English accent

[David Bergdahl]

[see comment below]

On 9/15/06, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: more on university names on Language Log
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> But then, as my colleague John Algeo and others have pointed out, the
> great majority of English speakers alive do NOT live (and have ever not
> lived) in England.
>
> It annoys me excessively when American Shakespearean actors (professional
> and amateur both) assume they are supposed to pronounce Shakespeare's lines
> with a facsimile of late-20th-century British pronunciation--as Shakespeare
> himself (having ever not lived in late-20th-century England) certainly did
> NOT!
>
> --Charlie
> _____________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:36:56 -0400
> >From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >Subject: Re: more on university names on Language Log
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
>
> >BTW, I heard an Englishman on TV refer to himself as standing out inthe
> U.S. because of his speaking "with an English accent." Many years ago,
> Jacques Barzun, discussing cultural imperialism, wrote that only Americans
> had the gall to speak of the English as speaking English with an English
> accent. It would never occur to a Canadien to describe a Frenchman as
> speaking French with a French accent.
> >
> >-Wilson
>

I don't remember who it's attributed to, but there's a famous quip of an
actor responding to a comment on his English accent--"Ma'am, I do not have
an English accent, I AM English."

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