Accents: By Robert Blumenfeld
Synopsis
Blumenfeld shares the expertise he has acquired over two decades of working as an actor and dialect coach. He begins by explaining the physiological awareness necessary when learning accents, then focuses on accents of people who speak over 80 native languages, noting variations within each and part
Good idea shamefully executed., 8 April, 2001
Reviewer: James Topping from London
I bought this book as I am currently at Drama School in London and part of my training includes the study of accents and dialects. This subject particularly appeals to me and so when I saw this book which documents hundreds of accents from around the world, I thought it was an excellent idea, and a good reference book for an actor's shelf, particularly as a CD was included with examples of how each accent should sound. When I got the book home however, I was more than disappointed. The book itself is OK if a little technical and difficult to follow. Also it doesn't use the recognised phonetical terms but constantly relates the accents back to "standard american" which is not so useful if your natural accent is Merseyside. It was the CD however which was the real let down, particularly as it had been one of the main selling points of the book in the first place. All the examples of the accents were gross stereotypes performed by the author himself. This was probably the worst decision he could have made. If he had intended to make a serious reference volume for actors, then surely the best thing would have been to find native speakers of each accent so the listener gets a true example. Obviosly, this would have cost a fortune to the producer of the CD and so he instead opted for the ...choice of doing them himself. Appallingly. I cannot speak for or against the accuracy of most of the examples on the CD, but ALL the British accents were GROSSLY inaccurate. I share a house with an Irishman and we were in fits of hysterical laughter at his ...interpretation of how people speak in Ireland, the Scottish accent was worse than Groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons and as for the Newcastle accent, I challenge anyone to find someone who speaks like that- there is nobody on the planet. On the whole, a great shame that more time, effort and money were not spent on what is such a good idea.
Dick Van Dyke has nothing on this guy!, 10 June, 1999
Reviewer: Andrew Sharp from London
This book comes with a CD, which is a very good idea and I would encourage more publishers of voice and accent books to do the same.
HOWEVER, if you are a publisher planning to include a CD please make sure that your author can in fact pull off the accents he claims to be able to mimic.
Being English, I cannot comment on how convincing his variants of American are, but I can say with some authority that an actor perfecting his version of any one of the UK accents would be laughed off the British stage. His R.P. (received pronunciation; the English equivalent of Standard American) is comically aristocratic; his cockney makes Dick Van Dyke sound authentic; and as for his British provincial accents, not one of them is even recognisable, let alone convincing. He speech is halting and full of inappropriate glottle stops, as if he had only ever seen the dialect written down, and had never actually heard it.
Having listened to the CD, I confess I now find it hard to take the book seriously: if this is the technique that he has used to learn accents, I can hardly recommend it! If you want to learn an accent then find a native speaker.
A comprehensive and invaluable tool for actors, 22 October, 1998
Reviewer: stephanie Cowell-Clay from New York City The range and usefulness of this book is quite astonishing. Not only does the text provide important sounds, stress and pitch and mouth/tongue positions for more than 80 accents of English as spoken all over the globe, but the author illustrates them with great versatility on the accompanying CD. I learned the difference between several Irish accents, heard a Cockney Yiddish and the same phrase spoken in several regions of the American South. It is an invaluable book for the actor or anyone who finds accents intriguing. A vibrant plus is the erudite and highly readable introductory essays to each language group which give a history of the country and its language, and include many examples of recordings and films in which you can hear fine examples of English spoken with that accent. I now understand why my Swedish daughter-in-law and Southern husband speak as they do,and am looking forward to perfecting my Dublin accent. A gift for anyone in theater or film, or anyone who is fascinated by the many ways our language can be spoken.
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