Well, the Regular Guy (I'm not too sure if he's still on XRT, Laga--it's been a long time since I listened to that station regularly) is an exaggerated version of the Classic Chicago Accent, like the "Da Bears" guys were on SNL. There's a good example of the more typical Chicago accent here (mp3 clip).
Ilona Costa Bianchi ,'The Girl in Question'
Buffista Movies 5: Development Hell
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I'm going to take a stand and say that "midwest" is not the "standard" American accent. Or at least, the Great Lakes type accent sure isn't!
Yeah, I've heard accents in Iowa, Michigan and Kansas City.
I think originally the broadcasterese accent came from Ohio. No, I am wrong: [link] -- the answer is, a big blob that crosses the middle of the flat states. Also, there is a chart full of phonetic letters, and a fun discussion of the cot/caught thingie of which much agita in Buffistas past.
I gotta say kudos to Netflix. I moved This Film is Not Yet Rated to the top of the queue yesterday, the day it was released, and it arrived today.
Here's what I don't get:
It may therefore be the case that the accents spoken in this region are deemed the most "neutral" by Americans.
That and the accentless thing--does someone from Kentucky think someone who talks differently from them has no accent? Do they both have no accent, or does the Kentucky chick think she's the one with the accent?
I don't know... Interesting question though. But maybe it's because nobody could ever hear me talk and think "Phoenix?"
Stephen Colbert decided at an early age (in his pre-teens, IIRC) to replace his South Carolina accent with a General Standard one just because he was aware of the stereotype of Southern = Stupid.
Wow...he did amazingly at it. Except for hearing him say "I'm from SC"I never would have thought so. I hope I don't sound like he had facial surgery for a cleft palate or something.
Huh. (Word of the day) I was just reading an interview with Henry Selick (from 2005) and they were considering doing the Coraline movie as CG instead of stop-motion. I hate that!
But apparently even a crapass CG movie will make much more money than a very good (Were Rabbit, Corpse Bride) stop-motion.
Based on my raising in the South, we knew we had Southern accents. At least, we knew that the standard TV accent was Not Ours, and that we were considered the "different" ones.
My personal accent was always quite "neutral" in comparison to my peers, so I was a bit surprised to discover that I actually did drawl quite a bit, something I really only figured out when I went to Boston for a summer and my friends called me Bill Clinton. Now, however, I am very rarely pegged as a Southerner - four years in California and two in NYC smoked it out completely.