How good is Spike's English accent?
Cas
English accent. It was very strange to hear him talk in his normal voice
the first time. But of course, not being English I can't really judge.
So, how good is his accent, really?
Bruins72
news:101dij5...@corp.supernews.com...
I was watching some of the featurettes on the DVD sets and heard JM speaking
without his Spike accent and it freaked me out! It just didn't seem right
for him not to have the accent (right or wrong). My favorite is when Spike
pretends not to have an accent (like when he's around the Initiative guys).
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Bruins72
Jason Kirk
Well I'm British and I quite like his accent. A fair amount of
that also has to do with the fact that he's a cool character -- a duff
character with that accent would be a different matter. FIRC from the
flashback shows William's accent was originally quite posh and the modern
accent is more of an affectation by Spike. Taken with Spikes flair for the
melodramatic then the accent works really well for that character.
Now Liam's Irish accent is another matter entirely. But of course, not
being Irish I can't really judge.
-Jason
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Aethelrede
Cas wrote in message <101dij5...@corp.supernews.com>...
Pretty darn good. He claims he picked it up from a British roomie he
had. He does a good job of "William" and the different rougher accent
"Spike" uses. However, he sometimes gets vowel sounds wrong: when he says
"can't" the "a" is always totally American and doesn't fit either accent,
and there are a few other errors.
Of course I've lived in the US for years so it may be that I'm a little
more accepting of his accent, but JM would certainly pass for someone from
the UK who'd lived in the US at least since the 1970s, when he killed his
second slayer. I probably sound a bit like him to people who have just
arrived in the US from the UK: I use an American vocabulary, except that I
still can't bring myself to call greengroceries "pro-doose".
Peter Cowan
hate to burden you with the class system, a working class background who has
moved 'up' a bit and then lived for a while in the USA. There are some
intonations which aren't quite right. I might add he sounds like someone
from north of the river. South (or rather sarf) London is a bit different.
Peter
Harry The Horse
Aethelrede
Peter Cowan wrote in message ...
Although if you follow Spikes career in the show, he comes from a good
background: it isn't stated but someone writing bad poetry in the 1880s is
likely to have been to university and definitely be "a gentleman": his
mother's house is also very definitely up-scale: at the absolute top of the
middle class at least, with no indication that William is ever going to need
to take a job.
After he becomes a vampire his accent drops way down the scale; Angel
mentioned it in one ep. He seems to have decided to make up as Spike for
the wimpy years as William by being rough, tough and workin' class.
iWubWiwwow
speaks, there are more London/South/Posh/Queens English accents, more
Yorkshire, etc, but no one accent is used by the whole country.
That said, he didnt do bad, but then again I wasnt around England when
he was, and I've probbably never been went to the part of England he
lived in...
David Brewer
That's all quite true. Orcadians certainly don't speak like the
Cornish.
"British Accent" is never a useful term since in these matters of
national identity we divide into Scots, Welsh and English. Among
the English, there is a sort of Received Pronunciation, a legacy
of the Grammar Schools that were established to keep the middle
classes educated separately from the rest. No one actually speaks
genuine RP, but if you took all the English and averaged their
voice to cancel out the regional inflections you could reconstruct
it and call it the "English Accent". Wesley and Giles are pretty
much RP.
And Her Madge... she has those bizarre Bertie Wooster vowels that
no one else has.
The times when Willian the BAP were around were much more
London-centric then we are now. Someone as posh as BAP occilated
between London and the countryside. Parliament sat during the
spring, adjourning on the Glorious Twelfth for everyone to rush
back to the sticks and start shooting any wildlife that moved.
While parliament was sitting there was a whirlwind of social
functions. Among people of this class there were no regionalisms,
they only mixed with each other and with servents.
Spike, as people often observe, is a Mockney. He reminds me of the
Italian-American New Yorker from Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam" who
affects a London punk persona. He doesn't always get it right.
--
David Brewer
"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Theory of Scientific
Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of
facts." - P.K.Dick (from VALIS)
sexy-...@webtv.net
Peter Cowan
"Aethelrede" <aethe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:PyERb.123568$6y6.2...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
True, a bit like the way Public School educated Blair starts using glottal
stops and expressions like "you know" when he talks to Labour Party
Conferences and suchlike.
