Friend of the Toast Alexis Coe’s book Alice + Freda Forever is going to be a MOVIE and it’s going to be directed by Jennifer Kent, who directed The Babadook and I am very, very excited and only moderately jealous.
“Jennifer’s debut film was one of the most accomplished I have ever seen and I’m thrilled she shares the same passion for telling this powerful, intense and unfortunately still timely story,” producer Sarah Schechter told Variety.
(tiny tiny screams)
***
What Ever Became Of Radio Voice:
The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. Queen Elizabeth doesn’t say car, and neither did Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor did the newsreel announcers or movie actors of his day. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. This brings us back to the “why things changed” question.
2) The Role of Broadway and Hollywood, and the Shift from Jimmy Cagney to Marlon Brando. A reader writes:
I’ve wondered about this myself when I see old Jimmy Cagney movies—and the date of his last starring role might give us a hint towards the date range of the change: “One, Two, Three” in 1961. (What else happened that year??? See below!) I’d like to offer a speculation, for what it’s worth.
My suspicion is that the shift might have begun in the switch away from the two paired styles in American movies, the classical acting of the British School and the rapid patter of popular American actors (Marx Brothers, Cagney, Powell and Loy, etc), and over to the Method Acting style of the Strasberg/Brando/Dean school. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?)
The enormously popular speech styles of Brando and Dean (and I could add Elvis Presley) clearly pushed vernacular style into a kind of mainstream acceptability, then desirability. Just in time for the Sixties, with all their other pressures towards some kind of anti-Eisenhower authenticity. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didn’t, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brando’s. His high Boston accent might have been heard as an influential transitional hybrid, and it’s interesting how prominent parodies of the speech of Brando, Dean, and Kennedy were at the time: seems a sign that we were noticing a marked change.
So, pairing the Cagney hint with the Kennedy Inaugural, could we date the changeover to 1961? A heuristic approximation!
Can’t talk about Locust Valley Lockjaw without Gloria:
“And I STEPPED on the PING-PONG ball!”
***
Ask, and it is given.
I’m legitimately amazed right now: http://t.co/7DmA3mW2Xw
— Kiefo Nilsson (@konilsson) June 8, 2015
***
STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS FOR EVERYONE:
“The U.S. Department of Education on Monday announced a series of new debt relief measures that could assist tens of thousands of students affected by the collapse of Santa Ana-based Corinthian Colleges Inc.
The provisions may allow thousands more students to wipe out their student debt.
Until now, only 16,000 students — those that attended schools that suddenly closed in April — have been eligible for debt forgiveness. The new policy allows other students to seek debt forgiveness if they believe they were victims of fraudulent marketing and recruiting practices, regardless of when their school closed.”
***
Everything about this story has been incredibly sad.
***
Last day of cat-sitting the wee cotched kitten before his rightful owner Liz comes back. Thank God, because I can’t stand another minute of this shit.
An idler, a trifler, a blood-sucker, and a non-producer. Get out of my house, man.
Tags: And I STEPPED on the PING-PONG ball, link roundup, the internet
Mallory’s Cotched Cat
is so cute that
everyone is smitten
Mal complains but
we know she’s quite nuts
about the little kitten
That second stanza is a bit wonky…how about:
Mal might complain
but she’s insane
about the little kitten.
Everyone says “oh, if cats only had thumbs, they’d rule the world” (like they don’t already) but picture 3 illustrates their true genius: what other species carries its own dedicated toy around on its butt, for not only its own delectation but that of its friends?
The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person.
I’m from the Midwest, but I work slightly north of Boston, and my office has an incredible mix of anti-rhotic Boston accents (“Sorry I’m late, I had ta pahk my cah”) and bizzaro-rhotic Kennedy accents (“that’s a great idearh!”) in any given meeting. I like the idea that the Boston accent is the fancier one but can’t shake the political-dynasty-private-school-Hyannis-mansion connotations of the Kennedy one.
I am endlessly fascinated by how the Boston accent ranges from borderline-British/super fancy to…very much not. Like, if you’re in a bar in Revere, Massachusetts on a night the Sox play, you would likely not be inclined to say the Boston accent is fancy.
Rahveeeeeeahhhh!
It took me years to figure out what town people were actually saying they lived in.
I work near Woburn and apparently the correct local pronunciation of that is “Wooburn” but then you add on a Boston accent and it becomes “Woobahn” and I cannot take the city seriously as a result.
I was doing a little internet research of my genealogy and discovered that one branch was integral to settling Woburn–which was surprising because I never expected my ancestors to be integral to anything. Still, though, I have mixed feelings about whether to be proud of that history or not. I’m never impressed by the Woo.
There are only two reasons to take Woburn seriously: Gene’s Chinese Flatbread Cafe, and Tudo Na Brasa.
Other than that, I spent quite a bit of mental energy trying to forget that I drank the tapwater for years of living in that ex superfund site.
(is it really an ex-superfund site? or is that the sort of thing where once a superfund site, always a superfund site?)
Revere is the only word I have to stop and think about how to pronounce without the accent. Otherwise I’ve never had much trouble fixing my Rs, but that one just pops out.
this is the greatest video ever of the Boston accent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbK4cL3QSc0
“The pahk’s depahtment of medfahd really has to get working!”
I grew up an hour outside of Boston in the North Shore suburbs and have only the faintest traces of an accent (I say “room” weird).
When our neighbors moved in, I truly and honestly thought they were from a place called “Meffa[d].”
Last night some neighbors were having a shouted conversation below my 3rd floor window:
“DIDJA PUT IT IN THE CAH?”
“NAH, I LEFT IT IN THE YAHD” etc.
for about 10 minutes. It may have been performance art. Throw a “Hahvahd” in there and it would have been for sure.
When there was an ad showing probably fake Bostonians saying various Boston-y things with Boston accents like “I paid a dollar for a tonic” and “I parked the car in Harvard Yard,” my sister and I thought it would be hilarious to have our Bostonian grandparents repeat the lines from the ad. Cue confused “But you can’t pahk the cah in Hahvad Yahd!” from both grandparents.
My parents and grandfather also once had a 10-minute Who’s on First back-and-forth because my parents were talking about Mikasa dishes and my grandfather thought they were talking about MacArthur the General.
Faintly_Macahb
I watched The Departed opening weekend in a theater full of UMass Amherst students.
Martin Sheen is not supposed to be comic relief in that movie, but… in that theater, he was, because his accent was truly truly awful, in a film of mostly really good accents. Obviously Damon and Wahlberg were going to be good, but even DiCaprio was fine, and then Sheen was just unexpectedly terrible. If he’d just taken his Bartlett and turned it up to 11, it would have been, well, not perfect, too aristocratic for the role, but BETTER.
I humbly posit that the worst Boston accent in that film is Vera Farmiga’s. It gives me a rage stroke whenever I hear her talk.
