Re: This week on Dancing with the Stars Re: The Business Memoir - the ``whom'' question

27 Oct 2006 15:07:36 -0700: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

Why? He's an actor, he's playing a character, for whom he devised a
particular voice. It's not his own voice.

Even if a terribly unprofessional actor got a job where he used his own
voice, it would be altered by the exigencies of acting for the theater
or for the microphone.

You obvously never listened to what you comment on. That makes
everything you say invalid.

The whole air supply system is handled
differently in those situations. Have you ever had vocal (singing)
training? Have you ever acted on a stage?

No, but when I recognize an accent, I recognize an accent. Even in
some languages that are not my own. If you can't, pity for you.

Wouldn't it be much more useful, if you EITHER shut up about this
subject, OR buy one or more Cold Feet DVDs and actually listen to him,
and to other Northern Irish speakers, and THEN comment on whether his
accent is genuine and if not how it differs from a genuine NI accent?

Have you ever wondered why
karaoke usually sounds so lousy (even if the performer isn't drunk)?

Utterly irrelevant.

Because the karaoke-ist has no reason to know about using the diaphragm
(and everything else that goes into voice projection).

Incomprehenisible quatsch.

He also has this typical "how" vowel (Reverend Paisly and Gerry Adams
have it too) which is so strangely similar to the Australian "so"
vowel. Such things are rather hard to imitate if you haven't learnt it
from the cradle.

Of course they're not. Any English dialectologist can do it, and if I
were in those communities for a few days, I could do it.

I can too, as demonstrated on my site. But it's hard. And even
dialectologist can't do it it running speech. Some actors can, to a
certain extent (non-speakers if the accent will recognize it, but
speakers of which can tell it is fake). This actor doesn't have to,
because the accent his character needs to use happens to be his own.
That's one of the reason he was cast for the role. They do such things
in British drama.

Quite possible, but irrelevant for the case at hand, because James
Nesbitt really is from NI. Again, what made you believe that he isn't?

It doesn't matter where he is from.

Did we need more proof you really have no idea at all what you are
talking about?

His character's voice is not the same as his own voice.

How would you know if you've never heard him?

I know how Americans speak, I've heard more than enough. In British tv
series, they use real actors, not accent impersonators.

Then you haven't seen the British series that are shown on American TV.

Are they played by American actors? Dubbed by American voices?

Actors BY DEFINITION are acting with their voice. A linguist CANNOT use
"acting," i.e. deliberately considered, voices as data.

Utter, utter nonsense.

Sheer ignorance.

On your part, yes.

British actors don't. They know how to play AND make it sound natural.
Please listen to some actual material before venting you uninformed
opinions.

You really have no idea what you're talking about! Have you ever seen a
classic Olivier or Gielgud movie?

No, I haven't the faintest idea what that is.

Nothing could be more artificial!

The DVDs I was talking about are not. The fast that you know some
artificial overacted unnatural movies doesn't prove every British TV
series is like that, does it?

--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
.

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