What the Hell Is That Accent?: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Sometimes, this comes about when the character will start using an accent for some reason or another. If the character knows what sort of accent they are going for then often it will sound nothing like it's supposed to (but then, of course, [[Reality Is Unrealistic]] may come into play here). Another character will often [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade]] this but it's not guaranteed.

 

Not to be confused with [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent]] where a character is supposed to be from Country Y but sounds just like the rest of the cast. May overlap with [[Just a Stupid Accent]] or [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign]]. If the accent ''starts'' recognizable but then inexplicably jumps on a cross-country road trip, then it's [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping]].

{{examples}}

== [[Advertising]] ==

* One GEICO commercial showed some people who were confused as to whether the Gecko's accent is British or Australian. The commercial cuts away just before he answers.

 

* The English dub for ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' has Jin, who speaks in [[So Bad It's Good|such a hilariously bad]] Irish accent, he's sometimes impossible to understand.

 

== [[Film]] ==

** Also Bill Nighy as Scrimgeour. He sounds like he's a Scotsman whose accent got lost in London, slept with Yorkshire, before going for drinks in Devon and waking up naked in a skip in Dublin., but at least it's consistent.

** Isn't it just meant to be Welsh?

* ''[[The Room]]'': Where the ''hell'' is Johnny supposed to be from? That voice is vaguely French, but not ''quite'' enough. Actor Tommy Wiseau is using his real life accent, but refuses to state his country of origin, claiming to be Cajun. One reviewer's best guess was Walloon (part of Belgium).

* The girlfriend from ''[[Werewolf (film)|Werewolf]],'' who sounds like Tommy Wiseau.

* [[Angelina Jolie]] as Olympias in [[Oliver Stone]]'s ''[[Film/Alexander|Alexander]]''. The intent was for her to have a vaguely foreign accent in order to accentuate her exotic "barbarian" nature. Historically, she came from Epirus, which is right near modern-day southern Albania, making this rather well-researched in terms of transferring accents.

* Poor [[Christian Bale]] in ''[[Newsies]]'' actually does a pretty decent New York accent. Only, New York has a lot of accents. Bale doesn't so much not pick one as pick all of them. Most of the other actors don't pick any of them at all.

* Ernest Stavro Blofeld when he was played by Donald Pleasance in ''[[You Only Live Twice]]''.

* [[Nicolas Cage]] in ''[[Vampire's Kiss]]'' appears to affecting [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfcJUl39iiA something between California surfer accent and that of an English gentleman] (when it's not [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping|slipping]]). What it ''actually'' is meant to be is hotly contested. Cage explained that the accent is supposed to be a nonsensical affectation that Loew uses to seem cultured and to impress others.

* Edna Mode from ''[[The Incredibles]]'' has a... German/Japanese accent, which forced Brad Bird to play the role himself, as no one else could do the accent properly.

* The title character in ''[[Coffy]]'' uses a rather strange accent when [[Dirty Harriet|posing as a prostitute]].

* [[Paul Rudd|Peter Klaven]] in ''[[I Love You, Man]]''. All of his accents have the same, vaguely leprechaunish quality, and other characters routinely call him out on it. [[Catch Phrase|Slappa da bass!]]

* ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'': Davy Jones, played by Bill Nighy, has what is sort-of-recognisable as a Scottish accent, but given that he's punctuating it with various bizarre sputtering and plops and other squid noises, and that Bill Nighy has a fairly distinctive voice to begin with, it turns into this trope. [[What Could Have Been|The accent was originally supposed to be Dutch]] (he's the captain of the [[Flying Dutchman]], after all), but Nighy refused to even attempt it.

* Russell Crowe gives us a strange blend of Welsh, Irish and a bit of Scottish in the 2010 ''[[Robin Hood (2010 film)]]''. He's been known to stop interviews when asked about it.

* Kate Beckinsale and her apparently Transylvanian accent in ''[[Van Helsing]]''. Strangely we hear some American pronunciations in there when Beckinsale herself is British.

