Presidential Election

[eldargal]

If this is true, it was entirely accidental. He got incredibly pissy when people asked him about. He knew it was terrible accent and was very touchy when anyone mentioned it, to the extent he stormed out of one interview (on Radio 4 I think) when asked a perfectly reasonable question about it. Out of curiosity, how do we know what accents sounded like 900 years ago? Given we only have written sources and British people today can pronounce the same word differently I don't see how that gives us much evidence to go on.

I actually attended a seminar on that very question, and I can't remember a blasted thing about it now. Something about the way it was written, rural survivals and dialects, comparison to other languages and all sorts of things I vaguely remember. The same chap was my source for the Russel Crowe accent thing, he cited it as one of the most, if not the most, accurate medieval English accent in cinema.

[Wildeybeast]

Someone should tell Russell that then because he clearly has some major insecurities about it. I find it hard to believe we sounded like that because his accent is just a terrible mixture of lots of different modern day UK accents.

[Wolfshade]

The trouble is with accents unless you are familiar with them it is quite difficult to tell them apart. Apparently Newcastle and Sunderland accents are readily distinguishable but they all sound Geordie to me. I think that is the same for most people. Possibly with the vast amount of american TV shows we get we can start to tell some of the more obvious ones apart like Brooklyn seems to be quite distinctive.

What does bug me is that quite often you hear people doing Brummie impressions while what they are doing is a Black Country impression which is entirely different with key defining aspects is saying things like "Yam" in lieu of "I am".

What I find very interesting is local phrases which are not standard english and are quite archaic in origin. Unfortunately, with the rising transportation it measn that such phrases are becoming less common place.

Then there is lovely local variations, like in the midlands roundabouts are almost universally refered to as islands. Sheffield you have the word "while" being used as between, e.g. "I am in work 9 while 5 (making cutlery )".

[Psychosplodge]

Not "Never do owt for nowt unless tha does it for thi sen." ? Local word use is more dialectical than accent though.

The reason apparently is most people in England and presumably the rest of the UK in previous generations, lived within five to ten miles of where they lived when they were born. Combined with regional transport links that make it more difficult to get to places on the other side of county borders than your own town and there you have it.

Just put a Barnsley accent next to any other Yorkshire accent...

[Drunkencorgimaster]

I agree that the British ear for accents is much subtler than the American one. Having said that, not all "foreigners" doing American accents get it right. Gabrielle Anwar on "Burn Notice" is particularly prone to slipping back into Brit. Once in a blue moon you can catch Kate Beckinsale muffle up a vowel here or there. I almost feel like I'm blaspheming on this next one, but in a few places in Last of the Mohicans Daniel Day Lewis sounds ever-so-slightly British (or Anglo-Irish or whatever). By Age of Innocence these traces were gone and his regular speaking voice is sounding kinda Yankish to me now.

Southern US accents in particular get butchered fairly badly by some British actors admittedly. Jude Law is a fine actor, but the accent he uses in Midnight the Garden of Good and Evil is really more Texan even though the film is set in Savannah, Georgia.

On that note there are quite a few regional accents in the US, but they are much more subtle than British regional varieties. Believe it or not there are some sharp differences between the way people speak in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia even though these cities lay a relatively short distance from each other. I live in Arkansas "Hill Country" but have some difficulty understanding people in "the Delta" of my same state even though it is only about a two-hour drive away.

To me a MUCH bigger problem as far a foreign actors go are the Canadians (William Shatner excepted). There is a definite difference between Canuck and American English. Given that a large chunk of our shows are filmed in Vancover and Toronto our airwaves are being bombarded with Canadian long vowels. I don't have a problem with the Canadian accent per se, in fact my home state of Minnesota has a very similar accent. But don't sound like a Canadian if your are trying to pretend to be a Chicago cop, or a New York cabbie, or a Texan rancher for pity's sake!

[Wolfshade]

Some accents impersinations are truely awful.
Brad Pitt in 7 years in Tibet, the worst attempted Austrian accent ever.
A close second I'd say is Keanu Reeves and Winona Rider in Bram Stokers Dracula, it perhaps wouldn't have been so bad if you hadn't had Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman
Though at least he tried, Sean Connery playing Rameriez in highlander makes no attempt to be Spanish with his scotch accent putting Christopher Lambert's to shame.

[Mr Mystery]

Americans attempting Scottish accents always get it wrong, to the point of it being really quite insulting.

Scotland has actors and actresses. Need a Scottish character? Just hire a Scot. Job jobbed.

[Wolfshade]

I do like the old adage that if you want a master villan that you get a bloke with an english accent, if you want to then rise it up a notch you get an english accent doing a german accent

[Psychosplodge]

Americans attempting Scottish accents always get it wrong, to the point of it being really quite insulting.

Scotland has actors and actresses. Need a Scottish character? Just hire a Scot. Job jobbed.

This with whichever appropriate accent...

[Bean]

To the OP:

I think there are two main things:

Yes, Romney really was that weak of a candidate. His routine and off-handed alienation of pretty much every minority (though, perhaps most importantly, hispanics) hurt him significantly--though he also did an unexceptional job of motivating his base.

Also, Obama's economic record is not nearly as bad as has been made out. The spending that people like to ***** about was pretty much entirely the result of bi-partisan decisions made immediately before he took office (though, of course, with his participation and agreement). More-over, that spending was basically good economic policy--it worked. If it didn't work as well as you might have wanted, that doesn't mean it was a failure--your desires were just unrealistic.

So, with what is, by any rational evaluation, a pretty respectable economic record and an opponent who routinely shot himself in the foot for little or no gain, it's really not much of a surprise that Obama got re-elected. Which, of course, is exactly what everyone who performed any serious statistical analysis of the matter predicted.