Why is the American accent so easy to imitate?

However strange and even funny a British place name would appear to be it's origins are invariably legitimate with regard to the reasons why they came into being in the first place.

The village of Six Mile Bottom, in Cambridgeshire, England, is so named because it is located at the very edge of the table top flat expanse of countryside known as the Fens....so flat that a molehill stands out on the horizon (slight exaggeration but you get my drift) at the bottom of a very gentle incline of a road leading down to it for a six mile length from somewhat higher ground - probably no more than a couple dozen of feet in overall elevation or so anyway, using these old measurements.

As for Shipton-under-Wychwood - located in the Oxfordshire portion of the luscious Cotswolds countryside of England - it is one of a trio of villages with Milton-under-Wychwood and Ascott-under-Wychwood being the other two. Very many English place names are double barrelled, far more than is the case here in Scotland. The English seem to have a pasion for double barrelled names. All three village are situated at the foot of a hill covered in woodlands - hence the "wood" bit and the woodlands contain a large number of wych hazel trees, which explains the name. Most probably hazelnut flavoured ice cream is very popular in that area.

The tree is called a "wych hazel" in the UK, and when the first settlers from England arrived in America they noticed trees there looking very similar so they gave them the same name but spelled it "witch hazel", and it seems that that's how they are call it over there, which may explain Jasper's spelling.

My maternal grandparents live close to the foot of the Malvern Hills, a very prominent range of long, long since dormant volcanoes forming a line of hills with about five distinctly separate summits (called beacons) and which now form the boundary line between the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire, in the south west Midlands of England. A main road cuts through a high level spot close to the summit of one of the hills and it's called the Wych Cutting - close to woods consisting of a large number of wych hazel trees, hence the name.

Damian: "Jasper....sorry to correct you....but it's Shipton-under-Wychwood!"

I stand corrected.

Apropos weird American names, the researcher will most often find that the names have American Indian (Red Indian in Brit-speak) origins.

I took a Greyhound bus through Wisconsin one cold winter in 1981, and noticed quite a few of those weird names—weird enough to spell, much less to pronounce. Wisconsin seems an eccentric state to me in many ways, a state that somehow sings some kind of siren's song for me; I'm not sure why.

I can't imagine Wisconsin drawing anyone in. All I know about it is it's where the Ingalls family LEFT on their trek across the prairie. They were trying to escape. They were willing to brave a lot to get away. That should tell you all you need to know! Cheese or no cheese.

>>Apropos weird American names, the researcher will most often find that the names have American Indian (Red Indian in Brit-speak) origins.

I took a Greyhound bus through Wisconsin one cold winter in 1981, and noticed quite a few of those weird names—weird enough to spell, much less to pronounce. Wisconsin seems an eccentric state to me in many ways, a state that somehow sings some kind of siren's song for me; I'm not sure why.<<

You just have to get used to such placenames, and they do have to be learned individually even though there are some general pronunciation guidelines that will help one out a lot. For instance, right here "Wauwatosa" is pronounced [wɑɔ̯wəˈtʰosə(ː)] while most people pronounce "Waukesha" as [ˈwɒkɨʃɒ(ː)] (or, for some people, [ˈwɒkiʃɒ(ː)], with this ignoring the variation between [ɒ] and [ɑ] here).

>>I can't imagine Wisconsin drawing anyone in. All I know about it is it's where the Ingalls family LEFT on their trek across the prairie. They were trying to escape. They were willing to brave a lot to get away. That should tell you all you need to know! Cheese or no cheese.<<

But they were going westward, towards the prairies of present-day Minnesota and North Dakota - and that area is overall colder during the winter than the part of Wisconsin along Lake Michigan.

And anyways, remember that many people *come* here on vacation every summer - particularly Up North and also in central Wisconsin and the Door peninsula...