* ''[[Belizaire The Cajun]]'' (a 1986 low-budget film starring Armand Assante) has this problem for purely historical reasons. Most of the characters are Cajuns (Louisianans of French-Canadian descent) in 1850s Louisiana, but their accents evoke an unlikely mishmash of ethnicities from all over Europe and the Americas (one of the characters sounds almost Hispanic/Latino at one point, while Belizaire himself edges close to what sounds like a Scottish accent in one scene). This discrepancy can be attributed to two things: one, most North Americans have never heard an authentic Cajun accent and/or have a stereotyped idea of what it sounds like; and two, the Cajuns really ''were'' a multi-ethnic and even multi-racial people, despite primarily speaking French.

* Peter MacNicol as Janosz Poha in ''[[Ghostbusters|Ghostbusters II]]'' provides the page quote. He's supposedly Hungarian, but his accent lurches all over Eastern Europe like a drunk in a Yugo. Since his name doesn't have any real country of origin, it's just a nonspecific wacky accent, which MacNicol developed by hanging out at the Romanian consulate in New York.

* In ''[[Funny People]]'', Leslie Mann's character attempts to imitate her husband's Australian accent and fails, confusing Ira.

* In ''[[Maverick (film)|Maverick]]'', Annabelle has this asked of her by the titular character.

'''Annabelle:''' I've tried so hard to forget that place. I endured such personal tragedy there. }}

* When auditioning for his part in ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'', Javier Bardem attempted to downplay his Spanish accent, and ended up with a bizarre, mangled dialect that is thoroughly undefinable. The [[Coen Brothers]] [[Throw It In|liked this so much]] that they told him to keep doing it, as the accent heightened the unsettling otherworldliness of his character. He won an Oscar for his performance.

* In the 1999 [[Disney Channel]] movie ''[[PUNKS]]'', a young [[Jessica Alba]] played a streetwise tomboy with a Brooklyn accent. Except Alba's accent drifted all across the United States' eastern seaboard, and occasionally turned into what sounded like an [[British Accents|Estuary]] accent.

 

== Literature ==

* Hunter in ''[[Neverwhere]]'' is described as having an accent like this, as point-of-view character Richard isn't familiar with the accents of the world Below.

* In ''[[Cryptonomicon]]'', Enoch Root has one hell of a weird accent in English; after some discussion of it among his squadmates, Bobby Shaftoe (who had met Enoch before and learned his (supposed) background) pretends to listen to it and declares:

'''Bobby''': Deal. }}

** Later, Enoch is revealed to have an even wilder accent in Italian; as he says, "[[Sarcastic Confession|In fact, I would probably sound like a seventeenth-century alchemist or something.]]"

* Rural folks in [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s stories usually seem to speak a random mixture of several different regional accents and dialects.

* Fitz, in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Eighth Doctor Adventures]], tried doing a German accent, which could easily be mistaken for Scottish, in ''The Banquo Legacy''. It lasts for one hilarious line before [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping|slipping]]:

* Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell from ''[[Good Omens]]'' is described as "unplaceable":

* During her [[It Makes Sense in Context|brief visit to Hell]], [[Honor Harrington]] encounters a group of prisoners who speak English in the oddest manner... their choice of words and grammar indicate that they speak it fluently, but something about how they are pronouncing is just maddeningly off for no evident reason. {{spoiler|They are all developing speech impairments, due to brain damage caused by the planet's native flora and fauna being slightly toxic to humans, with the [[State Sec]] personnel making it a point not to give them enough rations to sustain themselves.}}

* [[The Witches|The Grand High Witch]] is implied to be Norwegian. She [[Vampire Vords|replaces her Ts with Zs and Ws with Vs]]. It doesn't in any way resemble a Norwegian accent, which is recognizable by more pronounced Rs and replacing Zs with Ss. Her accent resembles German more than anything else.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** [[Craig Ferguson]] once commented that ''nobody'' in Scotland understood Scotty. "It was like an Arab had an epileptic seizure."

