Accents

[quartermainefan]

[Cheap21]

the makings of a con artist!

[All My Shadows]

I LOVE Amy Walker! I love her snobby Queen's English accent the best. I'd never seen the guy before, but he's great. He's got the Manc accent perfectly.

I wish I could be so talented.

[AllMyDaysatGH]

Love that guys New York/Italian American accent! LOL @ what he was talking about. The Southern/Redneck accent was good to

Amy Walker is fascinating! She reminded me of Lisa LoCicero (Olivia) from GH at the end of her Brooklynn accent

[quartermainefan]

I love his cliche english accent about his family's rival since the 18th century, and love his redneck accent with the jibber jabber bullshit.

I love her Katherine Hepburn type of 1940s radio accent at the end, and the way she abruptly went into Brooklyn in the middle. Also, I thought her california one was interesting because that is an area you don't really associate with an accent, but it does have one.

[Sylph]

Loved it. Loved it.

I don't know which one I liked better: her full-throttle RP or the "trans-Atlantic" one in the end.

[All My Shadows]

His redneck accent is totally on point. Match it up with his looks, and you'd be sure that his real voice.

I just wish either one of them would attempt Cajun/Down-da-baya. It's one of those dialects that you just can't understand unless you've experienced it

[Titus Andronicus]

As one who was born, bred, and raised in the redneck south (and admittedly speaks with a noticeable accent), it's off. Not terribly, but it's clearly influenced by movie representations of rednecks, which almost always play to the stereotype; even North Carolinian Andy Griffith spoke stereotypically in the first season of the show. At least it wasn't a Vivien Leigh southern accent.

[All My Shadows]

I think there are different regions associated with rednecks. The voice he did sounded like a lot of my friends from north Louisiana/west Mississippi.

[Sylph]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/23607004#23607004

[quartermainefan]

well, we were ahead of the curve! She does have Sybil like qualities!

[Sylph]

If you want to practice RP, here is a nice web page:

http://www.bl.uk/lea...owel-sounds-rp/

I think my favourite RP sound is /əʊ/. Absolutely fabulous. But also the these examples: glad <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈɡlæd/</span>, laurel <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈlɒr(ə)l/</span> , caugh <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈkɔːf/</span> , game <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈɡeim/</span> , stare <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈsteə/</span> , poor <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈpuə/</span> .

[alphanguy74]

Yeah... to me it sounds like a Misssissippi/Louisiana/Alabama accent as well, which is distcintly different from the Tennessee/Kentucky accent, which is also different from the Arkansas/Missouri Ozark accent (which is what I talk in). Even South Carolina/Georgia is a bit different yet. Just compare Jimmy Carter with Bill Clinton, and you'll see what i'm talking about. This guy was a "little" exaggerated, but there are people whose accent is that thick.

[SFK]

Your passion for that vowel sound is amusing. As you know, I studied this kind of stuff, and that's a sound I always associate with Joan Collins as she's fond of talking about "clothes". You'll also notice that this sound lives in the mid-atlantic region of the U.S. Folks from South Jersey, Philly, down to Baltimore use this "o" which sounds like a smooth linkage of "eh-oh".

A crisp æ sound is one of those sounds that may come across as upper crust and even pretentious when used properly in the states. Erika Slezak's Viki always uses it. A lot of people nasalize the vowel, think of the "Nyeeeaaahhh" sound Bugs Bunny makes before he says, "What's up doc?" It rhymes with the RP pronunciation of the word "air" which would have no r-coloring and would rhyme with "yeah." A lot of people put that in front of the æ. So let's say "eah" rhymes with "yeah", you get b-eah-ad (bad), s-eah-ad (sad), h-eah-ammock (hammock), eah-ass (ass). That was probably way confusing and much easier to explain out loud.

[Sylph]

You wouldn't believe but just minutes ago I was going to ask you something about this, but then I ended up deciding not to. Perhaps now I will.

People actually don't know this, I presume, but there are several 'subspecies' of RP: for example, we have upper RP, mainstream RP, adoptive RP, near RP and so on... I think the terms are self-explanatory. Of all those, the old, almost defunct conservative RP is currently something I've been looking into.

What was once <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ɪ/</span> (kit, mirror, rabbit) in the conservative RP, today turned into <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/i/</span>, in words such as happy or valley. The weak <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ɪ/</span> turned into to <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ə/</span> in words such as countless or problem. The <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ɔː/</span> of cough, salt, off, austere turned into /ɑ/. The word square is differently pronounced, too.

I also found it amusing that RADA still teaches <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/hw/</span> as a distinct sound, even though today's RP does not have the so-called wine–whine distinction. But it does differentiate between foot and strut, it's still non-rhotic, has the broad a, Mary–marry–merry are all quite distinct as well as nearer and mirror and so on.

Do you often practice the various accents, SFK? And do you use the IPA alphabet a lot while doing so? May I ask how good are you at imitating certain accents?