Re: Of accents & dialects

I watched a movie years ago, I wish I could remember the name, where the lead
was a Brit actor (a fact I didn't know at the beginning of the movie). He had a
flawless American accent UNTIL he said the name of a church, "St. Thomas",
rendering it "Sen Thomas". I immediately knew he was a Brit, because Americans,
regardless of regional dialect, never drop the "t" at the end of "saint" in a
name, and would never render "saint" to rhyme with "zen".

--gary

--- On Wed, 10/29/08, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:

> From: Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>
> Subject: Re: Of accents & dialects
> To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
> Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 11:30 AM
> I've noticed that British actors playing American
> characters in American shows
> usually have quite good American accents; but British
> actors playing American
> characters in British shows frequently have very bad
> "American" accents.
>
> From what I've read, American actors playing British
> characters in American
> shows frequently have very bad "British" accents.
>
> Do American actors playing British characters in British
> shows, usually have
> good British accents? Or is this situation asymmetrical?

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