Comments on: Trevor Nunn on American Accents http://www.bardblog.com/trevor-nunn-on-american-accents/ Quips, Quibbles, Queries, and Quarks from a Quirky Bardolator Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:02:30 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Chathan http://www.bardblog.com/trevor-nunn-on-american-accents/comment-page-1/#comment-908 Chathan Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:24:44 +0000 http://www.bardblog.com/?p=382#comment-908 If you listen to Daniel Day Lewis's accent in There Will be Blood (set during the first decade of the 20th century), I think you'll hear something that's not necessarily identical but probably very similar to what many Americans were speaking at the time. Teddy Roosevelt surely has a converging accent on many points when you hold it in comparison to DDL's in TWBB. The West Country accent is quite similar to what we call "Pirate English" and yet given a few decades of development in the New World and perhaps some mixture with other accents (Irish, Scottish, German), you could easily imagine that becoming an American-esque kind of accent. Fact is, the American accent is not static. Its been changing, has always been so, and always will. Americans 100 years ago did not all speak like how we do today. And its quite likely Americans 100 years before that (during the Jefferson presidency) had a radically different accent too. I won't be surprised if 100 years from now we start sounding a bit more like Hispanics (given the growth of Spanish). Ben Franklin once said that he feared Germans swamping the Anglo-Saxon base of the US, due to their massive immigration. He turned out to be quite right, as more people in the US have German ancestry than English ancestry. The general American (midwest derived) accent clearly reflects that German-Dutch-Scandinavian heritage. If you hear a polished English speaker in one of the Scandinavian states or even in Holland, you'll notice some similarities to GA. Not too hard to see how peasants adopted English to something we hear today. Likewise, there's a concern today over the growing numbers of Hispanic immigrants. if there's a reason why I'm interested in the possibility of living at least to the near-end of the century, its to see how Spanish affects the way we'll be speaking the English language here. I don't know about the cynics, but I, for one, am quite excited by the possibilities. If you listen to Daniel Day Lewis’s accent in There Will be Blood (set during the first decade of the 20th century), I think you’ll hear something that’s not necessarily identical but probably very similar to what many Americans were speaking at the time. Teddy Roosevelt surely has a converging accent on many points when you hold it in comparison to DDL’s in TWBB. The West Country accent is quite similar to what we call “Pirate English” and yet given a few decades of development in the New World and perhaps some mixture with other accents (Irish, Scottish, German), you could easily imagine that becoming an American-esque kind of accent.
Fact is, the American accent is not static. Its been changing, has always been so, and always will. Americans 100 years ago did not all speak like how we do today. And its quite likely Americans 100 years before that (during the Jefferson presidency) had a radically different accent too. I won’t be surprised if 100 years from now we start sounding a bit more like Hispanics (given the growth of Spanish).
Ben Franklin once said that he feared Germans swamping the Anglo-Saxon base of the US, due to their massive immigration. He turned out to be quite right, as more people in the US have German ancestry than English ancestry. The general American (midwest derived) accent clearly reflects that German-Dutch-Scandinavian heritage. If you hear a polished English speaker in one of the Scandinavian states or even in Holland, you’ll notice some similarities to GA. Not too hard to see how peasants adopted English to something we hear today.
Likewise, there’s a concern today over the growing numbers of Hispanic immigrants. if there’s a reason why I’m interested in the possibility of living at least to the near-end of the century, its to see how Spanish affects the way we’ll be speaking the English language here. I don’t know about the cynics, but I, for one, am quite excited by the possibilities.

