VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

I hope that you find this an interesting chat topic...

I grew up with a very strong Southern accent (all mixed up from Missouri, Texas, Alabama and Georgia) and maintained it well into adulthood. One thing that I have learned about myself is that I pick up accents very easily and quickly adapt to my surroundings. Perhaps my exposure to several different accents at an early age is responsible for my adaptability.

When I was eighteen years old, I went on a one week Carribean cruise on a British ship. I spent a great deal of time with the guys in the rock band which performed nightly in the lounge. On the last day of the cruise a woman stopped me to compliment my shirt. After we spoke for a bit, she asked where I lived in England! I told her that I was from Missouri. She was totally amazed... and so was I! She really didn't believe me. She remarked about my British accent and I did not realize that I had one, or even a hint of one. Interestingly, I am not very good at faking accents. I absorb it from others. I have to be immersed in it.

I moved to Las Vegas when I was 28 and after being here for a couple of years, I called an old friend from high school. We had attended a boarding school which had students from all over the States. He was from California. Anyway, after he found out who was calling him, his first response was, "What happened to your accent?".

I have often wondered about the mechanism of accents. I know people who have lived on the West Coast longer than they lived on the East Coast but they never lost their accent. No doubt there are some people who are proud of their accent and consciously maintain it. Others probably just are not very good listeners. They are not language conscious or perhaps detail conscious.

I even wonder why accents persist at all, after all of the radio & TV exposure to non-regional accents. I was discussing this with a friend the other day and he said that he thinks people are starting to lose their regional accents and everyone is starting to talk alike, so to speak (no pun). Well... maybe this is true to a degree but I work with people from all over and I can easily tell if the person I am talking with is from Boston or Dallas.

I wonder how the British accent was lost in America, what happened to it?

I wrote all of this to lead up to a another point but I decided to post that as a separate topic now.

What are your thoughts and experiences with your accent or accents in general?

Nick

[Philip Banks]

People love my American accent, I know there is only one ....isn't there?
British accent, which one .....Cornish, Devon, Somerset, Bristol, Home counties, London, Cockney, estuary, Welsh Cardiff/Swansea/Valleys/North, Essex, Kent, Yorkshire, Leeds, Mancunian, Scouse, Brummy, Macken, Geordie, RP? The list goes on. The most convincing British accent is Dick Van Dyke's Cockney from Mary Poppins, get that one right and you'll clean up over here.

British accent masterclass 1
Hull, north west coast of England.
Oh no there's a hole in the road = Err nerr there's a hurl in the rerd.

British accent masterclass 2
Birmingham, west midlands, England
Greetings close friend = Yowroyt me bab.

British accent masterclass 3
Bristol, south west England
I think it would be a a good idea to go to the opera and throw tomatoes =
Oy fink et wud be a gud oydeal tu gaw tu the operal an fraw t'maw -aws.

Why do we still have regional accents? Because the influence of friends, family, environment and etiquette are still and will remain stronger than the media. Long live cultural diversity.

[Bruce]

>>I wonder how the British accent was lost in America, what happened to it?

Supposedly our Southern accent (and country music) came from the Scotts who came over a few hundred years ago. I've also heard that American English is closer to what the Brit's spoke 400 years ago, and that they've changed a lot, not us. I'm not sure I buy that, but it's fun to think about for a few seconds.

The ability to speak in accents is nice to have in our business, but I think it's more important to be able to portray interesting characters: the frustrated homemaker, the challenged employee, the overbearing blowhard boss. There's a lot more work for those characters than for a Texas accent in Vermont.

Bruce

[Spacegypsy]

Banksey, could you give me a sentence of neutral Britih please?

What the heck is that anyway, isn't it more a perceived thing? Can one get classes?

I was recently selected to voice regular Podcasts for a Great British Institution, and the product has been in testing for a couple of months.

I was told the client loved my voice, so, I submitted hours of test recordings (paid, I add) while they tweaked their project.

