Pffft. Just ask any local soccer club. If you have an English accent, they'll make you Director of Training.
It's not about whether they are smart, it's about whether Americans *think* they're smart because of the accent.
Or maybe you should type it with an accent. That way people will just think the joke is over their head.
M*A*S*H did an episode on this, where Charles Emerson Winchester let himself be rubbished by an Englishman, who as it turned out was merely a butler.
Of course they do. People make judgments based on accents every time someone opens their mouth. Which is why I wish I still had the traces of a British accent I used to have as a kid.
Are these gentlemen brilliant? Or is it the Irish accent? 'Carry six beers at the same time? Brilliant!'
I disagree with this. Maybe I'm giving America too much credit, but it's prety easy to tell an Irish or Scottish accent from an upper-crust English one. Maybe not so easy to tell the difference between the first two and a working-class English accent, but there are still differences. As for movies, I think the idea is to use an accent of some sort to reinforce the "foreign-ness" of the setting while allowing the target audience (Americans) to be able to comprehend the lines. For whatever reason, accents other than English ones are associated with the nation of their origin, but English accents are just sorta "foreign", so to speak. As for villains, I'd say that up until very recently, the Teutonic and Slavic accents have been used just as often, probably because the US was at war or in conflict with those two regions much more recently that with England. I'm reminded of an observation I made while watching Enemy At The Gates- did anyone else notice that Khrushchev's accent was more noticably "Soviet", while almost all the other speaking roles playing Russians were English-accented? Even the American actor they got to play the sniper with the silver teeth faked a working-class Brit accent.
I've had some Irish friends here in the states - an Irish Accent gets you laid like there's no tomorrow.
I know that I ran riot through little British girls while bartending in Scotland in large part due to my accent.
before i had a conscience surgically implanted, i used to put on accents when out clubbing. i did have some success in chatting up birds wiv i', but oi hed mohwa' luck wen oi did me Continentol ekscent, dint oi.
Right there with you. Being the American son of Scots parents worked wonders when I was 17 and spent the summer with my mothers family in Dingwall.
Okay, the accents help, but once the brits open their mouths and show the teeth - its all over. I'm thinking, yaaa-up, that's where rednecks come from.
Exactly--it doesn't matter what your accent is, if it's different from the local variety (and especially if it's from another country), you'll sound exotic and do well.
"You must spread some Reputation around ..." If the babes can understand what you are saying, with that accent you're in like Flynn! to borrow the punch line from a joke, "to be sure, to be sure!"