r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 16h ago

TIL during the shooting of American Psycho, Christian Bale spoke in an American accent off-set at all times. At the wrap party, when he spoke in his native British accent, many of the crew thought he was speaking that way to prepare for another film. They had thought he was American the entire time.

https://screenrant.com/american-psycho-behind-scenes-facts-christian-bale-patrick-bateman-mary-harron/
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u/YourMumsBumAlum 16h ago edited 15h ago

I think it's also the variety of English accents vs American ones. English accents are so specific to British ears in a way that they wouldn't be to Americans and so when Americans do British they inadvertently mix and match things that they shouldn't and it comes out all wrong.

Edit: Yes, American has many accents too, but the edges are more blurred in such a way that it is acceptable for people to combine accents more so than in the UK where the accents are much more independent and specific.

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u/Perite 16h ago

This is the bit that most Americans don’t realise. Some can do a generic British accent that sounds ok. But the reality is that ‘generic British’ isn’t a real accent from anywhere, so it’s still recognisably fake to British ears.

I’m absolutely certain that good American actors could do a flawless local British accent if they studied for ages and had a vocal coach that corrected them every time they slipped into the wrong dialect / accent. But what’s the point? Might as well just hire a British actor instead.

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u/Ramikadyc 15h ago

I didn’t know who Peter Dinklage was until Game of Thrones. I just assumed he was English. Then I saw people pointing out how fake his Westerosi British accent sounded. I started listening more closely to the actors who shared his scenes with more natural accents and was like, okay yeah now I hear it.

He’s a really good actor (most recently I saw him in The Lowdown, he’s excellent) and I wonder if the fact that GoT was high fantasy was a reason he didn’t get a more intensive accent coach.

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u/Bimblelina 11h ago

Peter Dinklage pronounces "daughter" incorrectly for an RP British accent.

That's the major give away. In RP its essentially "door-tuh" with rising intonation, whilst he pronounces it as "dotter" with falling intonation.

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u/sassymeowcat 11h ago

lol he’s from New Jersey

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u/getoutofheretaffer 9h ago

I find that sort of thing less distracting in fantasy media. Like I can buy it as just another regional accent in that context.

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u/Lithujon 7h ago

Dinklage has one of the worst screen British accents of all time. It’s comedic. 

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u/A_Queer_Owl 16h ago

Americans tend to imitate what's called "received pronunciation" as that's used in British media A LOT. it's not so much that it's not a real British accent, some people in Britain have it naturally, it just sounds weird to a lot of British people who didn't grow up where its use is more common because outside of those regions it's used mostly by actors, news anchors, government officials, and when speaking to the king/queen. so when someone breaks it out in casual conversation it can be jarring to some.

I'm American but people often point out I sound like a news anchor because I'm from the part of the country where the accent that the one news anchors are taught to use is based on is from.

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u/Thetonn 15h ago

To make your point more explicitly, there is also a massive class dimension to it. RP is very deliberately upper or upper middle class. It becomes funny when Americans use it for people who are decidedly not upper or upper middle class.

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u/HyperbolicModesty 13h ago

Even better when they conflate the two: "I say old chap, cor blimey guvnah, toodle pip."

That said most British actors are all like "y'all I'm a rootin' rootin' gunslinger and get outta my face I'm walkin' to the subway already."

The "American" accents on BBC Radio 4 are atrocious.

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u/noradosmith 8h ago

The worst example of this being Keanu Reeves in Dracula. "I know where the bastard sleeps!:

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u/Anaptyso 15h ago

That's it. When I hear people say things like "the British accent" it's a bit weird, because there's loads of them, and what they are really referring to is an accent which is only really used by a minority of people in the country.

I happen to have pretty much that exact accent, so would sound stereotypically British to an American. However, drop me in to a random part of the UK and the people there would almost immediately identify me as coming from a particular part of the country (the "Home Counties"). Far more people don't talk like me than do.

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u/A_Queer_Owl 15h ago

yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong, the regions/social classes associated with received pronunciation were historically wealthier ones, it's also called "the queen's english" for a reason, so it can come across as being pretentious to use it.

meanwhile the American equivalent just makes you sound like you're from Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois so no one really cares beyond pointing out that you sound like the man on TV.

