Why do British people sing like American people?

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What makes an accent , is it only the tongue or is it also air movement ? Maybe that has something to do with it.

Disclaimer - I know nothing about what makes people sound a certain way. I have also been married to a Colombian woman for many wonderful years and speak about 3 words of Spanish.
 
I've always thought it pretty amazing that people from commonwealth countries like Lucy Lawless and Nicole Kidman can pull of an American accent. I mean, try and make an American speak in even a standard british accent and I know we would sound like a moron.
 
tnw said:
I've always thought it pretty amazing that people from commonwealth countries like Lucy Lawless and Nicole Kidman can pull of an American accent. I mean, try and make an American speak in even a standard british accent and I know we would sound like a moron.
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Madonna pulls it off pretty well. :lol

Also Brad Pitt is the first one that really comes to mind as a serious answer.
 
tnw said:
I've always thought it pretty amazing that people from commonwealth countries like Lucy Lawless and Nicole Kidman can pull of an American accent. I mean, try and make an American speak in even a standard british accent and I know we would sound like a moron.
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They see and grown up with American culture a lot more than Americans grow up with theirs. It's pretty simple really.
 
temp said:
REALLY??
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Yep, what I did was post an example, it saves me typing out every single english band which has a strong accent for the sake of saving on time. Unfortunately from your first reply it seems you missed this, perhaps you haven't used examples much in writing before?

Anyway other people have posted other english bands with strong accents, and UK/US culture being similar accounts for bands which don't have a pronounced accent.
 
VistraNorrez said:
They see and grown up with American culture a lot more than Americans grow up with theirs. It's pretty simple really.
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Except for the fact that what he said is not true.
 
tnw said:
I've always thought it pretty amazing that people from commonwealth countries like Lucy Lawless and Nicole Kidman can pull of an American accent. I mean, try and make an American speak in even a standard british accent and I know we would sound like a moron.
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+1
for Naomi Watts, I thought she was American for the longest time...
 
Vai said:
Yep, what I did was post an example, it saves me typing out every single english band which has a strong accent for the sake of saving on time. Unfortunately from your first reply it seems you missed this, perhaps you haven't used examples much in writing before?
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Oh, so what you meant to say was that EVERY British band sings with a heavy British accent like Arctic Monkeys.

Vai said:
Anyway other people have posted other english bands with strong accents, and UK/US culture being similar accounts for bands which don't have a pronounced accent.
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Wait a minute, so there are British bands that don't sound particularly British?? So why mention the ones that do?
 
OpinionatedCyborg said:
dick.jpg
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I'll thank you not to post photos of me and the missus.
 
Sir Fragula said:
Hah, what can I say? The stereotypical image of an American to me is a cowboy shooting guns in the air going "Yeeehaaw!". First thing that pops into the head. Nothing else seems solely American really.
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This post is hilariously funny to me, and I've lived in TEXAS for most of my life, for crying out loud.

FYI:

> Outside of situations where people are pretending to be cowboys (at Country and Western music shows, at the "Wild West City" at an amusement park,) you really don't hear any "Yeeehaaw!"-ing anywhere in the States.

[The strange twist to this is that I once went to a Willie Nelson show in London, England and there were far more people "Yeeehawing" there than if I went to see the same Willie Nelson show in Austin, Texas. (Well, except during "Whiskey River," which is when you're supposed to go completely nuts, and the fans kindly oblige)]

> No shooting in the air, either. I have learned that the only time you are likely to experience this is if you happen to be in a "border state" like mine, and you happen to be in/around a neighborhood with a substantial Mexican immigrant population on New Years. If you don't like random gunfire, never ever be caught in "the Barrio" at the stroke of midnight on New Years. So, in summary, that kind of seems like more of a Mexican thing to do than an American thing, really, and that's only one day a year.

[As someone who grew up in a city with a large Mexican population, I'll gladly trade five minutes of random, (and probably drunken) airborn gunfire on New Years Eve night for the AWESOME "good luck" tamales we get to eat on Christmas and New Years Day. It's a totally fair trade, IMO. Thanks, Amigos!]
 
Anerythristic said:
What makes an accent , is it only the tongue or is it also air movement ? Maybe that has something to do with it.
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Well, what makes any speech sound is a combination of tongue position, amount/type of air restriction and voicing. People develop a first-language accent based on what they hear while developing their language. For example, the people who say 'ave for have or bo'le for bottle grow up hearing it that way and their phonological system gets developed in such a way that in situations where others might use a glottal fricative (/h/--an 'h' sound) they use a glottal stop (/?/--we don't have a letter for this sound but most of us make it before vowels in 'uh-oh').