In my headcanon, the terrible Boston accent that Julianne Moore does in 30 Rock is actually a pastiche of Vera Farmiga’s terrible accent in The Departed.
Okay, so, it’s certainly possible her accent is worse in an absolute sort of way. But I had NO expectations of her accent whatsoever, where as Sheen’s Aristocratic Trying To Be Folksy Northern New England was perfectly serviceable, so the god awful nature of his attempt at a Boston accent was unexpected.
Yeah, I think what happened was one casting director was like, “What about Martin Sheen for Queenan?” and the other said, “Oh, yeah! Wait, can Sheen do a Boston accent?” “Sure, I mean, he played Kennedy once, right?” “You’re right, I’m sure that will be fine.” -FIN-
Edit: It was not fine.
HAHAHAHA i forgot he played a Kennedy.
HOW DID IT GO SO WRONG? Like, I get that the character wasn’t supposed to be as aristocratic as either Bartlet or Kennedy, and so those accents would have been wrong for the character. But once you start filming, and you realize that the guy in front of you is massacring the accent, just absolutely demolishing it, why don’t you tell him to go with the slightly wrong accent he does perfectly well? His Boston is so bad that even non-locals/linguists can pick up on it, and only the locals and linguists are going to really pick up on the too-aristocratic thing especially much, so, seriously, pick the lesser of the two evils.
I would submit that there’s a prestige issue there too: “But he’s MARTIN SHEEN! We can’t tell him he needs to get a dialect coach!”
Fair point.
But there are ways around it. Off the top of my head:
*Make Matt Damon do it
*Just go with the more aristocratic accent Sheen can do reliably, and tell Sheen that they’d decided to “go in a different direction with the character”. Make up a plausible backstory if required (ie, a rich boy slumming it).
*Find a Catholic priest and have the priest tell Sheen it’s a human rights issue.
BUT AMHERST DOESN’T HAVE A BOSTON ACCENT
(it does, however, have a silent H)
(hi everyone I’m a permanently embittered Western Masshole)
No, people who were born and raised in Amherst do not have a Boston accent.
Yes, college students who grew up in the Boston area who decided to go to UMass Amherst often find great humor in BAD Boston accents, even if they themselves to not have them.
Amherst does not have a silent H, it has a donated H, after they gave it to Northampton.
; )
I do love how the R’s move around. At my old work cafeteria, the choices for cheese on your omelet were cheddah and fetter, according to really a lot of people.
Yes, this is a crucial part of the Boston accent–you don’t LOSE the “r”s, you merely place them elsewhere.
Also crucial if you are from the Bronx. I like to make my dad count: “One, two, three, FOAH.” But he’d like a “vodker tonic,please”
Law of conservation of R’s!
The Rs mostly pop up before initial vowels in subsequent words.
“He had no ideaR AliciaR is from Manchestah!”
When I moved from the Midwest to the east coast I honestly could not believe the accents. I didn’t know people really talked like that! Or that there were so many kinds! But I’ve also had people comment on the Midwestern accents in my family, or even my own accent, which of course I can’t hear.
I’ve just stopped saying the word bag because I’m tired of the laughter, and also because I no longer know how to pronounce it. Bag. Baahg. Beg. Bayg. What is that word, even?
Also, high-five for Midwesterners on the East Coast!
Oh my gosh, that happened to me too. I grew up in Minnesota, went to college in Massachusetts, and one day couldn’t say the word “flag” anymore. I just couldn’t find the vowel. My school had a hugely diverse student body, so it wasn’t like I was surrounded by New England accents all the time; I blamed choir (no dipthongs in choral singing!) and the class where I was regularly reading Old English out loud.
Mine was “roof.” My East Coast classmates found it hi-larious that my ooooo sound was not long enough or something.
I’m from Iowa, which means I have to remind myself to ask for a ‘bayeg,’ because my first impulse when I’m at the grocery store is to ask for a sack. I also stopped talking about soft drinks because I end up pausing too long to consider what I should call them.
We shall never speak of the soft drinks, except by brand name.
GIVE ME POP OR GIVE ME DEATH.
*solidarity fistbump*
“Pop” is what we say here in Canadaland. But the grocery list app on my phone is American and only knows “soda.” Which is fine because the only pop I really buy is club soda – to put in my hard drinks to give them fizz.
I had a friend from Baltimore in elementary school who pointed out that I said “melk,” which began a long and arduous process of expunging any trace of accent from my speech. I had to fix milk, bag, beginning, Wisconsin, water (I actually said water with a Baltimore accent because of my dad) and probably a few other things I’m forgetting.
It still slips out after I watch Fargo, though, and if I get worked up I start shortening my o’s.
That’s what I did when I left St. Paul to go to college in Atlanta. It really hurt my feelings when one of my friends (whose Southern accent was much more noticeable than my Midwestern one) suddenly decided to start laughing and demanding I repeat myself every time I said the word “bag,” but I guess if you’re going to spend your one precious life making someone you claim to care for feel bad about the way that the people who love them spent years teaching them to interpret your shared language, that’s your choice.
Ugggg. People are the worst. I still cringe remembering after I moved to California how often I pretended not to have my feelings hurt by friends who laughed at my southern accent every. single. time. I said words like “iron” or “oil.”
I have that with ‘bagel.’ I even stopped eating them. (Not to give you another problem-word, though, I hope).
Midwesterners abroad, wooooooo! I lived in Maine for two years and people thought I was hilarious when I told supermarket staff, “I brought my own baaeeeygs,” or asked for pop.
Oh, and I also did a study-abroad program in Italy for a semester in college with a bunch of well-heeled kids from both coasts. One of the New Englanders told me at one point, “It’s so cute when you talk like a hick!” EFF THEM SINCERELY. My Italian was better than theirs, at least.
I’m really pretty privileged and have no room to complain, but sometimes I notice what a chip on my shoulder I still have about coastal people considering Midwesterners hicks. Once when I was abroad we were talking about regional slang, and a Chinese woman I was friends with pointed at me and said “redneck.” She just pointed at me because it was an American word and I was the American in the conversation, but WOW my hackles went RIGHT UP.
Whooo billy do I have that chip. I mean, there are some things I really love about New England but the number of people who literally don’t know whether or not Michigan and Minnesota border each other is mind-boggling. Which is fine, really, I had no idea about the geography of New England before I moved here, but please don’t act superior to us when you’re not even sure where Chicago is.
Ummm, did I mention I had a chip, too? :-/
If I have hackles about anything, this is it. The best is when the person doing the condescending is from a community that’s smaller and less notable than my midsized hometown– people literally think that being farther east or west is in and of itself a measure of sophistication. Or people here in DC who say “wow, this must be culture shock!” I usually respond “yes, I couldn’t believe the cost of living when I first got here!” Because let’s be real, middle-class white Americans are pretty much alike all over, and the metro was not THAT hard to figure out.
