And then there are the Americans who assume EVERY British accent is a HIGH-CLASS British accent. Someone said to me about an acquaintance who does indeed speak with a Cockney accent, "I love to hear his accent! It's so refined!" And a friend who works at the stage supply company says she can always recognize one particular community- theater box office tape on the phone because the speaker "has a phony British accent, which people seem to equate with being artistes!" (No offense intended to any true Brits out there who ARE artistes, or to Cockneys who ARE refined!)
--Ruth Anne Baumgartner gipsy scholar and amateur costumer On Apr 3, 2008, at 8:47 PM, Chris Bertani wrote: > On 03 Apr 2008, Kate M Bunting wrote: > >> Dianne wrote: >>> Point was simply that it would be harder for an American to >>> distinguish >>> between regional British accents, as it would be hard for someone >>> from >>> England to distinguish between say, Michigan and Ohio. >> >> and Susan Carroll-Clark replied : >> >>> Those states in particular are a really good case in point. >>> There isn't >>> an Ohio accent--there are three or four, at least. There's the >>> Cleveland/Northern accent (fairly nasal, somewhat akin to the >>> typical >>> Michigan accent), the Appalachian accent (SE part of the state, >>> akin to >>> West Virginia and eastern Kentucky), and two Midwestern accents -- >>> one a >>> little more generic than the other (which involves people saying >>> "warsh" >>> for wash and "crick" for creek). >> >> So are there several varieties of Yorkshire accent, as it's a >> large county (my mother came from East Yorks.). My original point >> was that Northern English speech in general is very different from >> Cockney (working-class London) speech. Even I can tell the >> difference between a New York and a Deep South accent! > > > I may not be able to tell a Tennessee accent from a Kentucky > accent, but > I also know better than to call something a Kentucky accent when I > can't > tell the difference. I've noticed a disturbing tendency among some > Americans to call all british accents "Cockney", which bothers me no > end. I've even heard the "pirate accent" (which is descended from > Robert Newton's Cornish accent in Treasure Island) described as > "Cockney".... > > -- Chris Bertani > www.goblinrevolution.org/costumes > _______________________________________________ > h-costume mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
