Everyone loves Ringo
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In the June 16 Doonesbury, Duke makes some additional suggestions about Tony Hayward's accent, adding to the GEICO gecko idea that we discussed yesterday:
There's a somewhat serious point here: Americans, despite being generally unfamiliar with the social and geographical complexities of British accents, have a surprisingly diverse range of emotional responses to them.
Today's Donnesbury strip continues the discussion:
Jeanne said,
June 17, 2010 @ 8:04 am
Then, it's ok to be the antichrist if your PR rep sounds like a nice bloke?
Jonathan Lundell said,
June 17, 2010 @ 11:53 am
A problem for me (raised Chicago/MN, long a resident of California) is that I hear the differences between British/Irish accents, but have no good way to anchor their identification. There are exceptions, presumably learned from TV & film: we can mostly distinguish Irish from Scottish from RP from Oz. And I think most of us recognize (roughly) Liverpool, and maybe even Yorkshire (if the Herriot adaptations are authentic-sounding, anyway). But while I hear a wide range of Scottish accents, I have no way of placing them (for example).
OTOH, I find my self in much the same situation wrt the American South. I recognize a wide range of southern accents, and have a vague sense of TX vs TN vs VA vs whatever, but no real confidence in placing arbitrary speakers.
I do find that I can generally distinguish between MN, WI & MB, though after 40 years in California I'm no longer confident of that.
Corey said,
June 19, 2010 @ 2:51 pm
Mark, you've got to stop giving away the punchline in the header!