People got killed because of accents

I recently read something interesting.
After the serious earthquake in Tokyo in the 1930s, the Japanese worried that the Koreans there might start rioting. So they gathered the Koreans and killed them.
Here is the method used to tell a Korean from a Japanese: The police asked the suspects to say ten dollars fifty cents in Japanese, which involves a few voiced consonants. Because the Korean language does not have voiced consonants, their vocal cords betrayed them.
The most interesting thing is that some Japan born Japanese who spoke with regional accents were regarded as foreigners and got murdered too.

Not interesting, but horrible!

I wonder if this is really true -- if so, there must be more to this story. Maybe the Japanese were just looking for an excuse to do a little ethnic cleansing.

what do you mean "not have voiced consonants" what language is that without consonants ? only vowels ? no consonants at all?

I studied Korean for a year so I can confidently say it does have voiced consonants. Now, it may not have them in the same positions as the Japanese utterance would've required, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have voiced consonants.

Anyway, the topic of shibboleths is interesting (and sometimes tragic) but this one probably doesn't belong on the 'English' forum but the 'Languages' one.

Guest does not even know what voiced consonants mean

"Anyway, the topic of shibboleths is interesting (and sometimes tragic) but this one probably doesn't belong on the 'English' forum but the 'Languages' one. "

Not implying, of course, that such things do not happen in English-speaking countries. In Great Britain, for instance, a non RP accent will leave you out of certain circles and clubs even if you are born next door to the bloody place.
A Spanish accent will also be frowned upon in certain circles in the US and a man with a French accent might even be considered non-qualified in scientific fields just because the French are only supposed to be good chefs and good lovers... And a German accent, at certain times of history was certainly a horrible thing such as being a 4th generation Japanese American. And so on, and so on, and so on...
Just imagine how popular an Arabic accent is these days in the Western World (including the American outpost).

These are all reasons why it is sometimes worthwhile to eliminate a foreign accent when you learn a language. It's quite a bit of work to do this, so the end has to justify the means, but in some situations it's very important.

One example: acting. If you want to succeed in Hollywood and you're not a native English speaker, you _must_ eliminate your accent, or you will get nowhere. The number of non-native speakers with accents who have amounted to anything in Tinseltown can be counted on one hand. There are lots of excellent non-American actors and actresses in the world, but you'll never see them in American films because they've never learned to speak English without an accent. Even a British accent can be a handicap for many roles, so actors have to learn to suppress it. The most successful actors are those who can be Everyman in a movie, and for that one must be as average as possible … and that in turn means _no accent_.

Arnold (I can't spell his family name) becomes so famous mainly because of his character in Terminator 1 and 2. His accent made him very real as a robot.

There's more than a handful. Arnie, Selma Hayek, Isabella Rossilini, Depardieu, Jean Reno, Tattoo from Fantasy Island, Juliette Binoche, Penelope Cruz, Benini, Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Antonio Banderas,

I once read somewhere that Hollywood often used actors (and I'm speaking nearly always of male actors now) with British accents primarily for the roles of villains...the bad guys......or as butlers and domestic servants....basically the underclass. That involves two main
categories.......evilness and servility. The British accents concerned were practically always standard "posh Southern English" type accents, especially for the butlers....clipped and cut glass and....quite honestly.... piss awful to listen to. Maybe the maids had some sort of Hollywood USA style Cockney accent the like of which has never, ever been uttered this side of the ocean...certainly not in London itself.

Just look at some of those weird old films...several were on TV over the holiday period. One was a very old b&w film called the Philadelphia Story with an actress called Katherine Hepburn, who had a very strange accent that was half American and half posh English, like a lot of the other characters in thenon US-non English English accent. The guys all seemed to have a proper regular American accent, so it seemed to be very much a gender thingy.

The other film was Mary Poppins, with this American guy playing the part of a Cockney chimney sweep who put on the most unconvincing Cockney accent possible....sometimes he seemed to forget he was supposed to be a Cockney and slipped back for a second or two into his natural American rhoticism.

It must be just as hilarious for American audiences when Brits try to put on similarly non too convincing American accents.

The Irish suffered terribly in the UK during the seventies and eighties. The chant "go home paddy" was common. Irish people were afraid to open their mouth in case they would receive beating.

<<The other film was Mary Poppins, with this American guy playing the part of a Cockney chimney sweep who put on the most unconvincing Cockney accent possible....sometimes he seemed to forget he was supposed to be a Cockney and slipped back for a second or two into his natural American rhoticism. >>

Hehe that was Dick Van Dike, who's widely ridiculed for his horrible accent in "Marry Poppins."

<<It must be just as hilarious for American audiences when Brits try to put on similarly non too convincing American accents.>>

I've heard some bad ones but some good ones, as well. Often they'll be generally good overall but then you can hear when they slip-up. To pull off an entire full-length movie and not give away any hints about your native accent is something not a whole lot of actors can do. Some, like Dick Van Dike, should obviously stick with roles playing Americans...hehe.

A lot of ESL courses developed in the UK inexplicably use British voice talent for "American" voices, and usually it's painfully obvious that the speakers are not really American.

There are exceptions. Christopher Guest and Micheal McKean had fully convincing British accents in _This is Spinal Tap_, even though both were born in New York City.

Even more spectacular is Lee Evans, who played an American pretending to be British in _There's Something About Mary_. Some people complained that his British accent sounded fake, not realizing that that was his normal pronunciation—he was born in the UK, and the accent he faked was the _American_ accent of his (American) character.

<<I once read somewhere that Hollywood often used actors (and I'm speaking nearly always of male actors now) with British accents primarily for the roles of villains...the bad guys......or as butlers and domestic servants....basically the underclass. That involves two main
categories.......evilness and servility. The British accents concerned were practically always standard "posh Southern English" type accents, especially for the butlers....clipped and cut glass and....quite honestly.... piss awful to listen to. Maybe the maids had some sort of Hollywood USA style Cockney accent the like of which has never, ever been uttered this side of the ocean...certainly not in London itself. >>

Hey, don't bitch, Damian -- the bad guy gets all the good lines, and usually gets to have the most fun!

Hmmm, evil and servile ... exactly how I've always pictured the British.... (That was sarcasm, by the way .... SARCASM!)

But it's true that there's something about that famous British reserve that seems to translate less as stoic and more as cold and emotionless over here on our side of the Atlantic ... and that "cut-glass" accent is just perfect for conveying the character of a baddie who probably pulled the wings off of flies as a child (in between masterminding more nefarious matters, of course!). Doesn't work as well with the OTHER British accents though....