Laughing with a New York Dialect (Uncontrollable Laughter #2)
02-20-2020
As an acting major, a part of my required curriculum is a class called Dialects. For the first month of the semester, we spent our time working on British dialects (RP, Cockney, and MLE), but this past week we began our work on American dialects. We jumped right in with the New York dialect. One might expect it to be easier to take on an American dialect when one is already an American. Whoever thinks that is the case is sorely mistaken.
Immediately, it seemed, the class was struggling. We couldn't keep ourselves from slipping into Cockney, which we quickly is remarkably similar to the stereotypical New York dialect. The only thing to do in a situation as absurd as a roomful of acting majors trying desperately to appropriately distort their speech to no avail is to laugh. And laugh we did.
The laughter reached an uncontrollable peak when, during an exercise where we practice saying sentences that highlight the linguistic features of the dialect, one girl's words came out sounding much more slurred and distorted than she'd intended. This sent one of her friends into a fit of laughter, which made her laugh. With the two of them laughing, everyone else joined in as well until the whole class was laughing uncontrollably. Laughter had effectively taken over the class. Though it only took about a minute for the whole incident to begin and then die out, it was a fun experience to be thoroughly infected by laughter.
As an acting major, a part of my required curriculum is a class called Dialects. For the first month of the semester, we spent our time working on British dialects (RP, Cockney, and MLE), but this past week we began our work on American dialects. We jumped right in with the New York dialect. One might expect it to be easier to take on an American dialect when one is already an American. Whoever thinks that is the case is sorely mistaken.
Immediately, it seemed, the class was struggling. We couldn't keep ourselves from slipping into Cockney, which we quickly is remarkably similar to the stereotypical New York dialect. The only thing to do in a situation as absurd as a roomful of acting majors trying desperately to appropriately distort their speech to no avail is to laugh. And laugh we did.
The laughter reached an uncontrollable peak when, during an exercise where we practice saying sentences that highlight the linguistic features of the dialect, one girl's words came out sounding much more slurred and distorted than she'd intended. This sent one of her friends into a fit of laughter, which made her laugh. With the two of them laughing, everyone else joined in as well until the whole class was laughing uncontrollably. Laughter had effectively taken over the class. Though it only took about a minute for the whole incident to begin and then die out, it was a fun experience to be thoroughly infected by laughter.
I relate to this post not in a professional way, but in an extreme amateur way. I LOVED to do accents when I was younger, and at one point my dad was going to pay me $100 to speak in a British accent throughout the week we were on a cruise. Unfortunately, I didn't take him up on that offer (I was too afraid people would ask me questions I couldn't answer about living in England), but I will say I'm getting an accent education like you did from my many new friends who live in England. Contrary to what I thought as a middle schooler, there are many, many different British accents, and I can't even imagine the fit of giggles I'd be in hearing people try and copy them.
ReplyDeleteI can picture this in my head right now and it is causing me to chuckle as I write this. I think this is a great post, and the class seems like it is probably one you can look forward to attending everyday. I can relate to this post because I lived in Ireland this summer and tried, with tremendous failure, to pick up an Irish accent the entire time.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great story. It speaks to how infectious laughter can be when it only took one person laughing to set off a whole room. I've taken a few dialect classes before and its so strange how quickly you travel the world when learning new dialects. They morph so quickly and it can be hard to control.
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