Isn't she from NY or NJ originally?
All Ogle, No Cash -- It's Not Just Annoying, It's Un-American
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IIRC, canonically Joyce has relatives back in Illinois. But I can't recall any statement that Buffy lived anywhere else but Los Angeles growing up.
She's from NY, I think, and that's what she sounds like to me (she's got the northeastern "ar" pronunciation in "Tara"), but in the early seasons anyway, she used a lot of California/Valley Girl inflections.
She does sometimes do this thing where she seems to be talking from the nasal cavity. Like, in Something Blue her "No" after spike asks if he gets a cookie.
We're talking SMG not Buffy.
Buffy is from California - - of course.
I think SMG sounds normal to me because that nasal cavity sound is really prevelent in NYS, where I live.
Do you unAmericans think Buffy has a different accent than the rest of the cast (excluding English and faux-English characters)?
I'm intrested in the answers to this becuase accents is a personal intrest, but I don't notice that Buffy is harder to understand than the rest of the cast. She does use the nasal-cavity 'n' that sounds almost French at times, but my (ignorant-of-America-in-real-life) feeling is that she's as much Californian as the rest of them (Willow, Tara, Cordelia, etc). I find all the American accents grating at times, and I try to only really listen hard to Giles, but that's a personal thing.
The nasal thing reminds me of and sounds like people I know here who talk in a "loud so everyone can hear the sound of my voice" way.
SMG, when I've seen interviews and stuff, sounds very NY to me. As Buffy, her accent/inflections shift around slightly. In the early seasons, I thought she sounded very California, but those inflections don't seem as obvious now. (Well, they come and go. Sometimes that sort of sing-songy Valleyness is there, and sometimes it isn't.)
Sometimes that sort of sing-songy Valleyness is there, and sometimes it isn't.
A lot of val-speak is jargon or affectation rather that a true dialect. (That is I think people first learn in conciously and then it becomes a habit. or not.) So I think it makes sense that it would come and go.