When you watch a series on TV do the accents of the actors ever seem odd, or take you out of the atmosphere a little?
Like watching That 70’s Show and barely anyone sounds like they’re from Wisconsin. Or Friends and no one sounds like a New Yorker.
That doesnt happen so much with British programmes. A popular show Coronation Steet is set in Manchester and thats what most of the accents are, they dont have people speaking with London accents.
30 comments
Yes
I was watching a show and the main character was Irish in heritage in the show but was American in the show and had an American accent. I noticed when he yelled in the show it didn’t sound right so I looked it up and he was actually Irish with the accent
Was anyone on “Friends” raised in NYC?
Those actors are most likely not from those areas, and could be from anywhere in the country. Also, a sizable portion of the population of any given metro area doesn’t always speak with the accent that is generally associated with it.
I mean, sometimes, but also you’ll find “general American” accents all over the place. It’s not all that uncommon for people to live in New York who didn’t grow up there, or people who did but have a fairly neutral accent without a very identifiable accent.
Like I grew up in the South, but one of my parents is an immigrant, my grandparents on the other side were immigrants, and the city I’m from has a lot of people from all over. So my accent is pretty faintly southern — it’s very muted unless I’m really trying to exaggerate it.
Our accents also just often aren’t as distinct from each other as regional accents in Europe. This is because accents develop primarily through geographical (or sometimes cultural/social) isolation, and up until a few hundred years ago it was pretty common for people to live their whole lives and die in the same village they were born in. So those accents have been in many cases developing for longer than the US has even existed, which is why they’re more distinct from each other.
Eh…sometimes. Not always.
I do love when they really exaggerate the Philadelphia on It’s Always Sunny tho. Lol
Yes. There’s a show on Netflix called *Sweet magnolias*, and it takes place in my area of the world (or it’s supposed to, anyway). The Southern accents were so bad that I couldn’t watch it, lol.
Nope, doesn’t bother me in the least. America is a highly mobile nation and people are moving around all the time. Expecting people to always have a uniform accent, especially in places like New York City, would be far less realistic than what’s on TV currently.
The only accent that pisses me off is when someone does a bad fake accent. Other than that I don’t really care.
I notice, but it doesn’t really bother me.
Also, FWIW, the characters on Friends are pretty accurate overall. The only one of them that I would maybe expect to have a stronger accent would be Joey, and even that is iffy.
Yes. I usually have fun with it when it’s bad.
I’m watching National Treasure right now, and Diane Kruger’s German accent easily slips through.
yes I notice that, if a show is set in the south and they don’t have southern accents I stop watching
90% of the southern accents I hear are badly done, that always takes me out of it. Most Americans have so little exposure to real southern accents that it’s like listening to Dick Van Dyke in _Mary Poppins_. Even when they can pull off a decent accent, it’s usually still not the RIGHT accent, ie a low-class deep south accent is different from a wealthier Appalachian. Texans probably never hear the right region/class representation.
If they’re supposed to be local accents but are really bad, it can be jarring
If they’re just neutral “standard” accents, I’m pretty used to it.
Something I do wonder about is strong accents I haven’t heard before, like Nadia on _Russian Doll_. I can’t tell if she sounds different from everyone else because she’s supposed to sound weird (she is odd in other ways), or if this is a normal way to sound in her setting
Shows that get southern accents right aren’t the majority.
Depends. I can usually tell when southern accents are fake, but generally speaking it has to be outrageously cliche for it to break my suspension of disbelief.
My feeling is that if you pay too much attention to the accent, you’re not paying enough attention to the action.
I only notice when the accents are so bad I can’t pay attention to what the person is saying. I’d rather have the actors play it with no accent than do a hilarious/bordering on offensive caricature of one.
As someone who’s from Southern California, I don’t notice regional accents unless they’re deliberately put on or the actors are from the region. Likely because a lot of these actors are Southern Californians themselves, so to me, watching “That 70’s Show” doesn’t give me the impression, “hey, they don’t have Wisconsin accents,” but rather, “they sound like people I talk to all the time, I sense no problem.”
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Fairly often with all those Canadians.
I do. It annoys me when the accents are inauthentic. The main male character from The Affair (name escapes me) is British IRL but plays an American on the show. At one point he says, “I could have done.” It annoyed me to no end. Americans never say that. Just “I could have.”
In every place I’ve ever lived, I’ve known a lot of people there who did not grow up in that area. I hear all sorts of different accents all the time and a lot of people don’t have any particular accent because they and their families have moved around a lot and lived among other people from a lot of different places.
I’d only expect uniform, distinct local accents in a TV show if it were set in some backwater where part of the premise of the show is that not a lot of people move into the area from somewhere else.
I’m watching Fargo right now and everyone sounds so aggressively Minnesotan
on one of the texas chainsaw massacres the characters have really horrible southern accents
Sure do.
Especially southern accents. I can tell right away who is putting on a BS southern accent and who has a genuine one.
The easiest is a bad southern accent. I’m not like a southerner southerner, but I know enough to know when one’s wrong. Those are generally the most annoying imo.
The Town and The Departed are two very iffy movies. I think Jon Hamm nailed it though.
Not really. I actually had NO IDEA that Benedict Cumberbatch or Tom Holland were British until I saw them in an interview. They did a spot on job for American accents.