How To Speak With a British Accent – This is the 4th in a series of articles by Lisa Theriot on speaking in different accents, a useful skill for voice over actors.

After several experiences of submitting a “first draft” of a voiceover and having the customer tell me that it wasn’t at all what they had in mind, I have learned to ignore clients’ directions that they want a “British” accent.  Since the bulk of American contact with British accents and vice versa comes from media sources (TV, films, music) which lack geographical context, we develop the ability to identify an accent as British or American without the critical information of where in America or Britain the accent originated.  And there’s the added complication that in any contemporary work, the actors are likely to have accents from all over the map in one show.  This often causes the casual accent imitator to throw in artifacts from many different accents, all of which may be British, but which don’t ever occur together naturally.

Our accents are an incredible stew made up of where we have lived, especially during our language-formative years, where our parents lived, what languages we are exposed to, and often what other accents are culturally important to us.  I don’t get it, but I routinely meet upper-middle-class white boys who sound ghetto not because they grew up in the projects, but because they like hip-hop and they think the lingo is cool.  (I hope their Daddies can get them into Harvard as legacies, because they might find it tough to drop the “a’ight” when they want to.)  Accordingly, every person on the planet has a different accent, so a descriptive like “British” or even “upper-class British” isn’t very specific.

I had two jobs that both wanted “upper-class British,” so I put on my best Sloane Ranger and sent drafts out.  Both came back with “not what I was looking for” comments.  I asked the first client to give me another descriptive to add to “upper-class British” and he said “perky.”  Swallowing the comment that sprang to my throat that those two identifiers are almost mutually exclusive, I asked if he had anyone in mind, and he said, “The Orbit Gum girl.”  Aha.  Channel Vanessa Branch, send the files again, and the client is thrilled.  Educated by that experience, I asked the second client WHO he was looking for and he said, “the girl on Royal Pains.”  Check.  One Reshma Shetty coming up.

Ironically, both Vanessa Branch and Reshma Shetty have spent more of their lives in America than in Britain.  Reshma Shetty sounds pretty much in person like she does on her show (though when she imitates her mother, she can get very Indian); Vanessa Branch sounds completely American, so the role of the Orbit Gum girl is a total put-on, though an informed one from her years spent in Britain.  But it was vital to have them identified, because it was their characters that the clients were really after.  Their performances impressed the clients with an ideal of the image they wanted.  I would never have come up with an accent alone that would have made the clients happy.

If you can target a person or a performance, between YouTube, Hulu, and other online media, you should be able to immerse yourself and pick up not only the accent, but the subtler things like mood and energy.  It doesn’t have to be an impersonation so much as an allusion to the Who that’s wanted as much as the Where.

Voice over recording tips – This is the third in a series of articles by Lisa Theriot on speaking in different accents, a useful skill for voice over actors.

Okay, this is a personal trauma, but I will never get over Walter Koenig as Chekhov on Star Trek saying “nuclear wessels.”  Would it have killed somebody to at least introduce the man to a real Russian speaker?  I know it was the Cold War, but sheesh!  W is not a letter in the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet.  The sound does not occur naturally in Russian.  When Russians have to represent a W sound, they either change it to a V (B in Cyrillic) or they use Y which sounds like “oo” as in “pool.”  Imagine spelling “wall” as “oo-all.”  Wales is “OO-ales” and Washington is “Vashington.”  A Russian, of whatever century, is going to look at the word “vessel” and pronounce it vessel.  Sigh.

