Just caught Claudia Schiffer waffling away about art projects in London. With a somewhat posh British accent…
Damn, it does wonders for her sex appeal. I’d lost interest in her years ago. I must be developing a taste for older, pseudo-posh, wannabee-British gals…
Nonetheless, nothing grates me more than the Saffas who come to Taiwan and develop the most annoying pseudo-Californian accent.
I’m a Saffa, born and bred, and I’d like to think that my accent is part of my heritage. I guess some lose theirs more easily than others, or inversely, gain an accent of their new locale with relative ease.
But the plonkers who go out of their way to not sound South African, and try so hard to sound otherwise, piss on my battery.
And I find it equally hilarious when folks from the USA come to Taiwan, or other countries, and suddenly develop a ridiculous “British” accent and speech pattern.
Who do they think they’re foolin’?..
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]And I find it equally hilarious when folks from the USA come to Taiwan, or other countries, and suddenly develop a ridiculous “British” accent and speech pattern.
Who do they think they’re foolin’?.. [/quote]
I can’t believe the number of Americans here who says “cheers”. And I don’t mean while drinking, I mean like “cheers” as in “thanks” or whatever the hell it is supposed to mean. No offense to the Brits and SAs that use it, but it is just so not American. What’s that all about?
I have a pet theory on this and it has a lot to do with the lack of emphasis in standard midwestern/Californian English.
A British accent enunciates certain parts of words much more clearly and loudly, which is why bars nearly always get my drink orders wrong while the Aussies and Brits can make elaborate drink orders in their English and get what they want. Especially the Aussies, who are able to enunciate the hell out of any word.
My guess is that the Americans who speak more “brit” when they move overseas are not necessarily putting on airs – they’re just trying to overenunciate so that locals will understand. If you want to pierce the air between the dancers’ legs at Carnegies to get the right drink when things are hopping, you’d better over-eeeee-nun-ci-ate a bit. For that matter, some people may even be known to overenunciate a lot to get their local secretaries to make copies, and so on. If overenunciated Americanese is enough to sound “british”, then perhaps that simply goes to show how 230 years isn’t enough to erase everything.
I think the most interesting thing about this, MFGR, is that it is modern British English that has “erased” the established way of pronouncing words and replaced it with something new. Language historians generally agree that American English is much closer to original British English than the accents prevalent in England today are. They sometimes call this the “conservative phonology” of American English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_english). Obviously “conservative” change does not mean no change, just that it happens at a very slow rate. So while speakers in England were busy creating new accents at an impressive rate over the last couple hundred years, their lazy, backward American cousins have just continued to speak in essentially the same way that English had always been spoken.
Thus, if a modern Yank and a modern Brit were to time-travel together back to the UK of 230 years ago, the American would sound right at home (well maybe not right at home --but relative to the other traveler) , and the 18th Century British people who met them would wonder why the Brit had this strange accent…
Like hell they would! They’d be far more interested in his iPod and his Nikes.[/quote]
Yeah, I guess it might depend on what kind of time travel technology was used. From what I have observed, most of the time machines available today send you back naked – so the iPod and Nikes might not make it.
If only we had a volunteer for this experiment. Ideally, we would need an intelligent, outgoing person, who didn’t mind travel or adventure, wore his hair longer to match the style of the day, had the appropriate accent for the experiment, and didn’t mind the nakedness part…
Excellent point! Having just read a book on the history of the English language myself, you are completely right on the American English being a bit more like the English of olden times.
My guess as to why the Brits started to overenunciate their English over the past 230 years is that they needed to be heard over the clatter and roar of Industrial-Age machinery in the early 1800s. Australians probably took this overenunciation to its current extraordinary Aussie heights simply in order to be heard over each the noise of each other. Meanwhile, we Americans kept our softer English so that the injuns wouldn’t hear, find and scalp us.
OK, so if I’ve understood this whole thread right, and I’m pretty sure I have…
Since the American English accent is heavily influenced by the Irish accent, the Irish are actually the only ones who still have the “right” accent, and those Brits just changed theirs to try and sound posh.
My guess as to why the Brits started to overenunciate their English over the past 230 years is that they needed to be heard over the clatter and roar of Industrial-Age machinery in the early 1800s. Australians probably took this overenunciation to its current extraordinary Aussie heights simply in order to be heard over each the noise of each other. Meanwhile, we Americans kept our softer English so that the injuns wouldn’t hear, find and scalp us.[/quote] This is a pisstake-right?
--but relative to the other traveler) , and the 18th Century British people who met them would wonder why the Brit had this strange accent…
