I was never there, I only read the book, I only saw the film

[sovay]

A double-header at this afternoon's medical appointment: the tech not only expressed surprise at my calendar age, but assumed from my voice that I was either foreign-born or had spent significant time out of the country, specifically she thought in the UK. Given the current climate, I should be clear that she was curious, not hostile; one of her children had been a staffer in the Obama administration and two others had been some kind of federal employee and she had considerable feelings on subjects from vaccines to tanks. But after I had gone through the standard litany clarifying the rather pathetic fact that I have lived my entire life in New England and the Boston area for most of it, she still thought I sounded British. "You should go over there. You'd blend right in." She herself had an old-school Boston accent. "People from anywhere, they can tell where I'm from." I am not good at other people's ages, but I don't believe that I look younger than my early forties, especially after the last few ravaging years, and I expect to be heard as American by anyone who actually has one or more of the plethora of accents on offer in the UK. Weirdest instance of trying to place my voice remains the time I was told by a very drunk Australian that I sounded like a Norwegian. Someday the question of my vocal origins will come around again because it has been doing so since my childhood and I will answer "Lisson Grove" just to see what happens.

Comments

[sovay]

For me the sentence that I can say to knock people over laughing at my accent is, "float your boat with your goat,"

That is a pretty funny sentence.

but I will do the more classic "out and about in a boat" on request.

I am now trying to figure out whether you are the person I can ask about Alex Knox's accent. It's fascinated me since The Sea Wolf (1941). He was born in 1907 in Strathroy, ON and the earliest I can hear him in his own voice, he's got something close to mid-Atlantic—it may have been literally transatlantic, given that he had by that point in his career worked in Canada, the U.S., and Britain—with discernible Canadian raising and a substrate of something that every now and then sounds almost like Scots to me. I have been suspecting it's southwestern Ontario. The difference in time is an obvious factor and I am aware there's at least one lake between your points of origin, but is he regionally-dialectally close enough to you that I could ask for an opinion?

[flemmings]

Time will actually have had a major influence. Southern Ontario was very very very Brit-influenced up to the 1960s, especially by the Scots. My father was born in 1913; we all sound like him, so that my sister was nearly refused entrance to the USA at one point because British citizens needed a visa, and as recently as ten years ago a British expat asked what part of England I'd grown up in.

Television has flattened younger Toronto generations, who now sound like Minnesotans to me.

[sovay]

Southern Ontario was very very very Brit-influenced up to the 1960s, especially by the Scots. My father was born in 1913; we all sound like him, so that my sister was nearly refused entrance to the USA at one point because British citizens needed a visa, and as recently as ten years ago a British expat asked what part of England I'd grown up in.

This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for complete with historical matrix, so thank you for providing it! Especially the context for the Scots sound, because it's apparent even toward the end of his Hollywood period when he had audibly worked on his American (results: intermittent; me: whatever) as well as in his post-blacklist British career, therefore had to be pretty far down in the stratigraphy. He was often referred to in the UK as "Canadian-Scots." In the U.S., despite consistent mention of his Canadian-ness, his accent and manner were not infrequently referred to as British.

[mrissa]

Do you watch Letterkenny or Shoresy? There is a difference between my Minnesota accent and the rural Ontario accent Jared Keeso uses in those roles (and I suspect has as his home accent, or something close to it), but it's a subtle one if you're not from the north. Sounds like you're one of the few people who'd hear it immediately.

[mrissa]

This is actually how I became a hockey fan. I lived in California for four long years, and I was incredibly homesick. So I would put the hockey game on with the sound turned low so that I wasn't hearing the words, I was hearing the shape and rhythm of the announcer dialog, especially the vowels. It was where I could hear something sort of close to home. My computer faced away from the TV in our tiny California apartment, but every once in a while I'd have to get up to do something, and there's nearly always action in a hockey game, and I'd get caught up watching it and turn the sound up more. But it started with being desperate to hear the right vowels.

(I would also make someone go to the shore with me so I could look at something with enough space. It was a rough go, those four years.)

[sovay]

(I would also make someone go to the shore with me so I could look at something with enough space. It was a rough go, those four years.)

(I will relay this story to my mother, who came out from the Midwest to upstate New York for college and did not realize how claustrophobic she had felt until autumn when the leaves fell and suddenly there was something approaching a normal amount of sky.)

[flemmings]

No, I umm actually don't have a television. But I'm also not good with Ontario accents outside my native Toronto (which still has three syllables in my diction, unlike everyone else.)

[mrissa]

I don't have a lot of familiarity with Alex Knox specifically, but oddly I think that particular clip you've linked is a mix between the bit of my home accent that makes people think there's Scottish influence (the roundness of the o's and some of the consonants being clipped off, t's and s's in particular) and the OPPOSITE of what makes people think there's Scottish influence (I have joked that there are non-rhotic accents, there are rhotic accents, and then there are hyper-rhotic accents, and that last is what Scottish people and I have, if there's an r in it we will hit that r hard, harrrd). If I ever call someone Captain Larsson, by God you will know that there is an r in that name.

(You will also know there's an s in that name rather than a z. I have more than one Lars in my life, and one of the accent things that makes me want to scream is when people call them Larzzzzz.)

[sovay]

I don't have a lot of familiarity with Alex Knox specifically

I fell abruptly into his acting in July and am about three films behind on recording the experience. He was a cousin of asakiyume's grandfather, totally unsuited for the Hollywood studio system, extremely suited for the crosshairs of McCarthyism, I have collected several grudges against the American film industry on his behalf and I like his work immensely.

but oddly I think that particular clip you've linked is a mix between the bit of my home accent that makes people think there's Scottish influence (the roundness of the o's and some of the consonants being clipped off, t's and s's in particular) and the OPPOSITE of what makes people think there's Scottish influence (I have joked that there are non-rhotic accents, there are rhotic accents, and then there are hyper-rhotic accents, and that last is what Scottish people and I have, if there's an r in it we will hit that r hard, harrrd). If I ever call someone Captain Larsson, by God you will know that there is an r in that name.

I was hoping for your ear! The non-rhoticity is part of what gives him the mid-Atlantic quality to mine, although every now and then it too flickers in a way that makes me really want to hear what he sounded like in his teens, before he had any kind of training. I can tell when he's working on his American accent because he shortens his vowels, especially that O; it slips back if he's seriously using his voice. The Scottish-ish intonation comes out unpredictably but as far as I can tell he never lost it, hence my assumption it was part of the baseline. I've heard him do a Scottish accent and think it may be the only one he could.

(You will also know there's an s in that name rather than a z. I have more than one Lars in my life, and one of the accent things that makes me want to scream is when people call them Larzzzzz.)

Please tell them I sympathize, since I have on a near-daily basis the experience of saying my name to someone who says it right back wrong.