*I’m not trying to imply that people from small towns or places with limited name recognition can’t be sophisticated, just that I get sick of people insisting that I must be more “country” than they are in spite of clear mathematical odds.
I think I’ve started to play up my rural Wisconsin accent since moving away.
The worst accent confusion I have ever had was when I spent a few years doing annual road trips through the Midatlantic and Northeast. Y’all in DC became You’uns in Pittsburgh, Yinz in Philly, You/se Guys in New York, etc. And God help you if you confused “burgh” or “burg” with “berg.”
I work in Boston and one of my coworkers has a Kennedy style accent, and I overheard him attempting to give some ID or password containing a lot of 4s and Rs over the phone to someone who was obviously not from Boston, because he or she obviously could not understand him. “Fowah Ah Fowah.”
Don’t come to Rhode Island, or the South Coast (Fall River area). We have all of that PLUS the influence of New York leaching northwards (especially in the Italian community in and around Providence) and the result is a horrifying cacophonous mess. I sit at work next to a guy who pronounces “almonds” with a flat A, like “Al Gore,” which I think can only be the depraved result of contradictory-accent-induced aphasia.
I grew up in Rhode Island and then moved to a part of Arizona that was mostly Midwesterners & Californians. The first couple of years, people constantly asked me if I was from New York because they were so unused to Northeast accents that they couldn’t hear the difference. Meanwhile, I was going nuts because I couldn’t believe anyone could mistake me for a New Yorker because to MY ears a Rhodey accent – and mine was never even that strong! – is incredibly different and HOW VERY DARE THEY.
Californian here. I had a work colleague who was from Rhode Island and she definitely sounded like she had a New York accent. I’m sure there were differences, but I couldn’t hear them at all.
That’s the cross we west coasters bear, as a people with no accent.
I went to school in Providence! I love the Rhody accent but it is truly in a league of its own.
The Cranston-Johnston accent is an unclean thing of vocal miscegenation, a monstrous, shambling, screeching noisomeness, shambling from the odorous darkness of the Blackstone Valley to take root among the tight-lipped farm people of that region and fester there.
And I love it so.
The thing that got me the most when I moved there as a child was everyone’s asking to go to the lav and the bubblah. Then I asked to go to the water fountain and was nearly laughed out of class. Rhode Island fifth graders can be way harsh.
Oooh ooh ooh! Is this where I ask you guys about the wacky* accent I heard on the street yesterday?
Six or seven bros emptied out of a car, looked around with confused expressions, then approached me to ask directions. Lead bro said, “‘Scuse meeh. Do yah know wheah to find a g’inral staaaah?” I burst into giggles, had to have him repeat it, and eventually figured out he was saying “general store,” and meant a convenience store where he could get bottled water and snacks. I later tried to place his accent — British? Kiwi? Australian? — but the more I think about it, the more I think he may have been from somewhere far up on the East Coast. I wish I had asked!
*wacky to me, as a Southern-born child of a midwesterner, who ended up speaking a weird pastiche of Mountain English and Chicago
“General store” is not a Yankee-ism. Yankee dudebros are looking for a packie.
Quite plausible that you spotted some roving Kiwis or Ozzies. Or possibly Canadians.
Thank you!
does anyone drink tonic where you work? I think that’s dying out, but it still amuses me my friends parents to this day drink tonic (not soda).
My grandmother will gladly offer you some tonic to drink while she irons your dungarees.
in the parlor? (or rather, pahhluh?)
In the pahluh, aftah suppah.
(Origins in Central Mass. I used to be able to tell within a town or two where in MA you were born, just by listening to your accent for a few minutes.)
Tonic is what you put in gin. Anything else is just uncivilized.
Once a friend and I visited Boston. Disoriented (as one gets in Boston, the city with the least comprehensible street layout I’ve ever visited), we asked a policeman for directions to the nearest T station. He directed us to Park Street in a heavy Bostonian accent, and my friend, baffled, said “Pax Street? Where’s Pax Street?”
Rhotic markers are super-interesting! I like how basically no two languages anywhere pronounce “R” exactly the same way.
Also, I think it’s funny that you can always tell when you’re hearing a British actor fake an American accent because they chew on those R’s so hard, like Americans are all a bunch of junkyard dogs growling our words at each other. It’s DOUBLY funny, because the hard American R is (I think they settled on this) a survival from 17th century English accents, and it’s actually mid and southern England who lost their hard rhotics in the intervening centuries.
Jude Law puts on an American accent in Spy and it was so interesting to listen to the sounds he was digging into.
Hahah, Hugh Laurie’s American Voice is one of my favorite parts about House.
i loved that hugh laurie could put on such a good american accent, but really quickly it got on my nerves that he was doing such a competent accent totally scrubbed of regional markers (except ‘not southern’)? And that made it even more weird/uncanny/creepy than an incompetent american accent. WHERE ARE YOU FROM, GREG HOUSE???? I can hear the northeast piped through Robert Sean Leonard and Lisa Edelstein’s nasal cavities, BUT NOT YOU, GREG. SAY HOAGIE.
of course then hugh laurie incepted himself doing a british accent through his american accent and i will never stop loving him
I wonder if that was supposed to be on purpose. If I recall my House history, didn’t he grow up on a bunch of different Army bases around the world? At least one of which was in Japan?
oops i totally bailed before that happened
I always thought it was something like that, living on Army bases. House actually sounded a lot like my dad, who is an Army brat who subsequently went into radio as a teenager. Dad has some regional markers in his usual speech and has added more as he’s gotten older and changed careers, but mostly he just sounds pretty generic American radio announcer.
yeah, all except for those junkyard R’s, those are British-guy-faking-an-American accent 100%.
Yep. Army brat here with no accent. I can verify this is a thing.
Navy brat here. I have words/sounds from all over the place. I confuse the hell out of those “where are you from based on your words” quizzes.
And for some unknown reason, Jason Statham adopts the American pronunciation of ‘twat’ (rhyming it with hot) even though he and his character are British (and would therefore rhyme it with hat).
Yeeees, I love how everyone has totally forgotten that English when the colonies were settled sounded TOTALLY DIFFERENT than what it does today.
Apparently the dialect from Tangier, Virginia is very close to what 17th/early 18th century English sounds like and it is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E
I also like when they did that video about what Elizabethan English sounded like, and the answer was, “It sounds like you’re from Yorkshire.”
“Sean Bean is more Shakespearean than all of you other bastards.”
That video is mesmerizing.
Now I have fallen down a YouTube hole of dialect videos!!! Somebody rescue me!
