I think Americans are just parroting pop culture from GB, and doing their best to sound, I dunno: posh or proper or whatever. It would be like someone in Kent trying to sound like a Wyoming cowboy. As the kids say: cringe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
Also for some reason I do not understand almost all US reality shows and other entertainment(contestant based shows mainly) have to have someone British judging Americans like we are incapable of having our own citizens be makers of taste or standards.
https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2023/03/31/bonus-episode...
Politics, too.
Also, IIRC, infomercials, too.
I think America has some longstanding cultural assumptions that Europe is more culturally refined/upper class/fashionable. Probably dating from when America was mostly hick farmers and Europe had all that royalty setting trends. Throwing in a superfluous European accent is an easy way to hook into those assumptions.
And then my grandparents on my other side had thick Bronx and Queens accents respectively. I think there were a lot more variations in region and class specific accents 50+ years ago.
Yes - a new "cool brittania" era, this time mostly via TV and TikTok/Youtube rather than music.
I consider this harmlessly funny, it's the reverse of the ubiquitousness of Americanisms everywhere and the extent to which non-English speakers usually have Americanish accents.
(Long ago, US East Coasters used to adopt high class English accents for much the same reason, and there is still what's called a "mid Atlantic" accent).
That contradicts the article. They’re imitating the Essex and regional accents they hear on love island and x-factor and TikTok. Unlike previous generations that probably heard ‘posh’ or cockney accents, Gen-Z are more likely to have heard Millie-B rapping than Alan Rickman in a movie.
Agreed with your take, but there is another reason as well - just the whole "rubbing off" effect.
I've seen quite a ton of comments in more serious/non-joke threads all across social media (including HN), talking about people from all across the western europe getting pseudo-american accents (usually something generic in-between or more general like californian, not anything like the boston one lol) from consuming so much american media. And that includes countries where english was already the de-facto primary language, such as the UK. So it seems like it goes in both directions.
Anecdotally, as someone for whom american english (and english in general) wasn't the first language (but has been the primarily used language 99% of the time for the past 15 years), I definitely get the occasional slips of pronunciation if I watch a lot of british english media. That is entirely unintentional on my part though, and I correct rather quickly and return back to the baseline in a couple of days.
With this in mind, I wonder if there is data available that plots these incidences of "fake british accents" against worldwide consumption rates of british-english-heavy media. I suspect there would be a statistically-significant correlation.
It's a little disconcerting to hear American words ("fall", not "autumn"), and New York accents from people who've spent their lives in Helsinki.
Still I come from the UK, and for me it's easy to place which part of the country people spent their formative years - sometimes even which half of a city somebody has grown up in, let alone the changes you hear across 20-25 miles.
(I'm doing my part, raising a child born in Finland to understand Rab C. Nesbit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc4gB89LN7o It's also a well-known fact that Scottish accents aren't easy for voice recognition - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbDnxzrbxn4 )
Why is it disconcerting? Should people adopt a British accent simply because it’s closer geographically even if most English media they consume is American?
Words like "fall" are something I've only heard on TV until moving here. (Or when visiting America.)
I appreciate American media is global these days, so people will pick up on the dialect, but it's still a little alien to me. I could hear "fall" a hundred times in films, but if everybody I ever spoke to about autumn holidays said "autumn" that's the one that feels more natural to hear.
Aside, try "Scotland the What" if you're interested in some different Scottish accents (I think they're mainly Highland, Doric Scots).
I grew up in Texas and I’m a liberal who’s lived all over the country. I meet lots of people in California who’ve never left home and think people from X are like A and from Y are like B.
But put four people from any location into the same room and you’ll find plenty of differences between them.
I think most of us first discover this fact in our own nuclear families. :D
But put four people from any location into the same room and you’ll find plenty of differences between them.
Aren't these saying the same thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Roper_(video_game_produce...
My favorite is Margot Robbie's over-the-top "Brooklyn" accent for her Harley Quinn character.
It opens up American roles for them. Nobody is going to cast Brad Pitt as a Brit, an Australian, or a Kiwi. He's a fantastic actor, but they're going to use the homegrown talent. So there's no incentive for American actors to really learn another accent. Instead, we get a mountain of non-American actors doing mostly-good-but-sometimes-awful accents because that's where the money is.
Except for Irish roles, for some reason.
Brad Pitt as a northern Irishman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FjQQrxBhwQT
Brad Pitt as an Irish Traveller: https://youtu.be/9Jar2XkBboo?t=28
FTFY
But on the other hand they don't, because true RP is generally far too pretentious. Even in movies/TV, you see it mainly only in villains and historical dramas, or for comedic effect.
Most people are generally referring to a kind of middle-class London accent. Like Jude Law for example. Neither "posh" nor "regional" nor "lower class" nor "multicultural" (quotes for irony where necessary, obviously London is a region). I'm not sure what the name for that is though?
As a North American, I find it one of the harder accents to understand. It has undergone a lot of interesting sound changes in recent decades, not shared by many other dialects. Likely a result of dialect flattening from 20th century population movements. "Football" -> [ˈfʊʔbɔo] (sounds like "fuh-baoh" to me) or "bottle" -> ['bɒʔo] {"bah-oh"?) or "Tuesday" -> [tʃuːz.deɪ] ("choose day").
"The water in Maiorca doesn't taste like what it ought to"
"THE WARTER IN MAJORKER DUNT TASTE LOIK WORRIT ORTER"
You really think so? Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine how anyone could mistake the two. (Possibly different people have different ears for accents.)
As a Brit the only convincing fake British accent I can remember in many years is James Marsters who played Spike in Buffy. I never once suspected he was American (in the pre-internet days).
Mid-Atlantic accents such as Loyd Grossman, are hard on the ears. "Soss", rather than "sauce" is particularly odd.
And then flip it - UK actors putting on US accents. Most of them sound to me like they're from the West Country such as Somerset, just rolling their Rs.
For US readers, the currently growing new London accent is awful and nothing like the 'Cockney' accent you might expect from watching older films. I've yet to see a US actor try that.
That's strange, I always thought his accent was awful and I'm a Brit too. Spike was one of the best characters though.
Yeah but Hugh Laurie in House though
> For US readers, the currently growing new London accent is awful and nothing like the 'Cockney' accent you might expect from watching older films. I've yet to see a US actor try that.
Multicultural London English. It's not "awful", although you are entitled to your views. Personally, I think it's great for comedy, have you heard Big Shaq's Man's Not Hot ?
Disclosure: British person living close to Wyoming, in Montana, so I have a fake US accent.
English people vastly prefer trying to do a sterotypical New Yawk accent because they can hide their mistakes in the extremity.
Afaict, Scots are the best at doing an American accent, followed by the Irish, followed by the Australians and the Welsh, then you get to English people.
Dominic West and Idris Elba are both English and often cited as 2 examples of British actors everyone thought were American due to the wire.
There’s an interview with snoop dogg where he was allowed on the set of the wire and couldn’t believe idris was British when he introduced himself.
Damien Lewis is also English and often cited as a master of American accents.
>But Gen Z has embraced bad imitations of Cockney slang or a Yorkshire dialect, using obviously fake, theatrical voices to make light of low-grade daily dramas.