Written Americanish/English

Wow. I haven't seen the show, Damian, but I can tell you that to American ears, the Maine accent -- indeed, New England accents as a whole -- are VERY distinctive and unusual-sounding. Trying to think of a movie that contrasts the Down East Maine accent with a "normal" American accent -- Dolores Claibourne would be one, if I recall, as Dolores (Kathy Bates) has a very strong Maine accent and her old witch of an employer does not. If I recall, David Strathairn does the accent as well, since he's playing her vicious husband. In most other films he speaks with a more general accent. A harrowing movie to watch, but those two actors are fabulous, and for once you get the real flavor of a Stephen King novel's setting.

My aunt has a very strong Boston accent (makes Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting sound positively midwestern!), and it is certainly nothing like "movie American". To me, it would sound just as distinctive as your Queens guys. Funnily enough, the only guy I know from Queens has a very neutral accent, but maybe it was stronger at one time -- he's been away for years. Likewise, the only remnant of my dad's original New England accent is his occasional tendency to drop his terminal R's.

I hear the name Stephen Fry occasionally (especially on the BBC news and other British sites, but I don't know if I could put the name with the face. I'll have to check out your links and see if I recognize him.

I hope you recognise Stephen Fry when you see him, Uriel. To me as a Scot he has quite a "posh" English English RP accent - he comes from a very privileged and highly academic background, and even though he was born in London (a very "posh", a very trendy district populated to a large extent by the mega liberal intelligentsia) his family roots are in Norfolk, England, and apparently he now lives there, and apparently he is even more passionate about that part of England than he appears to be about your country and the people who live there....he uses superlatives for both.

He recently played a Norfolk solicitor, by the name of Peter Kingdom, in a recent Sunday night TV series simply called "Kingdom". In the UK a solicitor is not a person who lingers under urban street lights late at night offering carnal pleasures in return for cash - it is the equivalent of your attorney I reckon - a person who runs a practice engaged in the whole gamut of legal matters - a lawyer.

His TV practice was based in a small Norfolk town full of charm but also full of all kinds of eccentrics and nutjobs (or nobheads as we call them) - so he was never short of clients. The English in particular can be ever so charmingly bonkers at times.

I hope you guys get to see Stephen's program "Stephen Fry In America" - he really does your country proud, and he keeps harping on about how he was "nearly born in America".

I'm sorry I didn't identify the Maine accent, but my lugholes are not programmed to differentiate between American accents as I do with the British, but that's to be expected is it not? As a result they all sounded the same to me, until he met up with those guys in Queens, NYC. Their lingo was unmistakable and what I thought of as being the New York City equivalent of London Cockney.

By the time he got down to Alabama the accent was again umistakable - I can't understand why so many Americans regard the Southern accent with some kind of disdain - I really like it, and it invokes mixed feelings in me somehow - amusement on one side and some kind of solidarity on the other in the face of oppression and discrimination. I remember the feeling of surprise when I first heard white people in a film talking with the Southern accent - I thought it was only the black people in the cotton fields who talked like that.

When he was in Kentucky he stopped over at a place called London, and there he dropped in on a local barber's and had his locks shorn, and the barber said he liked his accent and they had a really good conversation while a wee lad of about seven was having his hair cut in the next chair looking very serious and looking at this strange guy in the next chair who "spoke all funny". It didn't take Stephen long to make the wee lad laugh while speaking funny.

Episode two of the series is entitled The Deep South - he's already included South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama in the first episode, but episode is entitled The Deep South - Arkansas, Louisiana and the big one - Texas. That should be fun, I can't wait to hear the accents of the people he meets up with.

The Radio Times says: "Stephen takes his taxi to the Deep South, which he fondly describes as "a place of cotton, courtesy, gospel music, mint juleps, divine accents (note that, guys! - I agree) - and sultry Southern belles".

From Texas he later travels through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and ends up in a very frigid Minnesota. That should be fun, too - trying to determine shades of difference in the accents along the way.

Wasn't Stephen Fry on the Young Ones?

<<I can't understand why so many Americans regard the Southern accent with some kind of disdain>>

They regard the Southern accent with disdain because they regard the South with disdain.

Pretty much like why you look down on Estuary. To a foreigner it doesn't sound any worse than another accent. In fact some foreigners are likely to not even spot any difference between Estuary and "neighbouring" accents.

<<Pretty much like why you look down on Estuary.>>

Do people really look down on Estuary? I thought is was the new national standard over there, sort of like the NCVS west of here.

<<I hope you recognise Stephen Fry when you see him, Uriel. >>

Nope, his face didn't ring a bell, I'm afraid.

What I have noticed lately that is odd is how several British writers, Fry included, have harped on and on about American politeness and hospitality to strangers. It really seems to shock them. I've been following some of the BBC cross-country campaigns, including the bus tour by your fellow Scot, and most of them have found time to express this sentiment.

Do a search on this site for " simple phonetic alphabet " for a way of writing and reading phonics using only English letters, or see my website at fonikspel.com (I don't sell anything)

Uriel - I think that Stephen Fry and my fellow Scot simply came up against one aspect of the cultural differences between this country (and Europe generally) and the USA, and it seems to me from what little I personally know about all this is that it's all a matter of perspective and attitude as well as national character.

Many British people are naturally more reserved than are most Americans, but this may well be changing on a generational basis. No way is the upcoming generation in the UK "reserved" in the same was as previous generations were, and I know for sure that older people here constantly tell us that we are "ruder and less respectful" than they were at our age, and now the up and coming teens and younger kids in Britain are seen as even more "disrespectful and considerate". This could well be down to the changed social fabric of family life and upbringing across the board.

