Wycliffe read as why-cliff?

... and what about the accent exactly? Apart from it being irritating? Is it an American idea of how British people speak?

I used to be based near Perpignan in France; I work at the same place but I now commute 20 kilometres across the border from Catalunya (Spain).

You gather nothing of the sort. Whoever is bandying around pronouns that imply I am a female is utterly mistaken.

I'd been watching Family Guy for over five years before I realised Stewie was supposed to have a 'British' accent, and that was only because he said he had. I orignially thought he was supposed to be from somewhere in New England.

Ceili is not an American, and "Stewie" does not remotely sound like someone from New England. People from New England do not remotely sound like people from England.

I was just saying what my impressions were, Stewie certainly sounds more American than British.

To an English ear, "Stewie" does not remotely sound like anyone from England. He sounds like an American trying (very badly) to mockingly imitate what he imagines a "British" accent sounds like. I see from Wikipedia that his character, voiced by Seth MacFarlane, is "intended to have a slightly camp upper class English accent". Well, you could have fooled me.

Since I also see in Wikipedia that Stewie is a one-year-old infant prodigy who "who has a very sophisticated psyche, [and] is able to speak fluently", I wonder if possibly the mockery I hear is being directed at a domestic target, namely those Americans who affect an "English" accent because they fondly imagine that it makes them seem "sophisticated", "fluent", etc. (Do such foolish people exist? I recall the Niles character in "Frasier").

I cannot imagine watching it for more than 5 minutes without wanting to smash the TV.

I actually quite like it, but each to his own.

Don't get me wrong, I quite like South Park, and Ren And Stimpy.

I guess you really are quite thick. Be irritated. I could care less. You were the one who couldn't imagine a w having a sound. A couple of examples have been given and you're still going on your typical American sucks rant.
The entire family guy show is a caricature, an exaggeration, a cartoon, fiction. Does that clarify it? Tell me you understand that?
The second clip was the same w sound, just clipped.
I'm so done with explaining this to you. You're not interested in anything but being insulting, as per usual.

Don't be silly. You are completely over-reacting and misinterpreting my posts. I never said I "couldn't imagine a w having a sound". What I did say, and it's there, unedited, for anyone to see, is that I could not imagine the word 'why' and the name of the letter Y sounding different when spoken. I was told that some people in Canada do say them differently. I was shown a video clip of a (to me) irritatingly dumb TV cartoon show (that happens to be American) showing a talking baby with a fake-British "accent" repeatedly saying "whip" to a talking dog. OK fair enough. I get that. I happened to hint that I found Americans doing fake "British" accents irritating. I imagine many Americans would find Brits doing a fake American accent annoying also. I scarcely think that anything I have written here qualifies as an "America sucks" rant, either individually or taken together. In short, I think you are crazy, and I also think, on the evidence of your last post quoted above, that you are the "quite thick" person of this thread.

All right, contrex, you shall remain 'Enry 'iggins-esque in my mind's eye, not 'Enrietta, whoever's pronouns they were was wrong.

It's not only Canada that aspirates "why", it's a large part if not most of the States as well, and it's not an affectation, it's our native accent. Too bad your imaginaton couldn't stretch that far.

Hollywood and the American entertainment industry suck at doing American accents, let alone overseas ones. In spite of all the movies shot in Boston, I don't think they've ever nailed a Boston accent, and they do abysmal jobs at any of our various Southern accents (and there are quite a few). If you remember (or ever saw) "Magnum, P.I", the actor who played Higgins, the supposed English butler, had a truly awful "English" accent--he always sounded like an American trying too hard to me, tho I remember from the day when it played in England, he was taken to heart as a Brit making it in America and some English viewers were surprised he was American. Maybe they didn't have as discerning an ear as you. You guys who play Americans seem to do much better accent-wise. Hugh Laurie as the American doctor "House" was pretty spot-on the couple times I watched the show. Though Monty Python's "American" accents were, not surprisingly, just as caricature-like as a lot of our fake British ones come out.

I thought I had written my posts quite clearly; did you read them or just skim them looking for arguing point keywords? I expressed puzzlement that "why" and Y might sound different, and requested clarification. I got back a clip from Family Guy showing a baby with a fake "British" accent saying "whip" to a dog, which I supposed might be a poke, by Americans, at affected Americans. Perhaps that clip was not a good choice if the intention was to illustrate the widespread N. American sounding of the 'h' in wh- words. Whatever. Or hhhwatever.



