I just viewed an episode of Misfits on hulu.com that had English subtitles on a British show. Apparently, the accents the characters used was so strong that viewers were having trouble understanding them.
I understand it's not that unusual for some US viewers to struggle with regional British accents. I'm aware of a documentary about the band Oasis which was subtitled in parts for its US release, while parts of the film Trainspotting were re-dubbed with the actors speaking slower.
I also remember watching some trashy American talk show some years ago which featured a satellite interview with a guest's English boyfriend (who spoke with a fairly strong Estuary accent). After he'd been speaking for a few minutes, the host interrupted him to turn to camera and asked "Is he speaking English?!" (I think I may have thrown something at the TV at that point ;)
My boyfriend, despite speaking a couple of foreign languages, is one of those who struggles. I remember showing him a a few minutes of Never Mind the Buzzcocks once and he confessed to me he could only understand about 50% of what Ryan Jarman of the Cribs was saying (and nothing at all from Bez of the Happy Mondays). And one of the many reasons I preferred Simon Amstell to Mark Lamarr on that programme is that I could always understand everything he said, whereas I was always missing about a third of Lamarr's jokes.
I was just thinking about that program -- it contains more jokes/comments about accents and voices than any other I've heard, and definitely more than would ever happen in an American TV show.
(For instance, a couple of days ago I watched an old episode in which Mark Lamarr was unable to understand Fish, a Scottish singer. Here on YouTube, starting at about 3:40. It's partly because he's both mumbling and speaking fast, but partly because of his accent; he jokingly adopts another accent to make himself understood.)
Part of the reason for that, I suspect, is that Phil Jupitus is quite talented when it comes to putting on accents. Here's a lovely bit of back-and-forth between him and Stephen Fry where his imitation of Geordie utterly defeats your Cambridge-educated National Fucking Treasure:
This is really interesting! I can't think of any American accent that is so different from my own that it'd produce as much confusion as Stephen Fry is having here. And I wonder if Phill Jupitus's life, compared to Stephen Fry's, has involved exposure to a greater range of accents for longer periods of time.
I wouldn't have thought so - it depends where your job centre is, but in general, working class people are less mobile so you'd be more likely to hear a lot of the same local accent.
Have you watched The Wire? I know a lot of people can't make heads or tails of our Baltimore city accents sometimes, and so used subtitles to watch. I also saw a PBS show about Oystermen on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and many of the older guys warranted subtitles.
All the comics give Fry grief about his poshness, but no one does it as well as Jupitus. One of my other favourite QI moments is where Alan is trying to explain the concept of "beer goggles" to Stephen and Phill points out that Stephen doesn't get those, instead he has "a Madeira pince-nez."
'Fry, put on the 15 denier and see me in my study. [...] Fry, you oaf, those are fishnets.'
God, I miss British telly. Phil Jupitus is awesome. I've also got a real fondness for Bill Bailey - well worth a look if you haven't come across him yet (but he must have been on QI, surely).
Bill Bailey was the other team captain (in addition to Jupitus) on Never Mind the Buzzcocks. If you've never seen it, then you're the one in for a treat.
Oh, Buzzcocks was required viewing in our house right from the beginning. I'm still cross they got rid of the 'Indecipherable Lyrics' round. Did you ever manage to catch Black Books? Or Father Ted?
I have to be honest that I can't quite see what's wrong with Ryan Jarman's accent, he sounds very clear to me. Certainly a lot better than a really thick Bristol or Glasgow accent - those are the two that can defeat me to this day. The Bristol one is particularly puzzling as I used to live near there and went into town on a regular basis.
Heh, I once had that conversation in person. I was living in Osnabrück in Germany where there's a big British army base, and hanging out with an American woman and a Canadian guy (Francophone, but pretty much bilingual.) We started chatting to a British squaddie from Hull - which I wouldn't think of as a particularly difficult accent to understand for a non-Yorkshire person, but there you go - and the Canadian turned too me and asked if he was speaking English. I thought we were going to get our heads kicked in!
Actually, the way the Hull bloke pronounced "bitte" when he was showing off the German he knew was great - with a glottal stop, the same way he'd pronounce "bitter". I guess it's another example of this.
Ha, that story made me cringe. It's the turning and addressing someone else part that's worst, I'd just want to elbow him in the ribs and go, "Psst. *He* can understand *you*."
One of my American classmates makes up for failures to understand by pretending he thinks we've said the rudest thing he can possibly think of. Though it does go both ways - the other day he said "Wicked but fair" to me, and I heard "Licking butt ferret".
And this is why traveling with my mother is horribly embarrassing. Even at her own house it's bad enough. Last night she looks out the window and declares, "There's a woman out there! What is she doing?" My husband hissed, "And your window is open and she can hear you." lol.
I also remember watching some trashy American talk show some years ago which featured a satellite interview with a guest's English boyfriend (who spoke with a fairly strong Estuary accent). After he'd been speaking for a few minutes, the host interrupted him to turn to camera and asked "Is he speaking English?!" (I think I may have thrown something at the TV at that point ;)
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(For instance, a couple of days ago I watched an old episode in which Mark Lamarr was unable to understand Fish, a Scottish singer. Here on YouTube, starting at about 3:40. It's partly because he's both mumbling and speaking fast, but partly because of his accent; he jokingly adopts another accent to make himself understood.)
(edited because my HTML was faulty)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqRkkVQ6OSE.
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'Fry, put on the 15 denier and see me in my study. [...] Fry, you oaf, those are fishnets.'
God, I miss British telly. Phil Jupitus is awesome. I've also got a real fondness for Bill Bailey - well worth a look if you haven't come across him yet (but he must have been on QI, surely).
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Here's a link to a post I made on the lovely sampling of British accents to be found in it. It includes an embedding of the Ryan Jarman clip mentioned above.
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Did you ever manage to catch Black Books? Or Father Ted?
I have to be honest that I can't quite see what's wrong with Ryan Jarman's accent, he sounds very clear to me. Certainly a lot better than a really thick Bristol or Glasgow accent - those are the two that can defeat me to this day. The Bristol one is particularly puzzling as I used to live near there and went into town on a regular basis.
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Actually, the way the Hull bloke pronounced "bitte" when he was showing off the German he knew was great - with a glottal stop, the same way he'd pronounce "bitter". I guess it's another example of this.
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One of my American classmates makes up for failures to understand by pretending he thinks we've said the rudest thing he can possibly think of. Though it does go both ways - the other day he said "Wicked but fair" to me, and I heard "Licking butt ferret".
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And this is why traveling with my mother is horribly embarrassing. Even at her own house it's bad enough. Last night she looks out the window and declares, "There's a woman out there! What is she doing?" My husband hissed, "And your window is open and she can hear you." lol.
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