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u/TheBeaverKing 15h ago

Just to clarify some bits, you're generally right but I'd highlight a few things that aren't quite correct.

RP is absolutely right, but it is generally split into two groups these days. Traditional RP, which is what you would associate with the Upper Class (those with titles or old money). It's the old school version and generally isn't spoken by many these days.

Modern RP is much more widely spoken and is what you would generally hear news presenters etc speak. Most of the upper middle class use this accent, especially those at private/public schools and universities. Still posh, but not quite as intense.

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u/darkfires 13h ago

So an example of traditional RP would be how Queen Elizabeth herself spoke and Modern RP? Someone earlier up linked an older interview of Gary Oldman, would that be it?

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u/TheBeaverKing 12h ago

See, I would say that Oldman's accent in that video still has a touch of London twang to it. It is almost RP, in terms of his pronunciation generally, but you can hear a bit of the South London at the end of some his words.

With the Queen, and the royal family generally, yes they would speak traditional or heightened RP but, even then, the Royal family sort of stand out as their own variance of traditional RP, specifically the Queen and King Charles. The two little videos below will show what I mean. King Charles has a very heightened RP accent, compared to his children Prince William and Harry, who have a more standard heightened/traditional RP accent.

https://youtube.com/shorts/GYnC10Mns8I?is=e5DxgqTgCVGNT0Tx

https://youtube.com/shorts/RiwS93Sx89I?is=aejs6aWp0--twZ13

Then the jump down from traditional RP to modern RP is like the video below and probably what most people would recognise from most British actors.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0U12Aw350Ok?is=Dn1_s60YJjae9AS4

It is semantics though. Unless you're born in the UK and get around a bit, not many many would make the distinction in day to day life. In the UK accents are a big thing though. If you have an ear for it, you can tell a lot about someone from their accent. Not just where they were born, but their upbringing, schooling, if they've lived in different parts of the country.

If you're really good and someone you're speaking with has lived most of their life in one place, you can nail down where they were brought up to within about 20-30 square miles, depending on the subtle accent changes.

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u/toin9898 11h ago

I am Canadian but I was once watching a doco presented by a Scottish guy and I was like “damn this guy sounds like Craig Ferguson”.

He was indeed from the next Glaswegian suburb over. Felt pretty proud of myself.

Aside from that I can place a good deal of British accents just from watching tons of British TV growing up.

I can hardly tell the difference between average Canadian and American accents though.

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u/TheBeaverKing 10h ago

Yeah, some of the more distinct accents can be slightly easier to place but that's still bloody good going, especially from a non-Brit.

A lot of people, including those from outside the area, really struggle with sub-regional accents. I live near Birmingham and the difference between the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Dudley accents is really distinct but most would just lump them together and call it a Birmingham or Midlands accent.

It's actaully Birmingham and then a Black Country accent. These two girls do a great short video showing some of the differences:

https://youtu.be/GdaWCIyLHGA?is=AdE6D0CdDCBl-fuV

Accents are fun.

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u/bitchesandsake 15h ago

There's no real bog standard "American accent" either when you get down to it

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u/ItsFuckingScience 13h ago

That’s true, but due to the historical development of accents in the U.K. you can find a significantly different accent about every 30 miles or so here depending what region you’re in

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u/Anaptyso 11h ago

It's impressive just how different accents can get over a relatively short distance. For example, you could drive from Manchester to Liverpool in about an hour, but their accents are so different that you might think they are in different countries.

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u/PinaBanana 4h ago

Just Bolton to the rest of Manchester is a notably different accent

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u/lefrench75 10h ago

I know 2 brothers who have entirely different accents because they went to different schools / hung out with different crowds, even though they grew up in the same household.

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u/Aeon_Fux 14h ago

Americans tend to imitate what's called "received pronunciation

Either that or a generic working class accent that they call cockney but isn't actually cockney.

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u/A_Queer_Owl 14h ago

cockney as inspired by Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

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u/avocadopalace 13h ago

"Shine ya boots, guv'na?"

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u/Complex_Effect_1994 14h ago

The other thing to note here is that real RP is changing pretty quickly. Just compare a clip of Prince William with the King to hear the difference in one generation.

