Accents in Cold Mountain (the movie)

[Jonathan Lighter]

And the final flaw is that it's always easy to pontificate about the accuracy of screen accents, especially if you're a native speaker.  And the screen accents almost always are decried. But unless you're a dialectologist or have been an unusually attentive listener all your life, your perceptions may not be especially accurate anyway.

In a similar vein, the writer believes that Zelwegger is a master of "Britspeak."  Elsewhere I've noted that some Britons regard her Bridget Jones accent as pretty awful.  It sounded believable to me - as did the "Cold Mountain" accents. But I guess, like most people, I was more interested in watching the movie than in analyzing the effectiveness of the dialect coach.

BTW, I've never before heard the assertion that what we'd recognize as "a Southern accent" didn't exist before 1865.  Those early dialect writers must have been amazingly prescient in that case.  A little thing like losin' the Civil War wouldn't suddenly start people a-talkin' funny - and in two or three markedly different ways at that.

JL



"Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Peter A. McGraw"

Subject: Re: Accents in Cold Mountain (the movie)
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Another flaw in his argument, especially the part holding up John Edwards
as a model for North Carolina speech, is that Edwards was born in SOUTH
Carolina (don't remember where), and IIRC moved to NC only as an adult.

Then of course there's the fact that IIRC the female lead and her father
hail from Charleston, the native speech of their new home would be that of
the Appalachians, etc.

Peter Mc.

--On Friday, April 8, 2005 6:12 AM -0700 James Smith
wrote:

> Inconsistent accents may or may not be a valid
> criticism.
>
> First, as I understand - and I ask those with
> expertise to comment and correct as necessary - what
> we recognize as a "southern" accent didn't even exist
> 150 years ago, actually developed after the War of
> Northern Aggression. Can the same be said for the
> "North Carolina" accent? ...did John Edwards
> great-great-grandfather (assuming he lived in NC)
> speak with the same accent as John?
>
> Second: did all the characters in Cold Mountain come
> from the same region in NC? Does it even say they're
> all NC natives? Were they all from families that had
> lived in the area for generations, or were they a mix
> of old timers and new comers? Even if they were from
> long established families, how much variation in
> speech would be expected from town to town, county to
> county?
>
> Just some questions that came to mind as I read
> Michael Reisman's comments.
>
>
>
> --- Paul Frank
wrote:
>> The Cardozo Insider
>> Issue: 2/8/04
>>
>> "A more serious flaw is shared by almost all the
>> actors: although they are supposed to be from North
>> Carolina, not a single one is able to pull off the
>> accent. Geography may be to blame, as the
>> combination of Australia's Kidman, England's Law and
>> Winstone, Canada's Donald Sutherland (as
>> Kidman's father), and Harvard's Portman make for a
>> linguistic goulash.
>>
>> Listen to a John Edwards stump speech. Turn on
>> Charlie Rose or Bill Moyers on Channel 13. That's
>> what North Carolinans sound like. There is a natural
>> musicality in the cadence of their speech.
>> Kidman forces it, and the others don't really even
>> come close. Worse, Zellweger (who mastered
>> Britspeak in Bridget Jones' Diary) sounds like she
>> spent too much time watching Dukes of Hazzard
>> reruns. Remember Daaayzee Duke? The usually
>> wonderful Philip Seymour Hoffman, as a defrocked
>> preacher, takes us into Blanche DuBois territory.
>> Maybe this is all a bit nitpicky. It is a movie,
>> not real-life, after all. But the garbled dialects
>> in this film take us out of the Civil War-era
>> South and transport us into 21st century Hollywood.
>> I think it's time to read Charles Frazier's novel. "
>>
>>
> http://www.cardozoinsider.com/news/2004/02/08/Entertainment/Cold-Mountain
> .Six.Characters.In.Search.Of.A.Dialect.Coach-600708.shtml
>>
>>
>> Paul
>> ________________________
>> Paul Frank
>> Chinese-English translator
>> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>> http://languagejottings.blogspot.com
>>
>
> James D. SMITH |If history teaches anything
> South SLC, UT |it is that we will be sued
> jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com |whether we act quickly and decisively
> |or slowly and cautiously.
>
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*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw Linfield College McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************


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