Singing in a dialect and "Authentic pronunciation"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've long believed that actors have gotten much, much better in doing
accents. I can't say just when the improvement started, but my guess is that
it was in the '80s.

Dialect coaches must have gotten better or are being consulted more often.
Fake accents in older movies tend to be godawful.

Somewhere in the Archives is my comment on the terrible "Scottish" accents
in Orson Welles's _Macbeth_, to give one example. Another would be the
"Tennessee" accents in _Sergeant York_ (to the extent that they were trying
at all).

BTW, another friend of mine grew up in east Tennessee and his lived in the
area his whole life.  His family was from Mississippi.  I don't know if he'd
fool a specialist, but to my ear he has one of the most "generic" American
accents I've ever heard.The only clue that he's from the South is "y'all."
 If he were a C&W singer, he'd have to hoke up pronunciations to convince
people he was a Tennessean.

JL
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Dan Goodman <dsgood at iphouse.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dan Goodman <dsgood at IPHOUSE.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Singing in a dialect and "Authentic pronunciation"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> > My experience is that, beyond two or three stereotypical pronunciations
> in
> > each case, most people don't know what another dialect should sound like.
>
> And, from much reading of fiction, I would say most don't know what
> their dialect sounds like to people with other dialects.
>
> Not to mention getting the vocabulary wrong.  See any sf novel by John
> Brunner set in the US.
>
> > A fellow graduate student (from Georgia, I believe) once told me that I
> > didn't sound like a New Yorker because I didn't say "boid."   Another was
> > dismayed by my unfamiliar pronunciation of the O's in "Florida" and
> > "Oregon." She thought it was just a personal idiosyncracy.
>
> I've been surprised a couple of times when speakers of that dialect in
> the Twin Cities have identified me as a fellow-speaker.  I'm from Ulster
> County, which is in the Hudson Valley dialect area.  (Recorded examples
> of my dialect are probably fairly common; to me, Rod Serling had no
> accent.)
>
> > I have a friend from middle Tennessee whose (very) Upper-South accent
> > was described by an English woman as "characteristically American."  This
> > statement is both true and false.
> >
> > My wife's New York accent is rather more "typical" than mine (though she
> > doesn't say "boid" either). When she was living in a small town in
> > Tennessee, some people thought she was from "across the water."  (And no,
> > smart guys, they knew where New York is.)
>
> Peter Trudgill has written at least one article/paper on Brit rock
> singers sounding American -- sort of.  (By now, there are probably
> American singers trying to sound like Brits who were trying to sound
> like Americans....)
>
> Question:  There are a number of books and recordings for actors who
> want to put on another dialect.  Have any linguists reviewed any of
> these?  If so, how accurate were these materials?
>
> --
> Dan Goodman
> "I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
> Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
> Journal dsgood.dreamwidth.org (livejournal.com, insanejournal.com)
>
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