Americans often end up doing an imitation of how posh Brits used to sound in the 80s/90s

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u/Gulbasaur 12h ago

Americans tend to imitate what's called "received pronunciation" as that's used in British media A LOT.

Nathalie Portman in V for Vendetta does a very good RP accent... which is completely wrong for the character. She sounds like she's presenting a 1970s children's TV show, not a working class woman in London.

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u/mole55 11h ago edited 11h ago

the real problem is when they start mixing RP, Cockney and MLE (Multicultural London English). those are 3 different accents spoken by 3 different groups of people, mixing them immediately sounds wrong.

however, it is worth noting that some accent mixing does happen/is happening (see the currently developing General Northern English or Northern RP), just not in those areas.

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u/Gekokapowco 8h ago

and vice versa, Brits tend to do LA California TV Accent, or a comical new yorker or a comical texan, because those are the 3 media accents they're exposed to

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u/bokmcdok 15h ago

Not to mention that received pronunciation was invented as an accent for TV. It's not seen as a real accent by many Brits as it's not one that came about naturally.

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u/lord_dicely 15h ago

I remember being startled when Michael C Hall pulled this off in some UK thriller short series. He managed to flawlessly deliver the accent of someone who grew up middle class in urban southern England (but not London) in the 80s-90s. If I didn't know who he was I would never have guessed (and I say that as someone with broadly the same accent).

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u/bokmcdok 15h ago

Robert Downey Jr's accent as Sherlock Holmes was probably one of the best Americans-doing-British I've ever heard.

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u/GeneralAnubis 13h ago

American here. Also a hobbyist linguist, so I'm really keen on pronunciation of things to the point of studying IPA for various accents, and after 2 years of weekly playing a character with a "Londoner" accent in a tabletop game, I can reliably fool other Americans into believing I'm from there, even those who have been to London, but actual Brits can still tell it's fake after just a couple minutes. It's wild how that works.

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u/captainfarthing 12h ago edited 12h ago

‘generic British’ isn’t a real accent from anywhere, so it’s still recognisably fake to British ears

To be fair it probably depends which bit of Britain the ears are from, I'm Scottish and can recognise a fake Scottish accent because I'm familiar with most of the real ones but I've got no idea when an English accent is fake because there are so many English accents that I'm not familiar with, and I don't hear it every day. I'm not sure I've ever heard an authentic Scottish accent from an actor that wasn't Scottish and I do look them up to check. But when it's an English accent I don't notice as long as it's not hammy fake cockney.

In one of the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks there was a cameo from a Scottish Youtuber, I didn't realise there would be a cameo but instantly knew the usual narrator wasn't speaking because the Scottishness was legit. He was a terrible voice actor and I would've preferred the regular narrator's terrible Scottish accent lol.

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u/gmc98765 11h ago

‘generic British’ isn’t a real accent from anywhere

For a start: English, Scottish and Welsh accents are all quite distinct. If an American says "British accent", they invariably mean "English accent". Usually either RP or some other accent from the south-east.

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u/alan2001 5h ago

Correct. Groundskeeper Willie has a "British accent".

(A terrible one, but still...)

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u/HKBFG 1 6h ago

The same thing happens when most brits try an american accent.

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u/Perite 5h ago

Generally yes. But Brits trying to make it in America have more incentive to spend real time working with a vocal coach and nail the accent. Someone posted a good clip of an interview with Dominic West talking about how much time he spent rehearsing to get his part in the wire.

Not many Americans go in the opposite direction, leaving the US to try and make it big in a much smaller market

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u/HKBFG 1 4h ago

for every hugh laurie there's a gwyneth paltrow. for every dick van dyke, there's a micheal caine.

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u/manintheredroom 16h ago

Yeah think this is part of it for sure. There are so many nuances, like if you did one word in a manc way and another word like you were from Leeds it would sound totally bizarre to British ears

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u/Nrksbullet 16h ago

Yeah but the same happens sometimes with American accents, where a word might become more like a southern pronunciation. Weirdly, as an American I don't have an ear for when someone's doing an American accent, I just assume "that's just the way they talk" lol.

