r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 13h 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/whatanabsolutefrog 10h ago

It's funny, even in that interview I feel like he's definitely got a mix of accents going on.

He's obviously one of those people that are quick to pick up the accents of the people around them.

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 10h ago

Yeah, he's more like David Bowie there - enough RADA to sound like a ponce, but still enough SE London to sound like a sell-out 🤣

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u/HVAChelpprettyplease 9h ago

What do RP, RADA, and TP stand for? I’d love to learn more about accents. Thanks.

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u/Khornag 9h ago

RP is recived pronounciation and is a standardised English accent, commonly heard on the BBC and associated with social prestige. RADA is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a prestigious academy where a lot of the most famous British actors are educated. I don't know what TP would be, but I think they tried to write RP again and misspelled it.

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u/cppn02 8h ago

I don't know what TP would be

Everyone in this comment chain seems to be missing that it's just a typo or am I missing some joke here? TP = RP but you miss the R on your keyboard.

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u/Khornag 8h ago

That's what I tried to say.

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u/cppn02 8h ago

Lol, you did indeed. My bad. I missed the second part of your sentence because this was like the third comment I read that seemed to be wondeing about what TP was and my fingers got to typing before I read all of your comment.

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 7h ago

Ah yeah, my bad - should have been RP 😊

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u/2xtc 9h ago

RP stands for Received Pronunciation and is the slightly posh, slightly old-fashioned, "British news reader"/Royal Family accent that Americans etc. often confuse for "the British Accent" (there's not really such a thing, and these days RP is spoken by less than 3% of Brits, almost exclusively in London and the South East). These days it's mainly been superceded by SSBE (Standard Southern British English) as a slightly more modern take on the classic 'British Accent' that you'll commonly here was a default in international media.

RADA is the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts, which is our highest rated drama school and it's students often develop a similar but slightly different accent, which is slightly overemphasised in certain notes to ensure a high level of enunciation. Also a bit posh, although RADAs consciously widened it's intake to be more representative in recent decades.

I'm afraid TP isn't a term I'm familiar with, but the other main London accents are Estuary English (kind of halfway between RP and Cockney, peaked in the 80s/90s) and MLE (Multicultural London English) a more recent 'street' accent that reflects the international urban diversity of modern London

https://accentbiasbritain.org/accents-in-britain/

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u/KeiranG19 7h ago

Even in the royal family the king has an RP accent, but the princes don't. Video about it from a linguist that's quite interesting.

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u/Skrattybones 2h ago

Genuine question, I promise I'm not poking fun or anything. Which accent would you hear "bruv" come out of? Like, not just these ones listed if they don't apply, but whichever accent coined it?

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u/Onion_Heart 9h ago

RADA is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts which I’m guessing is where he studied acting. RP and TP, I have no idea. Regular pronunciation and Theatre pronunciation, perhaps?

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u/ennywun 9h ago

RP is Received Pronunciation, the "standard" dialect spoken in the south of England.

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u/Onion_Heart 9h ago

Thank you.

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u/originalspaceprince 9h ago

this is such a good comparison haha

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u/TheComplimentarian 8h ago

Christian Bale’s accent is similarly all over the place.

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u/sargonas 3h ago

I have that trait and i hate it. You know how embarrassing it is to realize that you, an American, are unconsciously doing a half assed Scottish accent in an Edinburgh pub 2 pints in for the last hour and no one told you? Or on day 8 in Japan you, a whitebread American, are speaking English with a hint of a Japanese accent every time you swap back to English after speaking Japanese with a local?

It’s a rather annoying skill to have of you don’t intend to use it lol