It’s appalling in the era of YouTube that anyone attempts a Russian accent without listening to some Russians speaking English.  Heck, just pick up the DVD of White Nights, which features Mikhail Baryshnikov (authentic accent) and Helen Mirren.  Though Helen is a fine English lady, she was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironoff and her accent is honestly come by.  I find that if I check IMDB, anybody whose Russian accent I can’t fault after five minutes is either Russian or Eastern European, or has an immediate family member who is.  A possible exception is the fabulous Timothy V. Murphy.  I loveloveLOVE the Russian mobster DirecTV ads, and I was completely blown away when I found out he was Irish.  I have not been able to discover if he has any Eastern European relatives (he lists Serbian as well as Russian and many others as familiar dialects on his resume), but if he doesn’t, I’m even more impressed.  Oddly, there are some sounds in Gaelic that are helpfully similar to sounds in Russian, but God bless the man, he did his homework.  And I soooo want a pygmy giraffe.

Pitfalls waiting to expose your Russian accent as phony include…the letter H:  Like W, it doesn’t exist in Russian.  Their letter is X, pronounced like the <ch> in Bach.  A breathy H sound with no slight phlegmy edge will give you away.  Also the letter R:  Russian Rs are rolled, more heavily the later English was learned.  In fact, the tongue is pretty far forward in the mouth for most consonants; the letter D is often pronounced with a slight “th” quality.  Short I:  My Russian teacher always said most Russians can’t tell the word “live” from the word “leave”.  Eef I hear “if”, I know eet ees phony accent.  Short A, as in “cat”: this sound is rare for anyone but English speakers.  A Russian saying “cat” sounds like a very quick “key-ett.”  Articles:  They don’t really exist in Russian.  If you aren’t limited to a script, saying “I have apple” is much more likely than “I have AN apple” or “I have THE apple.”  “Russia” is spelled with an O in Russian, so a Russian pronounces the first syllable as in “rock” rather than “ruck.”

I admit I am not Russian.  I studied Russian when I was a volunteer for American Ballet Theatre; if I ever got the chance to say “your place or mine” to Baryshnikov, I wanted to do it in Russian (yes, I had the chance, and no, I chickened out).  But I fell in love with the music of the language, and I don’t like to hear people butchering it.  So remember that Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov (the real one) are spinning in their graves every time Star Trek airs, and be careful with the Mother Russian tongue. Спасибо.

Lisa Theriot

Voice over recording tips – This is the second in a series of articles by Lisa Theriot on speaking in different accents, a useful skill for voice over actors.

I used to babysit some English children, and they found it delightful when I copied their accent and began to speak “normally.” When I asked them to copy MY accent, they said, “Oh, it’s easy to do an American accent; all you have to do is hold your nose.” They demonstrated, and I was somewhat alarmed when these children, who naturally had straightforward “BBC newsreader” British accents, produced fair Manhattanite American simply by holding their noses. They were nowhere near my SoCal American, but they were definitely more American-sounding than British-sounding.

This taught me two things. Number one, the less you know, the less you recognize. Just as many Americans miss the differences between, say, a West Country accent and a Merseyside accent, a lot of Brits will not hear the difference between “right coast versus left coast” American accents, especially from urban centers. (Most Brits can spot more pronounced accents, like Bronx or North Dakota, and almost everyone in the world can spot a “twang” accent, though they can’t usually distinguish between Texan, Deep South, and Midwest rural. Heck, a lot of Americans can’t.) The narrower your audience, the better your accent has to be. Try to convince a native Texan that you were born in Dallas, and you’d better be perfect; to convince a Californian, you might only need to slow down your delivery and throw in an occasional “y’all.” (I was born in California to a Texan mother; as a child, California kids at school would tease me about my “Texas” accent, while I can remember my Texan cousins remarking on how “funny” I sounded.)

The second thing I learned was the critical importance of the nose. As someone with a prominent proboscis as well as chronic sinus problems, I have spent years learning to speak and sing around my nose. This turned out to be a real boon in accent work, because if you can’t banish the nasality from your delivery, there are some accents you just can’t pull off. (Happily, there are a lot you can, even in Britain; South London and Geordies are pretty nasal, to name just two.) The opposite is also true; you’ll need to manipulate your nasality to do an accent from a culture that is more nasal than yours. When doing Indian British, I focus on shutting off my nose (and no, holding your nose won’t do—you’ll likely sound less like Shaheen Khan and more like you with a cold ).