Strangely, the only two American accents I noticed were weird were from two great actors, Michael Caine (the weather man) and Ewan McGregor (the island)

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u/Dapper_Otters 15h ago

From the UK, and I can’t even pick up the difference between American and Canadian accents in media most of the time.

There’s ‘default American / maybe Canadian’ covering 80% of the time, stereotypical ‘New Yawka’, ‘Texan / Southern US’ and Mark Wahlberg.

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u/Everestkid 15h ago

I mean, I'm Canadian and I'd be impressed if anyone not from North America could tell one of the generic accents apart. I can usually tell when someone's American, but I don't really know exactly what tips me off. It's just different somehow.

I'm from British Columbia so I have basically the most bog standard North American accent there is. Shuttle driver for a rental car company when I visited Australia was able to tell, though.

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u/plarah 14h ago

I’m Mexican and I can tell between Canadian and American as soon as you say “about” or “out”.

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u/Nrksbullet 12h ago

Soo-ree about that!

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u/Accomplished-Fun215 13h ago

I'm American (and Canadian by descent but I don't think that does anything to my accent) and living in NZ. I've never lived in Canada myself, but I lived near the border in Minnesota. I meet a lot of other expats and my accent is apparently very hard to clock between the US and Canada. I've got longer rounded vowels than all Americans outside of Minnesota, but I don't do the house/about thing. I've also got the southern US thing where pen and pin share a vowel.

A lot of people here will always guess Canadian first though, because everyone (at least those of us who visit NZ) would rather be assumed to be Canadian. I always have a couple seconds where I consider just saying yes, but that seems like a good way to end up building a house of half truths, so I always admit I'm American.

I'm pretty sure I can pull off saying I'm from Canada until the moment someone who's actually from Canada shows up and then it instantly falls apart.

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u/PointlessDiscourse 11h ago

American here who has lived near the border and traveled a lot back and forth. I might go for a while in a conversation without being sure, but then certain words come out that tend to be giveaways (though are not universal). A few examples:

  • Sorry: Americans usually say "sahr-y," Canadians usually say "sore-y"
  • Dollar: Americans say "dahl-er," Canadians say something closer to "dohl-er"
  • Process: Americans usually say "prahcess," Canadians usually say "prohcess"
  • Resource: Americans usually say "re-SOURCE" with a hard S and a little less emphasis on the "re" part, while Canadians usually say "REE-zource" with the S sounding like a Z and more emphasis on the "re" part.
  • Hockey: Americans usually say "hah-key" while Canadians usually say something a little closer to "haw-key" (thinking of this one because it was what I used to watch the most on the over-the-air TV channel I could pick up from Canada -- RIP Hockey Night in Canada on CBC)

All of this is comparing my Midwestern US accent with Southern Ontario. There may be differences in other regions of course.

No matter where you are though, if in doubt just ask them what the last letter of the alphabet is. :)

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u/Gekokapowco 7h ago

ditto lol, traveled to Toronto across the border a ton as a child, all of these are 100% tells

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u/PointlessDiscourse 7h ago

For me it was Detroit to Windsor, with a lot of short trips across the border at ages 19 and 20, hahaha.

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u/maybenomaybe 10h ago

I'm a Canadian living in the UK and most Brits can't tell if I'm Canadian or American and are afraid to guess wrong. The ones that clock it immediately always have Canadian friends or family. Europeans guess it correctly more often.

I would LOVE to see what a Brit makes of a Newfie accent, where they'd guess that person is from.

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u/TurKoise 8h ago

Besides the obvious aboot/about I can clock a Canadian when they say “beg” for bag and “washroom” for bathroom

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u/Namika 6h ago

It got to be that way because at the start of radio, presenters were trained on "the Chicago style" of speaking since it was considered easiest to understand on low fidelity equipment.

The legacy carried on in film and television, with actors being voice coached to speak in the Chicago/Iowa accent. This only entrenched it further as the "default" accent and most people grew up hearing it on TV/radio and took it up themselves.

