I hate it when actors use their accents in movies that required them NOT to use their accents! thats wrong and fake, come on!
does it take too much to teach the woman how to speak american english as opposed to her england english?! I'm tired of this! thats really lame and lazy of their part
just like amadeus...
Umm..but she was playing an English character. Why should she not speak with an English accent? Nothing lazy about it.
shareShe is South African anyway, not British.
sharesouth africans speak with british accents? Didn't know that...
shareI thoroughly enjoyed Embeth Davidz finally using her natural South African accent! It might seem British but it's clear (to S Africans) right from her first line that this is "well spoken" SA English. And it suits Madeleine's background perfectly!
Davidz is far from lazy! A GREAT strength is her ability to move to British and all sorts of American accents with apparent ease. Naturally, this calls for an enormous amount of additional effort on her part.
I'm South African, and I must say it was a pleasant surprise to finally hear our accent being spoken properly in an American film. Normally I want to cringe when I hear it, as it's usually way over the top; think of Mission Impossible 2, Lethal Weapon 2, Munich. (Why are South Africans always bad guys and killers in movies?)
I think it's really cool that they let Embeth use her real accent. The film makers aparrently wanted Connie Nelson to play the part, but she dropped out and they got Embeth in the end; after which, they obviously wrote into the script that she was from 'Africa'.
Also, her accent works on another level too, in that it's poles apart from the southern state 'drawl', which adds weight to the fact that she's an outsider.
If you want to hear a fake accent, listen to Charlize Theron.
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I'm South African, and I must say it was a pleasant surprise to finally hear our accent being spoken properly in an American film.
Also, her accent works on another level too, in that it's poles apart from the southern state 'drawl', which adds weight to the fact that she's an outsider.
IRanOverARabbit, mother tongue English South Africans sound like Madeline.
Nelson Madela's mother tongue is Xhosa and he, like other black South Africans pre-1994, he did not receive the same education as whites which explains why he doesn't have a more British-sounding accent.
hear, hear!
"You're all going to die down here." --The Red Queen
definitely agreed. davitz is one of the hardest working actors today.
hasn't anyone ever told you that smoking was bad for you?
no..no one..THANK YOU.
Cressida_du_Coudray, actually South Africans speak with South African accents.
shareGreat Britain seized the Cape of Good Hope area in 1797 seeking to use Cape Town in particular as a stop on the route to Australia and India. The Dutch East India Company declared bankruptcy, and the British annexed the Cape Colony in 1805. The British continued the frontier wars against the AmaXhosa, pushing the eastern frontier eastward through a line of forts established along the Fish River and consolidating it by encouraging British settlement. Due to pressure of abolitionist societies in Britain, the British parliament first stopped its global slave trade in 1806, then abolished slavery in all its colonies in 1833.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa
Yap. Embeth Davidtz grew up in South Africa (real life) that's why her accent isn't American.
Oh Embeth also knows how to speak Afrikaans (real life) She needed to learn it when she was young. :)
Ummm no, her accent was a well-spoken African English accent. I know a South African couple, and one of my professors grew up in Tanzania (but born in England) -- they sound something like Madeleine.
shareMadeleine says quite clearly that she was born in japan and raised in africa. As her background is of an upper middle-class child, whose father is a diplomat she would probably have attended finishing schools in switzerland and the like. This makes her 'english' quite realistic, particularly as some South Africans here have noted the s.a accent component.
share1. She was born in America.
2. Both she, and the character lived in South Africa, which is what the accent is. Not British.
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I'm glad she used her accent. It worked perfectly in the storyline especially in light of the fact that she was such an outsider in the Johnsten family.
sharethats so awesome.. i thought when embeth davidtz's character started speaking that it wasnt 'all that' english, and then when she mentioned she spent time in south africa, i was like oh that makes sense.. but yeh good to have confirmation.
shareyeah, that's the way she actually talks in real life. just listen to the commentary.
shareThanks Derek. Your post, long overdue as it was, was the best response to the o/p I have read compared to a lot of the drivel that has been posted here.
South Africa, like many other former colonies of the British Empire (US included), not only have distinct English accents pertaining to their geographic location, but can have distinct regional differences too. Where and how much education a person receives also affects accents greatly.
All too frequently we are presented with say a psuedo-Afrikaans accent to represent what all South Africans should sound like. Unfortunately many voice coaches involved in the film industry have no real concept of the cultural, regional & educational differences, and it is why we hear crappy stereotyped false accents.
As a radio broadcaster, I speak a very clear and distinguished English with as neutral an accent as possible. I do this because I am in continual contact with people from around the glode (55 language groups)who only have English as their second language and this is important for clear communication. I have travelled extensively, both domestically & internationally, and many people confuse my accent as British and it couldn't be further than the truth.
