When someone from Britain speaks, Americans hear a "British accent"...

[Rick Wotnaz]

Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> wrote in
news:867jcqoxgk.fsf at bhuda.mired.org: 

> Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> writes:
>> On 2005-10-06, DaveM <asma61 at dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>>>>Frankly, I can't watch Shakespeare or movies like "the full
>>>>monty" or "trainspotting" because I can't understand a damn
>>>>word they say. British talk sounds like gibberish to me for
>>>>the most part.
>>> Not just you. It always amuses me in trips to the US that
>>> British voices (outside of the movies) are often subtitled,
>>> while first-generation Americans whose English is. um,
>>> limited, are not.
>> What?!?  I've never seen a British voice (inside or outside of
>> the movies) subtitled -- with the exception of one of a
>> nightclub scenes in one movie (I think it was Trainspotting)
>> where the dialog was inaudible because of the music.
> 
> Maybe they were dubbed? I know America International dubbed the
> first version of "Mad Max" that they imported into the US. Then
> again, American International is well-know for their quality.

A couple of nights ago, I was amused and amazed to see subtitles 
during NBC news interviews with some good citizens of Louisiana. I 
don't know what NBC was thinking. I didn't think the accents were 
especially thick, either. I had no difficulty understanding the 
spoken words except in one stretch where background noise obscured 
some bits. I've certainly heard some New Yorkers with harder-to-
understand speech, though without subtitles. I suppose I could be 
fooling myself in thinking I understood them.

-- 
rzed