Peter
Jillun
character in the story was born before there were recording devices
around every turn of the corner.
Who are we to say that the accents were exactly the same as then they
are now? In fact that would be a ridiculous thing to saw. I come
from Seattle, in Washington state (just in case someone doesn't know).
The accents in Western and Eastern Washington are different.
Aethelrede
David Brewer wrote in message <4017E8F4...@blueyonder.co.uk>...
>iWubWiwwow wrote:
>>
>> You have to remember there is no "British Accent" which everybody
>> speaks, there are more London/South/Posh/Queens English accents, more
>> Yorkshire, etc, but no one accent is used by the whole country.
>>
>> That said, he didnt do bad, but then again I wasnt around England when
>> he was, and I've probbably never been went to the part of England he
>> lived in...
>
>That's all quite true. Orcadians certainly don't speak like the
>Cornish.
>
>"British Accent" is never a useful term since in these matters of
>national identity we divide into Scots, Welsh and English. Among
>the English, there is a sort of Received Pronunciation, a legacy
>of the Grammar Schools that were established to keep the middle
>classes educated separately from the rest. No one actually speaks
>genuine RP, but if you took all the English and averaged their
>voice to cancel out the regional inflections you could reconstruct
>it and call it the "English Accent". Wesley and Giles are pretty
>much RP.
>
>And Her Madge... she has those bizarre Bertie Wooster vowels that
>no one else has.
Except for others in the extreme upper levels of the aristocracy, and
people who would dearly love to be there. You should listen to the old BBC
recordings of her father, and of her back in the 50s: she's a lot closer to
the standard still kept up by the old public schools and Oxbridge.
David Brewer
I'll bet the accents are different in the East Side and West Side
of Washington DC.
I've been ransacking Google to find out the name of the man who
inspired Pygmalion's (My Fair Lady's) Henry Higgins, but, alas, I
cannot find it. It is said that he could, of Londoners, tell not
only which neighbourhood they were from, but from which end of
which street.
These thing have been studied for some time. Of course accents
absolutely have changed over time and continue to change.
Have you never heard of the Great Vowel Shift? All the vowels
migrated from the Slavic countries and settled around the
Mediterranean.
drsmith
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:30:25 -0600, Cas wrote:
>
> > As an American myself, I think James Marsters does an awesome job with the
> > English accent. It was very strange to hear him talk in his normal voice
> > the first time. But of course, not being English I can't really judge.
> >
> > So, how good is his accent, really?
>
> Well I'm British and I quite like his accent. A fair amount of
> that also has to do with the fact that he's a cool character -- a duff
> character with that accent would be a different matter. FIRC from the
> flashback shows William's accent was originally quite posh and the modern
> accent is more of an affectation by Spike. Taken with Spikes flair for the
> melodramatic then the accent works really well for that character.
>
> Now Liam's Irish accent is another matter entirely. But of course, not
> being Irish I can't really judge.
Being Irish myself I can tell that is one of the worst Irish accents I
have ever heard and thank god they never try to use it anymore
>
> -Jason
Harry The Horse
>
> Except for others in the extreme upper levels of the aristocracy,
> and people who would dearly love to be there. You should listen to
> the old BBC recordings of her father, and of her back in the 50s:
> she's a lot closer to the standard still kept up by the old public
> schools and Oxbridge.
>
undergraduate and doctoral student, I can say that I have never heard anyone
speak like the Royal Family.
Jillun
> These thing have been studied for some time. Of course accents
> absolutely have changed over time and continue to change.
>
> Have you never heard of the Great Vowel Shift? All the vowels
> migrated from the Slavic countries and settled around the
> Mediterranean.
Never heard it given a name, but then linguistics is not my field of
study. The things is that people in these newsgroups complain about
Spike's, Dru's and Kendra's accents. Spike and Dru, being vampires,
have this age-thing going for them. Like Angel's Irish accent is
pretty much gone, though DB slips it in once in a while just to remind
us. And Kendra? What's wrong with her having a mixed accent?
As I said, I'm from Seattle. However, numerous times I've been asked
if I'm from England. Actually that happens more often these days as
I've been living in Japan for almost six years. The reason is, aside
from spending several of my formative years watching Blake's 7 and
Doctor Who, as an English teacher I try to speak clearly and
concisely. It seems that speaking English in a manner which is easily
understandable makes Americans think of... well, of the English.
vague disclaimer
jil...@hotmail.com (Jillun) wrote:
But they would both be recognisably American accents.
