Re "I tried to help my tantra teacher take some accent-reduction courses. Online there were some videos and they were able to boil down to a few points the way for someone from India to sound American.":
Why so? Isn't hearing your own tongue spoken with a foreign accent rather appealing? In fact, it's often regarded as rather sexy to hear English spoken with a Continental accent! Could be a selling point for a tantric teacher . . . ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> wrote: Seems that British actors are very good at doing various American accents. Although in the commentary of the movie "The Ward" Jared Harris (Richard Harris's son) says there are some British accents that he finds difficult to do. It seems there is a better drama tradition in the UK whereas the US has cut many of their programs from schools. Doing accents shouldn't be that difficult. There are experts in training actors to learn them in short work. I tried to help my tantra teacher take some accent reduction courses. Online there were some videos and they were able to boil down to a few points the way for someone from India to sound American. On 11/06/2013 03:57 PM, s3raphita@... mailto:s3raphita@... wrote: Interesting video link. The funny thing is, I've always found the Southern "drawl" one of the most appealing of American accents. I used to work for the BBC and I can tell you that whenever BBC Radio broadcast a play which featured an American character, listeners would always write in to complain about the producer using an English actor or actress and expecting him or her to fake an American accent that sounded obviously phony. Why, O why, they said, doesn't the BBC employ an American actor for the part. And every time that complaint was made the producer was always able to reply that actually the actor used *was* an American! The funny thing is, I'm with the listeners who complained! The accents always sound false. I don't know if they pick Yank actors who have some of the rarer regional variants or the signal compression used by technicians does something weird to the sound. (I wouldn't know what "signal compression" means of course.) On a related note, whenever I've seen Reese Witherspoon or Gwyneth Paltrow do an English accent in a movie role they have been pitch perfect. I suppose imitating an accent is just bread-and-butter routine for an actor but I am in awe at how effortlessly those two pull it off. ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com mailto:fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> mailto:noozguru@... wrote: According to this video, southerners are speaking with a "slowed down" British accent: http://youtu.be/mNqY6ftqGq0 http://youtu.be/mNqY6ftqGq0 On 11/06/2013 01:48 PM, Michael Jackson wrote: you have never been to the South if you think the Brits speak like we do. -------------------------------------------- On Wed, 11/6/13, jr_esq@... mailto:jr_esq@... <jr_esq@...> mailto:jr_esq@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Rare Picture of Vivian Leigh To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, November 6, 2013, 4:33 PM I saw her in "Gone With the Wind". She was excellent in the movie, but I did not realize up till now that she was born in England. I suppose speaking like an American Southerner is very similar to the British accent. However, this got me wondering, why aren't there any Brits in England who speak like a Southerner? http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/05/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/vivien-leigh-gallery/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/05/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/vivien-leigh-gallery/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook
