Advertisement
One of the Token Brits at my 4July party is a Native Scot (the other from Kent). She attended Dickens a couple of years ago and while in conversation with a participant was informed that she had the single worst fake Scottish accent the person had ever heard.
Sean then told me a story about a guy who used to play in various bands with him- Barry was just off the boat from Ireland, had to take language classes, and was informed his Irish was the worst phony accent ever heard. Direct from Ulster, the boy was.
A couple of years ago we had an Escort Service meeting at my house and my Kentish neighbor came over and told us our Cockney was All Wrong.
SO who is it that is determining how we souind? Native speakers of dialect or someone with a theatrical sense of how they think we should sound?
There is going to be a show on the History Channel soon about factual pirates in the Caribbean,I saw part of the segment on Anne Bonney. Could someone please tell me why and how a Southern Belle from Charleston SC in speaking with an extremely bad Irish accent when she should be speakin a Sutthen Draaawl?
I mean, evreybody Knows that all pirates speak with a Gloucester accent, arrrgh.
Sean then told me a story about a guy who used to play in various bands with him- Barry was just off the boat from Ireland, had to take language classes, and was informed his Irish was the worst phony accent ever heard. Direct from Ulster, the boy was.
A couple of years ago we had an Escort Service meeting at my house and my Kentish neighbor came over and told us our Cockney was All Wrong.
SO who is it that is determining how we souind? Native speakers of dialect or someone with a theatrical sense of how they think we should sound?
There is going to be a show on the History Channel soon about factual pirates in the Caribbean,I saw part of the segment on Anne Bonney. Could someone please tell me why and how a Southern Belle from Charleston SC in speaking with an extremely bad Irish accent when she should be speakin a Sutthen Draaawl?
I mean, evreybody Knows that all pirates speak with a Gloucester accent, arrrgh.
posted by:
|
SF Bay Area
|
Advertisement
Advertisement
-
Re: on authentic speech
Thu, July 6, 2006 - 1:48 PMBack in the 80s PBS broadcast "The Story Of English".
www.amazon.com/gp/product...083-9646520
www.amazon.com/gp/product...083-9646520
One thing I found interesting was that much American English today is closer to the way many in the England of Elizabeth and James than their descendants are today.
Some examples of that include the West Virginia accent, the Nantucket accent, some Maine accents and the Plymouth MA accent.
Unfortunately many of these are being lost or homogenized thanks to population shifts and the effects of mass media. -
-
Unsu...
Re: on authentic speech
Fri, July 7, 2006 - 8:38 AM
Not anymore you should check out the show called "Do you Speak American" and the accompanying book. American English is an interesting kettle of fish -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Fri, July 7, 2006 - 8:41 AMthat's "Talk American". One speaks English & talks American. Or as I am fond of saying "I was a English major and I can talk any way I want". -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Fri, July 7, 2006 - 8:48 AMQ- It has been a few years and I forget the details, but Dan wrote music explaining the very questions you are asking. It was a fun dinner theater musical. We performed it before he pirate thing became the huge rage! -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Sat, July 8, 2006 - 1:44 PMOK, I buy the Irish attorney but Anne still grew up in the american south and should have lost her Irish accent before she grew up, unless she was kept in social isolation. If anything, she would probaly have ended up sounding more British than Irish, the southern accent took a while to develop, as did the famous Noo Yawk accent.
Spose I shoulda googled her Before I asked the question, but my other ones still apply.... -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Sat, July 8, 2006 - 5:25 PMIn "The Story of English" that I mentioned before they point out that many of the early accents were very different than todays.
An Irish accent today is probably very different than one from the 16th or 17th century.
They also point out that many of the regional American accents were formed not from those speaking "proper" English but from the lower/serving classes who were brought over.
Anne living on a plantation with her father would have learned his accent as well as the workers manner of speech.
Of course the main question is; if she spoke with an Irish accent would we today recognize it as such?
