The Transatlantic accent, also called a Mid-Atlantic accent, is a way of speaking English that is halfway between American and British. It makes you sound like you have a good education but no one can tell quite where you are from. You hear it in old Hollywood films from the 1930s and 1940s. It is the accent of Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, William F Buckley and (at least in some films) God.
There is no town in the world where people grow up speaking English that way. Instead you get the accent in one of three ways:
- Learn the accent on purpose (actors used to do that).
- Grow up or live on both sides of the Atlantic (but that can lead to even stranger accents, like those of Loyd Grossman and Madonna).
- Pick it up at a top boarding school in America before the 1960s.
The accent comes from American boarding schools in New England where students were taught to speak English in more of an RP or high-class British way.
In the 1930s and 1940s it was seen as a good accent to use in film and theatre since it sounded universal and not from any particular part of the world. That makes it a good accent for God and creatures from outer space. You do not hear it much any more because people have grown used to the general American accent, thanks in part to Humphrey Bogart and the extremely Middle American John Wayne.
Transatlantic English goes something like this:
- Start with a mainstream American accent.
- Drop your r’s at the end of words, like in “fear” and “winner”.
- Say all your t’s as t’s not d’s (like in “water” and “butter”).
- Use RP (British) vowels. So “dance” becomes “dahns”.
If you start from a British accent the rules are different. It is an Americanized RP accent.
It is a very particular accent and not just any sort of mix between British and American. There is even a book, now out of print, called “Teach Yourself Transatlantic: Theatre Speech for Actors” (1986) by Robert L. Hobbs.
It is a hard accent to do – people will laugh at you if you do not get it right. So it takes plenty of practice. But for the British it is an easier accent to master than a general American one.
It is a good accent for those foreign to English, strangely enough: since no one grows up speaking it, you will not sound to anyone like you have a foreign accent! Some learn it to go into business overseas.
Among those who speak with a Transatlantic accent or something close to it: Katherine Hepburn, Franklin Roosevelt, William F Buckley (in his own way), Niles and Frasier on “Frasier”, the millionaire on “Gilligan’s Island”, Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane”, Peter Jennings, Anthony Hopkins, Cary Grant, the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz”, Bette Davis, everyone in Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” (1941) and most British actors who try to sound American (but not, of course, Idris Elba or Hugh Laurie of “House”).
See also:
- RP (Received Pronunciation)
- English
- International English
- Standard English
- 21 Accents – fast-forward to 2:13.
Here in the high prairie there are some old timer professionals who speak with that accent. It’s quaint and amusing nowadays but a reminder of a time when caste was more overtly an issue in this country.
House is great, isn’t he? And I was shocked when I found out he was British. Very convincing American accent.
You know!… I’ve noticed this many times before but mentioned nothing of it. Had know idea that this accent had an actual title. Interesting!
Hughes “Geevs and Wooster” tv show from back when he acted in britian is awesome…I was a huge hugh fan long before he crossed the pond.
oh – and thanks for this – another interesting piece about something new.
Wow, I am glad you liked it.
Like Blank.Bare.Clean, I noticed that people in old Hollywood films sometimes spoke in this strange accent that was neither American nor British. I often wondered about where it came from.
The same is true for black characters from the same period, by the way: many of them spoke in a Black English that was made up too. I will probably post on that too sooner or later.
Cary Grant’s accent is genuine as he was born in Britain but moved over to the US.
Also, how is Hugh Grant’s American accent so undectectable compared to others? I’ve never got that
Not Hugh Grant, Hugh Laurie! The one on “House”, an American television show where he plays a cynical doctor. I do not know how he does it, but his American accent is perfect. You would never know or even suspect that he is British from that show.
Oops, I meant Hugh Laurie.
I think that this is truly laughable, especially when someone like Madonna does the transatlantic accent, especially since she started out very gutter, had no ‘formal’ European education prior to speaking in that manner AND seemed to start speaking that way overnight…
This is interesting because I was just explaining to someone why I don’t like old movies. The accent they spoke in was one of the reasons I mentioned.
I did not know that it had a name and everything. The accent for whatever reason is not pleasent to my ears. Maybe it is too “stiff” and “cold” and it just sounds strange to my ears. That says a lot because I really love all kinds of accents. You name the accent and I like, well except this one.
my ex is a well-known theatre actor, and for kicks we’d speak to each other like that over dinner. he said i was pretty good at it. i love the way all the ladies from movies of that era called people “dahling.”
“would you like a mahtini with your dinna, dahling?”
“owh, no thank you, dahling. a simple gin and tonic with a smahll twist of lime would suffice.”
love it.
Madonna uses this phony sounding accent, that’s sad.
In Hollywood it was called the “MGM accent” as the studios trained actors to use it. After the advent of sound, audiences would finally hear the voices of actors and Hollywood wanted to be sure the actors sounded sophisticated and glamorous. Speech and enunciation coaches from the theater on the east coast were flown into Hollywood by the planeful to make sure actors could get it right.
Add Simon Baker–Australian, not British–to the short list of actors with flawless American accents. He plays Patrick Jane on The Mentalist. He uses his native accent for the line, “Next week on The Mentalist.”, which plays just before the teaser at the end of the show.
I never knew there was a formal name for the accent. I’d always heard it referred to as “Hollywood Brit”. I love watching old movies where everyone speaks that way
Since no one speaks this way naturally, I always assumed it was Hollywood shorthand for “posh phony.” I guess I was right.
Jack Benny did a good job of massacring this accent in “George Washington Slept Here.” In fact several actors in that movie worked it for all it was worth, and more. It’s as if somebody at the studio was trying to elevate the tone of the production. Very distracting.
My father is from the UK and my mother is American, and I grew up being flown forwards and back after they divorced. I wouldn’t call my speech pattern ‘Trans-Atlantic’ by any means, however, my husband has told me that when I’m in England or on the telephone with someone from England, I tend to sound more English, and more American when I speak to someone with an American accent–I have a hard time saying my own name as well as my husband’s, as they both end with the dreaded dropped ‘a.’ I still get Madonna jokes. Her “accent” and the fact she made Guy Ritchie’s movies suck has cut down on my quality of life.
at all = a tall
Cary Grant really is the epitome, but I’d like to hear it done poorly. maybe I’ll check out Jack Benny
I was a US military brat, and spent the first 22 years of my life living everywhere from the Phillipines and Germany to the deep South of the US. I can’t speak for all Military brats, but I know a lot of us conciously tried to hide any trace of an accent as we moved from place to place. You can’t help but pick it up from family and friends, but by and large, MB back before ‘ethnic” accents were a mix of “Midwestern newscaster’ and Movie english.
My ‘accent’ was odd enough that a linguistic Prof at the U of Illinios lost a bet that he could place any student’s life history just by reading a prepared statement. Without deliberately misleading, I read the the statement, he asked if I had lived abroad, then when I said Yes, he threw a few questions in various languages, then gave up and said he could not tell. When I said I was a MB, he said he should have known, and said that would be his default answer from there on out.
After twenty years out west, I have a nasal ChiCAAAAgo, but still ask Howdy, and third person plural has gone back to ‘Y’all”. After a weekend in Baltimore, “y’all” still seems to work better
B
peter Jennings was Canadian. Normal Canadian white collar accent. (same effect though, due to the pull between UK and USA on Canadian culture during that era).