I love Julian McMahon but … his accent is extremely flawed. When I watch Charmed, I hear him slip constantly, like in almost every sentence. The last episode I watched, he added an “r” to the end of a word ending in “a”. Only New Englanders do that in America, but it’s a very common Ango-Australian thing.

He also messes up with his Australian “o’s”: e.g. “So” often sounds like an Australian “Soh-ee”.

I have finally managed to distinguish between NZ and Aus accents. To an Australian, that must be an easy thing, but to your ear, that’s the difference between a Canadian and U.S. accent, I’d imaging. You have to learn how to distinguish the two.

I have often thought that like the Canadian Accent, Australia’s is fairly uniform throughout the whole country. Is that so?

I’m a Canadian living in the U.S. for a long time now (>10 years). The person who commented on Canadian Raising is dead-on, and I’ve read, and noticed, the same phenomena that he speaks of.

I am keenly aware of all the Canadian give-aways, and I can pass 99% of the time. A small number of people claim they can tell ONCE I TELL THEM, but no one has ever “accused” me of it ;-). Most people are NOT very attuned to accents, I’ve noticed.

Most Canadians think they have no accent, or that they have a “Mid-Western New Anchor’s” accent. Living in Philadelphia, I can say that that’s a joke. BTW, the “Philadelphia” accent is awful. I try NOT to emulate it, except for fun. No offense to any Philadelphian or Canadians.

Beyond pronunciation, To my ear, Canadian speech has a very stilted cadence that is quite different from most American speech patterns.

There is certain vocabulary that Canadians use, but Americans do not. Those are easily altered. Examples: elastics [rubber bands], pop [soda] (depending on part of U.S.), standard [stick] (as in a car’s transmission), eavestrough [gutter], collector lanes [express lanes], and many more.

I watch a lot of SciFi Channel, and a huge number of shows are shot in Canada, and my American friend and I make a sport of spotting the Canadian actors. It’s easy and especially easy if you’ve had some distance from it, by living in the U.S. Likewise with Smallville. Kristin Kreuk is not even trying to cover hers up. Erika Durance is better, but she trips up on her flat “a’s”. I have some trouble with those too (e.g. “bad”->bahd instead of bay-ad, “that”->thaht instead of they-at, etc…). I can definitely make those words sound American if I try, and I know how to, but if I’m lazy or not paying attention, that’s where I will invariably trip up too, and I can HEAR myself doing so at this point.

Here are my most noticed Canadian tells: Yeah, About, Out, Right, Light, Not, No, Eh [too obvious], Know, bad, that, etc…

My personal theory is that the Canadian accent is totally a descendent of the Scottish Accent; whereas, the American accent is a descendent of the Irish Accent.

We all know that Minnesota’s accent descends from Scandanavian immigrants. There are some overlapping sounds between it and the Canadian accent, but I think it’s more coincidental than a true population overlap.

Lastly, like with all accents, within a single family, or city, you’ll find an extremely large range of relative strengths of the regional accent, and Canada is no different in this regard.

As far as Peter Jennings goes, he never [and proudly so] even tried to alter his Canadian accent, and it was always quite evident to me.

One last point: I have heard many older Canadians suggest that younger Canadians are sounding more and more “American” all the time to their ears due to TV. PERHAPS. I’ve noticed this a little bit, but there’s ALWAYS a giveaway or several.

I have lived and worked in Canada and it sounds more like “Aboat” (Irish) instead of “aboot” – Aboot is more Scottish! (Hence Nova Scotia). But i heard a few “Oats and Aboots”, but mainly the further east like Ontario. It is usually O’s and A’s! – But Howdy ya’all is a Texan thing!!!! that’s for sure. Also some say “Ruff” instead of “Roof”. In Texas people pronounce Toyota…”teayota”! BUT FROM TRAVELLING EXPERIENCE -The further west i travel i find the accent more Americanized such as “prah-cess” instead of some would say “process” as a British would say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK92rcZW0OM

Check that site out and there is an “ABOOT” in it. Oh! and my username is Supersmooth007 so check out my videos! (Canadian fag).

As for Jamie Bamber: I watch Battlestar Galactica a lot and I was stunned when I put on a DVD of the BBC/A&E production of Horatio Hornblower and saw him speaking in a British accent. It’s astonishing, really. Usually you can at least sort of tell. I had to look it up. His American accent, I think, is completely flawless. The past belonging to the British/the future belonging to the Americans may be a valid point, but the specific reason for Jamie Bamber’s fake accent is that he plays the son of Edward James Olmos’ character, and I presume they’d rather have Olmos’ natural voice than Bamber’s, for obvious reasons.

There have however been several situations in which a British or otherwise actor or actress really hurt a performance by completely failing to do an American accent. The one that comes to mind most immediately is the recent Cameron Crowe film “Elizabethtown”, in which Orlando Bloom failed so completely miserably to do an American accent in a film about middle American culture, it was physically painful to watch.

A few in response to the Australian actor list:

Hugo Weaving – The only movie I’ve seen in which he did something resembling an American accent was The Matrix (which was shot in Sydney, ironically enough), but his voice was so weird for other reasons I wouldn’t notice one way or another. He sounded odd, but I don’t think that’s because he did the accent badly. I just think his character’s voice was odd. So I bought it for that reason at least.

Naomi Watts – Had no idea she was Australian. So apparently she’s doing it well.

Nicole Kidman – She jumps around accents a lot in different roles, so it’s difficult to separate all the noise, but if I remember correctly she does it alright.

Russell Crowe – I wouldn’t call it bad, but it is noticeable.

Heath Ledger – I thought he did it poorly until I saw Brokeback Mountain. He seemed to improve — or maybe he does the rural southern thing better than the “neutral” midwestern standard.

And as for Canadian accents:

I’m from the Chicago area, and I can’t tell the difference between someone from Toronto and someone from Chicago. But I can pick someone from Nova Scotia right out of a noisy crowd. The Scarborough accent is also very, very distinct. Mike Myers’ accent is really recognizeably different from the Midwestern USA accent. I don’t think there’s a national divide as much as there is a regional one, or even a city/rural one, just like in the US. Though I will say, you’d have to do some pretty serious accent training to get someone from Canada to play someone from anywhere south of St. Louis. I think most of all it’s a north/south thing.

Great blog.

Steve & Chris.

lol

I studied acting before deciding I would rather write and that posh accent or ‘queen’s english’ that most internationals learn to speak when trying to be Brit (or that Brit’s acting abroad tend to speak) is called Received Pronunciation (RP). You get it drummed into you… It’s supposed to be a bit like wearing no make-up and a pony-tail for an audition; a clean slate of none accent to work from. Only it really sucks at it’s job and is now just seen as snobbish, they even call it BBC English these days because the name “Received Pronunciation” apparently has some elitist connotations lol

Poor Kate Winslet is northern too… comes from about 30 miles away but she had to ’strip’ her accent and learn RP at drama school. I’d give anything to see if she still talks like my mates after a few pints of lager and a bag of peanuts!

I think at the end of the day, a lot of actors really are shit with accents. I’m surprised at what passes for a good attempt from all sides of the pond and I’m beginning to think that the only true masters of vocal chords are the comedians! Someone else hit the nail on the head too — it’s also in the ear of the beholder and the expectations of hearing a certain dialect/accent that may in themselves be entirely wrong.

My first ever audition was for a part in a short film made by a former bafta nominee. I was 16 and stupid so I went in guns blazing with a wonderful Tennessee hairdresser’s monologue lol I got the part so I can’t have been that bad! and the reason given? The director, a fun guy called Lance, was fucking sick of sitting through really bad versions of Shakespeare. Musta been very strange to hear someone suddenly blurting out an accent like that in Nottingham on a Tuesday morning hehe Of course, now I’m older and ‘wiser’ I’d have gone in with Shakespeare and RP… I’d never have got the part!

I wonder if anyone did anything weird through naievity or stupidity for your auditions John?

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