Let it sink in. It works and its fun to say.
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Agree with you (at least) on her 'Brooklyn" accent.
What she’s doing isn’t even Queens, it’s Long Island.
Not really. There is currently no real distinction between accents around the NYC metro area. There was, before WWII. But these days it’s all the same accent/dialect. The real distinctions are ethnic. IE NY white vs NY African American Vernacular.
In terms of the general accent she’s attempting. It is thickest in Nassau County (Long Island but not the part I’m from), Staten Island, and Northern New Jersey. Weakest in Manhattan, Eastern Suffolk County (the other Long Island County), Western Connecticut. And somewhere in between for Western Suffolk, Westchester (and surrounds), Yonkers, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. And none of it sounds a lick like what our dialog coach is doing. She’s doing the Nanny. Which is a highly stylized pistach of the Jewish variation of the NY accent, most common in Nassau County.
ETA: OH and technically Brooklyn and Queens are both on Long Island. Its a geographical feature. Not a municipality of any kind. You’ve got 4 counties on Long Island. Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk. Nassau and Suffolk are about 3/4-2/3rds of the land mass. Then 5 boroughs of NYC. Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island. The Bronx is on the mainland. But the test of it is all part of the same archipelago.
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These are stage accents-- and not representative of the real thing. I think that’s why the lesson boils down to "fiddle with how you pronounce your Rs
So stage accents are by definition bad accents? I know actual dialog coaches, they don’t make a distinction like that. The point of accent work is not to sound just enough like something generally associated with a place to have people go “oh he’s British now” its to sound like you’re really from that place.
She’s focusing on the R’s because R’s are an actual sticking point in English pronunciation. And pronouncing an R properly for a given accent can be incredibly difficult. Particularly for English actors with natural RP accents trying to mimic various American Accents. But she does it improperly. And how R’s are pronounced is hardly the whole of it. Even if a mis or over pronounced R is frequently the tell in an otherwise good accent work. She misses, or glosses over other incredibly important features of the accents in question. Her natural accent slips in on nearly every other syllable. She attributes the wrong R sounds to a given place, and pronounces those R’s improperly even when she doesn’t.
One of the key features of an accurate Irish accent is a voiced, almost h like, exhale after certain hard consonant sounds. Typically at the start of a word. So its not “Cat” its almost like “Chyat” (but more clipped). The woman in the video does this once or twice. But not consistently. And when she does its exaggerated in much the same way as when I tease Irish friends and family by doing a deliberately bad Irish accent. (They call it Oirish). The Irish (and several other accents in the British Isles) also tend to fully pronounce, even over pronounce vowels. Most often very far back in the throat, without much nasal involvement. I don’t see much of that from her. And I don’t hear her mentioning that. She just mentions about the R’s being important and moves on. She talks about the R’s but she doesn’t talk about the mechanics of making the right R sound. And I don’t think she understands them, because she can’t seem to do it herself.
She’s basically given you one weird trick to sound like a bad imitation of a dozen different accents.
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Not sure about that either. I grew up on Long Island and I’m in the unfortunate position where I still have to go back 3-4 times a year. It’s just awful all around. I feel bad for saying it but it’s terrible.
Technically correct. The best kind of correct!
For the people unfamiliar with the NY metro area, if someone says they are from Long Island they mean Nassau County or Suffolk County – the part of the actual geographical island named Long Island that is not Queens or Brooklyn.
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Yeah the usage is basically “not from within city limits, but not that upstate crap either.”
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