21 accents

Actress Amy Walker does a bunch of different accents in this video, including one that purports to be from Charleston, SC. It's the only one that didn't sound quite right to me.

Comments

[Don D. Lewis]

You are right. Although I think her Brooklyn accent was a little weak as well.

It sounds like she's trying to imitate the "Gone With The Wind"/Clark Gable style fabricated by Hollywood. For many that was/is the only dialect commonly associated (incorrectly) with the "Charleston South".

[Agricola]

It's especially hard to duplicate these days as the last owners of said accent are moving into middle age. Their descendants do not speak with the same accent, due no doubt to the nefarious influence of TV and the massive wave of immigration that has brought many less distinctive accents to our land.

[Daniel]

Well, speaking solely of the native Euro-American accent... I always think of Fritz Hollings as the true keeper of the flame.

It's less about a sweet-tea drawl than it is about shortened vowels and words like "bo-at." It's kind of a cross between Boston and Columbia. Plus we've got unique constructions like "Great Gawd," that I suspect come from the Geetchie/Gullah.

I agree on the Brooklyn weakness, but I at least thought she was emphasizing the right things. I wonder how many of the other accents would sound odd to me if my ear were properly tuned?

Oh, and for our readers "From Off," I should clarify: I don't speak with and can't imitate the local accent. I'm just a fan.

[Dewey Sasser]

Brooklyn -- well, I worked with someone who sounded just like that.

I've been working with a bunch of Russians lately and her Moscow was a bit off. I think more from word choice than accent though.

But I have limited sample size for Russian, da?

Her Texan sounded a bit stilted to me. I've got a limited sample size there, too, though a mite bit more than Russian.

[chucker]

I was born in Charleston and, in my early 20s, was attending the University of San Diego.

I worked hard at losing my accent after a professor suggested I was doing a pretty bad British pronuncation of many words.(?!)

However, even a brief call home talking with my Mom, meant it would be "raght ther agaain."

[Ralph Kramden]

I can't tell about most of these, but the Brooklyn accent wasn't it. She missed a few gimmes from up here in New England (Boston Brahmin, South Boston, Downeast Maine are all distinctive and different and pretty easy to do).

When I've tried to do accents, I find that southern (coastal) US and British accents have some curious similarities.

I haven't experienced a lot of genuine southern accents, but I have a nephew who grew up in Chattanooga whose accent isn't the same as those in coastal Carolina.

Oh - and my vote for the WORST ACCENTS on film goes to "The Departed". They try to do various Boston-area accents. Wahlberg's and Damon's are genuine (because they're native), but Alec Baldwin's and Martin Sheen's are terrible. And Jack Nicholson's South Boston Irish gangster accent is the most embarrassing thing I've ever heard.

[Ralph Kramden]

Driving down to Folly Beach yesterday, we heard an interview with Mark Rylance, a Shakespearean actor, who had an interesting observation about accents. The northern British accents have flat vowels, similar to northern US accents (Scottish flat "a"s and Wisconsin "a"s), and the southern aristocratic British accents have the same dipthongs as Southern US accents.

Yee Hah! I'm in Folly Beach! This is heaven!