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Post by rupert12 on May 30, 2013 9:12:16 GMT -5
Being from the UK it`s hard to tell the different American accents, so I wondered if the cast made an effort to talk in the correct accent for Virginia?  |
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Post by PLP927 on May 30, 2013 9:15:31 GMT -5
I think all of them definitely had the "southern accent". I am not sure if they had the "Virginian" accent though.
It seems to me that their southern accent was stronger during the earlier seasons rather than the later seasons.
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Post by JeriJet on May 30, 2013 9:41:00 GMT -5
I think they pretty much gave up on using a particular accent soon after the first season -- they began to rely more on vocabulary to denote the region.... and not even sure they got that right ... But I reckon I'll give 'em an E for effort. |
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Post by clyde on May 30, 2013 13:21:57 GMT -5
The narrator, Earl Hamner, had a true Virginia accent. Michael Learned stayed with it longer than the rest of the cast.
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Post by ILoveTheWaltons on May 30, 2013 15:51:06 GMT -5
I think that at times some of the cast had the accent but other times there wasn't really an accent. I agree with clyde, Michael Learned did keep it up longer than the rest of the cast. I always remember the goodnight (can't remember which episode) which went something like;
Elizabeth: Mama, what is a soul?
Olivia: It's your spirit darlin' (Sounded very Southern)
Elizabeth: Oh, i always wandered what God wanted with a piece of my shoe. Goodnight Mama.
Olivia: (Little laugh) Goodnight darlin'
Throughout that goodnight i thought that Michael had a very good accent.
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Post by Marilyn on May 30, 2013 20:33:59 GMT -5
Livy always had a southern accent and Jason in the beginning had a VERY southern accent, which was weird, because none of the other kids or rest of the family had accents.
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Post by jlwn111 on Nov 17, 2020 12:25:04 GMT -5
The narrator, Earl Hamner, had a true Virginia accent. Michael Learned stayed with it longer than the rest of the cast. No. The narrator's accent is purely Canadian. It sounds nothing (at all) like the accent of anyone from ANY part of Virginia. So glad others have noticed this! |
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Post by Brenda on Nov 17, 2020 12:35:47 GMT -5
Actually, there is a small area of Virginia that does have that accent. It’s the area around Nelson County, where Earl Hamner was born and grew up. I’ve been there many times and have had conversations with people who have lived there all their lives. They all have that accent.
Some of the pronunciations are similar to Canadian pronunciations. I’m not sure why, but I suspect the early settlers of that area were from some of the same places as those who settled in Canada. Being in a mountain region, they were pretty much isolated from people outside that area for several generations, and the pronunciations were preserved. As far as I know, Earl Hamner never lived in Canada, so there’s no reason why he would have a Canadian accent.
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Post by jul on Nov 17, 2020 13:39:56 GMT -5
I agree Brenda. I never met Earl but a few years ago we made a trip to Gettysburg, PA, Washington D.C., Monticello ( Thomas Jefferson home) Montpelier (James Madison home) and the Walton's Museum, VA. All the tour guides at Monticello, Montpelier and the museum sounded just like Earl's narrations.
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Post by wacokyd on Nov 17, 2020 14:20:47 GMT -5
For a couple years I lived in a small provincial town (Poquoson) which bordered Hampton, a city of over 200,000 population. Hampton had a population probably 50 times this small town. When I went to the Hampton Mall, I would sit on a bench and watch the people go by and could tell when a Poquosoner walked by just by listening to their accent. I honestly believed that the locals couldn't pick up on this diffferrence.
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Post by carol on Nov 17, 2020 15:41:18 GMT -5
Actually, there is a small area of Virginia that does have that accent. It’s the area around Nelson County, where Earl Hamner was born and grew up. I’ve been there many times and have had conversations with people who have lived there all their lives. They all have that accent. Some of the pronunciations are similar to Canadian pronunciations. I’m not sure why, but I suspect the early settlers of that area were from some of the same places as those who settled in Canada. Being in a mountain region, they were pretty much isolated from people outside that area for several generations, and the pronunciations were preserved. As far as I know, Earl Hamner never lived in Canada, so there’s no reason why he would have a Canadian accent. I think Earl said once that many of the original settlers of Nelson County were Scottish. That would probably account for they way they say house with a 'Hoe" sound instead of a "How" sound |
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bucky
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Post by bucky on Nov 18, 2020 20:37:44 GMT -5
Hey people I am Canadian and having been to both ends of the country, I can say I've never met anyone here with an accent like Earl Hamner (as lovely as it is). He is pure southern USA to my ear (which isn't good enough to distinguish between regions). The majority of Canadians speak English that is halfway between British English and American English, which is to say there isn't much accent at all. (I always thought Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame spoke very much like a Canadian, not an American, when she was filming that show in Vancouver BC. Alberta and the Eastern provinces do have regional accents and Newfoundland's pronunciation has been said to be very close to Chaucer's English.
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Post by tommyc on Nov 18, 2020 22:27:06 GMT -5
Hey people I am Canadian and having been to both ends of the country, I can say I've never met anyone here with an accent like Earl Hamner (as lovely as it is). He is pure southern USA to my ear (which isn't good enough to distinguish between regions). The majority of Canadians speak English that is halfway between British English and American English, which is to say there isn't much accent at all. (I always thought Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame spoke very much like a Canadian, not an American, when she was filming that show in Vancouver BC. Alberta and the Eastern provinces do have regional accents and Newfoundland's pronunciation has been said to be very close to Chaucer's English. In regards to Gillian Anderson, her accent is crazy weird and she sounds like no one else I have ever heard. The first time I heard her speak "in real life" I was dumbfounded. So completely different from her X-Files voice. Her accent is also different at different times. I guess the reason for her odd accent is she grew up all over the world. I remember her on a talk show saying her family moved to London when she was young. I just checked wikipedia and she was born in Chicago, moved to Puerto Rico, then to London then to Michigan, all by the time she was 11. and this... Anderson is bidialectal. With her English accent and background, she was mocked and felt out of place as a teenager in the American Midwest and soon adopted a Midwestern accent. To this day, she easily shifts between her American and English accents. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Anderson |
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