Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful
if you’re not from the us american south, there’s some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can’t really describe all of them, because i’ve lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.
but y'all. the way he said “brutus is an honourable man” - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end…it wasn’t a threat, it was a promise.
christ, he’s good.
the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.
Get this man a starring role as Marc Antony in a southern adaptation of this show PLEASE.
This man is fantastic. 💕
The thing that just destroys me about this, though – we think of Shakespearean language as being high-cultured, and intellectual, and somewhat inaccessible. And I know people think of Southerners as being ill-educated (which…let’s be fair, most are, but not the way it’s said). But that whole speech, unaltered, is so authentically Southern. And the thing is: Leaning into that language really amps the mood, in metalanguage. I’m not really sure how to explain it except… like… “Thrice” is not a word you hear in common speech…unless you’re in the South and someone is trying to Make A Fucking Point.
Anyway. This was amazing and I want a revival of Shakespeare As Southern Gothic.
One of the lovely things about this, and one of the reasons it works so well, is that from what we can piece together of how Shakespeare was originally pronounced, it leans more towards an American southern accent than it does towards a modern British RP.
In addition, in the evolution of the English language in america, the south has retained many of the words, expressions, and cadences from the Renaissance/Elizabethan English spoken by the original British colonists.
One of the biggest examples of this is that the south still uses “O!”/“Oh!” In sentences, especially in multi-tone and multi-syllable varieties. We’ve lost that in other parts of the country (except in some specific pocket communities). But in the south on the whole? Still there. People in California or Chicago don’t generally say things like “why, oh why?” Or “oh bless your heart” or “Oh! Now why you gotta do a thing like that?!” But people from the south still do.
I teach, direct, and dramaturg Shakespeare for a living. When people are struggling with the “heightened” language, especially in “O” heavy plays like R&J and Hamlet, a frequent exercise I have them do is to run the scene once in a southern accent. You wouldn’t believe the way it opens them up and gives their contemporary brains an insight into ways to use that language without it being stiff and fake. Do the Balcony scene in a southern accent- you’ll never see it the same way again.
This guy is also doing two things that are absolutely spot-on for this speech:
First, he’s using the rhetorical figures Shakespeare gave him! The repetition of “ambition” and “Brutus is an honorable man”, the logos with which he presents his argument, the use of juxtaposition and antitheses (“poor have cried/caesar hath wept”, etc). You would not believe how many RADA/Carnegie/LAMDA/Yale trained actors blow past those, and how much of my career I spend pointing it out and making them put it back in.
Second, he’s playing the situation of the speech and character exactly right. This speech is hard not just because it’s famous, but because linguistically and rhetorically it’s a better speech than Brutus’ speech and in the context of the play, Brutus is the one who is considered a great orator. Brutus’ speech is fiery passion and grandstanding, working the crowd, etc. Anthony is not a man of speeches (“I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man”) His toastmaster skills are not what Brutus’ are, but he speaks from his heart (his turn into verse in this scene from Brutus’ prose is brilliant) and lays out such a reasonable, logical argument that the people are moved anyway. I completely believe that in this guy’s performance. A plain, blunt, honest speaker. Exactly what Anthony should be.
TLDR: Shakespeare is my job and this is 100% a good take on this speech.
definitely one of the challenges I have with reading Shakespeare is that it sounds so weird to me. “The good is oft interr’d with their bones”?? Who talks like that?
Well,,, rednecks. Despite being Elizabethan English, none of this is really out of character for a man with that accent; southern american English has retained not only (I am told) the accent of Shakespeare, and the “Oh!” speech patterns, but also so many of the little linguistic patterns: parenthetic repetition (“so are they all - all honorable men”), speaking formally when deeply emotional, getting more and more sarcastic and passive-aggressive as time goes on, etc.
i love the new zealand accent, genuinely, but it tickles me greatly that everyone who is reading explicit ofmd fic is imagining the sound of 2 men fucking and exchanging sexy talk in kiwi accents
Oh that's so interesting, I clocked Stede as being played by an NZ actor but I figured he was trying to do a British accent of some kind. Was it just a different flavor or level of NZ accent than what Taika was doing or was I tin-earing it?
