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. 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.
Examples of the accent (or something close to it): Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Julia Child, William F Buckley (in his own way), Peter Jennings, Vincent Price, Anthony Hopkins, Darth Vader, Princess Leia (when speaking formally), Niles and Frasier on “Frasier”, the millionaire and his wife on “Gilligan’s Island”, Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane”, the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz”, Mr Burns and Sideshow Bob on “The Simpsons”, Paige Sinclair (“Bojack Horseman”), Effie Trinket in “The Hunger Games” (pictured above), the Evil Queen in “Snow White”, Gayne Whitman, Alexander Scourby in the old National Geographic television specials, and most British actors who try to sound American (but not, of course, Idris Elba or Hugh Laurie of “House”).
– Abagond, 2009, 2021.
Update (2021): In 1953 Alexander Scourby read the entire King James Bible for the blind in a Transatlantic accent – and it is on YouTube! Just search on YouTube for “Alexander Scourby” and the book of the Bible you want to hear and you will see it (as of 2021).
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.
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House is great, isn’t he? And I was shocked when I found out he was British. Very convincing American accent.
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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!
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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.
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oh – and thanks for this – another interesting piece about something new.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Oops, I meant Hugh Laurie.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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. 😉
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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
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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
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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).
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u can never satisfy an American w ur accent (if ur European) cos Euro-Americans are disaffected – it is thus their nature to “attack” u if u hang onto ur European lineage in any way.
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So that’s why those old movies sound so funny! My mother and I get a kick out of imitating them.
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ha ha! I love it! Thanks for sharing. I always wondered why they talked like that in old movies.
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Kelsey Grammer speaks with such an accent. He performed on one commercial only as the voice of the GEICO gecko a few years back. From that point on the gecko’s spoken with what sounds like a working-class British accent (voiced by another actor) rather than the pretentious Trans-Atlantic one Grammer affects.
Either the writers of the commercials can’t tell the difference between the two accents, or they think the typical American TV viewer can’t tell it….
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Abagond, I believe the ACCENT you’re describing is called Canadian. American-sounding with some Englishe elocution.
PS. Grace Kelly speaks with the same accent.
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I meant Grace Kelly SPOKE. Past Tense. Anfd “English” doesn’t have an “e” of course.
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The Tin Man (Jack Haley) is a textbook example of a male TA accent. The millionaire (Thurston Howell III) and WF Buckley spoke with a “Locust Valley Lockjaw.” And a good modern example of TA is Carrie Fisher’s “Star Wars” ‘royal’ accent, at least in the first movie. She didn’t maintain it very well and mostly dropped it in the sequels.
Always laugh at 40’s actresses (they weren’t called “actors” back then) pronouncing the word ‘girl’ as ‘guhhl’!!
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Glad to see this finally explained. I would call it the Roosevelt accent as you heard a lot of politicians with it as well as Hollywood actors. As a matter of fact, I think the Roosevelt accent is the model. Lord Buckley ie Governor Slingwell Slugwell, had it also. Very interesting. It’s a sort of Pseudo intelligent accent that If I was around back then I’d ask them why they were talking that way.
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This was an interesting read. I always wondered about that unusual accent as well, but never enough to go find out what it was called.
I probably sound a bit like this due to having lived in both the UK and North America. However, I also have Dutch family and have lived in other European countries, so my accent is most likely all jumbled up.
Hugh Laurie does do an excellent American accent. I’ve only heard him slip once in House, when he pronounced `stroke’ in a very British way.
As for non-Brits recognising the difference between received pronunciation and `working-class’ accents… I’ve noticed that, for many people, the working-class accent has to be very obvious for them to recognise it. There have been many occasions when I have heard someone with a more subtle working-class accent, but still plenty obvious to my ears, and people have commented on it sounding `posh’!
