Why do yanks compare American southern accent to English

GiGi   Fri Mar 26, 2010 11:15 am GMT
Don't get me started on GWTW. First and foremost, this was entertainment, many, many actresses here tried out, but the powers that be had a set idea how Scarlett would be, & Vivian was her. (Sans her native accent) The movie was made to be different than the book, as it would have been too insulting to blacks. That said, most find it insulting now, so you can imagine how the book must be. The actress who played mamie was not allowed to attend the opening. Her crime? Being black. Yeah. Have you ever seen Roots? Much better, if you want to see how things were & what it all entails. The tragedy goes past the days of slavery, way past, which is something a lot of white Americans can't, or won't acknowledge. My mom is white, my dad is black, & my expeience in England & Wales was very different than what I was used to here. Not that there is no predudice, but a whole different atmosphere.
Steak 'n' Chips   Fri Mar 26, 2010 11:47 am GMT
To my British ears, the southern American accents sound a little like southern England accents simply because they are non-rhotic. But as you point out, there must be more to it because the NYC accent sounds non-rhotic and it doesn't sound as similar.

I always guessed that there must be some influence of the source of immigration: you can hear a similarity between NYC and Irish accents (and Irish accents are not uniformly rhotic, at least I've heard Dubliners drop their R's). New Englanders often sound a little more like English people that General Anerican accents do - not sure why. Similarly I supposed that the southern American "aristocratic" accent was derived from the accents of wealthy RP-speaking English aristocrats who ran plantations. My apologies if that's a horrible generalisation!

I've always wondered whether the rhotic of American accents were connected to the efflux of ordinary rhotic-speaking people from the West of Britain, and Ireland, and the "teang" as we hear it is related to the similar twang in Irish accents. It would be interesting if I could trace the place-of-origin roots of immigrants to the US and confirm whether any of my random thoughts on accent influence held water.
Steak 'n' Chips   Fri Mar 26, 2010 11:49 am GMT
Sorry "teang" should have been "twang"
GiGi   Fri Mar 26, 2010 12:13 pm GMT
Interesting observation... When I lived in Pensylvania I noticed many pronounced a word or name such as "Mike", as "Moik". Which reminded me of the Irish, & surprised me, as it isn't too far from N.Y.
As far as Scarlett's Irish last name,... there exisits no such thing as an "American" one, they are all from other nations. We all know why. Perhaps Native American names are the exeption. Most Americans never have contact with them though. I lived in Oklahoma for 2 yrs. & saw many, before moving there I'd only ever seen 1, & I've lived in many states. It was nice seeing them, the only thing I liked about Oklahoma.
Jasper   Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:34 pm GMT
Gigi: "I can see no comparison between any Brittish accent to an American Southern one"

Gigi, it seems hard to believe at first glance, doesn't it?

But when you break it down, there's *quite* a bit of similarity. For example, the pronunciation of "wh" as "hw", the absence of yod-dropping, the dipthongization of long-e (in words such as "beat"), dipthongization of long-a (in words such as "mate"), and in some areas (NC in particular), a long-o (in words such as "known") that's dipthongized to sound identical to the RP version.

This is not to mention English usage such as "spelt", "ruint", etc, and in older Southerners, "h"-dropping in words such "humble", et. al.
GiGi   Fri Mar 26, 2010 6:32 pm GMT
I see what you're saying. It looks good on paper, so to speak, but to my American ear,... not so much. LOL!
;D
Uriel   Sat Mar 27, 2010 1:16 am GMT
Damian:

<<I still think it strange that two Brits became involved in a piece of history that was so very, very American....their Civil War. >>

I don't. Movies are about the characters in them. The origins of the actors who PLAY those characters doesn't matter much. It doesn't have to be autobiographical on their part. That's the the whole point of acting; pretending to be someone you're not. I didn't watch Ewan MacGregor and Albert Finney in Big Fish and obsess about them not being US citizens in real life even though they were faking it on the screen; I just watched the movie. There was a lot weirder stuff in that film to suspend my disbelief about!

Americans also don't get as excited about seeing our compatriots on the silver screen as other people apparently do. Probably because American actors are a dime a dozen and we see them all the time.

I've never seen Gone With the Wind so I can't comment on anyone's accent, except to note that even American movie accents at that time bore little resemblance to natural speech. (Except for Katharine Hepburn, who apparently did talk that way even in her normal life. Niles and Frasier Crane carry on that strange tradition, too.)


Steak 'n Chips:

<<New Englanders often sound a little more like English people that General Anerican accents do - not sure why. Similarly I supposed that the southern American "aristocratic" accent was derived from the accents of wealthy RP-speaking English aristocrats who ran plantations. My apologies if that's a horrible generalisation!>>

Southerners weren't descended from English aristocrats. At least, not any more so than any other group. Hell, Georgia was founded as a penal colony for debtors and other riffraff. In fact, very few English aristocrats ever came to America, although they did often fund such ventures from the comfort of their own homes and got things named after them. The reason New Englanders and Southerners ended up losing their R's was because they had a lot of port cities in their respective regions that did business with British sailors and merchants, and it rubbed off. Americans farther inland had no such influence on their accents and retained their original R's -- remember that most dialects of English were rhotic around the time that the North American colonies were founded, and that was the style that stuck. That we have that in common with the Irish and certain English dialects owes more to the time period than to direct influence; the Irish didn't come over in droves until much later.

Today, both non-rhotic accents are less than admired. R-less speech marks you as poor and lower-class in Boston (even though many of its speakers are of Irish descent -- see, ancestry and accent are totally divorced!) You can get a sense of this class/speech divide if you watch The Departed, where Marky Mark hurls abuse at Leonardo DiCaprio for using a standard accent with his wealthier relatives and "dropping his R's" back in his poor neighborhood. Speaking of typecasting, you can get a kick out of hearing Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg use their real original Boston, Mass accents rather than the bland standard one they usually adopt on screen. But Leo does a good job, too. Doesn't matter that he was born and raised in LA. It's a movie. Go with it.
Damian in Edinburgh   Sat Mar 27, 2010 4:34 pm GMT
I get your point, Uriel.

Olivia de Havilland in "Gone With The Wid" - the third actor in that quartet of main characters in the film...I checked her out and amazingly she, too, was British by birth - born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1916 to British parents, but she later became an American citizen. So three of them out of the four playing leading parts in a film about the American Civil War were actually British...I'm sorry, but I still think that was a wee bit extraordinary.
Uriel   Sat Mar 27, 2010 5:46 pm GMT
Well, you're really going to be floored when you see Australians Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett playing Robin Hood and Maid Marian, then. ;P
GiGi   Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:45 am GMT
I wonder how the "posh" English accent sounds to those who speak other languages, does it sound pretty as it does to American english speakers? There are a lot of spanish speakers in the states from many lands, & they all seem to feel that spanish spoken by a Spaniard is beautiful. Yet I can not hear the difference.
My mom has a German friend who told her she found an American accent sexy, but then, when compred to a German accent,...
GiGi   Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:57 am GMT
Compared.
Sorry.
Damian in Edinburgh   Mon Mar 29, 2010 10:01 am GMT
Again, I understand your reasoning, Uriel, but let's face it - Robin Hood and Maid Marian were frolicking through the glades and copses of Sherwood Forest in deepest Nottinghamshire and clobbering the rich in order to dole out alms to the poor almost 900 years ago. Being more than just a wee bit pedantic here it's very, very unlikely that any modern day actor and actress could come anywhere near to replicating the accents of either of these two legends from English history, but that can apply to any film set way back in the past.

As with William Shakespeare, William Wallace, the Venerable Bede, Caxton, Thomas a Becket, King Arthur, Lady Guinevere and Sirs Galahad and Lancelot and any notable from the dim and distant past of this country, both Robin and the fair Maid and the wicked Sherrif of Nottingham would be quite unintelligible to people in the present day English speaking world. In fact, some of them existed before English even began to take on the form we all know today.

I have often day dreamed and imagined famous people from history being restored to life in 21st century Britain and then attempting to interact with our contemporaries. Eg: I'd love to have a conversation with our most illustrious Scottish hero - Sir William Wallace, more popularly known as Braveheart. I daresay we'd manage to get somewhere near some sort of mutual comprehension as it's amazing how humans can communicate in some form of another without any mutual knowledge of each other's languages.
Jasper   Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:30 pm GMT
Damian, I realize that this is a complete non sequitur, but I just had to show you.

Remember that conversation we had about cougars and other wildlife, living on the edge of our towns? Take a look at this picture, taken right outside of Los Angeles, near the Hollywood Sign:

http://snipurl.com/v59so
Damian in Edinburgh   Mon Mar 29, 2010 10:56 pm GMT
Jasper - how thrilling! We just would not find any such warning signs in the British countryside...all we have here are symbols indicating certain wild animals along the side of our roads in areas of high risk involving deer or even cattle and sheep that may wander onto the roads and present a hazard for traffic.

I was out on the Pentland Hills (just to the south of Edinburgh) with my wee dog George one day when I saw an adder on the pathway ahead - a viper type snake which is actually the only venomous snake in the UK - about 45 to 50cm long at the very most.

It's bite can be quite painful and causing swelling and discomfort but very rarely serious let alone fatal, and for it to bite you you would have to actually handle it. Anyway, this snake slithered into the ferns alongside the path as it was more scared of me and the dog that either of us were of it. Out on the Pentlands the creatures you really have to watch out for are low flying seagulls releasing their plops of birdlime on your head.

The British countryside is a very tame and innocuous place really.....as long as you steer clear of nettles when wearing shorts and don't eat peculiar looking "mushrooms" or stupidly trespass onto a farmer's land wearing a red top and wander onto a field containing a bull and a herd of cows awaiting servicing.
Reaney   Tue Mar 30, 2010 6:12 am GMT
<a viper type snake>

Not "viper type": "viper" is a synonym of adder.

<about 45 to 50cm long at the very most>

70-80cm.

<It's bite can be quite painful and causing swelling and discomfort but very rarely serious>

Adder bites are always potentially serious: if you're bitten, get treatment.

<you would have to actually handle it>

Nonsense. Adders are most likely to bite you if you tread on them.