In technical linguist terms there is only one New Zealand accent (minor exception for Southland, where due to very high Scottish immigration they kept a rhotic R in some words). In practical terms it varies noticeably to New Zealanders by class and ethnicity. This article goes into detail. As with other former British colonies, RP English remained a prestige accent for a long time (used by newsreaders, etc), so people who went to private school, are from wealthy families, etc often sound ‘more English’ even today. (A complicating factor in NZ is that 27% of NZers were born overseas, and the UK is still the second-most-common country of origin for immigrants after Australia - so there’s also a lot of people wandering around with, like, genuinely quasi-English accents.)
The same thing is true in Australia, there’s a distinct group of people who have posh white Australian accents that are much less distinctly Aussie than your Crocodile Dundee kind of Australian accent - an example in OFMD is Claudia O'Doherty (Mary).
Rhys Darby is however not an English immigrant, or doing an English or British accent per se - he’s doing a posh Pākehā accent/voice, contrasted with Taika Waititi’s more Māori accent (which, generally speaking, has heavy overlap with working-class and rural Pākehā accents in many areas of the country, as well as the accents of NZ-born Pasifika Kiwis). But they’re still both firmly in the broad category of New Zealand accents.
Instead of cluttering the notes on that accent post, I will continue talking in my own post lol
I definitely think Nog has an accent. There may even be sounds in Ferengi (assuming that’s what they call their language) that he can’t quite manage, because, as you said, he grew up on the station. His palate might have formed differently! We don’t even know if he is always speaking Ferengi and being translated or if he is speaking Standard? I would assume Quark would insist he learn Ferengi but I feel like he would pick up a lot of Standard. Altho! Maybe the UT just translates everything into Ferengi for him.
WHICH! DOES THE UT HAVE AN ACCENT??? Even if it is programmed to mimic the standard pronunciation of each language, there must be regional differences. Like, I would bet citizens of the nothern continent on Cardassia speak differently than those in the Capital or in the south! Like the U.S. is full of accents, not to mention the rest of Earth. And we know humans in Trek have accents! DOES THE UT HAVE A BRITISH ACCENT WHEN PICARD HEARS IT TRANSLATE OTHER LANGUAGES???? The UT makes my brain hurt.
I feel like the UT could simultaneously create extra accents and dialects and also flatten the variety of language, depending on how much it is used on different planets, ykwim? I wonder if there’s a sort of Starfleet version of Standard. Cadets go home after a year at the Academy and their parents keep asking them to repeat things. I imagine this happens even with human cadets on Earth, but it might even be worse with other species from other planets. Also! I wonder if Wesley had an accent to the ears of his Academy peers?
There’s more I could say, but I keep getting distracted and I’m afraid tumblr will eat this post. So I will end for now.
Do you ever wonder if the reason that different cultures have such wildly different onomatopoeias for the noise a cat makes is that cats have regional accents?
Actually, they do.
There’s a lot of evidence that animals have regional accents. Both birds and sperm whales in fact to vocalise differently depending on where they grew up.
As for felines themselves, there’s an ongoing study underway on at Lund University precisely about this.
As a phonologist who has watched entirely too many cat videos on the internet, I can confirm that cats of differing countries do have differentiated accents in their cries. Felines in England tend to have shorter, lower “mow” whereas Japanese cats do tend to make glides into high vowels, and are sustained longer, such as the ubiqutous use of “nyaaaan” in Japanese onomatopoeia.
It started when I was in kindergarten, and I was so proud I did not have to go to Bingo class, unlike my friends, because I could speak good English -
although I had no idea what a yellow dog that could spell had anything to do with Chinese.
(I figure out now that it was probably called Bilingual class)
I am lucky. I speak the fluent, accentless English of newscasters, the dialect spoken by the children of immigrants, that we learned not from our parents but rather from watching Sesame Street and other things on tv.
Last year, a white facebook friend of mine posted, “In order to celebrate Chinese New Year, me talk rike chinese man arr day.”