The premise of your argument is false - language, along with just about
everything else, was intensively studied with empirical diligence
throughout the 19th century. I would be pretty surprised if scholars
don't have a pretty good picture of common pronuctiations because
notation systems were developed to achieve just that.
But that isn't really the point. Spike's English English inflections are
recognisably so, even if they do wander regionally. Any infelicities and
Americianism can be accepted as the consequence of age and wandering
lifestyle.
Dru, and to a much greater extend Molly, do not have recognisably
English inflections. The tendency to pronouce 'i' as 'oi' (as in Spoike)
is a dead give away that, rather than listening to Stanley Holloway
(born 1890, 24-carat Cockney) in My Fair Lady they listened to Dick van
Dyke (born, 1925, West Plains, Missouri) in Mary Poppins.
Mind you, the need for clear notation is highlighted by the fact the
there are several (mainly rural) English pronunctiations of Spike that
could be spelled Spoike, but which no English person would confuse with
Dru's.
--
A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend
David Brewer
>
[...]
> The things is that people in these newsgroups complain about
> Spike's, Dru's and Kendra's accents. Spike and Dru, being vampires,
> have this age-thing going for them. Like Angel's Irish accent is
> pretty much gone, though DB slips it in once in a while just to remind
> us. And Kendra? What's wrong with her having a mixed accent?
Drusilla's voice is a fine example of what happens when an
American actor is asked to fake an English accent and it comes out
like Dick Van Dyke in Merry Pawpins. When it's shown in the UK, it
breaks the suspension of disbelief somewhat for us UKanos. We've
heard it before, we'll hear it again.
I remember a particularly bad example in an episode of Frasier,
when an ex-boyfriend of Daphne comes to see her from Manchester
(from Manchester) and practically bursts into the room slapping
his knees singing "Chim-Chimenny Chim-Chimenny", as if he were
from Larn-darn.
Kendra was meant to be a girl from a small island, so you would
expect a broad and unmixed local accent. She'd been trained by a
Watcher, presumably English, but we don't know where. She just
doesn't sound like any Caribbean person I've ever heard. Somebody
suggested that she was meant to be Montseration, I've never met
one. (Montserat is a British dependency that was all but
obliterated by a volcano a few years back.)
> As I said, I'm from Seattle. However, numerous times I've been asked
> if I'm from England. Actually that happens more often these days as
> I've been living in Japan for almost six years. The reason is, aside
> from spending several of my formative years watching Blake's 7 and
> Doctor Who, as an English teacher I try to speak clearly and
> concisely. It seems that speaking English in a manner which is easily
> understandable makes Americans think of... well, of the English.
Surely, as an American, you must have cringed at some of the
atrocious fake American accents that crop up on UK TV once in a
while?
Jillun
> Jillun wrote:
> > I've been living in Japan for almost six years. The reason is, aside
> > from spending several of my formative years watching Blake's 7 and
> > Doctor Who, as an English teacher I try to speak clearly and
> > concisely. It seems that speaking English in a manner which is easily
> > understandable makes Americans think of... well, of the English.
>
> Surely, as an American, you must have cringed at some of the
> atrocious fake American accents that crop up on UK TV once in a
> while?
Hmm. Well, there were the two cops come to arrest Zaphod Beeblebrox
in the HGtTG tv series. Their English was a little odd. Americans
didn't seem to crop up often on Doctor Who, except in the pathe - er,
the one filmed in the states. I don't remember any at all popping
through Blake's 7. Mind Your Language, a hilarious show... I don't
think they had many Americans, either.
George W. Harris
:
:Surely, as an American, you must have cringed at some of the
:atrocious fake American accents that crop up on UK TV once in a
:while?
UK TV? God save me from Kenneth Brannagh.
:David Brewer
--
Never give a loaded gun to a woman in labor.
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
David Samuel Barr
>
> I've been ransacking Google to find out the name of the man who
> inspired Pygmalion's (My Fair Lady's) Henry Higgins, but, alas, I
> cannot find it. It is said that he could, of Londoners, tell not
> only which neighbourhood they were from, but from which end of
> which street.