Second-language accents come from trying to emulate sounds you hear in another language with the closest match that exists in your language. People who say 'dis' for 'this' are doing this. They have no 'th' sound and substitute a similar sound ('d') because that's all they can make. Probably, that's all they actually hear.

My guess as to why British singers seem to sound more American when they sing is that the sounds used in singing are somewhat standardized and it's not so much that Brits start sounding American as both Americans and Brits sing in similar ways because that's the way English is sung. I could be wrong though.

To me the real question is why people stop stuttering when they sing.
 
mr stroke said:
This is something I have never understood.... Bands/Singers from the UK speak completely different from how they sing?? can anyone explain this?
is this something they are trained to do? how do they go from British accent to American in seconds..
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The reason I've heard from Elton John and the like was that the music that they listened to, and were influenced by, was American. People like Little Richard influenced a lot early rock bands (like The Beatles, for example). He also said it "sounded cool" and that the English accent sounded kind of lame to him and not very "rock and roll."

It's the same reason why 80s underground punk bands started singing with fake English accents.
 
temp said:
Oh, so what you meant to say was that EVERY British band sings with a heavy British accent like Arctic Monkeys.


Wait a minute, so there are British bands that don't sound particularly British?? So why mention the ones that do?
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No, some bands have a strong accent, some don't. This isn't an all or nothing situation, there are plenty of different styles.
Though I definitely wouldn't consider the bands which don't have a strong accent to be "talking like an American", they just have a fairly neutral/subtle accent, one I feel is increasingly used in both the US and the UK i.e. on the US media I don’t notice many thick accents, when I have spoken to Americans I don’t notice an overbearing accent, and most people I speak to from day-to-day don’t speak like a cockney (I love close to London).
 
Pink Floyd sounds plenty British to me...



And doesn't it have something to do with the way your mouth projects the sound. When you're belching it out, I imagine your mouth being open wider than usual and thus changing the sound
 
Pristine_Condition said:
[As someone who grew up in a city with a large Mexican population, I'll gladly trade five minutes of random, (and probably drunken) airborn gunfire on New Years Eve night for the AWESOME "good luck" tamales we get to eat on Christmas and New Years Day. It's a totally fair trade, IMO. Thanks, Amigos!]
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Is this a euphemism for some awesome sex act performed by a Mexican woman, or are we talking about real tamales here?
 
Sir Fragula said:
Hah, what can I say? The stereotypical image of an American to me is a cowboy shooting guns in the air going "Yeeehaaw!". First thing that pops into the head. Nothing else seems solely American really.
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wayne-300.jpg
 
When I was taught to sing in choir, we sang like British people talk...granted in a soft accent. (No strong posh style London stuff...)
 
Sir Fragula said:
I'll thank you not to post photos of me and the missus.
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This thread also begs the question: why do British people type like American people? I would expect your loveable slang to translate into something like "ah'd tank ya nort teh beh postin pho'ohs of meself an' me missus." but for whatever reason it doesn't...
 
the arctic monkeys' lead singer sounds very british, and so does lilly allen, i think. but yeah, a lot of british artists sing with an american accent.
 
OpinionatedCyborg said:
This thread also begs the question: why do British people type like American people? I would expect your loveable slang to translate into something like "ah'd tank ya nort teh beh postin pho'ohs of meself an' me missus." but for whatever reason it doesn't...
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Blimey, I didn't think some people found it that bothersome.


Accents bother me. Everyone I know seems to speak in "oi oi, farma boi surrrfolk speaks", but as I moved to East Anglia I don't have it...
 
OpinionatedCyborg said:
This thread also begs the question: why do British people type like American people? I would expect your loveable slang to translate into something like "ah'd tank ya nort teh beh postin pho'ohs of meself an' me missus." but for whatever reason it doesn't...
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Well I wrote it to read like it was coming from a typical working class Londoner - I thought that came across quite clear. Personally though I think you're just projecting your own accent on to the things I'm writing. I mean unless punctuation or deliberate misspellings are used, I read everything as if it came from a middle-class Home Counties sort; that is to say, from my own accent.
 
Vai said:
No, some bands have a strong accent, some don't. This isn't an all or nothing situation, there are plenty of different styles.
Though I definitely wouldn't consider the bands which don't have a strong accent to be "talking like an American", they just have a fairly neutral/subtle accent, one I feel is increasingly used in both the US and the UK i.e. on the US media I don’t notice many thick accents, when I have spoken to Americans I don’t notice an overbearing accent, and most people I speak to from day-to-day don’t speak like a cockney (I love close to London).
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My point is that naming British bands that don't sing like Americans doesn't prove anything one way or the other about the OP's claim that either some or most British people sing like Americans. You could have named 30 British-sounding bands and it wouldn't have contributed anything.
 