And then told me that she was “sorry I was offended” and “she didn’t mean anything by it” when I (nicely, sweetly) told her that that shit was not okay. She said that she saw it the same as doing an accent, like Irish. Or British. Or Italian. (for bonus points, she even said that she has lots of Asian co-workers and friends, and LOVES Asian people, and so is not a racist.)
And when one of my white friends gets drunk, he thinks his “Asian accent” is hilarious.
And I was told by a coworker about the time my Asian coworker mispronounced “Barroway” as “Bwawwoway” and how hilarious it was.
Here’s the thing - can you guess how many Asian people I know who actually say
me rikey
me from _____
me so solly
(or, if you like, the fetishized versions: me so horny, me love you long time)
if you said ZERO, then ding ding ding! Congratulations, you have working brain cells.
No, my misguided fb friend, the “Asian accent” is not an actual imitation of an accent, comparable to your bad British/Irish/Italian - but rather a mockery of Asian people and their supposed inability to speak English. It is the perpetuation of the image of Asian people as perpetual foreigners in America.
Like that time when my family was at an Italian restaurant, and we were speaking to my father in Cantonese, and a drunken white lady said very loudly, “GOD when you come to this country at least learn the language!”
Or when my father was pulled over for speeding, and although he said “what’s the problem, officer?” the first thing the state trooper said was, “Do you speak English?”
Your fake “Asian accents” are not harmless and silly, because at the root of the joke, it says - you, you are stupid. You cannot speak English. You are Other. You do not belong.
my parents have been in this country for 30 years. They have been American citizens for 30 years.
And they are very self-conscious of their imperfect English, afraid that it makes them look ignorant, knowing that it marks them as immigrants. That, after 30 years, you can still be told (in not so many words) that you do not belong.
The Cultural Revolution started in China when my father was 13. He was pulled out of school and, later, sent to work in the fields. (He escaped to Hong Kong when he was 18, but that is another story for another time.)
When my father came to this country, he had a middle school education and did not speak a lick of English. He worked as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant, the evening shift that ran until 3 or 4 in the morning, and went to school during the day.
It took my father ten years to earn his bachelor’s degree. He is now an engineer.
Is this not your “American Dream?”
When my mother came to this country, she spoke very little English. She got a job as an entry level clerk. Over the years she earned one promotion after another. She is now management at a large federal agency, and manages funds for the whole state.
Is this not your “American Dream?”
And my father didn’t understand why his coworkers said, “flied lice, flied lice!” to him over and over and laughed.
And my father is still afraid to speak in a professional setting, even when he has ideas.
And my mother still checks and double checks her professional e-mails with me, for fear of mockery from the same people she manages.
And people don’t understand why I can’t take a harmless joke. Why I don’t think that shit is funny.
No, I don’t “rikey.”
No, I won’t “love you long time.”
And no, I’m not sorry.
So, please, kindly - FUCK OFF.
Reblogging this for, like, the fiftieth time because it has never stopped being relevant to my life and it always, always breaks my heart.
It’s not funny. It’s not okay. It’s not harmless. It’s alienating and hurtful.
vibraniumandbulletmarks-deactiv: Hello! 'm loving your How To Brooklyn Series, and I was wondering: What about the slang. Often in fics, there's a lot of 'ain't' and 'ya' and that kinda stuff, but is that right? (Also, what the hell's up with the Dodgers?)
Oh man, how did you know to ask about two things so near and dear to my heart? Is it my birthday? Is this a gift?
God, I love accents, and the Brooklyn accent is one of my favorites, definitely the best American accent. I pay very close attention to the way people speak - I mean, in general yeah as a writer I make it a habit to absorb as much as possible from the world around me, but I also just like listening to people, and for some reason the Brooklyn accent in particular hits me right in the feels.
The Brooklyn accent is musical. It dips up and down, it’s rhythmic. It’s too fast to really be a drawl, but I can see why some fics refer to it as such. It’s quintessential American, and it’s also the best way to sound super fucking pissed at someone. New Yorkers are the nicest people ever, and I will fight people over that, but we will also fight people instantly, which I guess proves my point? I’m defending kindness and good manners here okay.
