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How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

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Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#41

Post by douche »

ewzimm wrote: post #37
eth0up wrote: post #32

As a younger creature I had a minor speech complex which at some early point I became conscious of, excessively so. Tormented by the inconsistencies of vowels and consonants in english, I began experimenting with enunciation in grievous violation of convention. In what according to many linguists might be my own stubborn idiocy, I picked a fight with the intervocalic "t", which most Americans pronounce as a "d", e.g.…

I did the same thing when I was younger. There's still some of it left over, but the embarrassment of being a teenager definitely normalized it. I learned to read when I was pretty young, before I was exposed to a lot of words in speech. I also watched a lot of TV, and people spoke with different accents. Since there wasn't any authoritative way to say things, I preferred to say them how they looked on paper.

I was in college before I learned how hyperbole is supposed to be pronounced. I'd never actually heard a person say that (it's a little beyond typical small-town Maine vocabulary), so I worked for years under the assumption that it was hyper-bowl, rather than hi-per-boll-ee. I knew hyper, and I knew what the bole of a tree was...

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#42

Post by jclem »

Edith Skinner is still taught in conservatory drama programs. I used Skinner at NYU 2004-2008. It's not a rare book at all (or maybe it's just not in a big city with lots of drama schools and training programs). Regardless of how outdated the Good Speech sound is in most contexts (you hear it in a lot of Shakespeare still that isn't RP), the book is an excellent source for learning the International Phonetic Alphabet and techniques for analyzing speech.

I have a lot of southern and mid western speech habits, and learning a rigorous framework for analyzing speech helped me get control over them.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#43

Post by ewzimm »

douche wrote: post #41
ewzimm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same thing when I was younger. There's still some of it left over, but the embarrassment of being a teenager definitely normalized it. I learned to read when I was pretty young, before I was exposed to a lot of words in speech. I also watched a lot of TV, and people spoke with different accents. Since there wasn't any authoritative way to say things, I preferred to say them how they looked on paper.

I was in college before I learned how hyperbole is supposed to be pronounced. I'd never actually heard a person say that (it's a little beyond typical small-town Maine vocabulary), so I worked for years under the assumption that it was hyper-bowl, rather than hi-per-boll-ee. I knew hyper, and I knew what the bole of a tree was...

It also took me until college to learn to pronounce the e.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#44

Post by danek »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

" . . . sometimes called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, which is deeply offensive to those, like me, from the actual Mid-Atlantic . . . " " . . . elocution class is wildly offensive to most of the modern linguists . . . " What is it with this childish writing, being "deeply, wildly" offended at, instead of disagreeing with? Its the wrinting caliber of a young teen, and it seems to be popular.

What's with this trend of calling an author's writing "childish" instead of saying you don't care for his style?

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#45

Post by dredmorbius »

I have a strong suspicion that the accent was adopted, by a newly-talkified Hollywood, in large part because the exTREMEly disTINCT eNUNciation would convey and carry better over the poor audio tracks and reproduction equipment of early theaters (not to mention the audio recording equipment of the time).

With further advances in audio capture, recording, processing, and playback equipment, vernacular accents were possible without risking nonintelligibility to the audience. James Dean's drunken ramble at the conclusion of Giant being a notable exception.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#46

Post by mc32 »

matt4077 wrote: post #8

Whenever I'm traveling in areas where people speak with an accent (either english or my native language), I can't stop myself from imitating it. Really badly. After a week or so I'm terribly annoyed by the sound of my own voice. It has even happened when someone was visiting, and acting in some sort of leadership role with a lot of speaking time. So I could imagine a single Hollywood director could possibly start a t…

I think it was John Cleese once, who was speaking of a fellow actor who could do great impressions of others and do many accents --he said, "He never had his own voice".

Not sure if Cleese had a point, but it's an interesting take on his fellow actor and that he finds "having one's own voice" important, to some extent.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#47

Post by stonogo »

jomamaxx wrote: post #15
zeitgeb3r wrote: post #2

Why does all Star Wars movies use aristocratic British accent?

Star Wars villains in the first series use such accents. A) The Imperial Navy is a euphimism for the British Navy / Empire. B) It was filmed in the UK with almost all UK actors. The new Star Wars - none of the accents are posh really. Just English accents, again actors, filming etc. - although - I think there was some attempt by JJ to keep it UK-ish in that manner, though I'm not sure.

Ah, yes, the notable villain Obi Wan Kenobi.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#48

Post by Osmium »

TillE wrote: post #31
Osmium wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever I'm traveling in areas where people speak with an accent Nit-pick, but everyone speaks with an accent :) (I'm not sure if you meant it that way, but I have met people who genuinely think that they don't have an accent and are 'unaccented', and it's just other people who do...)

But there's a neutral General American which a majority(?) of Americans speak, with very minor variations. Most accents that deviate strongly from it are slowly dying out. This is in stark contrast to the UK, or just England, where you have an incredible amount of linguistic diversity in a very small geographical area. RP is theoretically "standard", but in reality it's a niche upper class thing.

> But there's a neutral General American which a majority(?) of Americans speak, with very minor variations.

So this was actually the kind of thing I was hoping to address with my comment. The idea that there's a "neutral" accent is, linguistically speaking, nonsense. That said, there probably isn't too much harm in it, in that if you're an American talking to other Americans there's probably not much ambiguity.

The problem is more that it could create the mistaken idea that, say, "General American" is somehow "normal" and therefore anybody speaking with a different accent becomes "the other", for whatever that may mean. It becomes a reference point to judge other accents against, when that's not necessarily helpful.

And there's a lot of accent prejudice out there... ask anyone who's gone for a job interview, for example, who's been very well-qualified but has an accent that the interviewer didn't expect (this can be due to regional or social backgrounds, or even gender – e.g. so-called "valley girl speak"/high rising terminal). Just something worth thinking about, that's all. I know I've dismissed someone before off-hand based on how they sound, which is not a good thing, and something I'd like to be more aware of myself.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#49

Post by microtherion »

hackermailman wrote: post #11

There is also many bands with fake accents, like 1980s Minor Threat with whatever UK accent Ian Mackaye was channeling

I remember how in the 1990s I listened to Green Day (US with British accent) and Bush (British with US accent).

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#50

Post by BobCat »

ewzimm wrote: post #43
douche wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in college before I learned how hyperbole is supposed to be pronounced. I'd never actually heard a person say that (it's a little beyond typical small-town Maine vocabulary), so I worked for years under the assumption that it was hyper-bowl, rather than hi-per-boll-ee. I knew hyper, and I knew what the bole of a tree was...

It also took me until college to learn to pronounce the e.

So you went to kah lej ee?
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