Today, Jen Simmons, a member of the blogroll over at The Memphis Blog has a post up complaining about actors southern accents in movies and TV. Well, actually the post is sort of complaining while referencing another article which is complaining because as bloggers we only write three words of actual content for every 1000 words we link to... That is just how the blogosphere spins baby...
So what the hell am I blathering about? I am going to comment on one specific sentence:
You know what? I am almost always offended by terrible real Southern accents in real life.
It's the english language, and although there is a fair bit of interpretation allowed - pronunciation is pretty simple. Even leaving tone (or should I say "twang"?) out of it - there are some things which just drive me batty.
My biggest pet peeve is how the Southern people will randomly drop or insert syllables. Syllables are rarely optional, or left open for debate. It is pretty straight forward. "Dog" has only one syllable. "You all" has two. How about quoting Jeff Foxworthy (old Jeff, before he sucked) with his depiction of a Southern conversation:
Translation:
"Did you eat yet?"
"No. Did you?"
"No"
"Do you want to?"
"All right."
For some more gems, you can check out the (old but still true) Southern Word Homepage.
So OK, Jen - I will give it to you (and the source material from which you got your inspiration) many actors don't get it right. Hell, Kevin Costner is notorious for it.
Accents are hard to do right some times. But as many of the comments point out in the NYMag Vulture article - many of the genuine southern accents mess up themselves. There is no consistency or rhyme or reason. Basically the southern accent can range from very genteel to outright retarded. So why bitch about people messing up an accent that at its very nature is already garbage?
That's it, y'all!
So what the hell am I blathering about? I am going to comment on one specific sentence:
"I'm almost always offended by terrible fake Southern accents in movies and TV."
You know what? I am almost always offended by terrible real Southern accents in real life.
It's the english language, and although there is a fair bit of interpretation allowed - pronunciation is pretty simple. Even leaving tone (or should I say "twang"?) out of it - there are some things which just drive me batty.
My biggest pet peeve is how the Southern people will randomly drop or insert syllables. Syllables are rarely optional, or left open for debate. It is pretty straight forward. "Dog" has only one syllable. "You all" has two. How about quoting Jeff Foxworthy (old Jeff, before he sucked) with his depiction of a Southern conversation:
"Jeet yet?"
"Naw, Jew?"
"Naw"
"Yuntah?"
"Aight."
Translation:
"Did you eat yet?"
"No. Did you?"
"No"
"Do you want to?"
"All right."
For some more gems, you can check out the (old but still true) Southern Word Homepage.
So OK, Jen - I will give it to you (and the source material from which you got your inspiration) many actors don't get it right. Hell, Kevin Costner is notorious for it.
Accents are hard to do right some times. But as many of the comments point out in the NYMag Vulture article - many of the genuine southern accents mess up themselves. There is no consistency or rhyme or reason. Basically the southern accent can range from very genteel to outright retarded. So why bitch about people messing up an accent that at its very nature is already garbage?
That's it, y'all!
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