I just spent like 15 minutes digging through youtube trying to find the very very specific rural accent I grew up with. My dad and my uncles retain it a bit but I think in another half a generation it will be all but died out. Which is sad you know, that accent sounds like home to me.
God, I love that. It’s like a real good old timey Virginia Guinea accent. All the old watermen sitting around talking about how there ain’t as many ‘crebs’ as there used to be.
(Due to being a nomad I have no accent of my own. I make up for this by being overly fascinated with the accents of others. The beast that is the Rhode Island accent may be my favorite though.)
Awwwwww. I don’t understand, but awwwwwww.
-Rhode Islander with no discernible accent other than “generic American” who has since escaped
The RI accent is the best. My middle school bff’s mom used to work in Cranston and when she came home at the end of the day it was a thing of beauty. Cveeeanston.
Beautiful. And so easily imitated. Unlike the Vermont accent which refuses to be pinned down or mimicked.
Ahh, yes, Cranston. The Rhode Island accent turned up to 11. I grew up in RI, but hadn’t been back in years. Then I moved in with someone from Cranston in grad school. She would always put phone calls to her mom on speakerphone so I could hear the accent in full force.
The Cranston accent is the best accent. Where do the v’s come from? I don’t know and I don’t care. I love them.
It is hilarious to me how RI is such a tiny place and yet there are still regional accents within the state. Like, I’m from Coventry – excuse me, CAH-vin-tree – and when I lived there I always thought of my accent as distinct from Cranston despite the two towns not being that far apart.
Exactly. I lived in North Kingstown for a while and the done thing was to make fun of Warwick (Wawick) accents.
I worked very hard to flatten my RI accent (at leastin words like talk and walk). When I hear local commercials, though, I worry quite a bit that that’s what I sound like to other people.
IA, Rhode Island is fun.
My parents had a friend in college who was from Woonsocket, RI, but her parents were french-canadian, so she pronounced “Woonsocket” with the french-style emphasis on the last syllable- WoonsocKET. My mom still says it like that.
WoonsocKET. Side by each.
What, like “Woonsockette”?
Pretty much! Non French-Canadians say WoonSOCKet, but the Canadian descended fam says WoonsockET. Most of the time I think it’s ironic at this point, but I still enjoy hearing it.
Especially fun with the ending ET gets held onto for a while like announcing a goal in hockey.
Source: took French at a high school in RI, and we’d say French-Canadian style “Woonsocket” to each other on a regular basis.
There are French-Canadians all over my part of Vermont and I love it. There is a town named Charlotte. It is actually CharLOT. My mother’s dog is named Charlotte. Doesn’t matter. To any Vermonter she meets she is CharLOT.
Oooh, yes, I have a companion to that — an audio clip of someone explaining how the English accent migrated all across the South, doing each accent in turn as they morphed into each other, it’s fantastic.
My all-time favorite(?) British actor doing an American accent is the American spy in season…nine, I think it was, of MI-5. “Georgia by way of Jersey,” I think, was what my friend and I decided she was going for. It made it totally impossible to take anything seriously (not that there’s much to take seriously in that show).
I think it’s especially funny to imagine that that’s what Americans sound like when we try “British” accents.
“Sorry, is that Cornwall by way of..Lambeth? What the hell are you even saying?”
OH MAN actors and accents…. I once got to tell a supervisor, who is British but has been in the US for over 20 years and, apparently, doesn’t pay attention to a certain type of British comedy, that Hugh Laurie is British. Somehow she didn’t know, and I had to find a clip of him accepting some sort of award to convince her. In her defense, Laurie’s American accent may be the very best Brit-doing-American I’ve ever heard.
Although, I imagine there are a lot of actors doing really good American accents where I just never realize they aren’t American, so I probably don’t even count them? John Noble and Anna Torv were both amazingly unaccented in Fringe, but I don’t even really know what their normal speech SOUNDS like, so I always forget them.
OH OH OH Adrian Lester in Primary Colors was good, but just a little bit off. Not a lot, but not *perfect*. But then, by Hustle, he had managed to clean that up a bit, and go back and forth between US and UK pretty quickly/seamlessly, and that’s crazy to me. Just another reason I am convinced that Adrian Lester is made up of 100% pure sex.
There are weird common tells, like what’s her name on Grey’s Anatomy? Camilla Luddington — that should be enough of a tell! But also, she can’t say “anything” with the y in there. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have even thought she wasn’t American.
Idris Elba doing an inner city Baltimore guy working to become more respectable so his way of speaking changes if he’s angry is pretty amazing to me. I was floored the first time I heard him speak not on the Wire.
Same for me with Dominic West (McNulty)! I had no idea that he was British until I watched some of “The Wire” DVD extras (where they interviewed him).
Same here! I was listening to the DVD commentary for The Wire and went “…wait. He’s British? What?”
I’ve lived in both the US and the UK, and I can usually (though not always) tell when a Brit is playing an American, or vice versa.
Some actors really nail it– I mentioned Dominic West below (from “The Wire”), and Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson also did some great American accents in “Dead Again”.
I feel like a lot of British actors think that doing an American accent is easy, and don’t realize just how grating they sound to actual Americans. (Listen to just about any BBC Radio 4 adaptation of American novels…) American actors may be slightly more concerned about doing justice to British accents, since they’re usually considered more prestigious.
I get especially tickled in scenes of Primary Colors where Emma Thompson and Adrian Lester are speaking to each other in American.
Is there Primary Colors fanfic? Because I haven’t seen that movie in long enough that I don’t really remember much about the plot, but I suddenly have a craving for those two characters to have a fling. From what I can remember, it must be plausible…..
Early 90s British sitcoms! They’ve gotten so much better since then.
Dead Again is funny, because Thompson is doing basically just like, Basic Standard American, whereas Branagh is doing a sort of old-fashioned California accent you don’t hear very often — I associate it with film noir extras and my father when he gets really ticked off — which would have been more appropriate on Thompson’s black-and-white character.
Also, that movie is the most enjoyable movie ever made.
I was weirdly devoted to Brothers & Sisters in high school and one of my favorite things was when the Australian actor and the Welsh actor would be having a perfectly plausible conversation between two American siblings, only to be interrupted by Luke Macfarlane showing up out of nowhere saying things like “I’m SOORY, I don’t know what you’re talking ABOOT, also did you know I used to ride a moose to school???” YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FROM ARIZONA, LUKE MACFARLANE, SIT DOWN.
I have read a dozen explainations of rhotic-ness and I still have no idea whether I’ve got rhoticity or not.
Well, ask a British person to make fun of your accent. (Alternately, I guess if you are British, ask an American to do it.)
I love dissecting the different American English accents! I mostly grew up in the Midwest, but was born in Florida into a Kentucky mountain family so I grew up hearing that specific old Kentucky mountain version of Southern, and then moved to Oklahoma, picked up a few accent markers there, and then moved to Canada, and now gleefully sprinkle “eh’s” and “SOW-rry’s” throughout my speech. People that try to guess where I’m from based on how I talk generally end up confused.