An eccentric Wisconsin with funny names.....sounds good! That's where that goofy guy (played by Kris Marshall) in "Love Actually" headed for with a suitcase full of condoms hoping that his (to quote him) "cute British accent" would help him in his quest to get laid with American girls.....accordingly to him British girls are "too stuck up".

His plan worked....he had four on the go at the same time so there really is a lot to be said for the British accent - a slighty Estuaryised Londonish RP in his case.

"I can't imagine Wisconsin drawing anyone in."

Even I can't explain it, Uriel. I can tell you that there's something starkly beautiful about it in the winter—a trait shared by sister state North Dakota. The roads aren't in the best of condition then, and it gives you the sense in a way that you're traveling backwards in time. Then again, in certain cities you see really weird looking houses—houses that are very tall but very narrow, with only about 10 feet between them, an unusual trait in an American home.

Moreover, Wisconsin has a strong German contingent. (I grew up and became very close to a German family, so have a soft spot there.) I have heard that in both Wisconsin and North Dakota it is not at all an unusual feat to hear German spoken on the streets. This intrigues me in the sense that it's a spot of Europe right here in America. (Solvang, CA, anybody?)

In these two states, too, the roads are almost preternaturally straight, and from the air. The states look like some kind of checkerboard from the air, and having grown up and now living in a mountainous state, this intrigues me.

And then you have the myriad institutes of higher learning...and if ever there was a "nerd", surely it is I.

Oh, I don't know. Geographical areas sometimes have strange, unexplainable appeals to people.

>>I have heard that in both Wisconsin and North Dakota it is not at all an unusual feat to hear German spoken on the streets.<<

You are talking about Norwegian in some parts of North Dakota, where it is apparently still a living language. German is seriously dead in the Upper Midwest, at least aside from maybe some Amish settlements and zero-generation German immigrants (of which I have known a few).

Even still, German is likely a more popular second language here than in much of the rest of the US, if that says anything...

Apropos North Dakota, taken from Wikipedia:

Most North Dakotans are of Northern European descent. The six largest ancestry groups in North Dakota are: German (43.9%), Norwegian (30.1%), Irish (7.7%), Native American (5%), Swedish (5%) and French 4%.[32]
2.47% of the population aged 5 and over speak German at home, while 1.37% speak Spanish, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

About Wisconsin:

The five largest ancestry groups in Wisconsin are: German (42.6%), Irish (10.9%), Polish (9.3%), Norwegian (8.5%), English (6.5%).[10] German is the most common ancestry in every county in the state, except Menominee, Trempealeau and Vernon. Wisconsin has the highest percentage of residents of Polish ancestry of any state.

Interesting stuff, huh? I didn't know about the Polish contingent in Wisconsin; I'd always thought they were in Chicago...

In Washington state, we have our share of interesting place names. How many of you guys know how "Sequim" is pronounced?

>>Interesting stuff, huh? I didn't know about the Polish contingent in Wisconsin; I'd always thought they were in Chicago...<<

Heh - my mother's side is entirely Polish, and while her mother's immediate family did settle down in Chicago, much of the rest of her family had originally settled up north* before then.

* that is, northern Wisconsin, for those not familiar with the term in this context

(And here in Milwaukee, Polish last names are almost as common as German ones. It just happens, though, that there has been less longstanding cultural influence from Polish immigrants than from German immigrants here, probably due to them having come later and having been of a generally lower social status at the time.)

>>Most North Dakotans are of Northern European descent. The six largest ancestry groups in North Dakota are: German (43.9%), Norwegian (30.1%), Irish (7.7%), Native American (5%), Swedish (5%) and French 4%.[32]
2.47% of the population aged 5 and over speak German at home, while 1.37% speak Spanish, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.<<

And I thought that German really had gone the way of the dodo here in the Upper Midwest, unlike the reports that I have heard of Norwegian still being spoken in parts...

↑ That's easy to understand, Travis. North Dakota has near-zero visibility on the map of the United States. It's a state that no one ever thinks of researching.

It's amazing how different it is over there. Here in Washington state, English is the only official language.