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Alaskan Governor: Sarah Palin's accent
To me, Sarah Palin sounds a lot like Girl Next Door and Hugh Heffner main squeeze Holly <"Puffin, I cought the bo-quet!">, who coincidentally (or maybe not) also hails from Alaska
To me, both sound as if some school teacher back in the days of the pioneers made it her mission to go to Alaska to teach them dang Alaskanians how to talk right, because they sound as if they are ennunciating Waaaaay too clearly--almost too perfectly. Sounds a little hokey to me, but endearing nonetheless...
<<We Americans know the extreme complexities of our society, but our European cousins apparently do not. To make matters worse, their perception of us is colored by an extreme anti-American bias in their media. It's probably no wonder they think we're a bunch of stupid, uneducated, gun-toting thugs who live in cesspools of crime. Europeans' views of us bothers me a great deal more than I care to admit.>>
Agreed. I remember seeing a BBC story a few years ago where they were in New York interviewing Americans about the Iraq war. Now if you actually interviewed a normal sampling of New Yorkers about the subject, they'd be just as infuriated about it as any European. But the beeb clearly went out of their way to find vacationing American TOURISTS to talk about it, idiots from the sticks spouting the dumbest crap imaginable. I found it incredibly insulting to the actual politics of the city that I live in. It would be the equivalent of me doing a news story in London about English politics and only searching out interviews from conservative Gloustershire farmers in town for the weekend.
Yeah, I've seen them pull that crap, too. There's some guy running around the US right now on a bus, trying to get a "sense of the place" and reporting back on the BBC on a blog called "Talking America". He just hit Truth or Consequences and Santa Fe, and I noticed that while he seemed to have found a fairly balanced mix of political views in the people he interviewed, both I and a number of irate fellow New Mexican posters who commented on the blog were baffled by the fact that he didn't seem to have found any hispanics to interview -- in a city that's as heavily hispanic as Santa Fe, that's quite a feat! Now, it could be that some of his interviewees were part, and just had very unhispanic last names -- look at our governor, Bill Richardson -- but it was still surprising not to see a single Rodriguez or Mendoza or Archuleta in the mix.
I don't know if her accent is "Canadian", but her pit bull joke is an old, old, old, Canadian joke.
The guy is the BBC's very own Jon Kelly, travelling across the vastness that is America in a suitably emblazoned bus, and reporting back to us back home here in wee Blighty - or at least to those of us even remotely interested in what he has to waffle on about - the majority of Brits are definitely not due to overkill on the whole US elections circus by the British media over recent weeks and swifty switch over to something less boring or to which they feel they have more direct affinity with, such as the BBC's latest production of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
The cute Jon Kelly's reports don't even mention the even cuter Eddie Redmayne at all, who plays the admirable Angel Clare so magnificently in this new BBC drama production, filled to the brim with up and coming British actors and actresses fresh out of the drama schools, although Eddie has been around long enough on the acting scene both on stage all over the UK and on the big and small screens to become immediately recognisable to many people.
He's great with his accent ability, too. Being one of Hardy's novels,"Tess of the d'Urbervilles" is set in Dorset, and it was mainly in Dorset that the filming took place for this production (except for the train station scene which was filmed at the Horsted Keynes station on the Bluebell Line in West Sussex.) Normally Eddie Redmayne speaks in an English English standard RP accent, but in "Tess" is emits a pretty authentic sounding West Country Dorset accent, essentially rural in nature and pretty much as it probably was in the mid 19th century in that part of Southern England, although Angel Clare came from a fairly affluent background, his father being a Dorset clergyman but chose, for personal reasons, to take a job as a dairyman on a farm buried in the depths of the truly beautiful Dorset countryside, so wonderfully captured on screen in this serial being broadcast on BBC-1 TV each Sunday evening, recordings of which I view at a time more convenient to me.
In the 2007 film "Savage Grace" Eddie Redmayne sports an American accent in his part as a young gay guy with a wealthy American socialite as his mother in a true story set in London in 1972. Tony Baekeland is the young guy and Barbara Baekeland was his mother, and the culmination of the whole story was the attempt by his mother to "cure" Tony of his homosexuality by actually seducing him into sexual acts with her! Can you believe that? It really happened in real life, and the only response the poor lad could give to his weirdly demented mother at her flat in Cadogan Square, London, on a night in November 1972, was to follow her into her kitchen, take up the nearest knife, and send her on her merry way to the next world, which he duly did with precious little time for her to offer any kind of protest.
He was found guilty of manslaughter on account of diminished responsibility (no surprise there!) and sent to Broadmoor mental hospital where he "recovered" and he was eventually released when he was judged to be "no longer a danger to any person" but when he later moved to New York he decided to give his grandmother the same sort of treatment he had given his mother, and the American authorities took a tougher line with him than the British equivalent had, and before judgement could be passed on him he was found dead with a plastic bag over his head.
