On Brits Doing American Accents

[bratty_jedi]

There's an article at the Guardian on why David Tennant's American accent in the US remake of Broadchurch isn't perfect but also isn't that bad. It is just a light little article, and I haven't heard any of Tennant's new American accent so I have no opinion on that, but I must share my thoughts on random snippets from the article anyway.

Comments

[bratty_jedi]

I always found that at least in the TV-shows I watch there are much more, for my ears, audible differences in the British ones than in the American ones.

Like you, I'm pretty good at picking out British regional accents. I can pick out good versus bad Canadian ones and tell some regional variations there, but much less so than with the British ones. Too much BBC Radio and TV and not enough CBC I suppose. My real weakness is Australian and New Zealand ones. I'll hear something that I think is an OK fake Australian one but I have a couple of friends from Australia or New Zealand and they'll be cringing at how bad it is.

You can't really judge American regional accents by TV unless you're watching reality TV and even then it isn't guaranteed. Most the American accents on TV are what's called Standard American and only have hints and traces of the actor's native accent peeking through. It is sort of like Received Pronunciation for the Brits, but RP has more class connotations and is somewhat being phased out on TV in favor of real regional accents, I think though I might be wrong on that. Standard American isn't any actual American regional accent, though it is closest to the midwest or plains accent, both of which get described as flat or the non-accent in America, and all other American accents are identified by the ways in which they vary from Standard. Standard was basically created for the first readers of nation-wide nightly newscasts and goes by many other names, mostly focusing on that TV origin: broadcaster American, news reader or newscaster American, TV American, General American, etc.

Most actors only use something other than Standard when they are playing a character who is importantly regionally identified. When American actors try to adopt a specific regional accent other than their native one, they often screw it up as badly or worse than non-Americans trying to adopt any American accent. A favorite topic of late-night perhaps alcohol-enhanced rants across the American south is how there are many different Southern Drawls not just one and how badly stupid northern actors screw up when they try for any type of Southern accent. Real American accents can be pretty distinctive to the point where I introduced two of my friends to each other recently and within about 20 minutes of meeting they realized they had to be from the same state originally due to the way they'd both pronounced a couple of things. I'm sure they figured it out on their own and I hadn't even hinted at it because I didn't know where one of them was originally from, only where she'd done her undergrad degree and that was a different state with a different regional accent.

That's pretty cool about the Terminator dubbing. I've heard before about dubbing into other languages playing with regional accents in the dubbed language to either match connotations and stereotypes in the original or to even create new ones. I think with German I've most often heard about Prussian versus Bavarian regionalisms.

My accent generally marks where I'm from pretty well and includes a great many cultural stereotypes that are incredibly wrong and stupid (Southern drawl = redneck, conservative, and ignorant is always my favorite), but I just have those few quirks that don't match and I'm really not sure why I have them. This online quiz was making the round of social media a few months back that purported to pinpoint your accent based on a few specific colloquial expressions and regional pronunciations. It nailed most of my friends but couldn't pinpoint me at all.

[failte_aoife]

Most the American accents on TV are what's called Standard American and only have hints and traces of the actor's native accent peeking through.

Good...so I wasn't imagining it. I've been thinking but the only character I can think of whose accent is (for me) noticeable different from the others is one of the characters on CSI:NY and there the fact that he's from New Jersey is quite often remarked on. I don't think it's quite as extreme on British TV...I think there's still some kind of 'When in doubt go for RP' and e.g. Sherlock doesn't have vast differences but there's usually at least one character who is definitely non-RP and there's more variety in the guest-characters as well.
Here we have a sort of odd mixture. The big-name shows often have mainly Standard German or just a noticeable but not strong accent (though that is subject to discussion...I have non-Bavarian friends who complain that they sometimes have trouble understanding a certain Munich-based show while I consider it quite harmless...and Munich-Bavarian really isn't even close to my native accent) but since a while we're also again getting more shows where most of the cast speaks dialect.

I think with German I've most often heard about Prussian versus Bavarian regionalisms.
Yeah...rather Bavarian and Saxon...Prussian really is to big for one accent. But yes, especially in animated movies the comic relief characters will speak one of those (or perhaps some Austrian/Viennese) as those are considered the funniest accents.
Once I also listened to a radio-program on Bavarian in movies. Apparently the 80s had an awful lot of comedies with characters that were basically 'stupid Bavarians' and their only purpose was to say stupid things in broad Bavarian...I feel that somehow shifted to Saxon later before, thankfully, it (mostly) disappeared except for really bad sketches.