Can British people pretend to speak like Americans?
Can British people pretend to speak like Americans?
I mean, are they able to immitate American accent perfectly?
I've seen some American actors immitating British accent but I've hardly
seen British actors mimicking American accent.
Let's say you are British and you want to manipulate other people.
Do you think you can pretend to speak like American almost perfectly?
If you are American, can you immitate British accent perfectly?
Please answer my question!
Youtube is full of US or British people trying to speak the other accent lol.
I suppose it depends on who you are trying to deceive.
A non-native speaker may believe you whereas it would be more difficult to fool an American.
I've seen quite a few British actors playing Americans on BBC. It's almost never convincing.
Besides the fact that they get the intonation wrong, the use of the linking "r" gives them away every time.
(By linking "r", they say, for example, vanillar ice cream)
I've noticed that myself, that non-rhotic English English speakers generally end up giving themselves away if they try to speak North American English by where they place /r/, not just with linking [r\] but also because they generally have little intuition as to where /r/ should be placed in North American English (as outside the most conservative non-rhotic English English there is generally very limited information available as to where postvocalic /r/ "should" be in most English English dialects).
<<I've noticed that myself, that non-rhotic English English speakers generally end up giving themselves away if they try to speak North American English by where they place /r/, not just with linking [r\] but also because they generally have little intuition as to where /r/ should be placed in North American English (as outside the most conservative non-rhotic English English there is generally very limited information available as to where postvocalic /r/ "should" be in most English English dialects).>>
Sorry, Travis...it might be too late and I'm a bit slow on the uptake but what you wrote doesn't really make sense to me. You say that non-rhotic speakers make mistakes as they don't know how to place the rs. But at the same time you are talking about postvocalic r-sounds in most English English dialects. How does the lack of information about post vocalic r-s in most English English dialects come to the picture when you are talking about Brits imitating North-American accents and not the other way round?
Anyways, what's so difficult in pronouncing the r-s in the right positions? I can't pronounce them but not because I don't know where to place them - I know it in theory and I'd never pronounce them in the wrong positions. I simply fail to pronounce them because I'm not used to it.
It's relatively easy if you are a good speller (which I'm not really) - you have to pronounce the r-s that are written down.
Speaking of r-s, I find it quite amusing that here in Germany lots of people tend to overgeneralise the intrusive r-s, i.e. they say for example "idear" insted of "idea", even if the word isn't followed by a vowel.
Erratum:
how to place=where to place
and many others but I can't be bothered to correct all my mistakes. It would take me donkey's years. :-)
Liz, I know the answer to your question, but I don't have the vocabulary to express it!! lol I'll try.
In words like "war"--with no vowel succeeding--English actors just don't pronounce the "r" correctly; the vowel-lowering on the "ah" sound (beautiful, btw), along with a slight hesitation in speaking the "r", labels them as an actor. In American speech, the "ah" and the "r" sound are blended in more of single contiguous sound.
Was that it, Travis? I can hear it, but can't express it. <chuckles>
Actually, no. What I meant is that there are not many cues given in non-rhotic English English dialects as to where postvocalic /r/ should and should not be placed in rhotic English dialects. Note that this is not due to non-rhoticism in and of itself but rather the subsequent smoothing of diphthongs created by non-rhoticism, which eliminated information about where /r/ had once been. Consequently, it is often difficult to properly place postvocalic /r/ when trying to approximate a rhotic English dialect. As a result, one sometimes hears things like hypercorrect forms which have /r/ where rhotic dialects do not actually have it and like.
(Note that the opposite, trying to approximate a non-rhotic dialect when one's native dialect is rhotic is much easier as it does not require the *addition* of any information to one's speech which would not have already been there to begin with.)
>>I'm sure they can. In fact, British people who immigrate to the U.S. or Canada at a young enough age often lose their British accents entirely. Think of comedian Bob Hope who had an English father and Welsh mother. He came to the U.S. as a young boy but his accent always sounded very Hollywood American. <<
I'm not saying that they can't, but rather that it's more difficult, especially if one is not immersed in an environment where a rhotic dialect is spoken. The matter about people moving from England to North America is that they are consequently going to be immersed in a rhotic dialect (unless they live in particular limited areas of New England or the Coastal South), which would greatly ease being able to pick up rhoticness.
Bob Hope - not long ago I saw a TV program featuring him and apparently many years ago he went back to Craigton Road, Eltham, in South East London, to see the house in which he was born in 1903. He went with his parents to live permanently in America when he was 4 years old, and he always joked about wanting to leave England the moment he was told that he stood no chance of ever becoming King of England. Any kid of 4 going to live in America is bound to be speaking like a native born Yankee Doodle in a very short space of time. According to British Expats now living in Ameirca they are old enough to do their utmost NOT to lose their British accents under any circumstances, but given enough time it's inevitable that the odd Americanisms and tuns of phrase will creep into their "well preserved at all costs" UK accents of whatever kind. Check out the Brit Expats in the USA sites and you will see how strongly they resist adopting American expats. No doubt the same is true for Americans living over here. Ruby Wax has lived here for yonks and yonks and she still sounds as if she's never ever set foot outside of Florida.
I can pretty well determine how good or bad an American actor's/actress's version of a British accent is - more often than not it's a repro of a standard type English English RP thing as per Paltrow or Zellweger (it seems that female Americans are better at this than are the blokes. The RP E-E is probably the easiest for them to mimic as it's the one most Americans are familiar with by a long way I would guess. Paltrow is pretty well top grade although she does slip up now and again - the old rhotics show through, and sometimes the intonations don't sound quite authentic enough for me for it to be absolutely spot on - and that's coming from a Scot who doesn't normally live among RP E-E or any kind of E-E accents, although loads and loads of English people now seem to live in Edinburgh, but now that I'm working down here in London at the minute I'm surrouned by the b*ggers. :-) ...and even they are a pretty mixed bunch! In fact a modified version of Estuaryspeak London style is quite obvious.....and that's pretty much age related really.
I can't comment too well on the ability of Brits to mimic American accents and say whether their efforts are good or bad. I'm not familiar enough with US accents to make any sound judgments, but when I have heard some Brits adopt American accents in whatever circumstance they all sound the same to me pretty much - a sort of standard American - probably the American version of RP - G-AE - coming off a British tongue - except when I went to see "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the National Theatre on London's South Bank a couple of years ago. The entire cast drawled in a pretty authentic (to my ears) Deep South American accent - the "y'all" type thing. A fairly large cast but the only true American on stage was Glenn Close (the bunny boiler). I reckon she had it spot on.
Try and work out what I mean with my typos. I'm in a rush to go out - sorry about them - no time to correct except one of the "expats" should read "accents".
<< I've seen some American actors immitating British accent but I've hardly
seen British actors mimicking American accent. >>
I didn't know that Bob Hoskins -- who I know mostly from Who Framed Roger Rabbit and (ugh) the live-action Super Mario Bros. film -- is British until I watched a special feature on the Who Framed Roger Rabbit DVD and he spoke in his normal voice.
The accent he has in those movies is might be artificial, although it seems fitting for a stereotypical New York "tough guy" type, but I couldn't tell that it was a Brit putting it on rather than an American. And it's still convincing enough that if I heard such an accent in "real life", I'd probably assume it was real. Though people who are actually from New York might not. ;)
- Kef
''I've seen quite a few British actors playing Americans on BBC.''
Kate Winslet's Californian accent is very convincing.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zNkhrFQNK4g
Gillian Anderson's RP accent is very convincing too.http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ws60MdOaNWU