Many references claim that the model for Higgins was Henry Sweet, a
British phoneticist and philologist, later a professor at Oxford.
However, Shaw states very clearly in the preface to "Pygmalion" that
Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet. Shaw knew numerous prominent
phoneticists, some of whom he also names in the preface, and Higgins is
more likely an amalgam of them, even if Sweet had a more prominent role
than most in that creation.
George W. Harris
:However, Shaw states very clearly in the preface to "Pygmalion" that
:Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet.
And of course Shaw always told the truth
about things like that.
--
Real men don't need macho posturing to bolster their egos.
eris_70
i'm english but emigrated to canada a few years ago. spikes accent
isn't too bad except that every now and again he says something that
sounds very american. i actually think his accent was better in buffy
but that could just be my imgination. when he does occasionally lapse
back into his natural accent i just tell myself that if i can pick up
a bit of a canadian twang in canada, he could pick up an american
twang in LA.
Mark Nobles
<eri...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> i actually think his accent was better in buffy
> but that could just be my imgination.
That could be because he had ASH around as his language coach then.
He still has AD, but that somehow doesn't seem quite the same.
David Samuel Barr
Remember that AD isn't English; like Juliet Landau, he's an American
who lived in England. For whatever reason, though, his adopted accent
isn't bashed here anywhere as much as JL's or JM's.
David Brewer
>
[...]
> For whatever reason, though, his adopted accent
> isn't bashed here anywhere as much as JL's or JM's.
Denisof has an easier job than Marsters. Bringing off a consistent
Southern English middle-class voice isn't so hard to do compared
to a broader geographically more specific accent.
Furthermore, the writers don't try saddle him with any
distinctively regional vocabulary. It's easy to get fed up with
Spike calling everyone a "ponce". Or describing Drusilla as "sack
of hammers", wherever that's from.
arnold kim
"David Samuel Barr" <dsb...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:401E07...@mindspring.com...
I assume it's because he lived there for 15 years and picked up a reasonably
good accent.
Arnold Kim
Mark Nobles
<david...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Or describing Drusilla as "sack
> of hammers", wherever that's from.
That's from Foghorn Leghorn. He described someone as
"about as sharp as a bag of hammers."
David Brewer
I've never thought of Spike as a cartoon rooster before. Maybe the
next time he's defenestrated there should be a little circle of
bats flying around his head as he peels himself of the tarmac.
David Samuel Barr
I've never heard him use that phrase, but he did use
"Nice girl, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice".
"Dumb as (dumber than) a sack of hammers" apparently
is an established phrase, but not from that source.
salmoneous
As any actor will tell you, the point of an accent isn't necessarily
to exactly mimic the actual accent the character you are playing would
use. While sometimes you want to go authentic, more often it is more
important to use your accent to be perceived by your audience as being
something, rather than to actually sound like that something.
It's the same sort of logic that leads to German or Russian WW2
generals speaking to their troops in accented English.
Aethelrede
salmoneous wrote in message
<54daff87.04020...@posting.google.com>...
That's always struck me as stupid. I prefer films like "The Longest
Day" and "Tora, Tora, Tora." where the foreigners speak foreign. Using
accented English eventually leads to stuff like "Hogan's Heroes".
Can Altinbay
>
> salmoneous wrote in message
> <54daff87.04020...@posting.google.com>...
> >> So, how good is his accent, really?
> >
> >As any actor will tell you, the point of an accent isn't necessarily
> >to exactly mimic the actual accent the character you are playing would
> >use. While sometimes you want to go authentic, more often it is more
> >important to use your accent to be perceived by your audience as being
> >something, rather than to actually sound like that something.
> >
> >It's the same sort of logic that leads to German or Russian WW2
> >generals speaking to their troops in accented English.
>
...as well as ancient Romans.
> That's always struck me as stupid. I prefer films like "The Longest
> Day" and "Tora, Tora, Tora." where the foreigners speak foreign. Using
> accented English eventually leads to stuff like "Hogan's Heroes".
>
I hope you don't mean the horribly fake stuff like Frenchmen who are
actually speaking French, but since it's an american film, they speak
English with a weird accent, especially the terrible pronunciation of
"monsieur".