English accent

[Wilson Gray]

When I was in the Army in Germany, elements of the Durham Light
Infantry lived on our post, Faulenberg-Kaserne(sp?), near Baumholder,
Germany. We found that we could easily understand the English of the
officers and non-commissioned officers. However, the speech of the
enlisted men was, for all practical purposes, unintelligible. Too bad,
because they were really quite friendly blokes who enjoyed chatting,
despite getting what must have seemed to them to be a weird series of
non-sequiturs in response.

I've also had the same problem with some Australian dialects, such as,
croiky! that of the late Crocodile Hunter, when I was first exposed to
them.

We GI's also found that German as taught in American schools is quite
different from German as spoken in Germany. Once, we stopped a local
to ask where a particular bookstore was to be found. He answered our
question with a question of his own: "Will it be okay if I tell you
guys in English?" After that, we tried to speak German only when
English - we called it the "magic language," since using it worked
99.44% of the time anywhere, except in France - simply was not
understood, regardless of how loudly and slowly we spoke it.;-)

-Wilson

On 9/18/06, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: English accent
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "It would never occur to a Canadien to describe a Frenchman as
> speaking French with a French accent."
>
> My impression is that the Quebecois still feel that their version of
> French is a barbarous regional dialect, a feeling that we Yanks lost
> about our version of English about a century ago.
>
> If "Australian accent" or "American accent" are valid descriptions,
> then so in "English accent", surely.  At this stage of the dispersion
> of English around the world, the Limeys have no right to suppose that
> their version of the language is the touchstone.
>
> Of course, speaking of "an English accent" is as inadequate as
> speaking of an "Australian accent" or "American accent", since there
> are regional variations, but most of us Yanks only recognize three
> English accents (we think): Oxbridge, cockney and all the others.  But
> then Limeys can't be counted on to tell the difference between
> regional U. S. accents, either.
>
> I once heard Malachi McCourt complaining about casting directors, who,
> he said, were always young women named Melissa.  He had responded to a
> casting call for an actor to play a beefy, red-faced middle-aged
> Irishman.  There are some, including Malachi, who would say that this
> is a description of Malachi himself.  When he read his lines the
> casting director squealed "What sort of a dialect are you speaking?"
> he said, "it's not a dialect, it's an accent, and it's the accent I
> learned growing up in Cork."  He didn't get the part.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ****
>
>  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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> >
>
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--
-Wilson
----
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

--Sam Clemens

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