she is being pretentious.
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Garfunkul — 19 years ago(March 20, 2007 07:08 PM)
yeah, here in the US, a lot of accents get lumped into "Southern", what you would hear from a stereotypical redneck on TV, or "midwestern" - people from the north midwest who carry on the accent from their scandinavian roots (i've got it, doontcha know) - but there are really a lot of smaller sub-accents within them, you just have to be around them more to tell.
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huitzilipochtli — 19 years ago(April 07, 2007 09:11 AM)
I think around the Chicago area resides the most plain-jane US American you'll hear; that, and parts of the west coast. The north midwest seems to have that Scandinavian/Germanic carry-over (sometimes even with that singsong like attribute acquired from Norse/Swedish). I can spot Finlanders because they sound like they're from Hungary. Then you've got your east coast and all it's little differences (Boston: bar = "baah"). And, of course, southern is its own animal. I've never been to the southern US, but there is definitely a difference between say Texas and Georgia just watching TV.
I usually can tell what country someone is from when they speak English, but when it comes to Great Britain, I have only two accent classifications that I can tell apart: thick or thin. -
sangos_counterpart — 18 years ago(June 09, 2007 12:04 PM)
Well, while we're on the topic of Anna Friel's accents I think she did a really great American accent for Pushing Daisies, even though I've only seen the ABC previews. I was surprised when I read in a review that her accent is fake, and that she is actually British.
Fun and Failure both start out the same way. Arrested Development.