John Hillerman - a familiar supporting actor. I think he used to play "smooth" types - a murder suspect in Colombo I seem to recall, among many others.



Really? Are you sure about this? I bet it was a story put out by the studio. I see in the Wikipedia entry about Magnum PI that the Jonathan Higgins butler character was meant to be " former British Army Sergeant Major Jonathan Quayle Higgins III", and also that he developed the accent by "watching and listening to the performances of Laurence Olivier"

Now this is hilariously and profoundly inaccurate. Howlingly wrong. A sergeant major in the British Army is a senior NCO with a key role in training and discipline. He is the gigantically well built and loud bully who licks the new recruits into shape, and later the terrifying boss who sees everything and forgives nothing. He does not talk like Lawrence Olivier! He would have a strong regional and working class accent. Sergeant-majors do not have names like that either.



One I think is quite good, although I am no judge, is Damian Lewis in Homeland, an excellent series.

Imagine a British TV series in which a private detective has an "American" butler played by a 140 lb limp-wristed, lisping English thesp. The character is an ex-US Marine Corps drill sergeant called Hiram Q Rickenbacker Junior, and to get the accent right, the actor studied recordings of Emo Philips.

if a former British Army sergeant major got a job in the USA, I should think it would be as a trainer and supervisor of top-class security men or bodyguards or maybe a crew chief on an oil rig. Something tough, manly, and requiring on-the-hoof thinking and decision making skills. Not a butler.

contrex, I wasn'
t trying to argue re the spread of the aspiration in "why", I'd looked at your post directly before mine, where you talked about it as being Canadian, that was all. I, being a Yank, regard it as ours (too) and said that. And I don't remember the source of the Magnum and Higgins stuff--it was thirty years ago or so, after all, but it stuck in my mind because I thought his attempt at the accent was so egregious that it surprised the hell out of me that someone in England actually bought it. I'm not sure anyone really took "Magnum" or anything on it very seriously, tho it WAS fun.

And I think the guy who played Mel Gibson's oldest son in "The Patriot" was Australian (which makes his accent sort of English a century removed, there's still a lot of London there, to my ear) and his accent was pretty good American, I'd never have guessed.

Yeah, Heath Ledger.

it's also not "hhhwhatever" or "hhhwho" hwhen we say it, it's "hwho", it's not hard or accentuated at all. It's just a little bit of a sound, and it's just there, that's all.

I'm rarely duped by an American playing a Brit. I have to admit I was surprised to learn some actors weren't American born, especially ozzies like the La Paglia bothers or Alex O'Loughlin from Hawaii 5 0. I guess because so many actors have dulled their accents and so many of them are from here, the line tends to blur.

I sing. I listen to accents and voices all the time. I'm very good at mimicking sound. I can't copy my father's accent generic english accent, in fact I can't hear it, until one of my aunts speak. But I do a pretty mean norn ireland..lol
Like most people, I don't like the sound of my voice on tape, but I've been forced to listen to it. I've been complimented on my voice/accent many times. It's a very generic accent, it would be hard for most people in canada, never mind the US, to place where I'm from. I throw in a few eh! s every now and then to dispel the confusion... I can slip into bush Albertan though, any time, and yet, I've yet to hear any actor, from any other country, ever, give any Canadian accent it's due. Sometimes it's brutal. Regardless, I give 'em kudos for trying.


My cousin works for the BBC. One of the first people she met in her career, was a voice expert. When he listened to her voice, he could pinpoint her mothers accent - birthplace, where she grew up and the area of the private school she attended, in what I would call high-school, and university. This was after she'd already had 'how to speak for radio' vocal courses.
My cousin has a very posh accent. However, since I don't live there, my perception of what an upper class accent and the local's ideal might be completely off base.

Accents aren't easy to duplicate. It takes a lot of training. Yet even then someone, somewhere will find fault. The thing is... most hollywood accents play on the caricature, because everyone gets it, the idea of Boston or Texas is enough. The very act of watching tv or acting is asking you to dispel some element of truth.
As for Niles and Stewie, I think most people know that it's a fake English accent, the kind a snob or new money might pick up. Everyone knows the accent is affected, that's part of the joke, along with talking babies and dogs. It's been a running character through American cinema since the talkies.
Even to an untrained ear, anyone who listened to Madonna speak during her English phase could hear a fake accent a mile away.
Westerners, Americano's can hear a fake, really, we can, but we don't get bent out of shape about it. That's Entertainment.
Don't like it, don't watch.