I’m inclined to vote for the tech explanation of the accent switch, as you can see a similar phenomenon in Indian film — the switch from Raj Kumar’s Theatre Voice to Dilip Kumar’s Tragic Mumble of Pain.
Ooh, that is super interesting! Can anyone link example clips?
You can actually see the two together in Andaz (1942, I think?), which is a movie which asks the question, “Can men and women be friends?” and answers, “No, and people will die if you try.”
It’s funny that British actors do such great American accents (Hugh Laurie, Damian Lewis), but American actors all suck at foreign accents.
I also politely disagree. There are definitely Brits who do it well, but there have also been a number of times when I’ve been watching a British show, an ‘American’ comes on, and my immediate reaction of “hahaha okay sure you’re American” is confirmed by imdb. The example that springs to mind most readily is any American on Downton Abbey who is not portrayed by an American actor.
Ditto any ‘American’ on Miss Marple, i.e. someone who shouts and says “buddy” or “pal” a lot.
Is it wrong that I just adore Americans in Agatha Christie and adaptations? They’re so charming and ridiculous.
Yeah, Americans in Christie, Sherlock Holmes, or Poirot all have the best accents, like they are addressing a boardroom.
I love them to pieces! “Look here, I didn’t do no murdahr I swheaer!”
They all sound like gangsters out of an early talky, and it’s charming.
ANYONE WHO SHOUTS BUDDY OR PAL A LOT. #truth
honestly they always sound so charming/aggressive, they make me uneasy. And I’m an American. 😛
Haha, I know! I feel like they’ve decided that Americans are all like Jordan Baker in the Great Gatsby, and they need to dial it up to 11 to get there. It also makes them seem hella suspicious in every episode because why are they so anxious? What’s with the pacing around? What could they be trying to hide behind all that brashness? For the love of god, why are they off to play a sport again when there’s just been a murder?
I’m always like: “so this is what Americans seem like to Brits?? Because I think I get it now??”
So Industrious! And Sporty! Always Smiling! So many Tennis Rackets (or Army Paraphernalia)! Definitely Hiding Something.
And why are they always so rude to the British constabulary? Because there’s really a lot of “look, fella, I don’t know how you do things over here, but…”
I just take a deep breath and assume that the directors/accent coaches are going for “what an American in England in the (teens) (20’s)(etc) would have sounded like.”
The most egregious to me are any WWII-era American soldier characters in BBC dramas. Did you know that only boys who grew up in the Bronx fought in WWII?
(I am thinking particularly of Foyle’s War, here.)
There was a 1990 BBC adaptation of Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man with Albert Finney, in which a couple stay at the inn run by the main character and are specifically identified as coming from Baltimore and both sound like refugees from the Bronx via Damon Runyon. [shudder]
Oh jeez, yeah. There was one episode of Hotel Babylon where this British actor was trying her hardest to do an American accent and it was so atrocious it was like nails on a chalkboard.
Oh man, I was listening to Dracula on tape lo, these many years ago, and it was read by an Englishman with a truly marvelous, marvelous voice. Except that Van Helsing had this weird quasi-German quasi-Sean Connery thing going on, and Quincy Jones came out with the flattest affect you’ve ever heard, because the actor was clearly so focused on “Texan Texan Texan” that he couldn’t manage any actual inflection, like an American tourist in Paris.
Years ago I was following along with a section by section read-along of Dracula on livejournal, with the moderator posting each letter and diary entry on the date from the book.
We all collectively lost it when one genius pointed out that the Van Helsing bits are all part of one of the Dr Seward’s notes, which he recorded on audio and had Mina Harker write out. IE, Dr Seward had clearly been very carefully mimicking Van Helsing’s accent as accurately as he could…
I like to think this was an affectionate bit of nostalgia for his time as a pupil of the good doctor. We all do that with our advisors, yes?
I had an example of that in revese just yesterday while watching Elementary – there was a “British” character who had an accent like nothing I had ever heard. IMDB confirmed the actor was American (and doing god knows what).
Dialect coach here!
1. British actor training puts 1000% more emphasis on voice and speech work than American actor training does. That doesn’t mean that all British actors are necessarily *good* at it, but they have a hell of a lot more resources for improvement than American actors, who often skate by on their “party trick” accents.
2. Shows like “Jeeves & Wooster” and “Miss Marple” are not exactly naturalistic drama. They’re stylized period pieces, so yeah, of course all the American characters in them sound silly. Most of the Brit characters in them sound pretty silly too.
I wouldn’t say the problem is that they sound silly. They just…don’t sound American. I mean, they sound silly too. But silly in an old-fashioned way + not American in a general sense.
Are you a dialect coach in the UK? What would you say is the hardest British accent to get right (if you are in fact there)? I can tell that there are differences between British accents but I am terrible at knowing where the different accents come from. One of the many reasons why I will never be tempted to try my hand at a terrible British accent.
I’m American, but UK trained. What dialect is “hardest” is kind of like asking what language is hardest to learn– it depends on where you’re coming from, and what patterns are most distant from your own (or most subtly different from your own), and therefore might be harder to get the hang of.
I found this when I was looking up regional UK accents, as I watch a lot of British TV. Pretty great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyT2jmVPAk
Plus I just assume it’s about the television makers’ priorities? If you’re doing a big budget American TV series that’s gonig to be shown in the US, you’re just not going to cast a British accent unless they can do a spot-on American accent. The 80s and 90s Agatha Christies and Jeeves and Woosters are low-budget and for the British market, so the American accent is a lot more hand-wavy.
Bridget Jones’s Diary was one of the first times that an
I watch a lot of British drama series (especially ones from the ’70s, like Upstairs, Downstairs , The Duchess of Duke Street , etc.), and many of them have the same problems with overly exaggerated and buffoonish American accents. (To the point where it takes me out of the story completely). It’s definitely not just sitcoms, mysteries, etc.
I’m sure it is true that British drama schools focus more on accents and speech than American ones, but that doesn’t mean that British actors (as a group) are any better at doing realistic American accents than vice versa.
I’mma just sneak in here and leave this video of Chris Pratt imitating the cast of The Only Way Is Essex.
Spoken like someone who didn’t see Benedict Cumberbatch in 12 Years a Slave.
Sorry, but I can’t get on board with the Damian Lewis example. His accent never sat right with me, and I didn’t even know he was British when I started watching–I thought it was just some weird affectation.
I just watched “Homeland” and didn’t know he was a Brit until we watched some feature extras. I’d been wondering why he always seemed to be chewing gum but never actually was…
“always seemed to be chewing gum but never actually was” hahaha this is perfect. It’s not that you can hear anything particularly wrong with the accent, but you can almost feel his discomfort with it.
