Well, it probably doesn't help that a lot of American media whitewashes the accents... so, a lot of what you hear in movies is just ONE general accent. Whereas British movies tend to preserve accents.
Part of the reason America has to do that, of course, is that a lot of their accents are pretty damn hard to understand. I mean, besides the New York accents, and your general soft southern accent, I think the first movie I saw with a purposefully distinct regional accent was Good Will Hunting.
(And in Canada, there was the way me and my friends spoke - which was the same as the news-casters on TV and the radio... and then there were comedy troupe shows from Newfoundland/Nova Scotia. The Kids in the Hall were predominately from the Toronto area too, so they're accents weren't that special to my ears.)
But yeah... it's probably just one of those silly things that your brain for some reason never connects together. Like... I was in my late teens before I realized that "The Count" on Sesame Street was "The Count" because he counted... I just genuinely believed that he was a Count. :P (It doesn't help that they dressed him up like Count Dracula - who WAS A COUNT.) But yeah... according to my friends, it should have been obvious.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-02-20 11:00 pm (UTC)Part of the reason America has to do that, of course, is that a lot of their accents are pretty damn hard to understand. I mean, besides the New York accents, and your general soft southern accent, I think the first movie I saw with a purposefully distinct regional accent was Good Will Hunting.
(And in Canada, there was the way me and my friends spoke - which was the same as the news-casters on TV and the radio... and then there were comedy troupe shows from Newfoundland/Nova Scotia. The Kids in the Hall were predominately from the Toronto area too, so they're accents weren't that special to my ears.)
But yeah... it's probably just one of those silly things that your brain for some reason never connects together. Like... I was in my late teens before I realized that "The Count" on Sesame Street was "The Count" because he counted... I just genuinely believed that he was a Count. :P (It doesn't help that they dressed him up like Count Dracula - who WAS A COUNT.) But yeah... according to my friends, it should have been obvious.