Maybe American youth is taught to be "respectful" in ways that the British equivalent is not. I mean, we only have to look at some American TV programs to see young people, and others, addressing older people as "Sir" or "Ma'am" as a matter of course. That doesn't happene here to anything like the same degree...not at all.

Take one example - shop/store assistants, and that old chestnut "Customer Service". You've been over here, Uriel, so you must have formed your own opinion about our version of CS. OK - let's put it into a kind of "language" context here. Isn't the American word "dude" the equivalent of the British "mate"? Both used as a form of address between males, particularly. The latter is used universally here in the UK, although up here in Scotland "pal" is often the preferred word meaning the same thing.

How would your average American customer, especially the more mature man, feel or react were he to be addressed as "dude" by a teenage shop/store assistant on a casual basis? It's not unusual in the UK to hear elderly guys being addressed as "mate" by young male assistants, or any such in any commercial establishment, and mostly it is acepted without any kind of bother as it is done in a friendly manner even if it would appear to be "disrespectful" on the face of it.

It doesn't bother me at all as I am more or less the same generation as most of the younger end of the CS spectrum, but some older people can and do resent this kind of approach, as I said earlier. Only once have I heard an elderly gentleman "blow his top" at being addressed as "mate" by a young male assistant - that was in a computer store down in Epsom, just to the south of London. This was the gist of the convo, and there's no doubt that the old guy (he looked to be about 70) deliberately used pomposity to express his indignation:

Assistant (handing over goods to the man): There you are, mate!
Customer: Mate? Do we know each other? I have no recollection of ever having met you before?
Assistant (looking confused): What d'ya mean?
Customer: You called me "mate"!
Assistant (looking even more confused): Yeah mate! So what?
Customer: I am NOT you mate - I don't know you and I don't want to know you so don't call me "mate"! May I speak to the Manager?
Assistant: Yeah, mate - just a sec I'll see if he's in, mate.........
(Assistant slopes off behind the scenes)
Customer (eyes rolling and seethiung) I really don't know what the country's coming to.....
Customer NO 2 standing behind him in the queue: I quite agree with you, mate!

Anyway, here's Rude Britannia...or is it really? As I say - it's all about perspective.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/759276.stm

I do not think that there are many European languages like English in terms of the amount of borrowings that have taken place. I think that in 500 year's time, we might find that Danish, French, German, have all incorporated so much English into their vocabularies that 60% of the vocabularies are now English in origin.

Damian, thanks for point out Stephen Fry's show. I recognize him form some place but could not tell you where. I'm not sure why he chooses to go to some places and not to others, perhaps it has to do with what is famous about the U.S. in Brittan. For instance, he chooses to go to a body farm and not to Nashville, the home of a big music scene in the U.S. Also, he goes to a parole panel but not to Charleston or Savannah, which are considered quintessentially southern. This I find particularly interesting. I understand that he is trying to engage the people, the actual culture of the U.S. but this Editorializing is, though necessary given the size and diversity of the United States, very interesting to me. I would love to talk to Stephen about the some of the choices he has made.

Simon, I agree fully with your statement. There is a good deal of the English language entering into other languages. This has been happening for some time, though there has also been resistance too. The French are particularly interested in maintaining a uniquely French language. The question is if they will be able to.

Hello Wintereis (Your name will soon become a meterological reality won't it?)

Stephen Fry is obviously much more well known over here than he is over there......from what I can make out his only full length film which did the cinema circuits was "Gosford Park" - which featured a long list of very well known actors and actresses....he played the part of a local police inspector investigating a sudden death among a large group of society people (including Noel Coward) at a weekend party in a large country mansion in 1932. The most unlikely such copper you could ever imagine compared with the coppers of today but maybe they really were bumbling, pipe smoking old codgers out in the sticks in those days.

He is much more well known on TV over here as an actor, and also as a broadcaster, film director, writer and general raconteur. He first came to public notice via his first public appearance here in Edinburgh at the Festival Fringe, with the Cambridge University Footlights troupe.

I was in the books/magazines section of our local Tesco store the other day and I saw his book "Stephen Fry in America" on which this current TV series is based - knocked down in price a full 50% to £10 (cheaper than Amazon) so I chucked it into my basket. According to the book he visited every single one of the 50 states of the USA, so a well travelled Fry and a well travelled suitably adapted familiar London taxi with its steering wheel now on the wrong side. Obviously time constraints prevent every US State being featured in the TV series.

To me every American seems to speak with the same accent - except for the Southerners, the Boston lot and those garrulous guys in Queens, New York City.

He didn't go to Nashville as you say but while he was in Tennessee he headed straight for the mountains to hear hillbilly bluegrass way out in the middle of nowhere. I hope I get to hear their hillbilly accents...that'd be nice. I thought Kentucky that was the bluegrass State? He was there in the last episode having his barnet trimmed.

Stephen Fry appeared in the Blackadder series, first as the Duke of Wellington and then as "General Melchett" in the WWI part of the series.

I can't believe you did all of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Well, I've seen Gosford Park and vaguely remember the inspector and something about tea and milk and the order it's supposed to go in to the cup....and would not have made the connection.

"Dude" in a customer service situation would be appropriate pretty much only in a head shop, surf shop, or bike shop, where the clientele and the staff could reasonably be expected to be in the same generation and have the same laidback attitude.

Younger people addressing older ones as sir or ma'am in a non-customer service situation is really more of an old-fashioned, conservative, southern or western phenomenon. You won't see it much in the northeast or west coast. Can't speak for the midwest -- never been there. Don't imagine it exists in Hawaii, either.

Savannah is definitely worth seeing if you happen to be in Georgia -- I once saw it billed as "the city so pretty even Sherman couldn't burn it", and it is eminently true!