That is such a good description! I’ve always thought of it as talking through his teeth. I didn’t know he was British for years because he’s done so many American parts — Band of Brothers, Life, Homeland. (Note: His character is _kind_ of the same in basically every part he plays, which is amusing.)
I’m not British so maybe Brits are unimpressed, but I think Tatiana Maslany & Jordan Gavaris do killer British accents on Orphan Black. Are they only impressive to an outsider? Experts from the UK, weigh in!
Semi-related to the Newscaster voice article: here’s a great article about Yiddish and its use amongst American Jews. My mom only really ever learned Yiddish insults, which she is now passing on to me and my sister, and my godparent’s daughter-in-law (who is Filipina and loves nothing more than a good Yiddish insult).
Yiddish words mean different things in different countries. I am always fascinated by some of this, e.g. how schlimazel in American Yiddish is the hapless guy to whom bad things are always happening, but “schlemassel” in German Yiddish is a messed-up situation. So interesting/confusing!
I cotched a birb on Sunday, but unlike the wee kitten, I no longer have him (he flew away! Which is good, because we thought he was hurt!). I named him Charles.
(sources tell me he is a white breasted nuthatch!)
!!!!!! hello birb!
He is super-cute! Good job with the cotching and releasing!
EEEEEEE!
A+ cotching! I am glad Charles was unhurt, and hopefully off doing wonderful birb things now.
We were very scared as it looked like he had a broken leg! We were actually about to call the Raptor Trust and the phone had begun to ring as he looked at me, tilted his head, and then flew away. I think I held him for about 45 minutes!
that’s a fierce manicure!
Ahhhhhh so tiny!
That’s worth 2 in the bush if ever anything was!
My last Link Roundup comment was super depressing, so this time I’m going to bring the smiles! The Ferguson Public Library has been named Library of the Year! The story of how they supported the community in Ferguson last year is so inspirational: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/06/awards/2015-…
I’m surprised no one reporting the Griner/Johnson annulment mentions their episode of ‘Say Yes To The Dress’, they were so lovely and kind towards one another, I actually used it as an example of the type of relationship everyone should be searching for. So sad.
I loved that episode, and was really shocked to then read all of the ensuing troubles for them.
KITTEN.
That article was kind of diffuse, but I am interested in the subject of accent change. My grandmother who came from Michigan and later became a Cambridge Lady of a lofty sort spoke a lot like Hepburn. I wonder what she sounded like before she went to college. My father somehow grew up sounding like a radio announcer, but his brother who went into the army in his 20s (and never lived anywhere but the Northeast aside from that) sounded vaguely Southern.
I also grew up largely in the Boston area, and am frequently mistaken for a Canadian.
I grew up around Philadelphia, and am rigorous about not ever sounding like I have a Philadelphia accent (because it is an accent which I absolutely despise), but my dad grew up in north New Jersey and he almost completely lost his accent when he went to Acting School. Almost completely, because somehow I picked that up when I was learning to talk and it’s North Jersey that comes out when I’m not paying attention.
I grew up around Philly as well but I have never really figured out what the Philly accent is!
It’s a lot of “wooder” for “water” and “pitcher” for “picture” and a weird nasal quality to the vowels that I can never replicate except by accident.
I grew up in Central Jersey and parts of the Philly accent just slip out! I am unashamed of “wooder,” but the long a’s and o’s come out without notice, and I haven’t lived there in like 10 years! Clahhhs for class, OHver for over, hohme for home. They are such weird sounds.
Aforementioned UK-expat-linguistics-professor friend dissertated on the Philly accent, which was held tightly by the person who introduced us to each other. It was great. She can put on a Philly accent over her native Essex and it’s just dead on.
It’s weird, for sure – I think it’s not just the pronunciation of certain sounds but the way the mouth is shaped overall? That’s not a good way of explaining it, but I can guess a Philly accent before it hits any of the usual signifiers like “wooder.” It’s like everyone has shaped their lips around a Blow Pop and then kept that shape when they speak.
Yeah, it’s got to be something weird because 1) I can pick out a Philly accent from basically any two consecutive syllables, and 2) I’m usually pretty good at mimicking accents and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do Philadelphia on purpose. I guess I got to read Houblounchouffe’s aforementioned UK-expat-linguistics-professor friend’s dissertation.
Yes, you can totally hear the mouth’s overall *posture*!
I have a speech disorder that makes me sound (to american ears at least) vaguely British. However, being in fact from the mid-Atlantic and living in New England, I use local slang. If I ever want to get a really weird look, I can just use wicked good and ya’ll in the same sentence.
Between my husband not getting that job, insurance deciding they wouldn’t refund the cost of my eye exam, and this super itchy heat rash thing that’s plaguing me, it has not been a very good few days over here. (Yesterday I was in a scratching frenzy and somehow managed to scratch the top off a little mole on my arm, which I didn’t even know was possible.)
This has been A Rant.
Oh noes! Try Caladryl, I have found it very effective for my mosquito-bite intolerance. It’s basically a numbing agent. I’m very sorry about the other stuff but have no suggestions for fixing them… 🙁
Ugh, sorry life is so junky for you right now! Sending good vibes out.
Also, I’ve scratched off a mole before too, and hearing that it’s a thing that happens to other people is kind of a relief. Webmd was telling me cancer, which, of course.
That’s why I love webMD. “You either have a mild cold or anthrax poisoning¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
Stomach pains? Pregnant. ALWAYS PREGNANT. Yes, even you, Steven.
Pregnancy also seems to be the standard diagnosis for: nausea, light-headedness, exhaustion, etc.
Well, that’s what it always is in the movies!
Hate to break it to you but I scratched off a mole once and it was indeed cancer. Please go and get it checked out!
Ugh I’m having health/insurance issues too, and it truly is lousy.
About the mole — while it is always good to have them checked, this happens all the time, especially if you scratched. Moles get dry and can have peeling skin too, and they can be itchy if they are rubbing on some part of your clothing because they have some extra height compared to the rest of your skin. Bleeding after you scratch may then be from totally natural causes. This is what the big-name specialist at the major research hospital says to me quite often when I show her something (as a high-risk-for-skin-cancer person, I go in every 4-6 months). Check it out, yes, but really, don’t worry too much – it may be fine.
My American cousin married a Brit and has lived in England for like 6 or 7 years now. She definitely doesn’t have a British accent, but she has picked up some British…intonations, maybe? She probably still sounds like every other American to British ears, but to American ears there are a lot of changes in the way she speaks now. It’s very interesting.
I definitely do that! If I spend time with my Scottish friends, I pick up their inflections and how words are drawn out and such, but definitely still with my New Jersey accent. THAT is hilarious.