Unfortunately there are no recordings for us to listen to. -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Sat, July 8, 2006 - 5:27 PMOne more thing;
She probably speaks with a bad Irish accent because the History Channel was to cheep to pay for a good one. -
-
An Interest Recording
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 2:25 PMDid y'all hear this?
www.shakespeareswords.com/audio...le.asp
I remember a few years ago when this production was just going up at the Globe. You might find it interesting. The back story and production details make for some very interesting reading and it's sort of spot on to what you've been discussing.
It sure sounds a lot like the BFA I remember from the 70s.
Noel g. -
-
This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
And A Bit More on Pronunciation.....
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 2:30 PMwww.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio
As I say, I sort of lost track of this whole thing, but it looks like the book, and possibly the recording, are out.
This is probably old news to you all, but I found it interesting. -
-
Final Driblette
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 2:34 PMwww.shaksper.net/archives/2005/1233.html
This is the site on which I was tracking the activity originally....Somes like they've now down "Troilus" as well and there seems to be recordings.....
-
-
This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: An Interest Recording
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 2:40 PMOH
MY
Goodness.
I am kissing your cyber feet!
I shall sculpt an icon of you out of cheese and offer thanks to it for the next four months!!!
thank you thank you!! -
-
Re: An Interest Recording
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 2:50 PMWhhooooo Hooo!
Check this out!
www.cambridge.org/uk/litera.../audio.htm
The first parts are the description of marrying off the gal; the second is part of the Queen Mab speech.
Pretty cool.
David Crystal is every language geek/semiotics nerd's dream date.
It's all so late 70s structuralist/linguistic/Laurie Anderson/language is a virus from outer space!!!! -
-
But We Never Got to Use It
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 2:52 PMThe Court was never allowed to wax piratical in my day. We had to be veddy Brwitish.
Borderline Victorian. I guess we were supposed to be twee in contrast to everyone else's "Ay, me hearties"
Peg used to go "broad" on us, as did Luisa, but we kids in black (as we were in those days) had to stay prissy (or some such).
-
-
Re: But We Never Got to Use It
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 2:57 PMWe tended to use BBC English as opposed to BFA to show the class difference, at least that's what they told me when I started.
ALthough we did work on the sytax & such. -
-
Re: But We Never Got to Use It
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 3:10 PMMy mom's an Aussie (old school that is--she's 82, so she was of the generation that was not allowed to talk like an "aucker," if you know what that means), so the Brit thing was pretty easy for me to do.
Everyone always assumes she's English or Welsh (or Bostonian!!!)
But we as the proto-Courtiers always seemed very "Masterpiece Theatah."
We'd be bad and get all "Peter Wimsey-ish" ("dontcha know" and "veddy" and dropping out gs, but that was only when we were being bad and misbehaving). We could get a bit utterly utter at times.
I've also been rewatching "I, Claudius" (released in 1976, so it's my vintage at Faire). It suddenly dawned on me that we early Court monkeys were channeling a lot of that "British Country Weekend House Party Goes Roman" vibe which made "I, Claudius" such a hoot!
I think Patrick Duffy was prescient and channeled John Hurt as Caligula. He couldn't possibly have seen the performance at that point. The mind reels...
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Unsu...
Re: on authentic speech
Fri, July 7, 2006 - 10:55 AM
Uhmm No, that is not the title of the program it is in fact Do you Speak American
English major away but, if PBS wants to name their program that well, that it is:
www.pbs.org/speak/ -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Sat, July 8, 2006 - 8:12 AMPax, I wasn't correcting you, I was taking a phrase and running with it.
-
-
-
-
-
Re: on authentic speech
Thu, July 6, 2006 - 7:49 PMi can...her and her father are from ireland and immigrated to the wonderful lands of the carolinas. Dan briggs and a friend of his wrote a dinner theater musical number on the history of Anne Bonney and Mary Reade. You should ask him. He had all the research down.
