The English language

I missed the beginning of this thread when I was off running summer camps, but catching the guy at the beginning who did al the accents, I have to say the only American accent he really nailed was the country redneck. But it was perfect.

I think the most fun accent to listen to is the Russian English - if you get the right type of man he'll cover about two octaves in a single sentence. The women sound very sexy in person but sound roaring drunk over the phone.

And funny grammar should not be left out of an accent. I was once carting a group of foreign grad students off on a ski trip. The russian chick was talking to her best friend on cell phone, a Czech who had decided she was too busy to go along so was staying home trying to work. The report back we got, filtered through two grammatical accents, was

" She try to work, but all she does is look the walls. When she gets tired to look the walls, she may go walk the park."

Priceless.   

bungobaggins wrote:How do all these accents develop?

My twin brother and I have an accent no-one else has. You learn by who you talk to the most, and we talked to each other. We were clueless. What came out was structured baby babble. Have a recording of us when 4 years old, I can't understand a word we were saying. Been refined with speech therapy. Drives people crazy trying to figure out where I'm from.

I took tinwhistle lessons once. My instructor gave me a recording to pickup up a melody with ornaments by ear. I listened a few times, thought I had it and practiced it up. I came back, he listened to me, and said...'interesting'. I'd morphed it and it sounded fine to me.

All accents in different media.