The DVD of ""Savage Grace" is released in the UK on 10/11/08 (no - not the eleventh of October - the tenth of November!) ;-) Isn't it time you guys "did your dates" the way the rest of the world does?
Talking America with Jon Kelly of the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/talkingamerica/
Tess of the d'Urbervilles BBC TV preview showing Eddie Redmayne in the part of Angel Clare - no chance to hear his assumed Dorset accent unfortunately. Episode 2 was shown last night on BBC-1 TV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snhZ_flom1Q&feature=related
Eddie Redmayne with an American accent: playing the part of Tony Baekeland in "Savage Grace"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm5hxpeNOQQ&NR=1
Eddie Redmayne being inteviewed about his part in "Savage Grace" speaking in his normal English English RP accent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ExcyWiUamo&feature=related
Eddie has a wee bit of a bump on his nose! I wonder if he was ever in a boxing ring? I hope not.....
What has all this to do with Sarah Palin? Llareggub - read that backwards and you get the answer - plus the mythical Welsh placename full of strange people of the bible black night featured in Dylan Thomas' "Under Milkwood". ;-)
Tomorrow has now become today here in Scotland and today has become yesterday.....and today's tomorrow is yet a mystery to be unravelled in due course. Goodnight.
There is no typical Alaska accent. Palin speaks a variety of Alaska English called Mat-Su Valley English. It's influenced by the dialect of the hundreds of Minnesota farmers transplanted by the federal government to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley (where Wasilla is located) during the 1930s as part of a dustbowl relocation colony.
Really? You always hear about the Okies who packed up and headed for California, Grapes of Wrath-style, but I had no idea there had been northern midnesterners who had headed north. Interesting! I guess like the Okies, they REALLY had nothing more to lose.
Sarah Palin's accent sounds NOTHING like a typical Pacific Northwestern accent!!
She sounds more like a gal who should be running the woodchipper in rural MinnesOT-AH.
Never, ever, ever insult the fine folk of the PNW by comparing our accents to hers.
Ugh!
Her accent is not what we would typically associate with Alaska, but sounds more Midwestern. Of course, we don't hear a lot of Alaskan accents down in the South, so perhaps it is a typical Alaskan accent.
I was born and raised in Wasilla, and have never met anyone from my town who speaks like Sarah Palin. To us, it sounds very different than our usual speech patterns. Perhaps there are people in Palmer who have that accent, but it is not common in Wasilla, and certainly not typical of Alaskans in general.
I think that the British people generally don't really give much heed to her accent at all - it's simply an "American accent" and that's it - Brits wouldn't have a hope in hell telling the difference between an Alaskan accent or an Alabaman (is that the correct form?) although I suspect some would, quite honestly - Alabama is in the Deep South is it not?
No it's not Palin's accent that would bother Brits - it's what the heck she says when she uses it, and even much more importantly, what the heck she will do if she ever makes it to Vice President of the United States, with the likelihood of her actually making it to the Top Job in due course, bearing in mind the advanced age of her running mate and that the term of office could well be as long as eight years by which time McCain could be in line for a zimmer frame.
Nah - Brits don't give a rat's bum about these guy's accents - it's what they will do should they actually get to the White House that concerns us far more.
We have heard that Palin knows very, very little indeed about any place outside the borders of the USA and that she obtained her very first pasport only last year, and it appears that what she does know about international affairs could be written on the back of a postage stamp. But in America that's not unusual is it? Quite scary really....oh my!!
(Is that expression actually used in America very much?)
The UK has the highest number of its people holding a passport than any other country in the world - 85% of us are in possession of a current passport.
Obama has a lot of "fakeness" going on in his accent.
I confirmed this during the last speech.
He has a tendency to pronounce his terminal y's in an odd pseudo-southern (?) manner, but he can totally turn this affectation on/off like a switch.
Examples:
Tendency -> Tendencé
Apology -> Apologé
Phony -> Phoné
In many instances during the last debate, he turned it "off" and pronounced these sorts of words the way one would expect.
Is it just me who's noticed this? I find it rather annoying.
Regarding Palin, as a Canadian living in the USA, and having a good ear for accents, I can concur that Palin is exhibiting a very strong Minnesotan/North Dakotan vibe, but certainly not a Canadian one, nor a Pacific Northwestern one.
If the Minnesotan migration to her home valley suggestion is correct, and/or the influence of her father's accent, then she comes by it honestly. Yes, it does sound funny to us. That's why Maude Flanders has it; Rusty's mom on MAD TV, and many others' who are meant to sound very school-marmy/matter-of-fact.
Generally I believe linguists would call that code switching, not "fakeness".
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