Last week, after two months, apparently the test recordings went to somebody called or likened to god, (the word "god" was actually used) and I was told god doesn't like my accent. Now I'm furiously learning a British Neutral accent. And there was me thinking they liked MY voice!

I once tried to learn the American accent - I bought this cassette tape set which supposedly taught it, and the first lesson was to say "Betty bought a bit of better butter" in American. This translated as "Beddy badda bidda bedda budda".

[mikemckenzie]

In many countries, especially those here from "the old world," it's respective languages are broken up into dialects in different regions.

I think, within the next 300 years, America will be much the same. Especially here in the south with the massive influx of hispanics moving here from Central America and Mexico.

[Philip Banks]

[mcm]

It certainly would be interesting to listen to U.S. residents in a few hundred years. I've heard that also about Americans sounding more like the Brits did a few hundred years ago Bruce - I think I read it in the book Made in America by Bill Bryson.

I once participated in a little psychology study that involved a boy and a girl talking to try to find out if they knew anybody in common. I was in grad school in Pittsburgh at the time. One of the boys I talked to said it was unlikely we knew anyone in common "because ah'm not from arahnd here" he said - turns out he was from Iron City, a little town maybe 20 miles north! (which he pronounced Arn City). A lot of people in that region just don't get out much. Pittsburgh used to be the western frontier, and was quite isolated because of the mountains, so that distinctive accent probably didn't often get diluted by outsiders. Judging from the way they sound, they still don't get much dilution. When I was living there I wondered if there was a Scots influence because they would say things like "stane" for "stone".

[kgenus]

[Simon Fellows]

I have an English friend who was in a bar in the Boston not so long ago and was told by the bartender to "stop using that phoney British accent - you're not impressing anyone". Didn't matter what he said - he couldn't make her believe he was from the UK.

He's originally from Hull by the way, so here's another British accent masterclass for that area. What does the following mean?

Curled Kerka Curler.

Answers to a bulletin board near you
_________________
Simon Fellows
http://www.simonfellows.com

[Deirdre]

Ahm thoisty naow.
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[Bill]

My parents were raised in the Scranton, PA area, and I worked there as a TV reporter in the 80's. I absorb the accent very easily having heard it when visiting my grandparents as a kid, I would come backto Jersey and get odd looks.

It's very brahd, tro the bahl on the wahl... couple two tree hah dahgs one with relich one with not. goin up da mahl, hayna or no?

some of the other reporters called them haynas. It was funny they were mocking the accent, and didn't realize they were actually picking it up.

We on television didn't tahk dat way. We said ScranTon, not Scran'n we said Archbald, not Archebul as the locals said it. fun times.

[PJHawke]

I live in St Louis County (the city of St Louis is not in St Louis County, go figure)...and the working class dialect you hear from some of the white folks has a broad, flattend sound on some words (they eat with farks and write on chalkbards) and then swirl others around in their mouths (they warsh their cars, or even woarsh them). Fortunately, I pretty much grew up without that. My Mom's got a bit of it tho.

I want to get some training in accents because I have a knack for them...I have that Immersion Imprinting tendency like Nick, tho I can fake them well if I have samples to study...I'd like to do some books on tape and I think having specific regional accents would make characters come alive more than just "standard British", "standard Southern", etc.

A cpl years ago I told a British friend that Ozzy Osbourne is very popular here in the states, but we can't understand what the hell he's saying. Spencer just laughed and said "I got news for you, nobody back home can understand what the hell he's saying either." Take a large helping of extra-thick Brummy accent, shake well with a bad stammer and season liberally with embalmed neurons and burnt synapses...best served with a tall Jack Daniels...

[Bruce]

If you're really serious about learning an accent, then I recommend the Samuel French bookstores in NY, LA, Toronto and London. They are the best place for theater related material. You can also shop from their website at

http://samuelfrench.com/store/

Click on "Dialects" and you'll find a slew of training CD's for American, British and many world dialects for the English speaker. They're all around $20.00.

Bruce

[mikemckenzie]