Here’s an easy exercise to try. Get a short passage of text, say it as you would normally, then hold your nose and say it. It will probably sound ridiculous, but that’s the point. You’ll also feel the vibration in your nose through your fingers. Say it again, and this time, try to make your vowels rounder and deeper (say “how now brown cow” a few times). Drop your chin as you speak (say “Dad” and then “father” while watching what your mouth does, and you’ll know what I mean). You should notice the vibration reducing dramatically. Eventually, you’ll be able to sound almost the same with your nose pinched, though M and N sounds, which are inherently the most nasal, will still buzz a little. For you Brits trying to sound more American, the reverse will work; hold your nose and TRY to make it vibrate. Think flatter vowels (say “mitt meet mitt meet” for awhile) and grin while you say it. A little practice, and then, who nose?

Lisa Theriot

This is the first in a new series of articles by Lisa Theriot on an interesting audio topic, accents. Voice actors are frequently called on to provide different types of accents when preforming voice over jobs. One of the most requested types of accents is “British” (as if everyone in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all speak the same!–but that’s another harangue). This first entry in Lisa Theriot’s Accent on Accents series tackles the English Cockney accent. So without further ado, here is Lisa Theriot’s Accent on Accents #1:

The Curse of Dick Van Dyke

When we lived in England, we found that it was commonly accepted among most Brits that the hands-down worst fake British accent ever was affected by Dick Van Dyke in the film Mary Poppins. Considering that the film is now decades old and still has the power to haunt, you have to think the trauma was pretty severe. So what were Dick’s big mistakes? Two very basic ones that a lot of people make when imitating accents: Overdo and Disconnect.

Overdo is pretty easy to understand. Most people recognize bad actors, because they look like they’re acting. (Good actors make you forget you’re watching an actor, because it seems so effortlessly genuine.) Bad accents are much the same. The actor will have a couple of signature sounds, like dropping initial ‘Hs’ and rhyming <day> with <eye> in the case of a Cockney accent, and they will flog them for all they are worth. Trouble is, people vary their vowel sounds based on how much stress the vowel receives. (And they vary their consonant sounds based on a number of factors, but that’s another article.) Try saying “mayday” and you’ll probably find your long-A sound is lighter on either syllable than it would be if you just said “day,” and oodles lighter than if you belted “day” like the last line of “Tomorrow” from Annie. A good fake accent varies vowel sounds just as you would in your natural speech. For contrast, listen to Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. The Cockney accent was just as fake for the Belgian-born actress, who didn’t move to Britain until she was nineteen, but it seems much more natural. (People in the know would never believe she had been born within the sound of Bow bells, but real Cockney experts are the serious minority.)

Disconnect often accompanies Overdo. Actors have often drilled a few words or phrases, and when those are out, they think they’ve done their job and let the rest slide. Listen how often Dick will follow a hugely overdone long-A “eye” sound with a normal American long-A shortly thereafter. And all the little in-between words that make up most of our sentences aren’t worked on at all, so you get sentences like, “<accent> is in the <accent> with the <accent>.” Learning how things get strung together is the real key to selling an accent.

So what’s an aspiring Cockney to do? Hitting YouTube is a good start. And I’m not talking about links by Americans entitled, “How to Speak with a Cockney Accent,” I’m talking about actual Cockneys (there are plenty of them). Just listen. If you really want to learn, type yourself a script of what the person is saying and read along. Look at what they do with stressed and unstressed vowels. Pay attention to the little words. Pay special attention to what happens when two vowel sounds happen together (like “Diana_and” or “saw_a”). Read the script in your natural accent and then listen again. Try imitating syllables, then words, then phrases. It takes practice, but you’ll soon find you can do a good enough job to fool most Americans, and you definitely won’t sound like a Dick.

Lisa Theriot