How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by nptatall » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #86

nptatall wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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". Not all modern linguists are descriptivists; some are in fact prescriptivists. It is a pretty fundamental personality divide: some people take the world as it is, others as it could be (or ought to be).

Point me towards a single modern academic prescriptive linguist with publicly-available writing in english, and I will be grateful and fascinated.

Even just a single modern prescriptive linguist, without any of those other qualifiers. I would genuinely love to see it.

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

#102

Post by DonaldFisk » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

cgio wrote: post #40

DonaldFisk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well spotted. Latin has three genders, and Atlas is listed as masculine in all of the online dictionaries listed here: http://www.lexilogos.com/english/latin_dictionary.htm so it should indeed be Atlas obscurus.

Or Atlas obscurae?

How is that supposed to parse?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension#First_and_sec... gives the declension for adjectives such as obscurus.

I think the web site gets it wrong because of "camera obscura" (Latin for "dark room"). Camera (modern French: "la chambre") is feminine so takes the feminine form of the adjective.

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

#103

Post by zeveb » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

nptatall wrote: post #101

zeveb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". Not all modern linguists are descriptivists; some are in fact prescriptivists. It is a pretty fundamental personality divide: some people take the world as it is, others as it could be (or ought to be).

Point me towards a single modern academic prescriptive linguist with publicly-available writing in english, and I will be grateful and fascinated. Even just a single modern prescriptive linguist, without any of those other qualifiers. I would genuinely love to see it.

Geoff Nunberg certainly sounds like he's prescriptive in at least some ways: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2016/ling001/Nunberg....

Granted, it's from 1983, but Dr. Nunberg is still alive & writing.

My own thought is that the question, 'is linguistics descriptive or prescriptive?' is as wrong as the question, 'is salvation through faith or through works?' Linguistics can both describe language as she is spoke and prescribe the best ways to speak. There's nothing inherent in describing current practise that obligates one to applaud that practise; nor is there anything inherent in prescribing better use that prevents one from recognising that other uses exist.

The logical end of stating that all that matters is describing language as it's used, and not bothering to prescribe the best ways to use it, as to both not end up meaning-stand @talk.

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

#104

Post by jewbacca » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #94

jewbacca wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Key word: prefers . The grandparent comment is framing this as "that word is wrong , because in the context I've encountered it in, we used this other, right , word". When, assuredly meeting whatever measure you might use to qualify this besides the GP poster's personal experience (... though they do seem to recognize its meaning well enough), "mid-atlantic accent" and "trans-atlantic accent" are synonyms. ---- Like,…

You're right, I was way too absolutist there. Edited. You still shouldn't cite wikipedia!

It's a little awkward because there is no authority on the meaning of a word beyond that some other people understand it in a particular way.

In that role, wikipedia is as good as any other source.

No explicit comment on the wider applicability of your rule in other circumstances. But when was the last time you critically reexamined it?

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

#105

Post by danek » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

Avshalom wrote: post #3

How did that many words get used with out once calling it the "Trans-Atlantic Accent"?

fwiw i've heard it called both "Trans-Atlantic" & "Mid-Atlantic"

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

#106

Post by danek » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

sverige wrote: post #24

hackermailman wrote: post #11

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

And all the British bands who have strangely Midwestern accents.

I'm always surprised to learn a band is English when I expected they'd be from Chicago or Detroit

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

#107

Post by WorldMaker » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:58 PM UTC

psyc wrote: post #91

WorldMaker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The armchair linguistics as I know it: Accents (and languages in general) are typically social, tribal. We use them as one of the markers of "our tribe" versus "not our tribe". Things that sound neutral/unaccented to us are things that sound like they come from "around us", from within our tribe. Things that sound foreign are clearly not from our tribe. The misguided part here is that thinking because it sounds neutr…

I grew up in a region with a strong, distinctive regional accent and dialect. Every member of my family, teachers, friends, literally everyone all spoke with that accent. But even from a very young age (like 3-4) I knew it was an accent. I didn't pick it up. I understood what canonical pronunciation was, and opted for that. So, what, I just decided that newscasters were my tribe for some reason? I'm just very suspici…

«So, what, I just decided that newscasters were my tribe for some reason?»

That is not all that unlikely an explanation, really. Newscasters are shared figures of authority. But it may also be deeper than that. We watch sit-coms or soap operas and share their stories in a similar fashion we might trade tribal social cues. We interact at a very young age with educational TV programming like Sesame Street. There's a lot of pop culture jokes about many of us being raised by TV in the last several generations, but there is a lot of truth there too.

«And you ended with another appeal to consequences.»

Only because I read that you were inquiring about specific possible consequences. My apologies if that is not what you were asking.

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

#108

Post by foldr » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

psyc wrote: post #98

foldr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this view is that there are instances where the 'canonical' pronunciation in one group is the 'noncanonical' pronunciation in another, and vice versa. For example, in British English, 'r' deletion is part of the 'canonical' pronunciation and it's only nonstandard dialects that are rhotic. In American English it's the other way round. So in general, it can't be that features of the pronunciation itsel…

I don't have to remember. I have recordings. Things like 'r' are a bit of a puzzle. What determines when a letter is silent? I don't actually believe pronunciation is absolute or fixed in time. But I don't believe its perfectly relative, either, or that "standard" does not have a meaning. Most accents sound like vowel sounds aliasing as other vowel sounds. I think the standard accent just doesn't alias nearly as much…

>What determines when a letter is silent? I don't actually believe pronunciation is absolute or fixed in time

Not sure what you mean here. There are rhotic dialects which lack a rule of 'r' deletion and non-rhotic dialects which don't. It has nothing to do with letters. It has to do with the presence or absence of a particular phonological rule. The relevant feature most certainly is fixed in time, in the sense that speakers of non-rhotic dialects consistently delete /r/ phonemes following a vowel whereas speakers of rhotic dialects do not.

>I think the standard accent just doesn't alias nearly as much among all the vowel sounds, and I think that's meaningful.

This is simply false. There are non-standard dialects that make more distinctions between vowels than standard dialects.

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

#109

Post by Chinjut » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 8:49 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #93

teddyh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was probably referring to Peter Sellers.

Yep, you're quite right. Thanks. Here it is. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story... At 00:20:40 "CLEESE: Yes, I do. And it just showed why he was such a wonderful impersonator. But it showed that in a very strange way because he'd overslept. And his chauffer Bert said, sorry, boys, Peter's overslept. I'll make you coffee. He'll be out in a bit. And we just sat there sipping coffee. And when P…

Ooh, that Eric Idle dig at the end...

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

#110

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

ThinkingGuy wrote: post #73

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 (…

That's predating the talkie era.

Yes, early films were shot square-on into the set, as one would film a stage production. That changed with The Great Train Robbery, which introduced a very large number of the set of camera techniques used in film since: long shots, close-ups, tracking, panning, dolly, cross-cutting, and other methods. All in 1903, by Edwin S. Porter.

All that was well established by the time talkies started becoming widespread, particularly with sound-on-film in the 1930s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(190...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film