Can British people pretend to speak like Americans?

Christian Bale's American sounds robotic? Perhaps in American Psycho or Batman Begins, but he's supposed to be a rich, New England yuppie, and that's how they train themselves to sound.

Newsies, the Machinist, Swing Kids... The fact that he's Welsh is undetectable. And in Newsies and Swing Kids he was only 19.

<<It may also have something to do with the fact that an ex-girlfriend dragged me UNWILLINGLY to see the film because she fancied the pants of the bloke. That's probably it.>>

Uh-huh. You may have just been bitter!

The acting? I don't know, KT, I couldn't get much of a sense of it. His character was so low-key and emotionally detached that there wasn't really much to him. I found Kirsten Dunst slightly annoying in her character -- it was just so doggedly persistent! I don't know that he seemed to be doing any particular accent, just a neutral one. But then, I'm no expert on accents anyway. And I've only seen the movie once and really wasn't paying attention to the accents. I've had that happen before -- the first time I see a movie, I don't notice anything. Then if I watch it again, knowing that an actor is this or that, I listen harder and can pick out more of their flaws. Happened in Dawn of the Dead (the remake), where it turns out one of the main characters was indeed played by a Brit (Jake Something -- Weber, I think). Granted, most of the rest of the actors were Canadian -- Sarah Polley and Matt Frewer (who will always, always be Max Headroom to me!) for sure, the rest of the unknowns definitely maybe, as it was filmed in Toronto and the Canadian film board requires that a certain percentage of the cast and crew be natives. (In fact, probably only Mekhi and Ving were American!)

And there you go -- I didn't even know Christian Bale was Welsh. Not that I would know a Welsh accent from a kick in the pants.

You are correct, Uriel. There really wasn't much to his character; however, I really wondered if it was because of the accent or because OB didn't want to overdo it. How much range does one have with another accent? Now, my 16 y/o cousin would probably disagree because she "LOVES" Orlando Bloom (lol)...

I've only watched a couple of films featuring Christian Bale, but since I've learned that he is known for doing a different accent in each film I'll be listening closely when I watch his new film. His character is German.

I enjoyed reading about how you view films. I notice music or the lack of music in films. I hate it when they play music that doesn't fit the situation. I enjoy it when the music is part of the humour in the film or when the music gives a hint about what is going to happen. Next, I notice accents, foreign words (etc.), because I KNOW my spouse is going to ask me what is being said in language X, whether or not the actor's accent is good, ask me what language is being spoken, etc.

I didn't see "Dawn of the Dead", but My spouse watched "Shawn of the Dead" and thought it was hilarious. I saw part of it, but some (comic?) british accents are hard for me to understand.

I thought that Orlando Bloom's American accent in Elizabethtown was really bad. His vowels were off lots of times. Some parts were okay though. The thing that really annoyed me was that he pronounced Oregon wrong... he was supposed to be from Portland!

Christian Bale comes from Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire - if you glance at a map of Wales it's that bit sticking out into th sea right down in the bottom left, or the south west, if you prefer.

That makes him Welsh by birth but it's highly likely that he doesn't know much Welsh at all as Pembrokeshire is unlike any other part of Wales because of historical reasons - I'm not sure exactly what these are as I haven't studied Welsh history in any detail but it seems to be due to a strong Anglo Saxon influence down there making it an outpost in an otherwise Celtic country....probably the Anglo Saxons settled in that area close to the sea and ever since the Welsh language has been virtually non existent in that exteme south western tip of Wales.

I do know that Welsh has to be taught in all primary schools in Pembrokeshire, as all over the rest of Wales - it's compulsory - that is the official policy of the educational authorities in the Principality of Wales.

Look at a map of the area and all the place names are English - Little Haven, Tenby, Saundersfoot, Haverfordwest, Angle, Castlemartin, Carew Cheriton, Rosehaven, Jefferston, etc etc. Travel just a few miles eastwards into Carmarthenshire then all the place names immediately become thoroughly Welsh. What makes this odder is that Pembrokshire the Welsh county which is furthest away geographically from the border with England.

Christian's accent would no way be identified as Welsh. I've no idea where he hangs out now - probably here in London somewhere.

