What happened to your funny accent?

TGMatt
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 1:59 pm

great topic , great well thought out replies, super..

I will add this , I have had a little exposure to speech therapy, and some "alternative methods" to deal, including a strap that opens the diaphram up and teaches a breathing methodology , one of the ways to beat stuttering is to use breath in a consant stream as speaking, then break and go again, I think singing can do the same as you are breating in a completely different way, when I have paid attention I notice it is almost like yogic breathing, exhaling and singing is almost holding your breath whilst the words come out, maybe this has something to do with the ability and change to "sound different"..

also the place in which we are exhaling from is different if you have been trained at least, this gives you a completely different sound in the exercise I was put through, much deeper and smoother..

Anyways good post thx


dennisg
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 2:09 pm

The most shocking thing about this thread? It's gotten more views than my "Thinking about breasts" thread. What does that say about TGers?

A point about stuttering: my oldest brother was a chronic stutterer almost from the moment he could talk to the day he died. What I came to realize from growing up with him is that stuttering is 100 percent emotional -- and not at all mechanical. Yeah, I'm sure there are a few cases where an oral deformity might cause a stuttering problem. But it's more likely that the deformity caused emotional problems that led to stuttering.

Mcfingers mentioned Mel Tillis, the country singer, as someone who stutters significantly when he speaks, yet has no stutter when he sings. Again, though, I don't think it's a mechanical process, meaning that the way his mouth moves has no effect on his ability to avoid stuttering. I think it's a confidence issue. He's totally confident that he can sing without stuttering, yet lacks any confidence that he can speak without stuttering.

My brother had certain sounds (in particular, words that began with an F or a P) that would completely do him in. So he developed an alternate vocabulary to avoid using certain words. Instead of saying the word "fifty," for example, he would say "half a hundred." I mention this because there was no physical or mechanical reason he couldn't pronounce "fifty." He just knew, from past experience, that he'd embarrass himself if he tried. And the more he thought about his stuttering, the worse it became.

I make a distinction between stuttering and other speech difficulties, like a lisp. A lisp, a lazy L, or an ill-formed R, are all about mechanics -- about the way the tongue is positioned in the mouth. We have two news people in America who are almost as famous for their speech impediments as they are for their journalistic abilities: Barbara Walters (who has great difficulty pronouncing R's, and Tom Brokaw, who has the same problem with L's). Barbara Walters, I've noticed, his improved lately, probably because she was lampooned so severely by Saturday Night Live's Baba Wawa skits. But for most people, speech disorders are a life sentence. You can be sure that Tom Brokaw wanted to get rid of his lazy L. But he just couldn't. It's impossible for most people to change the mechanics of speech after years of using them incorrectly.

I've really loved reading and rereading the responses to this thread, and find the insights from non-Americans particularly fascinating, since they are the ones singing in what I call a neutral west-coast accent. I wonder if you would be able to speak (convincingly) with that accent if called upon to do so.

There are some people (Tracey Ullman, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep come to mind) who are absolutely spectacular with accents. I don't think it's any coincidence that all of them are enormously musical, too. I can't help but think that one's ability to hit the right sounds when imitating accents is directly connected to an ability to hit the right notes when singing. Put another way, I've never met anyone who was good with accents who was tone deaf. Conversely, I've never met anyone who is tone deaf (and I know a lot of tone deaf people) who can convincingly imitate a foreign accent. For some reason, this connection and "disconnect" (as Chris rightly put it) absolutely fascinates me.

Maybe I have too much time on my hands.

To finish this thought: my oldest brother, Jim, who was the stutterer, was also completely tone deaf and couldn't begin to repeat a musical note or a foreign accent that he heard. When he tried, he sounded like a cartoon character. My other brother, Ken, was enormously musical and even wrote a successful rock opera. He could imitate foreign accents beautifully and convincingly. In fact, when I did a bike ride through Ireland with him, he just decided to start speaking with a western-Ireland accent, and none of the locals saw through it.

Getting back to the topic at hand, the notion that singing rock, pop, or folk songs without a native accent is really a compelling subject for me -- and I totally believe you when you say that the smoothing out of your native accent is an unconscious process. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. And a special thanks to Chris and Suzi for posting examples of accents to illustrate their points.


tovo
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 3:08 pm

dennisg wrote:
I wonder if you would be able to speak (convincingly) with that accent if called upon to do so.
There's a challenge. I'm sure I could do it. Whether it were convincing or not would be up to you. I wonder where I would be from?

I also want to hear the best Australian/British/Dutch/Kiwi accents from all over the TG World.

Could be a great thread.


michelew
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 3:20 pm

tovo wrote:
I also want to hear the best Australian/British/Dutch/Kiwi accents from all over the TG World.

Could be a great thread.


That's a hilarious idea! Most attempts at an Aussie accent are terrible, especially from Americans.

Though Daryl's phantom, the woman with a million voices, Amy (?) who mesmerized Chris and scared the bejesus out of Tony did a pretty good Sydney accent.

I generally find I need to be surrounded by the accent (generally in the country of origin) before I'm able to copy it well.

M.


dennisg
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 3:59 pm

tovo wrote:
dennisg wrote:
I wonder if you would be able to speak (convincingly) with that accent if called upon to do so.
There's a challenge. I'm sure I could do it. Whether it were convincing or not would be up to you. I wonder where I would be from?

I also want to hear the best Australian/British/Dutch/Kiwi accents from all over the TG World.

Could be a great thread.
It's too easy to do a New York accent, because you just have to hammer on a few well-chosen words, like actors used to do in old movies: "Hey, sarge, I ain't understood a single woid." Or southern: "Y'all come back now."

The harder accent to mimic is the one that has become a de facto standard for all actors: the American west-coast accent. Phonetically speaking, it is considered to be an absence of accent, which is why it's the one actors use when they don't want to be associated with a specific American region.

By the way, I remember when Al did an Aussie accent in one of his videos. I thought he did a very credible job.


willem
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 4:12 pm

Don't wanna steal this nice thread,,but if anyone wanna try a dutch song,,translated it call's ''on the bike'',,Dennis maybe for you when you want to bike our flat country..






the lyricks







I'm aware of that this thread is all about the diffrents in speaking or singin englisch..


Max
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 4:44 pm

Here's a video of Amy Walker doing 21 different accents. She must have an incredible ear, there are some that I can't distinguish between, but I think I've got a lousy ear for acents.
Max



michelew
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:05 pm

dennisg wrote:
By the way, I remember when Al did an Aussie accent in one of his videos. I thought he did a very credible job.
To be fair Al did do a reasonable approximation of an Aussie accent, Tony specifically, but you obviously don't remember the misunderstanding that Al and I had after I said it was 'cringey' or 'painful' or some such thing. While true I meant it in a stirring way. I didn't use any smilies at that time.


michelew
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:10 pm

OK - bad memory regarding Amy Walker's accents - that's an over the top Sydney accent, but probably not too far off for were I grew up in the far western suburbs. Geesh - I hope I don't sound like that.

M.


tovo
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:11 pm

AAArrrrgggg Amy is BACK! Please, someone.....make her GO AWAY

(I'm off to hid under my bed).


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