I’m not sure the Transatlantic accent is the same as a Canadian one. I lived there and, to me, they sounded similar to Americans. The t’s were pronounced as d’s, r’s at the end were pronounced and the vowels sounded like the American ones. If I pronounced `water’ in my usual British way of `waw-tuh’ (which is apparently the same as the Transatlantic way), the Canadian people almost always became confused! Even stewardesses who worked on flights to and from London, UK had no idea what I was on about when I would ask for some water… I always had to put on a Canadian accent, but then they would get freaked out.
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The Tin Man in the original Wizard of Oz is not a Mid-Atlantic but an older Massachusetts accent. Within 15 mile radius of Boston, probably west.
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Yeah I tried to talk like that and sometimes I would succeed and sometimes I woulden’t haha yeah I like accents, I always like the overly-dramatized ways in those movies BUT as I grew older I started to Question:,,, : Whyyyy do they talk like that?, was it required by the “actors-society-Union bond” XD Stating: “You must sound like that while acting.” cause almost all of them sounded like that ,.the same.
,..was it because the White settlers came from England etc and they haven’t fully “settled” into The Americas? hahaa Or whAt,..I realised that there was no actual country other then HollywoodLand where they spoke such dialect ~Reahhhlly Dahhhlinnng ,yehhhs rahhhllly~…but, Now I know..thanks (^-^) haha
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Just found these posts and it’s very educational. A few points- nobody has mentioned Bob Hoskins in the same league with Hugh Laurie for being an undetectable Brit at will. Very talented- both of them.
Another point I couldn’t find about the TA accent is those annoying rolled L’s, as in ‘plyease’ for ‘please’. It sounds affected as hell and always bugged me.
I’m old enough to have been raised on many of those movies, so it’s not like a foreign sound suddenly assaulted my ear when viewing an old flick.
I guess it boils down to skill and artistry- some actors can pull it off and some can’t.
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its important to note that: there IS no bloody “Accent” n Britain. ONLY perfect and imperfect English pronunciation. if anything – people n the Americas are trying 2 drag English down with Spanish!
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@ Bulanik
Can you post someone with an Estuary accent? I have heard OF it but am not quite sure which accent they mean.
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Right, m8 – (those) can properly b called English accents, if u like – they’re HERE in the UK! But, I don’t wot the fuck u poor sods n the Americas r barking about. Learn proper ENGLISH, get on with it …
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@ Bulanik
Cool! Thanks. Estuary sounds like Dr Who to me.
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I am thinking of Matt Smith, the current one.
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@Bulanik
Stone the crows, I cant flippin believe it 🙂 . I reckon most in the ‘Sarf’ slip into Estuary English and RP (Received Pronounciation) aka as BBC English.
I guess some in the US will be familiar with Russell Brand following his marriage to Katie Perry – I would say his accent is closer to Estuary English where as Hugh Grant/Hugh Laurie is RP – what say you Bulanik?
Apparently, David Tennant is Scottish with a strong dose of Irish according to ‘Who do you think you are’.
Do you guys in the US know much about the Regional accents across the UK?
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It seems like everything from the 1900’s used that accent.
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@Bulanik
My accent is a mix of Estuary, RP and a good dose of Patois depending. How bout you? Have you picked up an Irish lilt yet?
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@Bulanik
My, you are ‘posh’ compared to me who speaks with a ‘Glottal Stop’ or should I say ‘Glo”al Stop’ from time to time 🙂
LOL, The Irish accent is infectious isnt it – my friend migrated to Ireland some years ago and says things like ‘yer man’ and ‘to be sure’ 🙂
I reckon I need to learn to speak pro’a (proper) 😉
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I really enjoyed reading all the comments. I went on the net to look up what accent Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Katherine Hepburn and even Deborah Kerr used. I like the term Transatlantic. It fits. Back in college I took a linguistics class and the professor said that when a language separates for 100 years. a different accent appears; in a 1000 years. it is a whole other language. With all the mass media, will that change? Will accents become less and less? I noticed when some 2nd cousins came to visit us in Wisconsin from Germany, they sounded British! i think a closer term would be more of a Transatlantic accent. i was really expecting them to sound like someone from Hogan’s Heroes.
