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Just call me Henry Higgins
Jul. 3rd, 2008 03:09 pmI had a half day today, so since it was a nice day (well, a bit hot), I decided to wander around the theater and garment districts and see what I could stumble upon. I wandered into The Drama Book Shop, which, as I expected, was full of scripts and screenplays and books on acting technique. And then! I turned the corner and there was a whole rack of diction tapes.
Diction tapes.
I suppose this isn't surprising since actors fake accents all the time, but I hadn't really thought about the market for phonetics CDs for faking accents. Now, I'm a diction geek. It comes out of some combination of being a failure at foreign languages and spending an awful lot of time in choir rehearsal learning to hear subtle differences of vowel and consonant pronunciation. I mean, I have some albums that I like mostly for quirks of how the singer pronounces some things (among this collection is the Power Rangers CD--I'm telling you, perfect shadow schwas). I love hearing people speak with authentic accents, particularly if there are sounds I just can't imitate. I often try to pick apart people's accents, but usually fail.
And then there's this rack of CDs with little booklets with the accents written out in IPA and recordings of authentic people speaking with their authentic accents! I wants them all!!!! They are unfortunately expensive, though. So I just bought the CD on the Welsh accent. (Shut up!) So now I'm listening to how South Wales speakers put full emphasis on normally unstressed syllables, like the second syllable of husband.
This is useless, useless stuff. I'm never even going to learn how to fake this accent. But it's so cool! There's even a list of movies to watch with Welsh speakers in them--it does list Very Annie Marie, but no Torchwood. I think the CD predates that.
I also found a shop with very authentic looking embroidered versions of badges for the US Secret Service, the US Marshals and a number of random British institutions (Queensland Police?). But I managed to resist buying one of those. I'm just imagining flashing the Secret Service badge at someone and having them go--wait...are those beads?
Diction tapes.
I suppose this isn't surprising since actors fake accents all the time, but I hadn't really thought about the market for phonetics CDs for faking accents. Now, I'm a diction geek. It comes out of some combination of being a failure at foreign languages and spending an awful lot of time in choir rehearsal learning to hear subtle differences of vowel and consonant pronunciation. I mean, I have some albums that I like mostly for quirks of how the singer pronounces some things (among this collection is the Power Rangers CD--I'm telling you, perfect shadow schwas). I love hearing people speak with authentic accents, particularly if there are sounds I just can't imitate. I often try to pick apart people's accents, but usually fail.
And then there's this rack of CDs with little booklets with the accents written out in IPA and recordings of authentic people speaking with their authentic accents! I wants them all!!!! They are unfortunately expensive, though. So I just bought the CD on the Welsh accent. (Shut up!) So now I'm listening to how South Wales speakers put full emphasis on normally unstressed syllables, like the second syllable of husband.
This is useless, useless stuff. I'm never even going to learn how to fake this accent. But it's so cool! There's even a list of movies to watch with Welsh speakers in them--it does list Very Annie Marie, but no Torchwood. I think the CD predates that.
I also found a shop with very authentic looking embroidered versions of badges for the US Secret Service, the US Marshals and a number of random British institutions (Queensland Police?). But I managed to resist buying one of those. I'm just imagining flashing the Secret Service badge at someone and having them go--wait...are those beads?