** [[Mauve Shirt]] Transporter Chief Kyle had a kinda-English accent (which makes sense as the actor who played him, John Winston, is British), but it was "off" enough that a DC Comics bio had him born in Australia.

** This troper always assumed Troi was meant to be Greek, and kept expecting her to ask Captain Picard if he wanted to buy a kebab.

* ''[[Friends]]'': When Ross starts lecturing at NYU he is very nervous and when he begins to talk "this [[British Accents|British accent]] just came out". [[Lampshade Hanging|"Yeah, not a very good one."]] In the same episode Monica does a Scottish accent to make fun of him and Rachel goes for Indian of all things.

** Possibly adding to the confusion, [[J. Michael Straczynski]] originally didn't want Londo to have an accent at all, but Peter Jurasik (who played Londo) kept on using it anyway. Plus, Centauri Prime is an entire planet, [[Justified Trope|so it would make sense]] that there would be more than one accent.

*** When pushed by his co-stars to identify exactly what accent it was, Jurasik was known to shrug and announce in an exaggerated version that it was "Eastern European". He claims that he'd lost a part once using this accent and figured that if he's an alien, he at least couldn't be accused of [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping]].

** The Centauri and Minbari in particular seem to have a selection of accents. Turhan Bey used his native Austrian accent when portraying the Centauri Emperor, lending some credence to the quasi-Eastern European accent affected by Jurasik as Londo. Theodore Bikel used his native Yiddish accent when playing a Minbari, Reiner Schone as Dukhat used his native German accent, and John Vickery affected a pronounced upper class British purr as Neroon.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

** In "Nightmare of Eden", the character Tryst has an utterly incredible accent, which the actor developed deliberately on the grounds that people on other planets in the future won't have the same accents as people on Earth in the present. It might have worked better if he hadn't been the only person in the story doing it. (And Tom Baker didn't keep visibly cracking up whenever Tryst spoke.)

** In the new-who episode "Day of the Moon" people were left trying to figure out where exactly {{spoiler|the orphanage owner}} is meant to be from. It's apparently southern US.

** Also invoked when Rose questioned the Ninth Doctor about his [[Oop North]] accent.

'''Doctor''': [[Hand Wave|Lots of planets have a North!]] }}

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' gives us two English potentials Molly and Annabelle who are cockney and RP respectively, and seem to have taken personal lessons from Dick Van Dyke. Annabelle pronounces because as "bee-cawwse" and Molly replaces wise with "woiz".

* ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' Season 3 featured Agent Vaughan's new wife, Lauren, who was supposed to be British. Melissa George was rather lacking in ability in that department...

** ...the poor accent was later [[Lampshade Hanging|given a plot based explanation]], but it seems unlikely that it was specified as a poor English accent in the original script.

** Which usually involves Ryan claiming the accent is "Dutch".

** One sketch had Ryan's character blaming his roaming accent on moving a lot as a child.

* The ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" - Dan Ackroyd puts on a plausible Eastern European accent, but Steve Martin's is just...what?!? Compounded massively when they speak in faux-Czech to each other.

** This is pretty common on ''SNL'', actually - some cast members are very, very good at accents, while others... are not. A couple examples of the latter camp include Jason Sudeikis as Richard Dawson in a ''Family Feud'' sketch, Seth Meyers as Prince Charles, and any time Christopher Walken has hosted.

** Somewhat justified in that this accent was shown to be part of Kryten's "corrupted" personality, and so may not supposed to be any specific accent we're familiar with. When he got temporarily memory-wiped in season eight his accent reverted back to an upper-class British accent.

** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in an episode in which the adults try to imagine what the kids say when they are not around, and they have ''Fez himself'' not knowing what country he's from.

*** Fez's friend from the other side of island has a British accent which makes everything more confusing

** Natalie, the female protagonist from ''[[Werewolf (film)|Werewolf]]'', and several other characters from that film to varying degrees.

* ''[[SCTV]]'''s Andrea Martin had two prominent characters built around this trope. Perini Scleroso, the station's cleaning woman, occasional on-air "talent," and recipient of the coveted People's Global Golden Choice Award for "Best Foreign Personality," has both a thin grasp of the English language and a bizarre, unplaceable accent. Mojo, the maid on "The Days of the Week," had a better command of English, but a ''different'' bizarre, unplaceable accent.

* Several of the accents in ''[[Leverage]]'', but it's most glaring in the season three finale, San Lorenzo. Everybody had a vaguely European-sounding accent. Not one person had the same accent as any other person. Also doubles as [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping]].

** In-universe, this is Sophie's reaction to the attempts of the other character's to do her accent in "The Rashomon Job".

* ''[[Shake It Up]]'' has Gunther and Tinka, who appear to speak with ''different'' accents from "the old country." (Gunther's is more German/Austrian; Tinka's is more Eastern European).

* ''[[Project Runway]]'' Season 9 had Olivier Green, whose accent baffled fellow contestants and the audience. It was so all over the place that people began to speculate he was faking it, though it seemed to fluctuate based on his mood.

* Shae from ''[[Game of Thrones]]'', who is equally mystifying to Tyrion in-universe. She describes her own accent only as "foreign." Her accent is German. Resolved in Season Two, when Cersei pegs her accent as Lorathi. It helps that Jaqen H'gar, the only other Lorathi character, also uses a German accent.

 

== [[Music]] ==

* For a while, after she married Guy Ritchie, Madonna seemed to adopt some bizarre, half-assed attempt at a British accent, most notably in the intro to "What It Feels Like For a Girl".

* During the first year after [[Lady Gaga]] released her first album, "The Fame," she began to use a weird off-kilter British accent, which even her fans commented on. She later admitted it had to do with her anxiety and dealing with her newfound fame, dropping the accent entirely.

 

== Radio ==

'''David:''' I wish I knew. }}

 

== [[Stand Up Comedy]] ==

* [[Eddie Izzard]] [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this a couple of times; namely, in his impressions of a Bond villain and a push-me-pull-you carpet sweeper. The Bond villain's accent is explained as being the result of his losing the instructions to a synthetic voice box, which is consequently stuck in shop demonstration mode.

* [[Josh Thomas]]. He was born and raised in Australia, and yet has an inexplicable, vaguely-English accent.

 

== [[Theatre]] ==

* At one point in ''The Complete History of America (abridged)'', one of the actors is impersonating a Vietnamese girl, and another observes that he has "no idea how to do a Vietnamese accent."

* One of many [[Running Gag|running gags]] in the popular summer stock farce ''A Bedfull of Foreigners'' is the mystery accent of Karak, the valet. The script calls for a non-specific Slavic accent, but Karak himself claims to be from Bulgaria, Hungary, and even Mexico.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Halo]]: Combat Evolved'': A random marine in the first level who gets in your way will say; "Sir, The Captain wants you on the bridge ASAP. Better follow me!", in an accent that sounds remarkably [[Buffy-Speak|Australianish]].

** That's because the marine is not random. The marine programmed to meet the Chief and take him to the captain will always be Chips Dubbo, who's voiced by Andrew McKaige, an Australian actor. Funny thing is, [[Irony|people complained to Bungie]] about [[Reality Is Unrealistic|Dubbo's poor imitation of an Australian accent]]...

* Sniper Wolf from ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' is apparently just supposed to sound generically Eastern-European (even though she identifies herself as hailing from Kurdistan)... but ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'' massively mocked her accent as being 'all over the place', with even the otherwise-perfect [[Master of Disguise]], Decoy Octopus, entirely failing to sound like her.

** Naomi sounds posh-English with an American twang on her 'r' sounds, even though her character is Rhodesian and raised in America. The best guess is that it's the character's deliberate affectation. In ''The Twin Snakes'' and ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'' her accent is almost completely gone, although she still has a few English-like affectations.

