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From: John Alexander Blyth
Subject: Re: singing in other languages (was: Solveig's song pronunciation)
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
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I'm a Scot transplanted to the Canadian priairies, who has visited various
parts of the U.S. When I was a little boy I used to pretend that my plastic
duck spoke with an American accent, like the the movies. I realized later
that what I was imitating was the consonants, and (except for 'yeah') the
vowels were still quite Scottish. I've since noticed that this is a common
British mis-hearing of American speech. I note, in the wake of Monty
Python's posthumous publicity, many efforts by young Canadians and Americans
to imitate British English, and what comes out is generic British, rather
than clearly from a specific region and social class. In connection with
this I think my spoken Italian sounds rather Transsylvanian, but I'm told my
sung Italian is quite good. Part of the reason for this is no doubt the
presence of pure, italianate, vowels in Scottish speech, not to mention a
rolled 'rrrr'! :o) john

>... as I have been using American songs and an American
>diction as the model. Yes, I know that what I am using as my norm is very
>much of an accent to your ears. (As is very obvious to me whenever I hear
>an actor in a BBC production working hard to produce an American accent for
>a character. It took me a while to figure out why it never quite works; I
>finally decided that, while none of the actual sounds are incorrect, it has
>something to do with how the sound is produced. Anyone else notice this,
>or see it as something different?)
>
>Barb Miller
>
John Blyth
Bass/Baritone (as opposed to Bass-Baritone) though I'm really a baritone
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada