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Thread: Upper-class American Accent
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2016-01-09, 07:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Upper-class American Accent
I'm sure everyone knows (or at least thinks they know) what an upper-class English accent sounds like, but is there such a thing as an upper-class American accent? The only one I can think of is Boston Brahmin, but I'm sure there must be others.
Spoiler: Out-of-context quotes
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2016-01-09, 07:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Heavy tidewater accents are often associated with the rich, at very least in the media.
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2016-01-09, 07:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
I think the Boston Brahmin you're describing there is similar to say, what a Kennedy might sound like? That was my first thought for an upperclass American accent. There's also that almost antebellum southern drawl associated with plantation owners and the like. "I do declare" and all that. Perhaps something like Mr. Howl from Gilligan's Island as another option? Wearing yachting style clothes and everyone has names like "Biffy" and "Muffy." That's the media's take on it, anyways. I would say anything that reflects intelligence and education would be a good representation of the upper class.
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2016-01-09, 08:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
There's a particularly flat version of a mid-atlantic accent that I see as "rich american" in a lot of british media especially, but look for it in period pieces from the 1920s or the like as well.
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2016-01-09, 08:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
Niccolo Machiavelli.
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2016-01-09, 09:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
The most distinctive historical upper-class American accents are probably the variety of non-rhotic dialects from the east coast. Boston Brahmin and Tidewater have been mentioned, if you want to hear what an upper-class New Yorker of the late nineteenth century spoke like there's a recording of Theodore Roosevelt on YouTube titled "Theodore Roosevelt Speech" that showcases this dialect. It seems that way of speaking has declined over the 20th century; recordings and videos of upper-class New Yorkers like FDR and William F. Buckley Jr. should be easy to find and show that people continued to speak that way into the 1900s, but I've never heard that sort of accent from someone born after 1950. If you encounter an r-dropping accent in U.S. media today it usually connotes a working-class Bostonian.
Last edited by Hoosigander; 2016-01-09 at 09:09 PM.
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2016-01-09, 09:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
No. It is not a tidewater. For one thing, it is rhotic.
It is a mid-atlantic accent. The version I am thinking of is especially flat and nasal, sounding more like a new yorker or jersey speech pattern except without some of the... Grr... Anyway, I spent years trying to place it until I found out it was an invented accent that has fallen out of favor since the end of world war 2. For a clear example of the form, look no further than the "american businessman" characters of Jeeves and Wooster (Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in a comedy of errors, it's worth watching regardless).
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2016-01-10, 10:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Heh, reminds me of a B&W Doctor Who episode. I was wondering why the heck someone was talking funny the way he was, then it occurred to me he must be "American". To my American ear he was attempting some coastal old money accent, but it just made me wonder who he was supposed to be based on that.
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2016-01-10, 06:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Whenever I need a upper class American accent, I go with a Locust Valley lockjaw, and channel Thurston Howell III.
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2016-01-11, 12:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
This might be an incredibly broad generalization, but I think accent really isn't that big of a class signifier in the US - at least not nearly to the extent that it is in the UK and elsewhere. There are some exceptions, mainly low-class signifiers. Southern dialects are generally looked down upon by either coast. I'll mention African American Vernacular, but that gets into forum-illegal topics very rapidly. If you're looking to show that a person or character is "upper class" in the US, you'd probably be better off looking at the sorts of things they own, or the services they pay for.
If you encounter an r-dropping accent in U.S. media today it usually connotes a working-class Bostonian.Last edited by Telonius; 2016-01-11 at 12:17 AM.
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2016-01-11, 01:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
...swear words? It sounds right to me though. Or maybe I just get quite close to it when I stop to put the Ts back on the ends of words. Just-get-quite-close-to-it would start to chop up like the way they talk.
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2016-01-11, 01:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Somewhat closer to accents is variations in lexicon, which is absolutely a class signifier. To take a somewhat trite example, the use of the term "retire" meaning "to go to bed" is virtually nonexistent among working and lower middle classes. The American upper class has a set of extremely pervasive propriety standards, which excise a great many words and phrases that are more prevalent in lower and middle classes, from the moratorium on most swearing to even euphemistic terms for things like bodily functions being largely excised. As a member of a lower class, I can both use and encounter both people cursing like sailors and terms like "take a dump", which would be classed as improper and largely avoided among the upper class. The use of slang is another point of difference, as are a particular set of grammatical rules that aren't part of the English language as a whole, but only the upper class dialect. Restrictions like not ending a word with a preposition are treated largely apathetically by most and have been for some time; in the south words like "y'all" are conspicuously absent among much of the rich.