The alternative would be to speak like Rupert Murdoch, head of New Corp (Fox, The Times etc). His accent changes to suit the geographic location he is in. His press conferences are conducted in either US, British or Australian accents and can change them like the flick of a light switch.
Ciao for now
et tu Brute!
Locked my wire coat-hanger in the car - good thing that I always carry spare keys in my pocket :)
I am curious to know what accent you expect the characters in Amadeus to use. Given that the characters actually spoke German, with an Austrian accent, and that the movie is in English, any accent other than what is natural to the actor would be a lie.
Do you believe that British accents are somehow 'more accurate' in and of themselves?
So, curious...
Can you distinguish British from South African accent? Or is it just that the South African is the 'proper' British accent and not 'cockney'/northerner accent.
Coz when people say, "oh she's from South Africa, I recognized the accent".. how do you know she's not from England? Just wanted to know what distinguishes the British accent from the South African accent. :)
Does that make sense?
Oh well. I could listen to Embeth speak all day... lovely voice!!!!
"They're all mistakes, children. Glad I never was one."share
krtkkarphillmuk - of course you can distinguish British accents from South African accents, but that's a pretty ignorant question.
First of all, a British accent could be a Scottish accent, or a Welsh accent or an English accent (which I believe was what you were probably referring to) or any number of variations stemming from these (according to where you live, for example).
The South African english accent shares the same pronunciation of certain words with 'British English' (for instance, we say toe-MAH-toe instead of toe-MAY-toe) - which is probably why most people who aren't familiar with the accent might think a South African is from the UK.
If you want to know more, clue yourself up and do some reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English
There really is no such thing as a 'true South African english' accent. Even South Africans whose first language is English have varying accents (depending on where in SA you live, or the way you are brought up).
Davidtz's South African accent definitely indicates that english is her first language, and it doesn't have any dialectic influences from other South African languages (Afrikaans or Xhosa, for instance. According to Wikipedia she had to learn Afrikaans when she first came to South Africa, when she was 9). Her accent is quite 'proper' (as other posters pointed out), probably because of her upbringing and the fact that she studied Drama and English - consequently her pronunciation of english words are very good.
I was born and lived in England for the first 22 years of my life. In answer to your questions about accents;
- Anyone born and raised in a given section of the country (Britain) can recognize where any other person was brought up, purely by their accent. In Britain, still to this day, one can also tell the economic and social "class" that a person belongs to, just by hearing them speak.
- Same applies to Sth Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, the States. Basically any English-speaker can be indentified by their accent. The reason that this is so much more difficult to do for a U.S. citizen, is purely because we walk around hearing only US accents all day long, plus the same on 98% of TV shows and movies. We are quite insular as a country, most Americans haven't spent much time outide the USA borders.
- US residents CAN tell the difference between a NY, and a Boston, and a Texas accent, and many more domestic linguistic influences. Whereas, someone from Britain would be hard pushed to correctly identify a Texas vs a KS accent. They all sound "twangy" to a foreign ear.
It's all about what you are used to hearing, and if you hear certain accents frequently, your ear picks them up and identifies them quickly and easily, regardless of country or neighbourhood.
Dave
The reason that this is so much more difficult to do for a U.S. citizen, is purely because we walk around hearing only US accents all day long, plus the same on 98% of TV shows and movies. We are quite insular as a country, most Americans haven't spent much time outide the USA borders.
Hello Jill. In answer to your question the reason that my comment is relevant is because if you haven't spent any time outside the USA it's much more difficult to recognize and correctly identify non-USA accents.
For instance, let's say you were born in NY City and had lived there your whole life. In addition you haven't traveled abroad and visited the UK or South Africa. In that case you would be relying only on whatever exposure you've had via TV, movies, etc. to UK and South African accents in attempting to distinguish the difference between the two. However if you had taken a vacation to somewhere in the UK, e.g. London, and spent a couple of weeks there, you'd have the advantage of having spoken to lots of Londoners. You would have heard the wide variety of accents that exist just within London, itself home to quite literally hundreds of unique accents and local vocal inflections.
Jill I hope that my reply has shined some light on this issue. If not, please feel free to ask away!
Dave
much like arjen rudd from 'lethal weapon 2'-'diplooomaaaatik immuniteeey!'
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Thick, inbred and immature. Cressida, how about you grow up and learn how to appreciate a good film and stop saying pathetic comments.
Lame and lazy on their part? How is that lazy? surely them speaking their own language is not lazy? It was her part and how she was directed to do it.
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