My cousin did this very thing as well! I also had a boss who was from Wales and had lived in the US for a long time, and although to my ears his accent was quite strong, he said whenever he went home, his family would make fun of his American accent 🙂
I lived in England for six months, and my friend came to visit me and said, “You sound British. Like, you don’t have a British accent, but your intonation is completely different.” Everyone starts mimicking when you live in a place long enough!
Yes yes yes yes yes yes YESS. When we are in England, even in MrChouffe’s hometown, people think he’s Canadian for the first couple of days until he starts dropping his H’s again–he’s lived in the States for 16 years. When we are here, people are extremely confused by me because I have never lived anywhere except Michigan but sound nothing like a Michigan person, due to mostly talking with MrChouffe and listening to his accent for the last four years. It’s totally an intonation thing, it’s a speech pattern and slang thing, it’s rhythms.
Interestingly, we are friends with two other US-born/UK-expat couples, and they have all described the exact same experience.
One of those UK expats is a linguistics professor who I have never let forget that when she met MrChouffe, she thought he was German. In her defense, he only said “Hi, how’s it going” and we were in the middle of a busy grocery store, but still.
My partner and I, both with upper midwest accents, were mistaken for German twice when we were in London. I choose to take it as a compliment.
I do this almost immediately upon arrival in a new country. Not a full on accent, but mimicking people’s inflections. I am told this is some kind of residual fitting-in thing? The more you sound/look like the people around you, the more likely they are to feel you’re”one of us” and not shun you?
I hope so, because it sounds idiotic when I catch myself doing it and I don’t have much success trying to stay in my own accent. What do I sound like again?
My mother does that. You can definitely tell its some sort of weird coping mechanism for her. If she’s around New Yorkers, she’s Bronx. If she’s around family she goes more Jersey. When she’s with childhood friends it’s Connecticut preppy. If she’s in a feed store talking to farmers she’s got this hilly Vermont thing going on. When she was in the middle of nowhere Texas she went Texan. (She outright stated that was deliberate because there are places there where you Do Not want to be a northerner.)
She spent a week in England and came back with an accent. It’s impressive.
My mother-in-law was born and raised by French parents in New Jersey. She moved to the upper midwest in her 30s. Her accent is… a thing.
American living in Britain here! Every single person in America says I’ve gone British, every British person thinks I just sound American, and every Australian I encounter here has no idea what to do with me. One once asked me, while waving her hand around, “So what exactly is this…accent you have going.” It’s wonderful. (It is not wonderful.)
An English friend of mine insists that she’s lost her accent after living in Canada and then the US for years. Nobody believes her.
My partner is from Northern Ireland, but grew up in suburban Sydney. Her N. Irish turns of phrase+Australian accent is a wonder to behold.
Sometimes Dutch people think I’m English now (I am definitely American). I’ve lived here for nearly 5 years, and when I go home I’m hyper-aware that I sound kind of…off, but I’m not sure how. It’s not really a Dutch accent, but it’s not quite what it was, either.
I love and respect Lucille Ball, but ROSALIND RUSSELL IS THE ONLY TRUE AUNTIE MAME.
Glorious, glorious movie. My only regret is that Bea Arthur didn’t play Vera Charles in the Russell version.
Rosalind Russell is my everything.
I’ve not saying that I became a journalist solely because of Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. But I’m not NOT saying that.
I know her every line from The Women. (Though, to be fair, I know everybody’s every line from The Women.)
fellow journalist here all day for Rosalind Russell. god, I watched Four’s A Crowd, *just* for her (also because she steals Errol Flynn from Olivia De Haviland. *cough*guiltypleasure*cough*)
My coworkers are really tired of me coming into the newsroom and saying with contemptuous hauteur, “Gentlemen of the press.” #hildyjohnsonlife
when I learned Hildy, in the script, was originally written as a man, they just switched her gender on paper, and gave her a previous relationship with Cary Grant, I understood SO MUCH of why that movie was fabulous beyond it’s time (as far as realistic portrayals of women.)
You could not be more correct about everything. The next time I need a correct opinion I am going to look for you!
I would like to start each day with a scene from that movie, particularly just that party because I just love everything about it, especially the way everyone drinks simultaneously…
What does it say about me that as soon as I saw the link to the video of heavy machinery tipping over I went “oooh, that is RIGHT up my alley”?
What does it say that it reminds me of this, my FAVORITE YOUTUBE VIDEO OF ALL TIME? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibEdgQJEdTA
The belts! The TENNIS BALLS! The MELON!
Not impressed by the tampons or pads. Anyone who thinks those are infallible has never been on the back of a school bus on the morning of a field trip on the heaviest day of their period with only a single unused pad available for the day.
The couch! I am glad to know that if I ever need to turn a couch into couch crumbs, there is a machine that can do it.
I am mildly horrified by how close their hands were to the thing, and the total lack of any sort of safety guards, though.
But how do you feel about robots falling down?
Oh noooo robot buddies! I like how, while some of them are trying to do tasks that are obviously hard (climb stairs, get out of a car), a lot of them just seem to be standing still or, like, raising one arm when they suddenly become overwhelmed by the futility of life.
Also, that led me to this Slate piece, where you can see that video and also a video of some much smaller robots trying really hard to play soccer.
I wouldn’t get near that thing while it was running. One slip and you’re juice.
am I horrible for wishing they had ended with a department store mannequin?
Is accent envy a thing? I think I have it. Not that I don’t not like people automatically assuming I’m intelligent just because I talk like I’m on the news, but it might be nice to be identifiable. Like having a hometown.
I can accent mimic til the cows come home (after Oklahoma, ozark seems to be my default), but there’s no proper accent itself. V. sad.
right?? Midwesterner here, from the section with no accent, with some Texas in my childhood, and I’ve always wished I had a charming vocal quirk like that.
(The shock on people’s faces when I can flawlessly imitate an accent kind of makes up for it. I will treasure the confused, slightly horrified, and yet turned-on face of a native Georgian when for a joke I said something in an over-the-top Southern Belle accent, and he barely choked out, “t-that’s….not bad,” until I die however.)
I love doing a Georgia peach accent. It’s definitely one of my favorites. Everything sounds so prissy and prim until you have to say cement.
SO RIGHT
The look on my face the first time I heard a southerner say cement is a moment that will never be matched.
I grew up in Houston (spent 20 years there), but just moved to Oregon, and whenever I admit this, I frequently get “But you don’t have an accent!”
And I have to say, no, city folk don’t. Or maybe a bit in Dallas, but definitely not Houston. Nor Austin. Probably not San Antonio either. Only in small towns do you get a Texan accent.
So it’s interesting reading the comments talking about the “generic American accent,” as I suspect that’s what I have, and I’d like to know how widely it’s spread. I do know it’s indistinguishable from my friends from Missouri and Wisconsin. Actually, in college we were from all over the country, but I can’t remember much difference between us. I think the cities are pretty flattened, accent-wise.
