accents and dialects

One of the things I find fascinating is language, dialects, and accents (or should that be several of the things I find fascinating?). Anyway, I've often wondered if there actually is such a thing as an American accent. Maybe only if you're not from America, I suppose. I've always thought of American English as being devoid of an accent, just a plain way of speaking. Then again, there are the regional American accents: the Southern accent, the New York accent, the Boston accent, the mid-Western accent, etc.

And just as there are regional American accents, there are regional accents in other countries. I'm thinking of Britain in particular. There's a Seinfeld episode that finds the characters doing their English accents: "Not bloody likely!" Yet there are particular English accents that even we are familiar with: the Cockney accent, the Liverpudlian accent (the Beatles!), and so on. I recall seeing that Jane Leeves (the British actress who portrays Daphne Moon on 'Frasier') adopted a Manchester accent for her character, although that's not how she speaks in real life.

Aside from having a private chef, a limousine driver, the list goes on, I think it would be fun to have a dialect coach - I'm no actor and I'd really have no practical use for a dialect coach, but I'd love to master accents.

"Not bloody likely!"