-
Re: on authentic speech
Thu, July 6, 2006 - 9:20 PMThe best was when Barry D. was at the office at Blackpoint taking care of paperwork and the person working the desk told him there was no BFA backstage! Leslie came out and shook her head - "Did you just tell Barry Deeney to drop his accent?" She turned a pretty shade of red (the little Nazi).
Funny. Of course, Barry was from Monaghan so the poor girl probably couldn't understand him :-).
Also, about that rule. Why shouldn't actors be able to stay in accent backstage during the day. Some new actors have a hard time dropping in and out of accent and to ask them to drop the accent they are learning backstage is just silly - but maybe that should be a new topic. -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Thu, July 6, 2006 - 9:25 PMKinda depends who you're talking To, I'd think.
'Cept for Jeremy, who Never drops character. -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Thu, July 6, 2006 - 11:03 PMI've gone back and forth with people on the subject. I sometimes find myself with half a character on backstage to keep from coming all the way down, same with language. If I'm in a business/office setting, character goes on hold. There is a type of person who doesn't just find it hard to drop it, but is having problems telling theatre from reality. Those people annoy me. -
-
Re: on authentic speech
Fri, July 7, 2006 - 8:46 AMRydell, I couldn't agree with you more. In certain characters that I have portrayed, a stage is a stage and changing an accent or voice on and off can be difficult. Although, there is a time and a place for this. In normal social settings, that behavior can be construed as ANNOYING. When people come over for a visit, I want to talk with them, not a character that appropriately suits a ren fair, and please...not in my apartment. THe excitement of learning thisnew accent is fun and should be used in appropriate settings. A "huzzah" and other such terms should be saved for the stage or street where the language and accent are best suited.
-
-
-
-
Re: on authentic speech
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 3:04 PMThose links are wonderful!
Thank you!! -
-
Those Links...
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 3:13 PMCool. I was a little hesitant to jump in there as I'm sure that ground's been well covered by the Downward Dudes, but I couldn't resist. I found the whole "in-language" thing very interesting (as did my sis who was just starting to teach R&J to high schoolers at that point. I was dying to get a recording for her, but it was too early)
Sorry if it's a repeat for the rest of you.
Noel -
-
David Crystal/Pronouncing Shakespeare
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 3:30 PMI'm such a scatter-brained dork sometimes.....
Looking back at my old e-mails, I realized that I'd been in contact with The Man Himself (Homo Ipse) and found an e-mail from the very gracious David Crystal which he sent me back in 2004 (I was really on the ball in those days I guess and has sussed him out pronto as the production had been the preceding June!).
Here's a clip of the e-mail I sent to my sis:
Begin e-mail to sis:
www.shu.ac.uk/emls/07-1/gurrothe.htm
Real Audio files
ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLTn...nciation.html
The two articles by David Crystal
Here's a clip of his e-mail message. Check out the link as well.
Crystal writes:
Thanks for your message. Happy to attach the two articles from Around the
Globe. The book, Pronouncing Shakespeare, will be published by Cambridge
University Press in about April. It will have a lot of detail, but they
wouldn't allow me an audio accompaniment. What I plan to do is put audio
extracts on the Shakespeare's Words website, as soon as a couple of teccie
issues have been resolved: www.shakespeareswords.com
Unfortunately the links don't stay "live" (but you can cut and paste) and his Word documents don't come through here. E-mail me at ngieleghem@cwclaw.com and I can forward them to you if your interested. The links above are interesting, too.
-
Unsu...
Re: Those Links...
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 4:16 PMBwhahahaahah Downward Dudes.
Like Bedlam Boys.
I love it. -
-
Re: Those Links...
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 4:21 PM"Downward Dudes are Dandy...."
The subsequent two lines I'll leave up to you, but you have to finish with
"And from Strangers They'll Take Candy!"
or
"And They're Both Known to Be Randy!"
Or some such.....
Mad Maudlin can't have all the fun, now right?
Dale Hill would kill me.
-
-
Re: Those Links...
Tue, July 11, 2006 - 4:32 PMsaving my shoes from gravel even as we speak
-
-
-
-