I'm not so sure about another Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd - now even his name is 100% Welsh. His first name should be pronounced something like "yaw-ann" with the "yaw" bit rhyming with "saw". His second name is tougher - you must roll the "r" and both the "u's" are almost (but not quite) the same as the French "u" in words like "mur" "sur" etc. The two "dd's" are souned exactly as is the "th" in the definite article "the".

Ioan is 100% Welsh speaking, comes from Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, but now lives in California. His accent is quite recognisable as Welsh if you listen carefully but the guy's put himself about a bit now - let's hope to goodness (as the Welsh would say) that his Welsh lilt is never tainted by Americanisms! That would be dire! No way would it suit a Hornblower image.

It was bad enough having a Mel Gibson type Braveheart hero Sir William Wallace! Eeeekkks!

>>I thought that Orlando Bloom's American accent in Elizabethtown was really bad. His vowels were off lots of times. Some parts were okay though. The thing that really annoyed me was that he pronounced Oregon wrong... he was supposed to be from Portland!<<

The matter is that one need not be from outside North America for this kind of thing to apply. For instance, of the many television shows and like set here in Wisconsin, the characters in them practically *never* sound like they're really from Wisconsin, and in those cases the actors are North Americans...

Married with Children is a sitcom about a family living in Chicago, but
everyone has a Californian accent (Kelly, Bud, Peg, Marcy...)
even Al (Ed O'Neill uses a Westernized version of his eastOH-westPA CCmerged accent)

I was watching some old episodes of the X-Files earlier, and I noticed that Gillian Anderson seems to have the low-back merger (despite being raised in London, Grand Rapids, and Chicago) whereas David Duchovny has muted most of his New York accent, but still maintains a clear distinction between cot and caught. In the script, Mulder is supposed to be from Martha's Vineyard, but he definitely does not have any trace of the accent.

William B. Davis (The Cigarette Smoking Man) seems to have kept his Toronto accent, as I noticed how he consistently has both forms of Canadian Raising and the low-back merger. Of course, Davis is still primarily based in Canada.

>>Married with Children is a sitcom about a family living in Chicago, but
everyone has a Californian accent (Kelly, Bud, Peg, Marcy...)
even Al (Ed O'Neill uses a Westernized version of his eastOH-westPA CCmerged accent)<<

The thing is that it'd probably be hard to find an accent coach who could really effectively teach one to speak as if one were from Wisconsin or northeastern Illinois who wasn't themselves from there...

Travis:

I've been thinking a great deal about your post the last couple of days; you could be right on a key issue.

I remember very clearly seeing a dialect map from the 1940s. The Tidewater region stretched from Virginia to South Carolina, with a sub-dialect called Virginia Piedmont right above it.

More recent dialect maps have changed these isoglosses; one finds that the non-rhotic areas have diminished very severely in these regions. For one example, see this (I'd urge you to read the whole thing): http://snipurl.com/1ope1

You will see that the non-rhotic areas on this particular map have diminished greatly. I have seen other dialect maps that reflect the same thing.

To reinforce this idea, I've watched shows that feature people from different areas of the country. I've not found one single non-rhotic speaker from North Carolina on any of them, despite hearing several samples. This has reinforced the idea that those subdialects are becoming extinct.

But perhaps all these sources are wrong! I certainly hope so, because, while I've never heard NCTidewater spoken, I can attest to the fact that pure Virginia Tidewater is beautiful. (Funny thing is, the intonation and inflections are different from Inland Southern; VTidewater has a lilting quality--I don't know how else to put it)

If you are correct in the fact that NCTidewater is alive and well, it just goes to show you that a grave mistake can be made when one relies too much on his sources.

Do you happen to know what town those men are from? I think they might be from a rural area--an area in which the encroachment of Inland Southern hasn't yet reached.

On another note, do you know if the NC Tidewater isogloss is preserved on Labov's maps? Wikipedia says "no", but there has been at least one other instance right here on Antimoon where Labov has been misquoted by Wikipedia.

