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That is so true, American accents are easy to imitate! |
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Seen The Dark Knight yet? Christian Bale (Wales) and Heath Ledger (Australia; may God grant
peace upon his soul) both had perfect American accents. Phenomenal performances on the part of both
actors. I can't think of any American doing better at any accent than Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne. |
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Whenever Americans try to their luck at an English accent-- including prominent television
actors--they tend to come across as Posh, or—if they are really good—they may sound a little
like BBC anchors, who have tried to replace regional accents with a standardized British English.
But try to get North Americans to do a Mancunian accent, or Cockney, and chances are that they will
have no luck at all. Brits and the Irish, on the other hand, are often quite good at imitating
standard North American English, even if it is almost always possible to tell that they are from
abroad, if you listen closely enough. A good example is Wes Craven’s film “Red Eye,” in which
Cillian Murphy does a very commendable job of speaking American English throughout the movie.
Compare this to Ross’ truly sad attempt at imitating an English accents on an old Friends episode.
Luckily, Ross did not attempt this in the UK, where Brits do not seem to be very tolerant of
Americans who try to imitate and stereotype them.
Daily exposure to American English through television and music appears to have ensured that many
Brits can imitate US accents with ease, even if a few of them seem to have a very stereotypical view
and think that we all speak like spoiled teenage girls from California. In the US, however, people
seem to be confused and assume that an English accent involves sounding posh, regal or old. I think
that perhaps North Americans are a little confounded, because they think that such a thing as a
“British” accent even exists, when in fact what they are doing is trying to sound like a classy
Englishman from the nineteenth century. If only everyone had the opportunity to watch British
programs on Canada’s CBC network, North Americans could be much more convincing when they travel
across the Atlantic. |
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I can't think of an example of a Brit doing a really good American accent. Most often it sounds
painful to my ears. Usually, they do a kind of exaggerated Southern twang, I think of Brian Cox, for
example, who did ridiculous American accents when he first went to work there. Afterwards, he seemed
to realise that it wasn't really working, and just spoke in his natural accent.
Some American Brit accents are surprisingly good. The problem I usually find, even when they've
obviously put a lot of effort into it, is that they don't understand the distinction between
different British accents, so their effort is usually a melange of different British accents. One
bit of dialogue might be given in a posh Southern accent, for example, and the next in a bit of
Cockney or some rehashed Yorkshire. Individually, each line might be quite good, but, collectively,
it sounds funny.
I think accents in films are a pretty dubious concept. In most cases, it would be better to just
rewrite the character back story to explain why he or she is a foreigner. The problem is that even
when the accent is quite good, most of the actor's cognitive capacity is spent trying to maintain
it, leaving little left over to do the actual acting. |
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It depends on the person, i am very well at a British accent, my whole family is. |
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28 Jul 2008 00:31
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