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Author Archives: Ben
A Brief Look at Jamaican Creole
I’ll begin today’s post with a wonderful video of the The Night Before Christmas spoken in Jamaican Creole (a.k.a. Patois): For non-Jamaicans the clip above is probably so hard to understand that it seems like a different language. Which is … Continue reading
New York City: Accent of Champions!
I like to think of myself as good at accents. I say this in all humbleness. Objectively speaking, I’d say my Cockney, Manchester, and Dublin are quite nuanced for an American. I can even do the more obscure accents, like … Continue reading
Stage Accents vs. Real Accents
As per recent discussions of American actors doing British accents, I’d like to make an important distinction: Authentic accents vs. stage dialects*. For about 90% of situations in which an American actor needs a British accent, that accent is probably … Continue reading
A Quick Update
I’ve received a lot of great feedback in the comments about yesterday’s post, Mastering the Trap-Bath Split. With that in mind, I’ve made some minor revisions to the post to eliminate points of confusion. I’ve sensed there is an unwritten … Continue reading
Mastering the Trap-Bath Split
[Update: I made a few slight revisions to this post based on feedback.] (NOTE: This post uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For information about the IPA, please visit my page of IPA Resources.) What is the #1 thing American actors screw … Continue reading
Posted in British English Tagged accents for actors, Boston accents, Cockney, Received Pronunciation (RP) 40 Comments
Techspeak for Evil
The information age has produced something of a dialect. Techspeak (if you want to call it that) has a vast trove of unique vocabulary, its own grammatical and syntactical rules, and represents a very real culture. And I am fascinated … Continue reading
The Cot-Caught Merger
One of the major distinctions in American English is something called the Cot-Caught Merger. This is exactly what it sounds like: some dialects merge the sounds in words like cot, lot and Tom with the vowel in caught, paw, and … Continue reading
Dialect Savants on YouTube
I have been with the family for a few days and haven’t got a chance to post anything substantial. So I figured I would quickly comment on the recent rash of “dialect savant” videos on YouTube. The most trafficked of … Continue reading
Pahk Yuh Cah: Non-Rhotic in New England
A few years back, I was sitting in a restaurant in my hometown of Willimantic, Connecticut*. A few booths over, a late-middle-aged man was talking to a young woman paying at the counter. Here is my paraphrasing of the conversation: … Continue reading
Cheryl Cole’s Accent: You Decide
I don’t want this to turn into a pop culture site, but it is hard to ignore the recent hubbub surrounding Cheryl Cole. As I mentioned a few days back, Ms. Cole is a pretty pop singer from the UK … Continue reading