Explore the Complications of Accents

I’ve been too busy lately to produce any Words of Wisdom so it’s about time I remedied that.

This week it’s Explore the Complications of Accents. The basis of an accent is the tonal quality of the vowels and consonants in a person’s speech. This is largely determined by the way a speaker adjusts the geometry of their face and mouth, to make a different speech instrument to make sounds through, but is not the whole story..

Apart from the tone of a voice, nasal or open, for example, there is the tempo, that is the rate at which people speak – people from big cities tend to speak more quickly than those from the country (they also walk faster.) Similarly, big city speech tends to be more throaty, the throat being closed against the pollution and traffic fumes that fill the air.

Other considerations are: how much do the speakers use emphasis or do they deliver more smoothly? Are their consonants slurred or pricked out? To what extent do they tend to be dramatic or phlegmatic? These are individual characteristics but we do all tend to conform to cultural norms.

All individuals differ slightly (that’s how we recognise people from their voices,) but they do fall into broadly similar groups and we do tend to affiliate with people who sound the same as we do. In fact studies in the USA show that there are better race relations in cities where black and white people sound alike, compared with plsces where black and white have different accents..

Another interesting area of study is where accents have been influenced directly by other languages and cultures:: the various Scottsh accents, Welsh, Irish, Caribbean, African, Eastern European, South and East Asian, and last and by no means the many accents of the USA, to which we are all heavily exposed through the mass media. And as the planet has become a smaller and smaller place, through globalisation, accents are everywhere moderating and the young speak differently from the old.

It should always be remembered that the way we speak is a sensitive matter of class and identity and that not everyone is happy about the way they sound. And then there is the whole matter of RP English, but that must wait for another time.

Accents: exaggerate when learning, underplay when performing.

An actor should never stop exercising his or her voice. Apart from working on the tone of the voice, developing projection and maintaining clear diction, there is the whole area of dialects and accents to consider. (The meanings of these two words overlap, but generally a dialect is a different version of a mother tongue, depending on the country or area someone comes from, while an accent either refers to someone using a foreign language or the voice of a particular person.) Although actors are usually cast for parts which use their own accent, this is not always the case and, in any case, the more you learn about voice and speech the better.

The main way in which accents vary is in the actual sounds made in pronouncing the vowels and consonants: for example, whether the 'r' is rolled in a word like 'worse', whether the 'a' is long or short in 'path' whether the 't' is pronounced in 'brighten.' But there are many other important differences: how much stress or emphasis there is on individual syllables (French speakers, for example, speak with very little stress), what is the characteristic pitch, how much of a musical intonation is present, what is the typical tone (often throaty in city dwellers) what is the pace (often slow in country people) how precisely do people speak.

The throatiness factor is an interesting one. The cockney accent, from London, and the Bronx accent from New York, share this and, presumably, people in those places have for generations closed their throats when speaking, to protect themselves from the polluted air of the big city. However, there is a new kind of throatiness heard from fashionable Californians - sample 'The Hills' to hear it - and I have no idea why this should have happened, but then there is no accounting for fashion, is there.

There is endless fascination in how people speak and many subtleties. For example, doctors and lawyers speak slightly differently from each other, no doubt because of their different roles in life. Neither do builders speak like sales staff. There is also a lot of fun to be had in 'doing' voices and developing characters who speak in different ways. I was lucky enough to have been brought up in the golden age of radio comedy, listening to classic shows such as 'Take it from Here', 'The Goon Show' and 'Hancock's Half Hour.' I found that when I got into school the next day I could imitate what I'd heard the night before and add to it as well. I found I could make people laugh and this was one of the first things that turned me on to theatre.

The best way to learn an accent is from someone who speaks with that accent or by going to the area where that accent is spoken. Failing that, listen to recordings and talk back to them (the talking back is very important.) You are using the power of imitation, which is an important part of the learning process. When a whole cast have to speak with an accent they can improvise together using it and catch it from each otherlike a disease.

One final Word of Wisdom: when learning an accent, exaggerate it: this accelerates the learning process because you are stretchiing yourself. When using an accent in performance, underplay it because accents are more subtle than you think and you don't want to fall into a 'stage' caricature version. Accents: exaggerate when learning, underplay when performing.