Any examples of this English accent?

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Codpiece Callaway
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Any examples of this English accent?

Post by Codpiece Callaway »

So Lloyd writes about this Celia Johnson on his page here and gives a description of her accent as such:
She was possessed of a charming accent, of a type which has now gone so out of fashion as to have disappeared altogether. She would add Y noises before certain vowels, such that "I went absolutely mad and bought a new hat" would come out as "I went eybsolutely myad and bought a new hyat".
What I thought at first was that this was some archiec form of the Received Pronounciation, but I might be wrong. Can anyone attest to what this accent is? post any examples of it?

Velvet_Violetta
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Re: Any examples of this English accent?

Post by Velvet_Violetta »

Well I'm not very good at placing accents, so apart from 'old-fashioned upper class British' I can't really help you. However, I thought it might be helpful to listen to the accent in question rather than just reading a description of it, so here's a link to the lady herself narrating a film trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5fE0HXkmyo

Sumelic
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Re: Any examples of this English accent?

Post by Sumelic »

Hmm... While I didn't hear her pronounce the specific words "mad" or "hat" in that video or the linked ones, I have to say that in her pronunciation of words like "hand" and "unhappy" I could not hear an onglide like this source seems to suggest. I'm American, so I'm not familiar with the nuances of British dialects, but her TRAP vowel simply sounded to me like the old-fashioned RP [æ].

Αυτοβοτα
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Re: Any examples of this English accent?

Post by Αυτοβοτα »

It could be mishearing the vowel being more front or raised than he's used to (I don't know the writer's accent). It makes me think how English "gal" gets rendered as "gyaru" in Japanese.
-_-_Aftovota_-_-

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Gulliver
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Re: Any examples of this English accent?

Post by Gulliver »

Here's a clip of the old girl in action.

I would say it's a very early form of RP. She studied at RADA, which is an acting school, so I imagine it's a learnt/trained accent (as RP largely was, although it did exist in some family settings, particularly if the parents went to a "good" boarding school).

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clawgrip
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Re: Any examples of this English accent?

Post by clawgrip »

Speaking of mad and hat, this reminds me of the Mad Hatter from the 1960s Batman TV show. The actor was American, but he seemed to be trying to do an imitation of this sort of accent. You can hear him (somewhat exaggeratedly) do it a few times:

https://youtu.be/fc_eE7lHOPA?t=39s

Around 2:20 he says "hat factory" in an extremely exaggerated way, but this is clearly an attempt to do this type of accent.

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Re: Any examples of this English accent?

Post by Curlyjimsam »

I suspect Lloyd is exaggerating somewhat, especially after viewing the videos: reading his example aloud sounds to me like a sort of parody of old RP.

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