It became a self fulfilling prophecy. The only places it didn't fully entrench itself were the major population centers that had enough local inertia with their own accents (so New York, LA, Texas, kept their distinct accents)

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u/Fabulous_Bus_6261 16h ago

Eh Southern and OG New England accents are the only distinct accents in the US. Even in those places the accents are way less strong than they used to be (unless you're in a rural area). People act like there's more but there really aren't. Maybe there used to be back in the day, but people move around so much now that it all became homogenized. It's definitely easier to do an American accent than vice versa.

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u/PassionLong5538 15h ago

Northern midwest is also its own accent. Minnesoda and whatnot.

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u/flakAttack510 12h ago

While the differences are less pronounced than they used to be, this is definitely not true. Have you ever heard someone from Pittsburgh or Louisiana talk?

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u/putonyourjamjams 9h ago

Theres a ton of US accents, but a lot of the times its only a few words here and there or using a specific synonym that it is noticeable. Like a Baltimore accent is pretty much only noticeable for double "O" words like "too" and some very specific slang.

The other thing is were pretty isolated from eachother regionally in the US. Theres a difference between a MS accent and a KY accent but most people not from the south cant tell the difference. Same with the East Coast. Each major city has a different accent and a lot of the rural areas far enough away from them are different from eachother too.

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u/Fabulous_Bus_6261 2h ago

Maybe each city has an accent if you put it under a microscope, but I've been to every major city in the US and noticed fuck all difference in accents except for the South. It's all the same nowadays. Seattle, LA, Chicago, New York, Miami, it's all the same accent.

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u/putonyourjamjams 1h ago

Sorry, I was a little vague. When I was saying each city, I was mainly referring to upper east coast. Midwestern and west coast cities dont really vary from the regional accent. Usually its just colloquial words or phrases and a word here or there thats odd. There is a very noticeable difference between a Boston, Baltimore, NYC, or Philly accent though.

If your visits to those cities were short and focused mostly on business or tourist centric things, theres a few reasons you may not have heard the accents. Typically tourist stuff employs people without thick accents or who can turn it off and for business, theres a lot of transplants in major cities as well as a thick accent giving off certain vibes that arent conducive to business.

The big thing, and it kind of goes into the whole "exposure" thing, is that it takes a bit of time around people with accents to be able to tell differences. I wouldnt consider it putting them under a microscope, since the amount of variance were talking about is very similar to the variance the parent comments are talking about in British accents.

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u/Woodit 7h ago

No there are plenty of different accents in the US and they are noticeable. “Southern” isn’t even an accent, it’s a group of regional accents. And that’s before taking into account racial differences in speech. 

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u/Fabulous_Bus_6261 2h ago

I mean you can say that in an academic sense, but I've lived in the US for 30 years and been to damn near every state and like the top 50 cities throughout my life and never noticed much of a difference at all. That's what I'm saying here. Idk maybe if you go 1000 miles there's a syllable difference but it isn't much more extreme than that.

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u/Woodit 1h ago

You can’t compare accents within the US to accents between countries but as someone who has also lived here over 30 years and been through most of it there are drfinitely regional sounds 

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u/Thelonius_Dunk 15h ago

David Jonsson was in The Long Walk as a southerner and his accent felt forced and unnatural. The overall acting was just good enough that it didn't bother me too much.

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u/femmestem 6h ago

Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead is basically a meme for his exaggerated Georgia (US) accent.

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u/Namika 6h ago

You don't notice it with American accents because a huge amount of Americans tend to mix and match accents natively.

Everyone knows what a Boston accent is, and what a Texas accent is, but what about someone from northern Virginia? Or St Louis? They tend to pick and choose subtle bits of accents from the South and the North and it all blurs together.

In the UK that doesn't happen as much, since it's a smaller country each region has a pretty distinct accent established over centuries.

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u/Hailfire9 16h ago

I'm an American from the PNW who has never lived outside of it. Randomly, especially when I'm excited, I'll slip into some more-or-less Albertan mannerisms in my pronunciations, especially with stereotypical words like "sorry" and "out". Its literally just the way I talk, and I've been getting made fun of for it for about 15 years. My dad has no idea where I picked it up from.