** Why it's supposed to sound Scottish when we're in Not-Quite-Spain is unclear.

* ''[[Katamari Damacy]]'': The King of All Cosmos -- [[Camp Gay]] or Irish brogue? Bonus points for pulling this effect off ''in Japanese''. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M06aDKSgK5o Vocals start at 1:55.]

** Not that anybody else ''from his island'' has that same accent.

* Fran from ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]''. Again, though, not Earth (though Ivalice's state of reality is so screwed up - ''thank'' you, ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' - it's hard to be sure...).

** It could be an attempt to create a suitable accent for the bizarre monstrosity that seems to be the Viera's native tongue. '''Mjrn''', anyone?

*** That, at least, has roots in real languages. It's pronounced "mee-urn"; the J has a Y sound. Common in Scandanavia.

*** Also, the Bhujerban accent (Marquis Ondore's in particular) sounds like some weird Welsh/Hindi hybrid.

* Jetfire in ''[[Transformers: War for Cybertron]]'' has either an Australian or some kind of British accent. Which one it most sounds like can change every other line.

* Parodied in the fourth episode [[Sam and Max]]'s third season, where attempting to use Max's ventriloquism power on Grandpa Stinky will result in Max producing an accent that Sam can only describe as "Irish Pirate".

* Dynaheir from ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' is supposedly a [[Lzherusskie]] like her bodyguard Minsc. Her accent can charitably be described as "foreign" and defies most other adjectives.

** "Whadaya mean, what kinda accent is dis? [[Funetik Aksent|It's a troll accent!]] I swear, [[A Worldwide Punomenon|ja makin']] [[Lampshade Hanging|me crazy."]]

*** World of Warcraft adds the draenei, who speak with some sort of Slavic accent, though the fanbase is in no agreement on which one.

* Several if not all of Caesar's legion in [[Fallout: New Vegas]]. Its not a standard accent for an English speaker.

* ''[[No More Heroes]]'': the Job Board guy appears to have an accent that is not of Earth. It's possible that this is from having a Japanese actor read English lines phonetically (see the [[Takashi Miike]] cameo in the sequel).

** There's also Alice, the 2nd ranked assassin from the sequal, who has an accent that sounds to be either German or Russian, but it's a bit hard to tell.

* Razer's accent in ''[[Jak and Daxter|Jak X]]'' is all over the place, sounding like either German or French, depending on who you ask. Others recognize Austrian or even Russian in it.

* [[Team Fortress 2]]: Invoked this trope for comedy, as all of the characters' "accents" are as how a typical American in [[The Sixties]] might have perceived it; the Spy's accent is the hardest to pin down, having mixed French, Italian, and Spanish pronunciations and words in his vocabulary.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Check the comments for any ''[[Let's Play]]'' or ''[[Retsupurae]]'' video featuring Psychedelic Eyeball and you'll see a handful of guesses at the nature of his accent. For the record, he's French-Canadian.

** In their Wrongpurae of ''[[Darkseed|DarkSeed 2]]'', the duo speculate this about Mrs. Ramirez's accent, settling on a mix of Irish and Swedish. In fact, the one certainty about it is that it's definitely not Hispanic, contrary to what her name would suggest.

** Their Wrongpurae of [[The Town With No Name]] had a character with a completely indistinguishable accent, prompting this line:

* Dartz in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series]]'' to the point of bordering on incomprehensible...to his own henchmen

'''Dartz:''' DUUUUUUEH! }}

* A common occurrence in the videos of ''[[Tobuscus]]''. During a playthrough of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, he once attempted to imitate Ezio's Italian accent, only to end up with something vaguely Slavic.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* For the Disney adaptation of ''[[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)|The Hunchback of Notre Dame]]'', Paul Kandel gave Clopin an accent somewhat French, somewhat Eastern European, and somewhat uncategorizable. This was intentional on Kandel's part as coming from Clopin's nomadic past.

* The episode of ''[[Rocko's Modern Life]]'' where Mr. Bighead dreamt he was a pirate when he sleepwalks.