]]> By: Kent Richmond http://www.bardblog.com/trevor-nunn-on-american-accents/comment-page-1/#comment-824 Kent Richmond Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:34:56 +0000 http://www.bardblog.com/?p=382#comment-824 Here is a post I submitted on the same discussion topic elsewhere. The discussion had been initiated by comments by actor, Nicholas Cage, who felt American accents had the wrong rhythm to perform Shakespeare. ---------- Of course, Americans are perfectly capable of giving great performances in American accents. So what motivates Nicholas Cage to make such a claim? Cage, who was born in Long Beach, California, my hometown, speaks a dialect that has sometimes been called “broad,” “General American” or “North Midland.” This North Midland dialect has spread in a long, expanding swath from a narrow band running from southern New Jersey through the center of Pennsylvania and through states north of the Ohio River and below the Great Lakes. It expands its geographical reach across the Midwest, widening steadily until its range extends along the entire Pacific Coast. Because of its coast-to-coast reach, this dialect does not allow easy identification of the speaker’s place of birth. As a result, it has become the least marked of all the dialects in the United States and seems geographically and socially neutral (meaning middle class). Although most Americans do not speak it, it has the impression of being “the” American accent. This neutrality should make it comfortable for the Shakespeare stage because it gives away little about the actor’s geographic origin. Much like the Received Pronunciation of England, North Midland tells us more about the speaker's social class than place of origin. I wonder if this feature, its neutrality and middle class feel, is what bothers Cage. Americans who enjoy Shakespeare still find Shakespeare a bit exotic (and British) and therefore expect to hear an accent different from what they hear every day. So American actors will often affect a British “stage” accent to add an element that places the play in a different time and place. In other words, it is not the rhythm of American English that is the problem. American English is entirely suited to iambic pentameter and verse. We Americans simply expect something a bit more foreign and exotic. Many Americans also find British accents, even the stigmatized ones, more proper. We see Shakespeare’s language as quite stylized and supposedly proper, so we expect a stylized, “proper” accent even if that accent is not Received Pronunciation. What about Trevor Nunn’s claim? Is this North Midland American dialect closer to Shakespeare’s English than the Received Pronunciation spoken by much of the upper crust in Britain? Probably not. Both dialects have no doubt changed significantly since Shakespeare’s time. But the North Midland dialect had a huge contribution from Scot and Irish immigrants who made up as much as one-seventh of the colonists. Many early colonists who settled outside of New England came from the south and west of England and spoke dialects quite distinct from those in the London area. Also don’t forget the influence of two other groups—African Americans, who were among the early colonists, and millions of immigrants who arrived after the 1840s. Received Pronunciation developed from a regional dialect spoken in the London area before spreading around Britain as a “neutral” accent. Its geographical proximity to London suggests that it would be closer to the accents spoken on a London stage in 1600. In the end, though, none of this matters. We have no recordings of anyone speaking English before the 1880s and precise, or “narrow,” phonetic transcription, was still several centuries ahead. We can only guess as to how anyone in the past actually sounded. Go back and listen to American actors in 1930s movies or a president from the early 20th century. Where have those accents gone? In the space of one lifetime, Katherine Hepburn’s accent has gone extinct. Good luck trying to find someone today who sounds quite like Teddy Roosevelt or Calvin Coolidge. (Then, for comparison, listen to Herbert Hoover, who was raised in Iowa, Oregon, and California. His accent seems quite contemporary). Kent Richmond See David Crystal's "Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language" for a fun, accessible introduction to English dialects around the world. The book is a wonderful bargain. Here is a post I submitted on the same discussion topic elsewhere. The discussion had been initiated by comments by actor, Nicholas Cage, who felt American accents had the wrong rhythm to perform Shakespeare.

———-
Of course, Americans are perfectly capable of giving great performances in American accents. So what motivates Nicholas Cage to make such a claim?

Cage, who was born in Long Beach, California, my hometown, speaks a dialect that has sometimes been called “broad,” “General American” or “North Midland.” This North Midland dialect has spread in a long, expanding swath from a narrow band running from southern New Jersey through the center of Pennsylvania and through states north of the Ohio River and below the Great Lakes. It expands its geographical reach across the Midwest, widening steadily until its range extends along the entire Pacific Coast. Because of its coast-to-coast reach, this dialect does not allow easy identification of the speaker’s place of birth. As a result, it has become the least marked of all the dialects in the United States and seems geographically and socially neutral (meaning middle class). Although most Americans do not speak it, it has the impression of being “the” American accent. This neutrality should make it comfortable for the Shakespeare stage because it gives away little about the actor’s geographic origin. Much like the Received Pronunciation of England, North Midland tells us more about the speaker’s social class than place of origin.

I wonder if this feature, its neutrality and middle class feel, is what bothers Cage. Americans who enjoy Shakespeare still find Shakespeare a bit exotic (and British) and therefore expect to hear an accent different from what they hear every day. So American actors will often affect a British “stage” accent to add an element that places the play in a different time and place. In other words, it is not the rhythm of American English that is the problem. American English is entirely suited to iambic pentameter and verse. We Americans simply expect something a bit more foreign and exotic. Many Americans also find British accents, even the stigmatized ones, more proper. We see Shakespeare’s language as quite stylized and supposedly proper, so we expect a stylized, “proper” accent even if that accent is not Received Pronunciation.

What about Trevor Nunn’s claim? Is this North Midland American dialect closer to Shakespeare’s English than the Received Pronunciation spoken by much of the upper crust in Britain? Probably not. Both dialects have no doubt changed significantly since Shakespeare’s time. But the North Midland dialect had a huge contribution from Scot and Irish immigrants who made up as much as one-seventh of the colonists. Many early colonists who settled outside of New England came from the south and west of England and spoke dialects quite distinct from those in the London area. Also don’t forget the influence of two other groups—African Americans, who were among the early colonists, and millions of immigrants who arrived after the 1840s. Received Pronunciation developed from a regional dialect spoken in the London area before spreading around Britain as a “neutral” accent. Its geographical proximity to London suggests that it would be closer to the accents spoken on a London stage in 1600.

In the end, though, none of this matters. We have no recordings of anyone speaking English before the 1880s and precise, or “narrow,” phonetic transcription, was still several centuries ahead. We can only guess as to how anyone in the past actually sounded. Go back and listen to American actors in 1930s movies or a president from the early 20th century. Where have those accents gone? In the space of one lifetime, Katherine Hepburn’s accent has gone extinct. Good luck trying to find someone today who sounds quite like Teddy Roosevelt or Calvin Coolidge. (Then, for comparison, listen to Herbert Hoover, who was raised in Iowa, Oregon, and California. His accent seems quite contemporary).

Kent Richmond

See David Crystal’s “Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language” for a fun, accessible introduction to English dialects around the world. The book is a wonderful bargain.

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