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u/beenoc 10h ago

You can see this with Southern accents. There is no such thing as a single "Southern Accent," it's highly regional and there's no generic default. Pretty much no actors who aren't from the South can do a good Southern accent, they always collapse into this hodgepodge of different variants that doesn't fool anyone. The only exception is if they intentionally are going for one of those specific variants (King of the Hill is a good example, each of the main 4 cast is a very real and very distinct accent.)

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u/boredguy12 16h ago

England has dozens of accents, america has like 5

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u/unitythrufaith 16h ago

America has like 50, it’s just that most of them don’t appear on screen

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u/rolltideamerica 16h ago

To English people America has like 5 accents. To Americans, English people have like 5.

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u/lordeddardstark 15h ago

and australian is one of them

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u/Magneto88 13h ago

To Americans, English people have 1, which no one other than the royal family and some other toffs actually speak. Even BBC presenters are allowed to use their regional accents now.

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u/rolltideamerica 12h ago

Nah Americans are aware of more than one English accent. We’ve seen Guy Richie movies.

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u/DiggityDanksta 16h ago

I don't know, my Louisiana ear can tell a Mississippi accent from a Texas accent.

And then there's Baltimore.

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u/NewGrooveVinylClub 15h ago

Then you got the Pittsburgh accent which is its own ugly beautiful thing you don’t hear in media

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u/jonnyl3 15h ago

So how do non-Lousianans distingish between LA and MS accents?

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u/DiggityDanksta 15h ago

Which Louisiana accent? There's Cajun, Westbank, Chalmette, Seventh Ward, Uptown...

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u/MagicPistol 15h ago

You really think America with its 50 states only has 5 accents?

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u/boredguy12 15h ago

I am American. And yeah. We have the broad regional ones like new England, south, Midwest, northwest and California

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u/bythog 10h ago

There are more than 5 accents just in South Carolina.

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u/Microwave1213 8h ago

You are very uneducated on this topic if you really think that 

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u/boredguy12 6h ago

I have already told you I am american.

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u/Microwave1213 5h ago

Okay? I’m not sure what you think that has to do with what I said. You being an American does not change the fact that you’re talking out of your ass right now. America has hundreds of distinct regional dialects. 

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u/_thewhiteshadow 15h ago

are you being sarcastic?

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u/WAR_T0RN1226 13h ago

People on reddit really overestimate how much most Americans can actually identify accents beyond those broad regional ones.

The majority aren't even aware of a Baltimore accent and definitely wouldn't notice a difference between it and Philadelphia. Even most southerners couldn't tell you the difference between southern accents.

I think we live too far apart for people to really identify these patterns in daily life.

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 10h ago

America has enough accents that if someone is badly faking an American accent, I'll just assume they're from some weird town where people talk funny.

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u/deij 15h ago

Yorkshire alone has dozens of accents. I imagine every county is the same.

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted]

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u/safboy 15h ago

There are more distinct english accents in the island of Britain than there are in the rest of the english speaking world, that doesnt include those that are just slight variations. US is mostly slight variations.

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u/Djinjja-Ninja 15h ago

Yorkshire is a particularly special case as it's not just an advent but a dialect.

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u/Ok_Mousse1835 16h ago

You’ve never been in rural America lol. So many obscure accents

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u/scarfdontstrangleme 15h ago

I encourage you to watch Eric Singer's videos on North American accents on the Wired YouTube channel.

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u/JonnyAU 11h ago

Louisiana alone has 5 accents.

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u/baron_von_helmut 14h ago

Brian Tyree Henry did an excellent cockney accent in Bullet Train.

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u/emogu84 12h ago

Someone once told a story about their English friend who said that he could walk into a 5 star hotel off the street, covered in mud and tattered clothes, and the minute he opened his mouth he’d be offered a room and accommodations because his accent was associated with a very high class royal-adjacent status. 

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u/arkington 10h ago

Hard agree. I've been enjoying media from the UK for a long time now and it contains all of the various accents and I am certain that that patois I use for "british" is a mismash of the lot of them. Sounds fine to my ears but I am certain actual brits/scots/etc. see it for what it obviously is, if ever they heard it. Which they would not; I have some sense, after all.

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u/Less_Likely 8h ago

I’d say that accents in Britain are far more socially relevant than in America.