Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "BBC"
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Actually, to my ear, his accent was always a bit flat. Never entirely dead on for one region being part, but inflection slightly off on occasion to have had me wondering since the first episode and it was between second and third episode that I did learn he was British. Largely, because I honestly don't go running to see where some actor or actress came from as a matter of course.
Once I learned, I had to admit that he did an exceptionally fine job of it and well, one does have to work with what speech impediments one is stuck with.*
*The fun part of that statement, it being pronounced with a southwest Philly accent. Excuse me while I take my breakfast of pills, lemme grab my worder boddle, gonna haveta fill this at the zink laedder on...
Suffice it to say, I've quite a number of friends from the UK, most being from London and my accent actually is rather variable, as I tend to pick up idioms and accents rapidly during conversations. The result being sounding at times like I'm northern midlands in part fairly frequently, although missing the mark on idioms often enough due to lack of practice. That said, I sincerely doubt that I'll ever come close to speaking whatever language it is that spoken in Liverpool. ;)
The US and UK, two people separated by a common language. It's their own fault though, they never bothered documenting the language until after that little tiff we had in 1776 and they ended up losing the war. We further diverged after much exposure after we rescued them from two world wars, the wars going quite terribly for the war...
Actually, the original UK accent in received English was closer to the US mid-Atlantic accent, which oddly has decreased to near-extinction in the US since the 1950's. Makes sense, as the mid-Atlantic had the last great wave of immigration from the UK before that bit of unpleasantness in the late 1700's and that general trade disagreement in 1812.
You should hear me go on about US tourism of Canada during said conflicts and their rather humorous conclusion of an honor guard escort to our borders, when their arms were finally returned... A spoiler, Benedict Arnold was seriously wounded during that brief vacation abroad, resulting in disability and inability to work his farm, resulting in his contracting to earn a living in the UK... As a result, we created the precursor to the VA.
Yeah, history actually is pretty cool. Right until one survives having actually made some of it, then it's damned tedious and unpleasant.
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Well, it's not as if we've got a monolithic accent here. We've a fair bit of regional variance, albeit nowhere as wide as in the UK, which is four countries to begin with, all packed into an area between the sizes of Minnesota and Michigan and having a number of languages spoken besides English. Yep, England, Wales, the Land of Scots, the northern part of the Land of Ire. No, you can't slap me, shit splatters. :P
They do pack in the regional accents in the UK though, actually quite varied from what we're most accustomed to hearing on TV, which is largely a London-ish accent to whateverinhell they speak in Liverpool. ;)
An in joke, had a friend from Liverpool, at times I had absolutely no clue in the universe what he was saying. The rest of the time, the universal translator, after much smoke and sparking, belched out a transliteration.
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