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@ Bulanik
I guess I really have lived away from the UK too long, then! Or I have to pay extra attention to his pronunciation.
As for the `working class accent’, I agree it is very complicated. I’m a Brit and even I don’t know a name for all of them, nor can I understand every one of them!
I hate hearing myself on tape or video now. My accent sounds so bizarre.
@ Mary Ellen O’Sullivan
That’s really interesting. I have noticed that a lot of people who speak English as a second language end up sounding American. Especially if they watch a lot of American TV shows (which are available in most parts of the world). So I think it certainly has some sort of effect.
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I’m American and Find this topic intriguing. I’m curious if you have a term for the Australian accents. Would it be closer to RP, estuary or something altogether different? Also, do you know how the American accent became devoid of British annunciation? Was it an intentional break in speech to distance ourselves from the Brits? Thanks for all the info and those clips are great.
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u have to be aware that there were no recording devices or any way to maintain proper, British English pronunciation in the Americas. the idea of the new world distancing itself from the language is probably more of a patriotic sentiment. The Aussie English pronunciation (style) is more a more recent incarnation as the British colonised that land after 1788 and kept a strong line of communication with (them) well into the post modern Royal Commonwealth era …
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I’d hoped to discover from Cary Grant why whites hate, demonize, fear and look down on blacks but I guess that’s going to be a mystery a bit longer.
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Fascinating! Love being a Brit here in the USA and seeing the difference in the accents. Had a go at a US accent year and a half ago in a play – was prob a bit transatlantic when I think about it – had a few vowel problems slip out on stage but was thoroughly fun to do! Had the shoe on the other foot a few months back coaching Americans in Cockney, Estuary and RP for a production of A Christmas Carol. That was very educational too! Love reading the posts – I think that there is also a difference in humour – I think one of the Brits here was trying to be funny and some people have taken him/her seriously! Happens to me all the time. LOL
So funny when I do a Manchester accent and no-one here knows – they just think it’s English!
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Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohen on The Walking Dead do not speak with that accent, I guess voice coaches are better in teaching dialects.
This is the accident that certain characters in Marx Brothers movies and adults on the Little Rascal shows spoke.
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Kimberly, aren’t Australian accents just strongly influenced from Cockney, since a lot of Australians were Cockney. Just like the accent of the Southeast had a lot of influence from the original Scots Irish immigrants?
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Very interesting article. I just wanted to add that Jimmy McNulty and Stringer Bell in The Wire were played by English actors. McNulty I kinda suspected but Stringer Bell completely threw me. The accent Damien Lewis uses in Band Of Brothers and Homeland also seemed slightly off too but generally it seems easier for A Brit to successfully pull off a US accent than the reverse.
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I see you’ve been reading Neatorama.com
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I speak transatlantic when I’m making old timey news reels (which doesn’t happen nearly as often as I’d like…)
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Stephen Hawking also has an American accent.
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Another actor who does a fine job of an American accent is Marsha Thomason as Special Agent Diana Berrigan on “White Collar”; she’s actually from Manchester and in one episode goes undercover as someone from Manchester and–I assume–speaks in her own natural voice.
An accent I love to hear is Reshma Shetty as Divya Katdare in “Royal Pains”; she’s also from Manchester but on the show speaks pretty spot-on Standard Received English, as is appropriate for a young Indian woman of her character’s social standing.
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It’s a fake english accent that celebrities and and yuppies ues to make themselves sound smart. So that’s why Katherine Hepburn and Carey Grant as charming and entertaing as they were,it always sounded strange and affected to my ears. This was enlighting thanks for this post. Learned something new today.
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I concur with Ray Trygstad. I do like the character Divya Katdare on the show Royal Pains as well. I wondered was that the way an upscale Indian woman would speak. Since Divya’s character is very poised and articulate.
