Re: Worst American Accents by British Actors and Actress


"Horace LaBadie" <hwlabadiejr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:hwlabadiejr-D8A40C.00052331052008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <WISdnbQjw4P-Fd3VnZ2dnUVZ_gadnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
"curmudgeon" <briticanlankey@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hollywood as always gone along with what many call a Generic American
Accent, North, South, East or West, American actors and actress all speak
with the same type of accent, that way LA sounds just like NYC and Chicago
sounds just like New Orleans, and Hawaii sounds just like Alaska.
No wonder then that millions of Americans have such a hard time following
regional dialects, even if they are American dialects.

Never heard Jerry Orbach or Billy Bob Thornton, I take it? Or John
Hillerman's natural accent?

You're just grazing the surface.

Tommy Lee Jones. Robert Duvall. Clint Eastwood. Frances McDormand. George Carlin. David Letterman, Jay Leno. Casey Affleck. Dolly Parton. Morgan Freeman. Denzel Washington. Gwyneth Paltrow.

Most of them, admittedly, tone their native accents down towards the "American standard newscaster" center. But there are a lot of good American actors who aren't total accent whores.

Of course, the country as a whole has been rapidly devolving into a national standard. In my lifetime, I have watched the near-total disappearance of the true "Southern" accent. And especially in the movies, almost any person depicted from the southeast with an accent uses a generic country "hick" accent.

And that beautiful educated New York accent is practically gone, as well. At least you can still hear it in pre-WW2 movies. I have never heard the wonderful old "educated Charleston" accent, for example, on film.

.

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