* Oblina from ''[[Aaahh Real Monsters]]''. It's a vague "classy" accent that's actually an exaggerated, yet obvious, Bette Davis impression.

* King Julien from the ''[[Madagascar]]'' films and spinoff TV series ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]''. He's voiced by Englishman Sacha Baron Cohen in the movies, resulting in a voice that sounds like a cross between [[Borat]] and some vaguely African accent (Danny Jacobs, his replacement in the TV series, maintains almost exactly the same voice). His repeated usage of malapropisms, strange syntax and [[Buffy-Speak]] (e.g., "Ah, but I was expecting you to be expecting that, so we switcheroo-ed the crates on the pier before the fish got loading on to the truck.") only contorts the accent even further.

** Mort also slips in and out of some strange, unidentifiable accent.

* Where the hell is Dexter of ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'' supposed to be from? It sounds like an attempt to do a generic European mad-scientist voice, but the rest of his family seem to speak fairly generic American English.

** Lampshaded in one episode where a bully who "hates kids with funny accents!" attacks Dexter and a group of other students... in which Dexter is the only one without an obvious accent source.

** When Dexter meets future versions of himself in the [[Made for TV Movie]], they all have a similar accent, but the [[Future Badass]] has a [[No Celebrities Were Harmed|Schwarzenegger-like]] Austrian accent.

** Made even more blatant in the Norwegian dub, when Dexter inexplicably throws in German phonetics and grammar that clash with the Norwegian language.

* The Mayor's accent in ''[[Scooby Doo]] and the Witch's Ghost'' is a bizarre combination of several New England accents

* The twins on ''[[Superjail]]'' seem to have an accent that sounds vaguely "European" but doesn't seem to come from any country. Justified once it's revealed they're actually aliens.

* An episode of ''[[Sabrina the Animated Series]]'' has Sabrina and Salem travelling back to the Dark Ages and meeting characters from King Arthur mythology played by counterparts of her friends. Except for Pi, who doesn't even bother, all of them have rather...unique...English accents.

* Examples from ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'':

*** It's worth noting that Sweetie Belle is the only one in her family WITHOUT an exaggerated accent: Rarity's father is somewhere between Midwest and Canadian, while her mother's accent suggests either New Jersey or New York.

** Photo Finish from "Green Isn't Your Color" has a vaguely Germanic accent, presumably because her voice actress was doing a vocal caricature of Anna Wintour. (Although most of the younger kids watching would most likely compare her to [[The Incredibles|Edna Mode]].)

** Zecora's accent seems to be some sort of vague "generic African accent"... crossed with "vague Caribbean islander accent".

* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'':

** Moe the Bartender speaks in a generalized "crotchety old man" accent that could represent many different American regions or ethnicities. Over the course of the series, it's been hinted that he might be of Italian, Arab, Dutch, or Russian descent (though whether this is [[Multiple Choice Past]] or [[Negative Continuity]] is impossible to say).

** Both characters, by the way, are voiced by [[Hank Azaria]], a native New Yorker whose parents were Greek Jews of Spanish descent.

*** He originally based Moe's voice on [[Al Pacino]] in ''[[Dog Day Afternoon]]'' and it developed from there.

* Done intentionally on ''[[Family Guy]]'' with the [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|Two Foreign Guys Who Have Been Living in the U.S. Almost Long Enough to Sound American]].

"Oh yeah, but it was so expensive. Each drink was like six dollars forty!" }}

* Tim the Bear on ''[[The Cleveland Show]]'' voiced by [[Seth MacFarlane]]. Seth said he based it on his dad's bad impression of the "Wild and Crazy Guys" foreigner characters from ''[[SNL]]''.

* [[Bugs Bunny]] talks in a mixture of Bronx and Brooklyn accents ([[Mel Blanc]] also said his inspiration was Frank McHugh, who spoke in a New York Irish accent).

* Sandi on ''[[Daria]]'s'' accent might be best be described as a bad imitation of a French one, except the character had no connection to France. It's not clear what it was supposed to be, besides vaguely upper class.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Accent Tropes]]