It’s got a couple different key distinctive features: it’s non-rhotic, meaning it drops R’s from the end of words. It blurs up T’s and Th’s, making T’s sound more like D’s, and Th’s more like T’s. There’s not really a lot of words that are allowed to end in G’s: -ing verb’s are gonna come out like you forgot the end off it. There’s a particularly lovely quality to A sounds - the difference between cwafee (like a Boston accent) and caaawfee (ahh, Brooklyn) - which for my ear is what differentiates it from the Long Island and Jersey accents, who all share common roots. There’s a looseness to the mouth, in Brooklyn.
The other part of the Brooklyn accent is the manner that people speak, not just how it sounds when the words come out. You know how New Yorkers have a reputation for being pushy? I mean, look, we got shit to do, so maybe - but actually that impression comes across in how to listen like a polite New Yorker: by constantly interrupting:
In a really good New York conversation, more than one person is talking a lot of the time. Throughout the conversations I have taped and analyzed, New York listeners punctuate a speaker’s talk with comments, reactions, questions (often asking for the very information that is obviously about to come). None of this makes the New York speaker stop. On the contrary, he talks even more—louder, faster—and has even more fun, because he doesn’t feel he’s in the conversation alone. When a non-New Yorker stops talking at the first sign of participation from the New Yorker, he’s the one who’s creating the interruption, making a conversational bully out of a perfectly well-intentioned cooperative overlapper.
That rapid fire questions; the “Yeah, uh huh”s to show we get you; a visible, audible reaction to whatever you’re telling us: New Yorkers are active listeners in a very literal sense.
I also want to direct you over to Jimmy Cagney, because I’ll bet you real money that Sebastian Stan watched Cagney’s entire oeuvre for the thirty seconds he was allowed to have a Brooklyn accent in the Cap films:
Haha my favorite part is listening to Cagney grimly cling to his R’s, that the scene that starts from 1:52. Come on buddy, you can do it, I believe in you.
If anyone knows a hosting site that can handle 900mgs, I have a copy of Angels with Dirty Faces I can upload, for anyone who’s interested. It’s got all the greatest hits that should be required viewing for your pre-war Brooklyn street urchin fics, especially if they’re mob boss AUs. It’s got scrappy street punks sassing priests and smoking cigarettes, there’s a neighborhood tough who made good, the settings are nice and tenement-y looking, the accents are out of fucking control, and Cagney even rents a room on motherfucking Dock Street. (Side note: Cagney was also fluent in Yiddish, having learned it while he was growing up in the Lower East Side.)
Here’s a fun website to listen to a bunch of New Yorkers talk. I like this guy, who was born in 1946 and has a nice, softer version of the shouty videos posted above.
So I’m gonna make a separate post to answer your question about the Dodgers, because this one’s getting long and baseball’s sort of a New York animal in itself. Also I uh might have a few feelings about baseball such as I FUCKING LOVE BASEBALL so.
Can I just add in that while it is non-rhotic, the Brooklyn accent also adds an r to the end of a word that ends in an a.
My grandmother, a contemporary of Steve Rogers, would have said, “Here’s a soder for your friend Marther; she’s down in the front of the theatah.”
I can tell when my mother has been talking to New Yorkers based on those rs that creep in at the end of words.
Other fun fact, I was in middle school before I learned what I had was eczema and not egszimmer.
Yes!! Hah, actually when I was writing up this post I was trying to figure out an example sentence to capture the beauty, but the best I could come up with was something convoluted like,
“I wenna da bodega on Toity Toid Street t’ get a quadda wadda, but dey wuz out so I hadda wait on line fer a soder.”
Also if anyone reads the Fraction Hawkeye comics, the accent is why they call him Hawgguy.
Not that anyone asked but Chicago accent is similar, except with flatter ahs (not aws, ahs. Their are 2
very different sounds. Cot and caught sound fucking different ok??) and ours Rs are there.
Okay, this made me laugh so hard! My real life accent (not a Brooklyn accent) is vowel shifty as a motherfucker, so tbh I can’t even hear the difference between caught and cot, much less pronounce it. I think I was literally 25 before someone told me most of the country doesn’t pronounce those two words (and pen and pin, etc etc) like they’re homophones.
