| re: I don't think so... | |
| Last Edit: sf 01:05 am EST 01/31/22 | |
| Posted by: sf 01:01 am EST 01/31/22 | |
| In reply to: I don't think so... - earlybird 11:52 pm EST 01/30/22 | |
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| Whether or not you've heard of the phenomenon, I'm afraid, is irrelevant. It's genuine, albeit a little unusual, and in Gillian Anderson's case, it is a fact that she sounds very different speaking to an American interviewer than she does when she's interviewed in the UK. She's not the only example, either - you don't have to look too far to find a clip of John Barrowman speaking in his native Scottish accent; you might find it 'bizarre', but it isn't faked. In Settle's case, it's not just simply that one of her parents is English. Her mother's New Zealand accent, I would guess, would have been much closer to an English accent than to anything American; when she was interviewed on The One Show last year she sounded completely English - she didn't sound like she was putting on an accent, or doing it for a joke. And there seems to be another layer there; on YouTube there's an interview with her in New Zealand where she sounds, well, like a New Zealander. Context matters. I grew up in a house with parents who more or less spoke RP, and went to school in a place where everybody around me didn't; my own accent varied according to where I was - any trace of regional inflections got switched off at home, because my parents placed great value on speaking 'properly', and it took me until I was in my late twenties to learn to stop instinctively code-switching according to where I was. The (distinct but not very strong) regional accent I spoke with away from home was not faked, and neither was the more-or-less-RP I spoke with around my mum and dad (and, later, at work, at least in front of clients). It's just the way my speech evolved, and it took a certain amount of effort to teach myself to stop doing it and allow myself to speak in any context without switching off the regional inflections. And I hear the regional inflections in my voice a lot more now, living in a part of the country where the prevailing accent is very different, than I do when I'm back in my hometown; even now, in my late forties, I sometimes catch myself unconsciously switching off the parts of my speech that sound like the north-west. It's never deliberate, although once I notice it I stop. As I said, it's just the way I evolved. So no, I don't find it at all difficult to believe that someone growing up in the USA with two parents who were not American spoke differently at school than at home. I also don't find it difficult to believe that someone's natural accent changes according to where they are. If she learned to speak, before going to school, from two parents whose accents are not American, then that range of sounds would have been established first. And as I said, while I didn't see the Big Night of Musicals special this weekend, there was nothing put-on about the English accent she spoke in when she was interviewed on The One Show last year. There were no 'tells'. It was completely natural. |
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