What shows is Jackie watching?

Tom the Fanboy · Post by **Tom the Fanboy** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 9:09 am

I'll whole heartedly agree with the Washington broadcaster accent being american. Even though I live in Oregon (the state just south for those of you who flunked geography) I have heard the the Pacific Northwest has the least accent to their English of all dialects. I know we have an accent, I can't hear it but I'm sure it's there. English is after all ENGLISH so I've never really understood how people speaking with an english accent (American's doing cockney, like My Fair Lady) can mispronounce things. As far as I can tell the folks around here have very little deviation in their accents when they speak propper english.Has anyone else heard this about the Northwest? I think it might be because of how many different type of settlers came here after being diffused by the rest of the states (unlike New York where they were fresh off the boat). I wonder if the same thing applies to British Columbia accents, anyone know?Oh, and bully for Tracy Ulman!------------------
Tom the Fanboy
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HariSeldon · Post by **HariSeldon** » Wed Oct 10, 2001 11:39 am

Of course the Pacific Northwest has an accent. You're just aurally trained to recognize it as normal. To a Brit, or Canadian, or American Southerner, or New Yorker, or Australian, or wherever else, you don't speak correctly.

TrueRaijin · Post by **TrueRaijin** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 6:07 am

Dream of calfiornication...------------------
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Maccabee · Post by **Maccabee** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 7:10 am

Everybody has an accent. Everybody. Some accents get accepted as "standard" because of the political, economic, or social status of their speakers. They're still accents. Regional accents in the US have flattened out somewhat because of the influence of film, radio, and television, and our increasingly nomadic lifestyle.One change we're likely to see is the growing status of assorted southern accents. Since shortly before the Civil War the south has had a reputation for backwardness and, to be frank, stupidity. People will often lop a couple dozen points off an estimated I.Q. when they hear a thick southern accent. However, since 1948, southerners (if you include the sunbelt of the states bordering on Mexico) have won every presidential election but one, and the region is growing in relative population and economic power as well. The "southern accent" is therefore likely to rise in status over the coming decades.Most midwestern accents, like those of the pacific northwest, are the result of northern and southern accents merging through immigration patterns (there are of course exceptions like the scandanavian-flavored accents of parts of Minnesota). Even before Edward Murrow's day variants of this accent were being pushed by Hollywood as "standard."It ought to be interesting to see how regional accents are affected by changing technologies. The internet may help preserve regional accents by making communication more text-based, for instance. I wish I had more than one linguistics class on which to base this. And why shouldn't I dangle my prepositions, huh? Where's the harm? It's a stupid, clumsy construction, "on which to..." Fucking grammarians. <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/mad.gif">Maccabee------------------
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BLee · Post by **BLee** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 7:15 am

*delurking*
I had always heard that most movie and television actors (and yes, that includes news anchors) spoke in something called "Hollywood Standard" which is essentially a California accent without the clip, and that this has since spread around most of the nation (a shame if you ask me.) However, it could very well be that the California accent strongly resembles the Washington accent, except for a few words (soda and pop, for instance) and the speed at which it is spoken (Californians are notoriously fast talkers.)
And I agree about Brits doing "American accents." I'm sure our British voices sound equally bad, but still.

Tom the Fanboy · Post by **Tom the Fanboy** » Thu Oct 11, 2001 11:27 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by HariSeldon:
Of course the Pacific Northwest has an accent. You're just aurally trained to recognize it as normal. To a Brit, or Canadian, or American Southerner, or New Yorker, or Australian, or wherever else, you don't speak correctly.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>*sigh*
Yes thank you for verifying the side I knew.
I get plenty of Texans here who say that we're "Stupid hicks who talk funny."I was curious whether anyone had seen actual scientific studies of dialect to verify whether some regions are more "accurate" or their accents "thicker".------------------
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Schol-R-LEA · Post by **Schol-R-LEA** » Mon Oct 15, 2001 8:21 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Psiogen:
 Heh. Here in Brooklyn, people who've grown up 200 yards apart have radically different accents.
I have an especially confused version, having lived 3 of my first 4 years in South Carolina before coming here. I would probably fare worse than most Brits at attempting an "American" accent.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Bob Hodgson does pretty well at what I guess is supposed to be a sort of generic New York (or maybe New Jersey) accent circa 1945... well, to be honest, he sounds like a typical Hollywood 'tough guy' from that era, and mixes it up quite a bit really, but I'd bet a lot of people who saw him in his 'American' roles would have pegged hm as being from somewhere in the US if they didn't know better.I have no ear for accents, myself I couldn't tell a Brooklyn accent from a Bronx, and anything from below the Mason-Dixon line leaves me wondering if we're speaking the same language; the differences between British accents utterly bewilder me. I don't even know what a Connecticut accent is supposed to sound like (I definitely do not sound like Jim Backus doing Mr. Howell, thank you very much), and as for the polyglot stew you get here in Berzerkeley...------------------
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The greatest weakness of the Conspiracy is that it does.[This message has been edited by Schol-R-LEA (edited 10-15-2001).]

