I'd Fancy a Cup of British Accent

Yesterday for the first time in about a year I did production sound mixing on a film (which in this case meant that I went to set and pressed "record" and "play" on the recorder while the boom operator boomed). At lunchtime we moved from the crazyness that was the handprints outside of Graumann's Chinese Theatre back to the USC area. Amy (the boom op/brains of the operation) and I got to the second location a little early and stood on the street waiting for the rest of the crew to join us (with lunch!).

I saw a guy walk over and look at the bus that we were all about to film on (after lunch), and I figured that he must be one of the extras. Since Amy and I were conspicuously crew members (we had our equipment), the guy approached me and said, "Ha um clays fremmark?"

"Excuse me?" I said, because that's the polite way to say, "What??"

"I'm Mark," he said, and the second time I realized that he had a British accent. I felt stupid because at first I thought that he was speaking in tongues, but he was actually just...proper. For the record, he said, "Hi, I'm Claire's friend, Mark," which makes sense because Claire is from London (but I knew that, so her accent didn't throw me when I met her).

Anyway, that flashed me back to my first dinner in Barcelona, the summer that I spent a month backpacking in Europe. My travel-partner and I decided to go out and try the famous Spanish dish, paella. I was super-excited to finally get to use my AP Spanish, although I was apprehensive because Barcelona uses a different dialect than the one I'd learned in school.

So we got to the restaurant and our waiter's first words to me were completely indistinguishable.

"Mas despacio, por favor," I said (aka please speak slower).

"I'm not speaking Spanish," he replied. Turns out that he hardly knew Spanish-- he had just moved to Spain from England. My bad.

This leads me to my famous hypothesis, which is that our ears have to adjust to be able to understand unfamiliar accents. When I expect to hear an American accent, my brain doesn't interpret the British until it realizes that it needs to use the British filter. Once I knew that these respective gents were British, I had no trouble understanding them. This has probably happened to me with other accents before too, but I always feel like a bigger dolt when these Brit-confusion occasions arise. I really don't want to come off as an Ugly American.

A couple of months ago I visted my friend Betty and we ate delicious homemade (by her) strawberry ice cream (that's totally irrelevant but it was really memorable) and watched her DVD of the newest bond film, "Casino Royale." She told me that most of her Taiwanese relatives--even the ones who speak English really well--have to watch films where the characters speak in British accents with English subtitles, because they can't understand what the people are saying. I laughed, but then I found myself having difficulty understanding some of the lines (which could have been partly post sound's fault or a DVD mastering issue, but I'd have to go back and watch again--and do some sleuthing-- to evaluate that, and I'm lazy).

Anyway, Amy, Mark and I went into Zemeckis to eat lunch, and when we arrived Mark introduced himself to the rest of the crew and the actors, and at first they seemed confused by his name. "Is it Mock?" "Monk?"

"No, it's Mark," he said, affecting a nasally American accent.

"Oh!" Everybody got it, "Mark!" "Sorry."

"That's okay," he said, "It happens all the time. Nobody gets it until I say it in American." Then he explained that people often have trouble understanding his accent, while he said it, he did this awesome thing where he switched back and forth between American and British accents. I am a little bit obsessed with accents (if this post hadn't clued you in), so I was totally enthralled. Maybe because the last British accent I heard was James McAvoy in "Atonement," (but in reality he's Scottish), Mark's accent kind of reminded me of Robbie's (McAvoy's character in the aforementioned film).

Our lead actress asked him how he had learned such a good standard American accent, and he said that he just immersed himself. One week he spoke nothing but American. "I even spoke it to myself when I was at home, chopping up vegetables for dinner." (I'm paraphrasing slightly there because I can't remember his exact words.)

He said that he knew when he had the American accent down because he dreamt that his British mother spoke to him in an American accent. He said that his German friend had told him that he knew that he could speak English well when his German mother spoke to him in English in a dream. Cool. I can't remember if I ever dreamt in Spanish.