It's worth observing that this is particularly prevalent among the de-facto aristocracy. The linguistic mores of old money differ dramatically from that of up and comers, particularly people who are upper class themselves but come directly from working class backgrounds. To use a southern example, the upper class has both a number of people who come from a long line of wealthy landowners, and a number of people who either rode the emergence of oil to success or have recent ancestors who have done so; there's a cultural gap between these groups.I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
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2016-01-11, 01:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Which leaves us with a bit of a problem when considering people like General George S. Patton. You don't get much more aristocratic in the U.S. than someone like "Old Blood and Guts," but as a soldier from 1st Infantry Division remarked about him at one of his speeches in Sicily, with rather sublime irony, "That ****ing ****er of a general swears too ****ing much."
While I agree that slang terms are a lot less likely to be used above a certain "class level," I'm not sure if I'd associate prim and prissy language per se with the upper class. Seems like a trait I'd associate with insecure, a bit conformist middle class types, while the lower class would swear by reflex and the upper class by choice, when they felt it necessary for emphasis (though not in a strictly formal situation, obviously).Spoiler
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2016-01-11, 09:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
On the subject of informality in upper-class speech, a study in the U.K. found that both working- and upper- class people were more likely to drop the "g" from -ing ending words than middle class individuals. This is obviously a different culture, but the same social pressures may apply.
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Don't destroy it! That alter to Lamashtu, Demon Queen and Mother of Monsters, is historically significant!
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2016-01-11, 09:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Historically, the Mid-Atlantic accent (not to be confused with the Mid-Atlantic dialect, the native working-class dialect of Baltimore and Philadelphia) was considered the upper-class accent. An acquired accent that consciously blended British and American features, it tended to be very "flat" and non-rhotic. For example, Audrey Hepburn spoke in this accent in Breakfast at Tiffany's:
However, this accent has fallen out of use, and Standard American is the favored "accentless" variety of American English. It is based on a Great Lakes accent instead -- perhaps most strongly that of Michigan and Detroit.Last edited by lurkmeister; 2016-01-11 at 09:42 AM.
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2016-01-11, 02:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
I'm thinking of the Crane brothers - Niles and Frasier. What would you call their accent?
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2016-01-11, 03:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2016-01-11, 05:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Just to note, General American and the Great lakes accent have diverged since the mid-twentieth century. In particular, Michigan (excepting the U.P. and the northernmost parts of the Lower Peninsula) is at the epicenter of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Although, It doesn't stop most Michiganders from swearing up and down that they "don't have an accent."
Even the wise cannot see all ends. -J.R.R. Tolkien
Don't destroy it! That alter to Lamashtu, Demon Queen and Mother of Monsters, is historically significant!
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2016-01-11, 06:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
I don't know if this will help or hurt. But do you think there is a difference between accents,.. between "Rich" and "Upper Class" I don't know if they are mutually interchangeable.
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2016-01-11, 08:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
There is a difference in my ear. Take a southern accent between 2 different rich people . If you wanted to sound like an upper class Southerner, you may mimic Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg. The voice is softer, the grammar and diction correct. If you wanted a rich, low class southerner, you may choose Ross Perot. The voice is louder, faster & for added effect, just throw in some slang (ie Happier than a pig in a wallow).
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2016-01-11, 09:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
The thing here is that there isn't one. There is the Connecticut or New York wealth that people are associating with some media portrayals of wealth in the U.S., but that barely scratches the surface. There's Texas oil money, money from the Carolinas that is more old southern, money from the great businesses out west and the descendents of the old railroad barons, and these days there's Silicon Valley and the technology world.
All of them speak differently and have been portrayed differently as various stereotypes in media.
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2016-01-11, 09:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Something like Colonel Autumn from Fallout 3.
"Of all the words by tongue and pen, by far the saddest are "I could have been...""
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2016-01-12, 02:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Upper-class American Accent
Point of order. You are absolutely right about standards of propriety among the upper class both existing and being held extremely tightly, but the standards that you mention are not entirely correct. The upper class will use traditional swear words with abandon as a class signfier: it is very common, for instance, for a very wealthy person to use words that refer to excrement, filth or various bodily functions frequently even in situations where it would be considered impolite specifically to demonstrate that they can violate such standards and suffer no consequence. Telling a guy to go . . . well, let's say that special something to himself in a business meeting is a signifier of their ability to violate traditional social norms. It's middle to upper-middle-class strivers who would never use such language, precisely because they can be punished severely for their breach of social etiquette.
That being said, while they frequently flout those traditional social conventions, the line that is never crossed nowadays is using language that denigrates on the basis of race, ethnicity and increasingly gender or disability. While the upper, upper class certainly see themselves as and hold themselves out to be better than other people, they never see it as because they are a member of a superior race or gender. No, that kind of language and thinking is reserved exclusively for the hoi polloi. So, just to use an example, a wealthy American person will happily swear at their Hispanic maid. They might even complain about her work ethic at their country club. But call her a racial slur against Hispanics or use a derogatory term to compare her to, say, female genitalia, even if it something that is only heard about rather than seen directly, and you will never be allowed in polite company again.Characters: