Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 November 29

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November 29

What accent do luxury car TV ads use in Britain?

In the US some or all of Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Infiniti, Lexus and Mercedes sometimes use a very uncockney flavor of British accent cause the car seems more posh than if they narrated in the US equivalent of RP. (I haven't paid attention to which brands) In Britain that would not have the same effect so what do they use? German? (the German brands) Queen's English? Also I remember worldt. Soft T. Is that the RP pronunciation or the narrator's idiosyncrasy? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:08, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

From your list, only Audi (AFAIK) advertise on British television, and they use a man with a slight German accent, their selling point being the excellence of German engineering (Vorsprung durch Technik). I've never heard of Acura or Infiniti so perhaps they have little presence here, but I'm not much of a car enthusiast. Alansplodge (talk) 16:37, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

BMW and Mercedes advertise on British TV too, although I can't remember many specifics. (For me, most car adverts tend to blur into one: "good-looking people drive a nice car through spectacular landscape, without ever encountering other traffic". Which car they are trying to sell me invariably passes me by). Iapetus (talk) 10:22, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Our ads mention German engineering sometimes too. Apparently Acura doesn't sell in EU and Infiniti only sold 3515, 2891, 1195, 746, 386, 530, 382, and 232 cars there in '17 to 2010 respectively so they're a fairly minor brand, at least for now.

P.S., does Audi show the sad T-Rex driver in Britain too? I can't tell if the dinosaur's accent is Irish or some kind of Scottish or something. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I haven't seen that advert here in the UK. It sounds a sort of Irish accent, but perhaps just put on for effect. Who voiced it? Dbfirs 18:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

IMDB says it's this guy from Dublin. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, so it's genuine Irish, but overlaid with acting experience. Dbfirs 09:20, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Televison is primarily a medium for semi-literate proletarians. They are not a primary taget market for Mercedes, BMW or Audi. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

How very RP dare you! We're all proud to be still driving our wonderful Allegros and Princesses. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:31, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

In the New York City TV market at least half the car ads are for luxury brands. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Where is Jaguar on that list? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

In the obviously their ads have a British accent section. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:48, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

No, I mean is Jaguar considered a luxury brand in England. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:49, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

That I don't know. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 05:38, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, or at least Jaguar tell us that it is. Alansplodge (talk) 17:01, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah-ha. So that would be a kind of slightly Anglicised French-Swedish type accent, then? [1]. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC) (... although not actually seen this one on any UK TV channel)

Actually, while we're on questions like this, what are the British and Irish regions where no (or know) shifts toward nay, and is there a British–Irish settlement pattern that links them? (Or something even older, like Nordic settlement?) It's not quite /neɪ/, just really close to it, with a hint of /nɛ/, and frequently nasalized a little. People used to it wouldn't probably notice it that way (possibly from having shifting nay itself somewhere). But to someone for whom no is very firmly /noʊ/, the sound is very noticeable, sometimes even confusing, e.g. when so is shifted toward say. My first thought was that it might be connected to Danish (etc.) nej, and I have read of known effects on pronunciation patterns in parts of England that were the Danelaw and in which Anglo-Norse dialects emerged for a while. But I abandoned this "thirty-second theory" since the shift applies to most or all words that RP and GA would have an /oʊ/ in. I first sharply noticed this almost-nay split when I was watching The Secret of Roan Inish; it was really obvious that the little girl in the story is from a different part of Ireland than most of the rest of the cast, since she has this shift and the others (playing her own family members) didn't exhibit it. Since then I've occasionally noticed it also in the voices of various BBC announcers and actors in British TV shows, but of course I have no idea where they're from. PS: There's a similar feature in a Southern California sub-dialect (San Fernando Valley – Valley Girl talk), but it's also accompanied by up-and-down pitch shifts and vowel stretching, and is an emphaticizing affectation (along the lines "Like, /n^eɪuː_uː/, dude." I don't think it's related in any way to the British Isles /oʊ/ → /eɪ/ shifting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:40, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I never heard [oʊ] → [eɪ], but it's well known that in some prominent British accents (including Daniel Jones RP), [oʊ] becomes [əʊ], with a further development to [eʊ] in some cases... -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:18, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

English (mis)pronunciation of foreign words

When a word comes to us from another language (I'm thinking specifically of place names and proper names as they generally aren't translated) is it possible to generalize how English speakers will modify the words to make them fit more closely to English phonemes, word construction, etc? I'm thinking of something like Romanization of Chinese, but maybe in a more generalized way. For example, English doesn't use /ŋ/ at the beginning of a word/syllable, so words like Nguyen tend to be pronounced with an initial /n/ sound. Has someone attempted to collect these and try to develop rules about what happens or understand how/why they occur? Is there somewhere I could read more about this? Matt Deres (talk) 21:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I've tried several searches in Google Scholar like this, and unfortunately I'm getting LOTS of interference from the opposite search (foreign speakers learning English, not the other way around). You're right, it does sound exactly like the sort of thing there would be good linguistic research on. My Google-fu is failing me, however, in finding a way to isolate the correct search. --Jayron32 21:30, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Matt_Deres -- it says on that article "The pronunciation of Nguyễn is commonly approximated by English speakers as [wɪn]", which agrees with my personal experience... AnonMoos (talk) 04:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I've heard that as well, especially in stuff from the US, but I think /no:wɪn/ is more popular in Canada (this could easily be subject to all kinds of regional variations and personal preferences, of course). However, that was just an off-the-cuff example based on personal experience; I'm looking for more theoretical kinds of references to check out. Matt Deres (talk) 19:29, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I think the n- versions are likely a spelling pronunciation. My mother language also doesn't use ŋ at the beginning of syllables and Nguyễn sounds to my ear almost exactly like English "win" (with a bit of a Mexican accent). In general it seems to me that over time spelling pronunciations for loanwords tend to prevail in English, especially today, although you can also hear approximation with existing English phonemes. For example, in the movie The Mummy (1932 film) a character named Muller is pronounced by American actors with a convincing German ü, while today the best you can hope to hear is "mew". 93.136.57.116 (talk) 23:56, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I recall during the late 60s, when American newscasters would mention guys like Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, they would pronounce it something like "NEW-yen", as two syllable. However, the Canadian skater Nam Nguyen usually seems to get announced as "NEW-en" almost as a single syllable or dipthong. In neither case do the announcers seem to tackle the first two letters correctly. The start of this interview clip with Nam should clarify the matter.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:47, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

We could teach them how to pronounce "nucular" properly before weaning them on to the hard stuff. Britmax (talk) 17:04, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Grrr. Don't get me started. I've given up on GWB and his ilk, but our current Prime Minister (the latest in the rapidly passing parade, and destined to be a distant memory fairly soon) says it, and it's an international embarrassment. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:19, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Fascinating. But - again - the pronunciation of Nguyen is not my question, never has been, and I've already clarified that. I'm wondering if the changes English-speakers make to foreign words can be generalized. I hesitate to bring up another example as it clearly confuses people, but I guess what I'm looking for is something broadly similar to the material in Great Vowel Shift, which describes the changes that occurred in various ways. Does something like that exist, but for foreign words being transported into English? Matt Deres (talk) 03:33, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

If Google wants they could probably make a machine learner they'll answer that hours after being turned on. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:35, 3 December 2018 (UTC)