Americans have a type of fascination with the English accent. It has enchanted and fascinated us for hundreds of years, to not point out all the new actors du jour with British accents (I’m taking a look at you, Andrew Garfield).
But pulling off a British accent is less complicated stated than completed. Recently London comic, presenter and self-described “persistent Englishman” Benedict Townsend posted on TikToksaying there’s one phrase specifically that appears to journey up Americans taking part in English characters.
It’s not that they overlook to pronounce the “h” in “herb” or maintain the American pronunciation of “vine” as an alternative of “vit” in “vitamin.”
In truth it’s a lot much less apparent: the phrase “daughter”.
Americans who play English characters in movie and tv are likely to pronounce the phrase as “dah-ter,” however Benedict says it is an “absolute clue” that they are not really from throughout the pond.
“I feel any phrase that has that particular ‘a’ sound is all the time a clue, like ‘water’. You’ll hear somebody do a fairly flawless English accent, after which unexpectedly they’re going to say ‘wutter’ and your eyebrow will go up,” Benedict advised BuzzFeed.
He explains in his video that, so far as he is aware of, there is no such thing as a Englishman who would pronounce “daughter” with the quick “o” sound for the primary syllable. Rather, it can normally sound just like the vowel sound in a phrase like “north”.
Benedict did a follow-up video a couple of months later, explaining how he and his spouse “inside a microsecond” had recognized the American within the forged of the Netflix collection An excellent lady’s information to homicide.
Benedict’s recommendation to Americans attempting to have a convincing English accent is two-fold. First, take into consideration the English pronunciation of “door” whenever you say the phrase “daughter.” And secondly, select a very outlined accent based mostly on a particular location in England somewhat than the “quasi-English accent” employed by many (together with Peter Dinklage on recreation of Thrones — «however I forgive him», stated Benedetto).
“I feel the largest mistake is to overdo it. Quite a lot of American actors determine to make use of a usually ‘British’ accent, which is type of a mash-up of each English accent they’ve ever heard, and so they find yourself sounding the poshest of the bunch. northern hemisphere. The finest transfer, I feel, is to decide on an insanely particular accent (and England has it many) and persist with it like glue,” he advised BuzzFeed.
However, the phrase “daughter” will not be the one English accent mistake. “For some time there was an obsession with saying ‘pip pip’ when doing an English accent. I do not know what ‘pip pip’ is; no Englishman, regardless of how posh, ever stated ‘pip pip.’ ,” Benedict stated. “Even the phrase ‘truck’ journeys folks up and turns into ‘lowree.’”
Commenters on his video identified different phrases they observed American actors mispronouncing:
As some have identified, this mispronunciation comes from what is named the cradle fusiona linguistic sound change wherein North American English audio system started to pronounce phrases like “cot” and “caught” (or “tot” and “taught”, “inventory” and “stalk”, and so on.) the identical approach over time, whereas in British English they’re nonetheless distinct.
I additionally requested Benedict if there are any quirks he notices in the way in which English actors pronounce American accents. “Oh, all the time. The most blatant phrase that lots of people in my TikTook feedback have introduced up is the phrase ‘something,’ which English actors prefer to pronounce as ‘ennything,’ even after they’re taking part in Americans. I’ve been saying that for some time the very phrase “America” is probably one of the vital troublesome phrases for a non-American to pronounce with an American accent.”
So, attaining a convincing English accent is not as straightforward as dropping your jaw and including a couple of “pip pips,” however with somewhat examine and apply, you will be fooling folks very quickly, Renée Zellweger model.
Who’s your “wait, they’re really British (or American)?” actor? Is there a phrase that you simply assume is a powerful clue that an actor is imitating an accent? Sound off within the feedback.
