Just as an amusing sidelight, there is also Swenglish which is a sort of mixed up Swedish and English. But things are confusing enough already!!
David Harewood, who plays Estes in Homeland, is also British. Don't forget Dominic West and Idris Elba in The Wire also.
What about Damian Lewis (Homeland)? A Welsh (Old Etonian) boy.
So a cross between Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart then? I think I'll stick to what I know - I already make concessions like calling a pavement a sidewalk when I'm there (not that I've been for quite a while).
I don't know if you ever watched Frasier but Daphne's brother (played by Anthony LaPaglia who is Australian and has lived in the US for years) had an accent that veered from Lancashire to Melbourne to the East End and back via Los Angeles and heaven knows where else. Roz said once "oh, doesn't he sound like Prince Charles"!!
Ah, now you are talking about football commentators who are a different species! LOL.
My father's sister, who used to work on the telephones in the old Post Office (before it split up into BT and PO) called it the POST OFFice, with the emphasis on both "post" and "off" - most peculiar! And a friend of the family who moved house, gave her address as "Camb-r-eye-an Place" when she meant Cambrian. My mother and I just looked at each other.
Hah-vahd!! How strange and a bit Katharine Hepburn-like. There's another one: "herb" pronounced as "errrb".
It's true that words ending in "tory" tend to be pronounced "tree" or something close to it.
I don't know anyone who pronounces "contributed, distributed and electricity" in the way you've put it under British. Everyone pronounces them as you have them under American. You are so right about the mispronunciation of Secretary and February - really gets on my nerves!!
I remember some years ago, when I was working for chartered surveyors, a girl at another firm rang up and asked me about one of our properties at St Katharine's Quay and she pronounced "quay" as "kway"! It took me a moment to figure out what she meant.
Have we discussed "LABORATORY" and the bizarre American pronunciation which ignores the first "o" altogether?
You're right - I doubt Mel Brooks could have made Blazing Saddles in 2012. Still one of the funniest films ever. Enid Blyton has had to be cleaned up in latter years too.
Those sound fun. When I clicked to look at Amazon, it also threw up a book called Cwmtwp! Wonderful.