>>If you are correct in the fact that NCTidewater is alive and well, it just goes to show you that a grave mistake can be made when one relies too much on his sources.<<

This is definitely true; linguistic documentation is very often quite incomplete. For instance, there seems to actually be very little in the way of detailed documentation about the dialect here in the Milwaukee area. This itself has resulted in some akward exchanges with other people online who seriously did not believe my transcriptions of my own speech; particularly people do not believe it when I tell them that I actually use a uvular (normally approximant) rhotic most of the time, because such is practically not documented as being used at all in English as a whole.

>>Do you happen to know what town those men are from? I think they might be from a rural area--an area in which the encroachment of Inland Southern hasn't yet reached.<<

I don't know exactly where they are from, and unfortunately they in meetings right now so I can't ask them at the moment. All I know is that it was originally said that they were from the UK, but I was later corrected and told that they are actually from North Carolina, despite rumors that they were British. That is, besides that they clearly speak a non-rhotic dialect that sounds *nothing* like the typical Inland Southern dialect.

>>On another note, do you know if the NC Tidewater isogloss is preserved on Labov's maps? Wikipedia says "no", but there has been at least one other instance right here on Antimoon where Labov has been misquoted by Wikipedia.<<

I would not completely trust Labov's maps myself - in particular, I know that the depiction of the range of the NCVS on them is not correct, as today it extends all the way into much of Minnesota while his maps say that it ends basically around Madison, Wisconsin.

I asked one of them, and it turns out that they are from Durham, North Carolina originally, which is somewhat far away from what one'd expect in this case. But I think the person mentioned two other places that they lived, which I did not exactly catch, so they may have picked such up there. Also, they said that while they're 23, their parents are much older than them, so they could have potentially picked it up from their parents...

<<It may also have something to do with the fact that an ex-girlfriend dragged me UNWILLINGLY to see the film because she fancied the pants of the bloke. That's probably it.>>

LOL! What a tactless girlfriend. I hope you booted her off with the utmost haste. :-)

<<My spouse watched "Shawn of the Dead" and thought it was hilarious. I saw part of it, but some (comic?) british accents are hard for me to understand. >>

Hilarious movie! But I had the same trouble you did. Especially when the female characters were pissed off or shouting, their staccato delivery almost obliterated the words for me -- I had a hard time following what they were saying. It's such a different delivery and rhythm from American English.

Travis, have you ever seen "Stir of Echoes"? I'm no expert on midwestern accents, but it seemed to me that Kevin Bacon and the actress who played his wife had a certain gritty Chicago-ness to their voices that I don't remember from other movies. And I assume it's "That '70's Show" that has you narked about the lack of appropriate accents. ;P I felt the same way about "Lake Placid", the silly crocodile movie. First of all, it was set in Maine, a place with a very pronounced regional accent, yet NO one in the movie -- including the townspeople -- had even the slightest hint of a New England thing happening in their speech. Secondly, the REAL Lake Placid is in New York, three states away.... Of course, speaking of Maine accents, Kathy Bates did an excellent one in "Dolores Claiborne" that really gave the movie a sense of place. Can we expect any less of a master thespian like Kathy Bates? Absolutely not. But I was surprised and gratified to hear Fred Munster using one in the not-so-Oscar-worthy "Pet Sematery" -- a little touch that really sttod out -- he even used the laconic "ayuh" that Stephen King, a true Mainiac, often puts in his characters' dialogue.

>>Travis, have you ever seen "Stir of Echoes"? I'm no expert on midwestern accents, but it seemed to me that Kevin Bacon and the actress who played his wife had a certain gritty Chicago-ness to their voices that I don't remember from other movies.<<

No, I haven't myself.

>>And I assume it's "That '70's Show" that has you narked about the lack of appropriate accents. ;P<<

"That '70s Show" is the most recent sitcom set in Wisconsin, and the most recent one to lack even the slightest hint of any sort of Wisconsin accent, but this has been a problem with practically all TV shows set in Wisconsin, such as older ones like "Laverne and Shirley" and so on.

>>But I was surprised and gratified to hear Fred Munster using one in the not-so-Oscar-worthy "Pet Sematery" -- a little touch that really sttod out -- he even used the laconic "ayuh" that Stephen King, a true Mainiac, often puts in his characters' dialogue.<<

So the correct term for people from Maine is "Mainiac"? Heh.