Sir Fragula said:
Well I wrote it to read like it was coming from a typical working class Londoner - I thought that came across quite clear.
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I think you're giving us far too much credit :lol
 
temp said:
My point is that naming British bands that don't sing like Americans doesn't prove anything one way or the other about the OP's claim that either some or most British people sing like Americans. You could have named 30 British-sounding bands and it wouldn't have contributed anything.
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That goes both ways, as without statistical data you can't prove anything. So does that not make every post in this thread invalid, including the OP? As I sure don't see any facts listed to back up the other posts in this thread.

OpinionatedCyborg said:
This thread also begs the question: why do British people type like American people? I would expect your loveable slang to translate into something like "ah'd tank ya nort teh beh postin pho'ohs of meself an' me missus." but for whatever reason it doesn't...
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What do you refer to your language as (important point, language not nationality)? American or English? Most of the time it gets called English...
 
Vai said:
That goes both ways, as without statistical data you can't prove anything. So does that not make every post in this thread invalid, including the OP? As I sure don't see any facts listed to back up the other posts in this thread.
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He could post any one British band that sings in an "American" accent and it would add to his argument, yeah. His point is that (at least) some British people sing with an accent that sounds American. Saying that some British bands don't sound American doesn't make any sense, since he never said that ALL British singers sound American (or no British singers sound British). It would be like he said "It snowed in November," so you say, "It didn't snow on the 12th!" I hope you understand now.

Vai said:
What do you refer to your language as (important point, language not nationality)? American or English? Most of the time it gets called English...
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He's joking.
 
This is the perfect thread to get away with a Rick Roll
 
temp said:
He could post any one British band that sings in an "American" accent and it would add to his argument, yeah. His point is that (at least) some British people sing with an accent that sounds American. Saying that some British bands don't sound American doesn't make any sense, since he never said that ALL British singers sound American (or no British singers sound British). It would be like he said "It snowed in November," so you say, "It didn't snow on the 12th!" I hope you understand now.
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I suggest you reread what he posted:
"This is something I have never understood.... Bands/Singers from the UK speak completely different from how they sing??"

This implies that all/most do. In my original post I pointed out that there are British bands who sing with a strong British accent (in fact there are many), and that cultural similarities could be a reason for some bands not having a strong accent which in a lot of cases could be confused with trying to appeal to the American accent.
You seem to be strongly opposed to this but I still do not understand why, do you think that there cannot be a variety in how people speak in England?
Could it be because you interpret a subtle accent as an American accent?
 
Vai said:
I suggest you reread what he posted:
"This is something I have never understood.... Bands/Singers from the UK speak completely different from how they sing??"

This implies that all/most do. In my original post I pointed out that there are British bands who sing with a strong British accent (in fact there are many), and that cultural similarities could be a reason for some bands not having a strong accent which in a lot of cases could be confused with trying to appeal to the American accent.
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He made a generalization about the way people from the UK sing. Listing a couple anecdotes doesn't address his claim. Here's another example: If he said that people from the UK spell aluminum "aluminium", and you said that you had a British friend who used the American spelling, that wouldn't negate his point.

Vai said:
You seem to be strongly opposed to this but I still do not understand why, do you think that there cannot be a variety in how people speak in England?
Could it be because you interpret a subtle accent as an American accent?
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I haven't said anything about how I feel about this. I'm just telling you that what you're saying isn't logical.
 
I've always thought it pretty amazing that people from commonwealth countries like Lucy Lawless and Nicole Kidman can pull of an American accent. I mean, try and make an American speak in even a standard british accent and I know we would sound like a moron.
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Uh, maybe that's because Lucy Lawless and Nicole Kidman AREN'T standard random British citizens off the street but in fact do training to have such a good accent? Ya know, for little things like movies and television?
 
the only real answer is that the american accent is descended from british singing. :P

the new "street" british bands emphasise their british street accents, but normally classical singing will involve doing whatever to your voice to make it sound...like singing. and american accents sounds like british people who are walking around in singing voice mode.
 
A local band from my area got popular in Europe, and the singer did his vocals to sound British under the advice of the European record label. No joke.
 
Now that I think about it, the cure does sound kind of british when they sing, but maybe not.

Morrisey sounds British when he sings for sure, at least I think he does.
 
mr stroke said:
This is something I have never understood.... Bands/Singers from the UK speak completely different from how they sing?? can anyone explain this?
is this something they are trained to do? how do they go from British accent to American in seconds..
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Because the "natural" English is the one Americans and Canadians speak. Ever notice non-English speaking Europeans who speak English - don't have a British accent, but something similar to the Americanized accent - even if they live amongst the British? Best example are Athletes since we can hear them speak.