Muttley · Post by **Muttley** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 2:35 am

isobelfox said:
On a vague blend of the 2 topics, I like red dwarf books better than the shows because I just can't understand 3 of 5 words out of Lister's mouth. I've always been bad w/Scottish accents, though. Had the same problem with Trainspotting.
---Ummmm . . . there's just not an easy way to break this, but Craig Charles's accent, which he uses unmodified when playing Lister, is Scouse i.e. Liverpudlian. (I was going to say like The Beatles, but realised that it would just make me look old and not help very much). Scouse is heavily influenced by Irish, which derives from Scots, so I suppose the relationship is fairly close <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/wink.gi ... inspotting on the other hand, is Edinburgh, which the rest of Scotland thinks of as an effete Anglicised city and not really part of Scotland at all. And on the subject of White Dwarf, I've never come across a television show by that name, but I am familiar with it as the punning title of an SF/fantasy gaming monthly.Er - has that helped, at all?
Oh.
Sorry...Muttley
Scottish by marriage, which helps even less[This message has been edited by Muttley (edited 10-16-2001).]

Maccabee · Post by **Maccabee** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 7:00 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Tarkas:

And don't even get me started on the treatment the average Septic (Yank -- rhyming slang. Work it out for yourself <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/smile.gif">) hands out to Australian accents. We're not Southern Hempisphere mockneys, you know.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Septic... tank... rhymes with Yank.Word ---> associated word ---> rhyme.Stupid fucking cockney word-play. I hear they still do it for the tourists in parts of London. The rubes just eat that shit up.Maccabee

Isobelfox · Post by **Isobelfox** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 7:41 am

Getting back up to the first post, I noticed something interesting- I figure Jackie is talking about "Red Dwarf" when she says "White Dwarf", name changed to avoid trademark infringement, etc. But I actually saw a British show once called "White Dwarf". It was something about a world divided between night & day, a war, sci fi, etc. I saw this before I ever heard of Red Dwarf, so for the longest time I thought they were connected & I was sorely confused. Has anyone else heard of this? It this what Jackie was really talking about? Am I on crack? Tune in tomorrow!We had the accent conversation in playwriting class once. I have traces of an appalachian accent in my speech, which manifests itself as a tendency to say "warsh" and "Ohia". I feel curiously proud of subverting the linguistic norm. Hurrah!

Blondlot · Post by **Blondlot** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 8:13 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by isobelfox:
Getting back up to the first post, I noticed something interesting- I figure Jackie is talking about "Red Dwarf" when she says "White Dwarf", name changed to avoid trademark infringement, etc. But I actually saw a British show once called "White Dwarf". It was something about a world divided between night & day, a war, sci fi, etc. I saw this before I ever heard of Red Dwarf, so for the longest time I thought they were connected & I was sorely confused. Has anyone else heard of this? It this what Jackie was really talking about? Am I on crack? Tune in tomorrow!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I remember White Dwarf. Fox TV brought it over here around the same time as the Doctor Who tv movie.Red Dwarf is the name of a sci-fi comedy I saw a short time back. The main characters were these two engineers on a spaceship. One was a goof-off named Lister and the other was this career-minded guy who could never get promoted because he always failed the exams (there was a hilarious scene where he tried to pass the exam by writing crib notes on his sweaty palms). Lister had these cats and as it happens that they have not been passed through inspection. They have to either be frozen or executed. He decides to have them and himself frozen, as he can't bear to be without them. Two of the cats escaped, I believe.After Lister has been frozen the other guy forgets to do some routine maintanence and destroys everyone with a huge blast of radiation. He only saves himself by becoming the ship's onboard hologram (the ship can have one sentient hologram at a time).When Lister wakes up from cold sleep all that is left of the crew are piles of bone white dust. He meets up later with both his old partner in hologram form and a ancestor of his cat, who is a moorish, zoot-suit wearing hipster catman raised on myths that Lister was a messiah who would lead his race back to earth.It's a neat show. I believe there were books.
Ex animo,
m.d

Muttley · Post by **Muttley** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 10:18 am

Red Dwarf is a long-running "Comedy/SF" series on BBC, first aired in 1988 and now into its eleventh series. Written Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (as "Grant Naylor"), it has a strong following in the UK. The first two seasons were the best (in my opinion), especially as the Cat was much more cat-like; he's now devolved into a vain human with long canines (felines? but I digress).Red Dwarf is a mining ship. Lister is portrayed as a slob, and was originally a maintenance engineer 3rd class or something equally menial. Rimmer is a pompous ass, and a lifelong failure, and was Listers supervisor (the highest position he ever rose to). Rimmer managed, through sheer incompetance, to cause an accident that killed the whole crew, except for Lister who he had placed in detention (in suspended animation) at the time. The ship drifts. Time passes. Lister's cat also survived, and in the intervening eons manages to father a race evolving into humanoid form. Rimmer was preserved as a hologram, for reasons that escape me right now.I'm not a fan. For me it emphasises the lowest common denominator too much, that is, it's too crude.You can find a good summary of Red Dwarf <A HREF="http://hem.fyristorg.com/gumby/sf/eng/h ... aylor.html" TARGET=_blank>here</A> or <A HREF="http://www.reddwarf.nildram.co.uk/genesis_fr.htm" TARGET=_blank>here</A>, or a the <A HREF="http://www.jupitermining.com/" TARGET=_blank>official fan club</A>. Yes, indeed, there are also books.Muttley