You might be wondering why Mark worked so hard to learn how to mask his accent if necessary, and the answer is that he's an actor. But it's not just a question of learning the accent. He said that sometimes when he's speaking in an American accent, he accidentally says British phrases and throws people off. One example he gave was, "I'd fancy a cup of coffee." Try saying it with British vs. American accents. Imagine your American male friends saying it. Kind of hilarious. But beyond that, isn't it amazing that he can choose to speak one way or another? I feel like if most Americans tried to pass off British accents in London we'd just seem like idiots.

He also explained the hierarchy of British bad words, which most of us had totally backwards. "Wanker" is the worst, followed by "bloody" and another I can't remember at the moment, and "bugger" is actually sort tame, like "crap," although if you look up the origins of the word I find it the most offensive, because it has homophobic connotations. They also say, "Are you f*cking me off?" which sounds really strange to me. Also, if you do the victory sign but then reverse your hand so that your palm is facing you, that's flipping someone off (I think it has the same origins as our middle finger--it has to do with archers getting their fingers cut off).

Anyway, I was totally glad to hear Mark field everybody's questions, because it was the sort of discussion I always wanted to have, but I feel bad being like, "You have an accent! Tell me all about it!"

After we wrapped for the day I drove home, thinking about Mark and his personal accent immersion program. This semester I signed up for a class where I would have learned how to speak in New York, Southern, and British dialects, but I ended up dropping it because I felt like I needed more time for all of my other classes (and it turned out to be about theater performance and I wasn't really interested in the diva theater majors). I signed up for it to begin with becuse I have this fantasy about being a dialect coach's assistant (I don't have enough/any expertise to be the actual dialect coach). I bought the book about how to learn to speak in dialects, and even though I dropped the class I didn't return the book.

In the car I started trying to speak with a British accent. Sometimes it got kind of Southern, and other times it got sort of New Zealand/South Africa (other dialects I'd like to learn), thanks to my (I think) South African literature professor and my Flight of the Conchords watching/listening habit. I kept trying to recite this Emily Dickinson poem with a British accent, even though she was American. I wasn't really feeling Dickinson (or ED, as I call her in my notes, which always makes me think of erectile dysfunction) until we read this poem for Friday's class. I'm kind of obsessed with it right now:

861

Split the Lark-- and you'll find the Music--
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled--
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the flood-- you shall find it patent--
Gush after Gush, reserved for you--
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

For some reason that poem totally resonates with me. I think it can be interpreted in at least three different ways. When you say "Lark" with a British accent, it sounds a little bit like "Lock." Think about THAT. My professor pronounces "patent" with a hard "a" sound, but I don't know how the British say it (in American we generally use a soft "a"). None of my interpretations are particularly religious. In every lit class I've taken there's always one girl/woman who wants to put a Christian spin on everything we read. And I know it's there but...I'm glad we've been finding ties to Greek mythology in a lot of the stuff we're reading instead of just always jumping back to a big New Testament orgy.

It's funny because when I signed up for Women in British Literature from 1800 to Present, I didn't really know if I would like it, or if it would end of being some sort of radically feminist class, but I'm really enjoying the texts. Sometimes in class I come up with interpretations that are actually quasi-deep, and I think that I might actually like to get my MFA in Creative Writing but then go on to get my PhD in something litty (like a certain current professor of mine--his knowledge of grammatical rules alone is astounding, but that's a different matter). But there are only a few colleges that have a program like that set up, and one is Iowa (the best and the hardest to get into)...good luck with that, self. Also, do I really need a PhD? Some might argue that I don't even need an MFA...or don't deserve one...haha...sad. Also-- provided I want an MFA, wouldn't it be cool to go to a university in England or some place I might not get another chance to live in anytime soon (I'm thinking about visas, for one thing)?

In summary: British dialects--sometimes hard to understand if you're not expecting them! And can be learned on tape/by immersion rather than in a wacky theater class! Homemade ice cream--delicious! I wish I had more British friends! Student visa-- The Golden Ticket? I'm sorry if I misused the words "accent" and "dialect." And "orgy."

Bringing it full circle: Not being afraid to ask people about their cool accents--Why didn't I think of that?