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In Reply to: RE: DDLewis hasn't the cadence of any American native speaker. That's the problem: posted by tinear on November 17, 2009 at 08:15:53
This native speaker, for one, was uncannily, even scarily, reminded of a former colleague by her delivery in Possession.
I'm sure you're right about Damian Lewis, but my impression is that at least some of this generation of actors have a better ear for this - 'music' and all - than previous ones.
Follow Ups:
Most people don't have very good ears for accents, especially Americans. The jokes about Americans attempting foreign languages are legion for good reasons.
Peter Sellers is one of the very, very few people that could do accents perfectly. Even so, his American accent, for example in "Dr. Strangelove," was overdone (perhaps for comic effect like his German one?).
... I'll mention that I was born and brought up in 'The Athens of the North' where, as everyone knows, the very finest English is spoken. (Sex is what coal comes in for us.) Also, I studied linguistics and phonetics in Daniel Jones's old department at University College London - Shaw is believed to have based Prof Henry Higgins on him - which might explain why this topic is close to my heart.
But credentials and expertise aren't all that relevant here: I was just curious to know about inmates' perceptions, whatever their own backgrounds.
PS Your dig at Patrick, below, has me wondering whether Archie Bunker isn't your alter ego!!
taught ESL for several years to a wide assortment of nationalities. I also speak a couple of foreign languages. My insight is that language is theater and music as well as linguistics. In other words, one has to somewhat assume the persona of an Italian to speak the language and also get the cadence, the flow, correctly to speak convincingly. An accent is akin to learning another language. Very few people can do that in a few months. The odds that those few would be actors is small but they do get a "leg-up" for the persona bit.
"The wife" has a masters in linguistics and agrees with me, though that doesn't mean much.
Anyhow, I didn't read a sniff of ad hominem in your post; it was interesting, informative, and equitable.
Wrong, all the same..... :-)
.. except about my being wrong!It seems to me actors work to please a broad audience, so their success or failure in their craft depends on the overall response of that audience, drama experts as well as ordinary Joes, Joannas, Giuseppes, etc. If, say, Hugh Laurie's House performance passes muster with a majority, Stateside and internationally, ... kudos to him, I say.
Accents for comic effect, such as Garbo's Ninotchka, require less skill but can be equally entertaining, I think.
It's always interesting to know which performances elicit cringes, though!
Edits: 11/18/09
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