T Campbell · Post by **T Campbell** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 10:40 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by isobelfox:
Getting back up to the first post, I noticed something interesting- I figure Jackie is talking about "Red Dwarf" when she says "White Dwarf", name changed to avoid trademark infringement, etc. But I actually saw a British show once called "White Dwarf". It was something about a world divided between night & day, a war, sci fi, etc. I saw this before I ever heard of Red Dwarf, so for the longest time I thought they were connected & I was sorely confused. Has anyone else heard of this? It this what Jackie was really talking about? Am I on crack? Tune in tomorrow!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Auuuuuuuuuuuugh! Jason warned me there was a real White Dwarf series, and I missed it in the revisions... file this next to Kath's glasses as "to be fixed when you least expect it."

Tarkas · Post by **Tarkas** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 11:21 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>I'm sure our British voices sound equally bad [...]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Worse... far, far worse... <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/wink.gif"> But then, what is a British accent? There are as many or more dialects in the UK as there are in the US, and the speakers of each one cordially loathe all the others. I think it was GBS who said, "An Englishman only has to open his mouth to make another Englishman despise him." That goes for the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish, too.And don't even get me started on the treatment the average Septic (Yank -- rhyming slang. Work it out for yourself <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/smile.gif">) hands out to Australian accents. We're not Southern Hempisphere mockneys, you know.The fun thing about Farscape is to be able to listen to all the aliens with Oz accents... <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/biggrin.gif">------------------
"Ping! Ping! Ping!" -- Mother Box

Isobelfox · Post by **Isobelfox** » Tue Oct 16, 2001 11:46 am

Oh no, I made T scream! Bad Isobel! Bad!On a vague blend of the 2 topics, I like red dwarf books better than the shows because I just can't understand 3 of 5 words out of Lister's mouth. I've always been bad w/Scottish accents, though. Had the same problem with Trainspotting.Does anybody know where I can find stuff on White Dwarf? What I saw looked nifty.-Izzy

Yumitori · Post by **Yumitori** » Wed Oct 17, 2001 5:06 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Muttley:

Red Dwarf is a mining ship. Lister is portrayed as a slob, and was originally a maintenance engineer 3rd class or something equally menial. Rimmer is a pompous ass, and a lifelong failure, and was Listers supervisor (the highest position he ever rose to). Rimmer managed, through sheer incompetance, to cause an accident that killed the whole crew, except for Lister who he had placed in detention (in suspended animation) at the time. The ship drifts. Time passes. Lister's cat also survived, and in the intervening eons manages to father a race evolving into humanoid form. Rimmer was preserved as a hologram, for reasons that escape me right now.
Muttley<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Lister had the lowest rank on the ship. Rimmer, who had a serious need to be important, the second lowest. That's what made him, in his mind, Lister's superior. Really, they were just roommates.
The ship could make one hologram, and when Lister was thawed out, the ship's computer chose Rimmer, with whom Lister had had the most conversations, despite them being all ones in which Rimmer bitches at Lister and Lister tells Rimmer to 'Smeg off'.First season or two were amusing (and a fine source for fannish material), later seasons seemed to have lost their way.

T Campbell · Post by **T Campbell** » Wed Oct 17, 2001 5:13 am

Heheh. No biggie, isobel. But you'll notice it's now "PINK Dwarf." <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/wink.gif">

Maccabee · Post by **Maccabee** » Wed Oct 17, 2001 5:48 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by T Campbell:
Heheh. No biggie, isobel. But you'll notice it's now "PINK Dwarf." <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/wink.gi ... QUOTE>T, we talked about this... There's no such thing as a "pink dwarf." To keep the astronomical reference of Red Dwarf we were going to use Blue Dwarf if people had actually heard about White Dwarf.Maccabee
underpaid and underappreciated editor

T Campbell · Post by **T Campbell** » Wed Oct 17, 2001 5:56 am

Yikes. My public apologies, Greg; I've been getting it going and coming on this one. I remembered a conversation with JASON where he suggested "Pink Dwarf;" the talk with you had honestly slipped my mind. An increasing number of things do, these days... Neither of us felt particularly strongly about what color it should be, so consider that on the to-do list.And now you can all start the office betting pool about what evening it becomes "BLUE Dwarf."

T Campbell · Post by **T Campbell** » Wed Oct 17, 2001 6:14 am

Have I mentioned lately that Greg is, indeed, the least appreciated member of the FANS team for the amount of work he does? And that he's moving up to co-writer for most of 2002?