teenager doing accents

[Paul Frank]

One of several mistakes I caught is that Californians don't "take the
piss." The art of the piss-take is rare in California, and it's not
known by that name. By the way, I think that the New Oxford
Dictionary's definition of "taking the piss" as to "mock someone or
something" misses the important element of doing it without the victim
knowing that he's had the piss taken. I hear that Hollywood has done a
remake of Le dîner de cons, a hilarious French movie about taking the
piss. Dinner for Schmucks I think it's called, but I doubt very much
that it's as funny. Come to think of it, I have no idea how to say "to
take the piss" in French - or in American English for that matter.

Paul



On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 3:53 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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>
> His Russian was pretty bad. But a Russian accent in English is hard to
> get the hang of. I wouldn't even try, myself. Otherwise, I was
> generally impressed.
>
> As for the various versions of Britspeak, I'm now satisfied that, WRT
> all those friendly British soldiers who attempted, mostly
> unsuccessfully, to converse with me, back in the day, it wasn't me. It
> was them. Well, actually, I already knew that. Some while ago, 25
> years or so, a British dramedy called "Bross" - spelled _Brass_ - was
> provided with subtitles for its American audience.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Here's an English teenager doing a bunch of English accents. Apologies
>> if this has been posted before:
>>
>> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/01/24-english-accents_n_747400.html>
>>
>> Paul

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