Is this my future?: Andrew Sullivan’s terrible, terrible English impression
We all know that everyone’s favourite bear Andrew Sullivan has an awful, trans-Atlantic voice – that’s just an established fact. What we perhaps didn’t know is that Sullivan can no longer do a convincing impression of an English accent. If you skip to the 2 minute mark in the above video (which is always worth watching in of itself if you’re at all interested in ebooks) you can see Sullivan’s rather disastrous attempt at doing a fairly generic London accent. An Englishman without even the ability to fake an English accent. Such a sad thing – like a donkey without a tail, a sail without the wind, a sundial without a shadow.
Noooooooo! If that’s your future… you’re screwed! Read P.G. Wodehouse again and again (always a good thing). Watch Four Weddings and a Funeral at least once a week, if you’re sure you can resist the urge to poke out your eyes with a gimlet after the first showing (because all Brits sound like Hugh Grant, don’t they?). Save yourself!
By the way, who is this bear?
Pie
February 9, 2012 at 6:31 am
Journalist. Has a blog at the Daily Beast that’s popular. Often pops up on the likes of Bill Mahr. Fiscal conservative who has found himself moving away from the Republicans to the Democrats on account of the former’s increasing emphasis on social conservative issues (Sullivan being an out gay man).
awindram
February 17, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Ooooh, THAT was nasty, even HE thought so, you could tell from his embarrassed smile and refusal to meet our eyes directly afterwards.
I can only advise that you swiftly cultivate friendships with Stephen Fry and Hugh Grant (avoid Lloyd Grossman like the plague!) and have regular sessions of revision with My Fair Lady… “the rrrain in Spayn stays maynly on the playne”
expatlogue
February 9, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Not sure my wife would let me hang out with Hugh Grant. I think she’d assume he’d be up to no good (she’s probably right).
awindram
February 17, 2012 at 2:05 pm
He must spend little time there. It was indeed an awful approximation. I don’t sound like a Southerner anymore either, though I was born and learned to speak in St. Louis. Like many others, I start picking up local accents unconsciously if I’m immersed in them. But I’m no Henry Higgins. I can’t do them well on purpose.
Invisible Mikey
February 10, 2012 at 10:37 am
I’m a little like in the English sense as I don’t speak with much of a northern accent, but rather a more generic RP accent. America so far seems to be changing my word choice rather than pronunciation.
awindram
February 17, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Bloody hell. I’ve been here 22 years. I hope to God I don’t sound anything like that. He mustn’t phone his mum very often.
Having said that, he still put the “r” on the end of “idea”, although it took me a while to realise he was saying “con”.
Expat Mum
February 10, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Heard you talk when you put a link to a TV interview, no you didn’t sound anything like that. To me for the most part you sounded fairly generically English but with just a little bit of the north east coming through. I suspect your accent wasn’t too different when you left England. Mine is fairly similar too.
awindram
February 17, 2012 at 2:11 pm