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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

#71

Post by uxp100 »

emodendroket wrote: post #66

> The entire concept of an elocution class is wildly offensive to most of the modern linguists I know; following the rise of super-linguist Bill Labov in the 1960s, the concept that one way of speaking is “better” or “worse” than another is basically anathema. But that wasn’t at all the case for the rich kids of Westchester County, Beacon Hill, or the Main Line (those would be the home of the elites of New York, Bost…

> modern linguists

You'd have to ask a modern linguist, not just anybody. Class signifiers in speech still exist, but modern linguists are not likely to endorse one way of speaking as better than others.

I guess I agree with your objection though, this statement is pointless. Its comparing modern linguists to '60s rich folks from the east coast. They don't agree, what a surprise. I think you are right, in that a better comparison would be '60s rich folks from the east coast to 2010s rich folks from the east coast. And I agree that you would find things have not changed as much.

I think the whole statement was a way to introduce that the author has been talking to linguists, and start with a really crude overview of their opinion of the whole thing before we get to the details.

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

#72

Post by nptatall »

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.

The first thing is obviously playful hyperbole, but I don't know about "childish".

But, regarding your second quote... if you bring up the idea of a way of speaking being "better" or "worse" to a modern linguist, trust, me: you will understand why the author uses "wildly offended" instead of just "offended".

If the author had just kept it at "The entire concept of an elocution class is offensive to most of the modern linguists I know", that would not at all be sufficiently conveying the degree to which the idea of a prescribed elocution class is violently at odds with everything most modern linguists believe in.

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

#73

Post by ThinkingGuy »

dredmorbius wrote: post #45

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 pos…

My understanding was that in the early days of motion pictures, they simply borrowed most of the conventions of stage acting (for example, scenes would commonly show an actor walking into a room, and continue all the way through the action or dialogue, until they had exited the set, rather than cutting out the unnecessary parts). So it would make sense for trained actors accustomed to projecting to a large audience (no wireless mics in those days), to continue projecting and enunciating in the same manner.

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

#74

Post by jewbacca »

nailer wrote: post #67
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.

> " . . . sometimes called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, which is deeply offensive to those, like me, from the actual Mid-Atlantic . . . " Speak to any acting coach: it's more frequently called a Trans-Atlantic accent. Edit: be less absolute.

> This is incorrect anyway

Even the Wikipedia article is titled "Mid-atlantic accent": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

What is it about this article that seems to so efficiently be bringing the armchair prescriptivists out of the woodwork?

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

#75

Post by pge »

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...

My version of the same was the word "rendezvous" which appears in many detective stories for kids (eg Hardy Boys) but doesnt often come up in daily conversation. So, in my head (to this day), it is still pronounced as it is written...

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

#76

Post by psyc »

Osmium wrote: post #48
TillE wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's too much appeal to consequences here. I'd rather see someone make an argument for why a set of pronunciations can't be canonical. I certainly know exactly which pronunciations are the "neutral" ones, even the ones I don't use myself. So how did those pronunciations receive their status? What does it mean for us to hear them as "unaccented", and why exactly is that misguided?

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

#77

Post by hx87 »

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.

General American is still an accent, albeit a neutral one, and it's hard to find people who still speak it on a daily basis outside the Pacific Northwest. Even in the region where it was allegedly first spoken (Iowa), the average person today speaks with an Inland Northern accent, or central Canadian further north.

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

#78

Post by nkrisc »

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.

Shall I fetch your smoking jacket and a brandy so you may tell us how real adults write?

I'll also not point out the elementary writing mistakes in your own comment.

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

#79

Post by amyjess »

lottin wrote: post #68
amyjess wrote: post #63

> “Each vowel sound is called a PURE SOUND, and the slightest movement or change in any of the organs of speech during the formation of a vowel will mar its purity, resulting in DIPHTHONGIZATION.” I find this funny, as the monophthongal /e/ and /o/ sound utterly alien to American ears. So much so that switching from diphthong to monophthong pronunciations for those sounds is a quick-and-dirty way to fake a Scottish a…

American English definitely has a monophthongal /e/ sound in words such as BED, which is conventionally transcribed as /e/ although it really is an open/mid "E" rather than a close one and thus /ɛ/ would probably be more accurate. You're probably confusing that sound with the diphthong in FACE /eɪ/, which in Scottish English usually is a long close front vowel /eː/.

Sorry, I forgot to include the gemination marks (and I've since edited it into GP). I was specifically talking about /e:/ and /o:/, which are monophthongs in Scottish English but diphthongs /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ in American and English English.

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

#80

Post by eth0up »

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...

I remember pondering the hyper-bowl. Not insurmountable though, unlike "colonel", which I suspect a certain primate[1] would still refuse to comply with long after completing the works of Shakespeare. I also refuse, either imposing the image of a penguin or cob of corn upon the head of anyone titled thus.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

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