But I think I do have access to a different, more peculiar voice, because in my time waitressing in Houston, some customers asked me where I was from. In my own neighborhood! Part of it may be how I’m adapted my voice to deal with a speech impediment, and maybe also an anglophilic influence. (I was such an awful, unconscious mimic in my semester studying abroad in England. But then, when strangers guessed where I was from, they didn’t even say America. One actually said Australia.)
Hah, I *know* there are people in Houston with a Texan accent, because I have met some of them — one was my husband’s next-door neighbor from childhood, and they both grew up right around Clear Lake. You may not have any trace of it, and it’s definitely not as pronounced as a thick East Texan accent, but there is a bit of it that can be found in Houston. I suspect the presence of an accent is both a class and family marker: my husband’s parents were middle-class and non-native Texans, and none of their kids have any accent (at least not while sober and while not talking to friends from Texas).
Oh, that’s interesting! Yeah, my parents aren’t Texan natives either.
Yes, definitely, both class and family. My dad is a non-native; my mom is a native Texan, but grew up in Clear Lake during a time when there was, as she describes it, a strongly-felt divide between NASA People and Country People around that area and her family was NASA People, so in spite of her dad’s Hill Country roots she and her siblings were explicitly pushed toward sounding more neutral (and toward looking down on strong Texas accents). In spite of these disadvantages I did manage to develop a slight but audible East Texas accent, which gets stronger the madder/drunker I am and which I can use to horrify my mom in a pinch.
Yeah, my husband’s father worked for NASA and husband himself claims to have consciously chosen as a child never to adopt a Texas accent, but when his friends from Texas/heavy drinking are around he definitely reverts a little bit. Ironically, we moved up to Boston two years ago and he had the hardest time at first when meeting people who had pronounced Boston accents — it took him a while before he realized that he had been culturally primed to hear all Boston accents as both untrustworthy and stupid. (I, who had been primed to think the same thing about Texas accents and had struggled with it every time we were in Houston together, tried not to laugh.)
This is so fascinating to me! I grew up in Clear Lake, and when I go up north people are consistently disappointed that I have no accent. I definitely got one when drunk while going to school in Lubbock, however….
I have a friend from Atlanta who easily sounds like he could be from Manhattan, and in the Georgia backwoods is routinely mistaken for being English.
Oooh, there’s a reason for that — I finally found the audio clip I’ve been looking for all morning, tracing the evolution of the English accent through the colonies. All by one speaker, adapting to each in turn. It’s magnificent.
Everywhere I lived in Texas was a city and there were accents galore in all of them. Thing was, most of them didn’t know they had an accent. That was when I was in high school and I did competitive speech and debate. I won so many times and got so many top speaker awards competing against kids who were mostly from the DFW area. All because I sounded smurter than my opponents.
Yeah, I’ve heard they’re more prevalent in Dallas. But I haven’t been there since I was three.
Weirdly, no one in Portland ever believed I had a Texas accent either! This in spite of the fact that my coworkers were always hearing me answer the phone with my Customer Service Voice on, which even to my ears sounds embarrassingly like “How kin ah he’p yew?”
I used to work in a Starbucks in Charlottesville, VA. My accent got *way* more southern during the summer, because the students would leave, and all of the people who actually live in central VA would reappear. You can tell, because they say “house” with a bit of an “oo” in it (probably the West Country and Scots/Irish settlement history).
My aunt is 8th generation Texan (if I’m remembering correctly) who spent much of her childhood in Oklahoma, now lives in Dallas and swears that due to her training as an actor she has no accent. This is certifiably not true, as the rest of my family can attest. She has a very lovely and distinctly Texan accent, which she just cannot hear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt1T7d1jCeY “…And she stepped on the ball!”
YESSS. There aren’t enough thumbs ups available for me to give you for posting that clip. I’ll just say that to myself at random times. Usually whenever I find myself slipping a little too preppy, like when I’m considering purchasing yet another pair of espadrilles, or agonizing over Sperry’s, or buying a tennis sweater despite not playing tennis.
Everyone looks at me funny whenever I say it. Don’t care. It is my quote of choice.
Please please please, everyone head to #WOWWATX tag for some good old fashioned misandry on twitter dot com.
Oh god a branch of my SO’s family is living in dismissed disgrace in Westport, CO and still has that lockjaw accent.
It’s like visiting Betty Draper’s family except they all have iPads.
I imagine that the third photo of Jeeves and Milo was followed seconds later by a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger heart-to-heart about Respecting Other People’s Tails.
Them there kitten pictures are even more heartening if you dig about in the archives and give yourself a before and after show. Compare: http://the-toast.net/2015/05/20/i-cotched-myself-… to today. So much cleaner! So much floofier! Slightly less wee! The universe is just and good!
(I do the same thing regularly with mine own kitten, because seriously, how did this scrap
become
this ridiculous fourteen pound monster? LOVE EXISTS!)
I like this game. How did this thing, that was so tiny she sucked the gravy off scraps of wet food because she was too small to chew them turn into this pinup?
If the links to the images don’t work, my excuse is that I’ve only had two hours of sleep today.
Yup. Back to bed!
I’m pretty much always here for the Adventures of Wee Cotchled Kitten and His Look-Alike Cat Friend.
The Rs mostly pop up before initial vowels in subsequent words.
"He had no ideaR AliciaR is from Manchestah!"
That is uncanny.
I love hearing his accent slip into Scottish now and again; there's a scene with him and David Tennant in the episode "Utopia" where one line is just pure Glasgow, and it's amazing. (I assume Tennant's presence helped.) Sometimes John Simm slips from generic Southern-ish to Lancashire, which is also fun.
I have that with 'bagel.' I even stopped eating them. (Not to give you another problem-word, though, I hope).
Yiddish words mean different things in different countries. I am always fascinated by some of this, e.g. how schlimazel in American Yiddish is the hapless guy to whom bad things are always happening, but "schlemassel" in German Yiddish is a messed-up situation. So interesting/confusing!
Ugh I'm having health/insurance issues too, and it truly is lousy.
About the mole — while it is always good to have them checked, this happens all the time, especially if you scratched. Moles get dry and can have peeling skin too, and they can be itchy if they are rubbing on some part of your clothing because they have some extra height compared to the rest of your skin. Bleeding after you scratch may then be from totally natural causes. This is what the big-name specialist at the major research hospital says to me quite often when I show her something (as a high-risk-for-skin-cancer person, I go in every 4-6 months). Check it out, yes, but really, don't worry too much – it may be fine.
as entertaining as watching large things fall over is I can’t help but see the peril to life and livelihood in all of those, like, it’s nice to imagine big corporations absorbed all of the infrastructure damage and nobody got fired, but this is real life