Americanized English = speaking from the tip of your tongue (easier)
British English = speaking from the back of your tongue (harder)

Listen to this. I found this weird, being a Trekkie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HGLpwQ4lOQ
 
DarkJediKnight said:
Because the "natural" English is the one Americans and Canadians speak. Ever notice non-English speaking Europeans who speak English - don't have a British accent, but something similar to the Americanized accent - even if they live amongst the British? Best example are Athletes since we can hear them speak.

Americanized English = speaking from the tip of your tongue (easier)
British English = speaking from the back of your tongue (harder)
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o0 actually people speak with american accents from asia/europe if they have an american teacher or watch mostly american tv shows, both of which are more common than british ones nowadays.
 
kaizoku said:
o0 actually people speak with american accents from asia/europe if they have an american teacher or watch mostly american tv shows, both of which are more common than british ones nowadays.
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Maybe, but for example, why doesn't F1 World Champion Mika Hakkinen or Kimi Raikkonnen have a British Accent when they speak English? Both are from Finland and spent a great deal of their early 20s surrounded by the British Press and British entourage within the team.

Out of curiosity, how much American programming is shown in England?
 
mac said:
British people singing "America?"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tDP-yMwXI

Hugh Laurie weighs in on this topic.
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Anytime it's necessary to point out whats wrong with the usa, this video serves as the complete answer.


Anyway I think it's more to do with there not being ancents when you sing really.


Shirley Manson of Garbage, very strong edinburgh accent (sexy lady) completely absent when singing.
 
Elton John (As a kid when my Dad used to listen to him, I thought he was from Canada, actually.)
Freddie Mercury (Unless you know he has a British accent, you'd never believe it)
 
Sir Fragula said:
Well I wrote it to read like it was coming from a typical working class Londoner - I thought that came across quite clear. Personally though I think you're just projecting your own accent on to the things I'm writing. I mean unless punctuation or deliberate misspellings are used, I read everything as if it came from a middle-class Home Counties sort; that is to say, from my own accent.
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That's how I read it in my head (the 'missus' clued me into that), but I just took it a step further :D.
Because the "natural" English is the one Americans and Canadians speak. Ever notice non-English speaking Europeans who speak English - don't have a British accent, but something similar to the Americanized accent - even if they live amongst the British? Best example are Athletes since we can hear them speak.

Americanized English = speaking from the tip of your tongue (easier)
British English = speaking from the back of your tongue (harder)
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Actually, I've noticed the opposite a lot of the time, mainly because those people came from British colonies. There is no "natural" accent.
 
Morbidesque said:
I am a singer, and If I remember correctly, when I was studying opera, my maestro told me that different parts of the brain were responsible for speech and singing. Also I believe it has something to do with how the vocal chords flatten out when you are singing, as opposed to being in a different position when you are speaking. or some combination of those variables.
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Also, you were probably taught to sing vowels so that they didn't sound like the consonants that come before or after them. Pure vowels, in other words. So the accent, if any, comes entirely in the way the consonants are treated.
 
DarkJediKnight said:
Maybe, but for example, why doesn't F1 World Champion Mika Hakkinen or Kimi Raikkonnen have a British Accent when they speak English? Both are from Finland and spent a great deal of their early 20s surrounded by the British Press and British entourage within the team.

Out of curiosity, how much American programming is shown in England?
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alot. not to mention all the movies and songs.

Finnish people all speak fantastic english, its taught in schools from a young age and I imagine they are largely american english although imo its their own accent.

your whole idea of natural accents goes against the nature of sociolinguistics, there is no such thing as a natural accent. an individual will have various forms of accent - its a complicated subject.

the only thing i can add to the debate is....when i try to sing a song/phrase or just go into "singing mode" my voice will become more americanised simply because americans have a gentler sing-songey way of speaking. words are elongated and tones adjusted when you sing.

its not that we're trying to sound american (although some pros might I dont know) but for example I cant imagine how I might sing certain songs without sounding american.
 
temp said:
He made a generalization about the way people from the UK sing. Listing a couple anecdotes doesn't address his claim. Here's another example: If he said that people from the UK spell aluminum "aluminium", and you said that you had a British friend who used the American spelling, that wouldn't negate his point.


I haven't said anything about how I feel about this. I'm just telling you that what you're saying isn't logical.
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Yet the OP posting his generalization without evidence is somehow valid to you? That makes no sense.
If the OP had something to backup his argument then I agree that posting a few examples wouldn't be much of a counterargument, but examples and listening to British bands daily is a stronger argument than what the OP has given.
 
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