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RP = Royal Patois
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Don’t fear the water, be a winner and dance in the butter.
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I have this accent. I didn’t try to obtain this accent. I’ve spent half my life on one side of the Atlantic, half on the other side. It’s not long into a conversation with someone new that I can see them strain to place it until they can’t stand it any more and ask where I’m from. After a few years, I started countering with, ‘where do you think I’m from’. I can’t list the wild guesses I’ve received.
I sound like this when I’m tired, I sound like this when I’m angry, I sound like this ordering takeaway. In short, this is me 24/7. Comments like Mary Burrell’s are assumed about me all the time. It’s an unwarranted, prejudiced assessment of me as a person to listen for two seconds and conclude I have ‘a fake english accent that celebrities and and yuppies ues to make themselves sound smart.’ I *am* smart, it’s not fake, and I’m no yuppie.
A lot of what people are mentioning here, by the way, are examples of ‘code switching’ – using different accents, vocabulary, or languages for particular locales, events, with certain groups.
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I am told I have this accent. I never knew it had a name until now. I grew up in California but went to a somewhat elite school with very good English teachers. I always thought I had an upper-crust California sort of accent. In any event, one thing I do notice about the hoi polloi American speakers is their tendency to pronounce the ‘t’ as a ‘d’. I got quite a laugh recently when I saw the movie Gettysburg. Martin Sheen had a horribly overdone Southern accent which was uncomfortable to listen to. I felt somewhat bad for him. But the funny part was when he told Longstreet “we must all do our doody.” Doody, indeed. Of course, he meant “duty”. Most amusing. Cheers.
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I’d love it if Trans-Atlantic/Mid-Atlantic were to be revived because I have it too. I grew up in the States (midwest and west coast) and my parents are English. As a child, I got very tired of people talking about the way I talked or how my parents talked that when I decided to come to live in Britain when I was 20, I reduced my American accent as much as possible and, hey presto. Nobody here knows where I’m from–with one or two exceptions, e.g. one keen eared linguist who noticed that I have some rhoticity in a few words–it’s just assumed I am not from whichever region I happen to be in. When I’m in the States, I sound very English, almost to the point where I’m surprised to hear myself speak.
I noticed that I go very ‘lock jawed’ at times. It does, however, make me good at teaching non-native English speakers to speak neutral English.
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*I’ve noticed
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Reblogged this on A Reckless Mind and commented:
Interesting info regarding the American Transatlantic accent. I’d basically say this is pretty much the same as what General/Standard-Canadian English accent is today.
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Isn’t this pretty much just General/Standard-Canadian English accent?
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@ Anna
Maybe there are accents like that in Canada, but most Canadian Anglophones sound like they come from the US. For example, Lily Singh on YouTube:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeEe8QasV5s)
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Give it up to #England u sods. All other lingua is toast. 🙂
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Well think about it? That’s unfair, isn’t it? English may be dominant (largely because of massive, successful war, colonialisation and cultural conversion) – but English is STILL a language like any other. And just as you would like to perfect your Russian or your Mandarin – you should perfect your English. You’d better apologise to that ‘douchebag’ … ! 😉
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Haven’t read all the responses so sorry if I’m repeating what has already been said but in the UK this is equivalent to what we call a BBC accent. An unreal accent used on all British forms of media until the 1970’s. It was considered cultured and correct to talk this way but actually sounds ridiculous. No one in life spoke like that.
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You should do a post about how African/Asian/Indian accents are treated vs. how European accents are treated.
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Not ‘BBC accent’ – its properly called RP or received pronounciation — so that any one can understand really. To be honest: the BETTER your english the better for you on UK and EU …
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Update: In 1953 Alexander Scourby read the entire King James Bible for the blind in a Transatlantic accent – and it is on YouTube! Just search on YouTube for “Alexander Scourby” and the book of the Bible you want to hear and you will see it (as of 2021).
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