Re: Of accents & dialects

IME, rapid American "respiratory" drops a syllable, but not an 'r', so
"respitory" is inaccurate.  More like "respritory" or "respertory".
Laurie's accent is phenomenal.



On 10/30/08, And Rosta <and.rosta@...> wrote:
> Sally Caves told me that the only giveaway of Hugh Laurie's Englishness in
> "House (MD)" was that he pronounced "respiratory" as "respiratory", as the
> English do, rather than as "respitory" as the Americans do. (The English
> pronunc is /'respIr@tri/ or /r@'spIr@tri/; I don't know which one Hugh
> said.)
>
> Fans of the Wire -- which surely includes everybody who's ever been
> fortunate enough to see it -- will have been impressed not only by Dominic
> West's American accent but also by his superbly crap British accent in the
> episode in Season 2 where he pretends to be a Brit to infiltrate the Russian
> bordello.
>
> In answer to Eldin's question, it used to be very rare for American actors
> to play English people in British films, and formerly the prime example of
> such a case would have been the notorious, heroically dreadful case of Dick
> Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. But latterly we have had Gwyneth Paltrow, Renee
> Zellweger, Gillian Anderson & perhaps others acquit themselves admirably
> doing English accents in British films.
>
> --And.
>
> Gary Shannon, On 29/10/2008 22:40:
>> 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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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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