what's your favorite accent?

[rovingjack]

goofing around with some pop culture character debates, and it comes up that some iconic characters sound absolutely stupid if you change the accent... Imagine James Bond with a Boston Southie Accent. lol.

Going further down that rabbithole and realizing that I have a few biases with how I'd assign accents. Like how I could never imagine casting an Appalachian accent in a role of a professor or doctor in a movie or TV show, despite knowing there have to be doctors and professors in the region.

So now I find myself noticing what accents I favor for the widest number of roles. So I guess I kinda like something a bit Cornwall, it's very similar to Generic New England (leave boston out it, lol).

what's your favorite?

[Sorontar]

I like strong but melodic Irish accents. For instance, I like Aisling Bea's accent, but then her choice of words can sometimes ruin it.

Sorontar

[J. Wilhelm]

Wasn't that South Boston accent permanently associated with President Kennedy as a "politician's accent"?  I'd say it's recognizable abroad.

Some accents are stronger than others.  Usually, non English as a native language speakers will have a hard time differentiating between accents spoken in English speaking countries. It takes a certain amount of time to learn the accents.  As you get exposed to a language for a long time, you move from distinguishing a country's accent (eg "American accent" is very nasally compared to others), and you begin to differentiate regions (American Deep South accent). After a longer time, like decades, you begin to tell the difference between a Texan accent, and Georgia accent, for example.

The same is true for Spanish as non native language speakers. It's difficult to explain to Americans that accents in the Spanish world are as varied (by sheer number of speakers and geographic extension) as in the English speaking world.  Sometimes English speakers will refer to the "Iberian Lisp," whereby Castilian speakers differentiate the sound of a letter "s" and a "soft c" or a "z."

Like a Scot accent in English, there are a few accents that are so strong, you can switch language at mid sentence and speak your own language using that accent to hilarious effect. In Spanish, that would be the Yucatec accent of Mexican Castilian. Often assumed to be a Maya accent, actually it may not be, because out of 3 Mayan languages, only Yucatec sounds that way. The other two sound a lot like Central Mexican accents. It's a mystery where the accent came from.

[Sorontar]

Australians are used to hearing "Aussie" characters in US movies with South African or New Zealand accents.

Sorontar

[Synistor 303]

Australians are used to hearing "Aussie" characters in US movies with South African or New Zealand accents.

Sorontar

Oh yeah, and some of them are hilariously bad!

I like the English accent as spoken by the Hobbits. I expect it is dying out now as people move around more and as people hear other English accents via media.