The Off Topic Topic

[Valmy]

Fair - but the youngest person in that article is 21. Everyone else is 25-32 and apparently doing random British accents

Edit: Obviously still the time to do something silly but also the stage of life where you're starting to sort some stuff (and yourself) out a bit.

Although I am very glad that they're doing Estuary English and kind of love that Love Island/TOWIE is shifting the Downton Abbey view of Britain. What a shift that is.

Doing fake English accents has always been a thing.

This is from How I Met Your Mother in the 2000s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhcbAtzw_vM

And we almost always do the weird cockney accent thing (or whatever the lower classes in the Southeast are supposed to soundlike). Dick van Dyke is our hero.

And for the most part the English have no sense of humor about this, they usually take nothing about themselves too seriously but for some reason their accents are sacred that can never be mocked. Or at least the ones on the internet are. Even people who can nail a pretty good stickupyourasstonshire accent get shit because they didn't perfectly do that persons specific part of stickupyourasstonshire. I think when I was in France I did a fake English accent to a English woman and the very unamused response let me know never to do that again. 

[Jacob]

And for the most part the English have no sense of humor about this, they usually take nothing about themselves too seriously but for some reason their accents are sacred that can never be mocked. Or at least the ones on the internet are. Even people who can nail a pretty good stickupyourasstonshire accent get shit because they didn't perfectly do that persons specific part of stickupyourasstonshire. I think when I was in France I did a fake English accent to a English woman and the very unamused response let me know never to do that again. 

I think there are probably two aspects to it:

1. Accents are central to different UK identities and self-perceptions, much in the way that race is in the US. Think of the many ways deliberately copying the characteristics of different racial groups in the US might land wrong, even if the intent is benign. I think there's a bit of that in play here.

2. UK accents carry a lot of information in their native environments. Differences can be hard to pick up on for outsiders, but communicate pretty fundamental things to different Brits. Your random "hey check out my cool British accent" punter runs the risk of mixing things up and coming across as someone wearing a MAGA hat, a black lives matter patch, sporting paraphernelia for both Ohio State and Ohio U, and confusing several different regional varieties of BBQ while wearing their powdered wig backwards." Individual details may be true to life for different Americans but put together it's kind of cringeworthy rather than charming.

... that'd be my guess.

And in general, people copying your accent is not really entertaining unless they're surprisingly good at it or there's some other good bit to it.

[Sheilbh]

On accents in the UK, can't help but think of George Bernard Shaw, "it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

Edit: On Valmy's point though I think those people are just being over-sensitive/daft. Dick van Dyke is lovingly regarded here too.

And you should see the Irish version of this because Ireland also has incredibly varied and specific accents which just get flattened into a very broad, non-specific "Oirish" when Brits and Americans or, weirdly, actual Irishman Jamie Dornan does an Irish accent in a film. Which causes no end of irritation.

[grumbler]

2. UK accents carry a lot of information in their native environments. Differences can be hard to pick up on for outsiders, but communicate pretty fundamental things to different Brits. Your random "hey check out my cool British accent" punter runs the risk of mixing things up and coming across as someone wearing a MAGA hat, a black lives matter patch, sporting paraphernelia for both Ohio State and Ohio U, and confusing several different regional varieties of BBQ while wearing their powdered wig backwards."

Or comes off as someone who thinks that Ohio State and Ohio University have some kind of rivalry. 

(It's Ohio State and the University of Michigan that have the rivalry).

[Jacob]

2. UK accents carry a lot of information in their native environments. Differences can be hard to pick up on for outsiders, but communicate pretty fundamental things to different Brits. Your random "hey check out my cool British accent" punter runs the risk of mixing things up and coming across as someone wearing a MAGA hat, a black lives matter patch, sporting paraphernelia for both Ohio State and Ohio U, and confusing several different regional varieties of BBQ while wearing their powdered wig backwards."

Or comes off as someone who thinks that Ohio State and Ohio University have some kind of rivalry. 

(It's Ohio State and the University of Michigan that have the rivalry).

Exactly!

[Richard Hakluyt]

The faked accents that are not quite right sound terrible 

Apart from Dick van Dyke where for some reason it is all very amusing 

[Tonitrus]

I watched enough Brit TV shows as a kid that, I think, I can do a decent English accent...except it probably crosses several parts of England at random and sometimes accidentally goes Australian.

But even when I lived in the UK, there was no way in heck I would ever try it out there...just out of politeness.

[Tonitrus]

But I have a couple students who sometimes seem to pull out random English accents.  One of them is likely legit though.

[Valmy]

The results of the Turkish election, at least as reported, don't look great. I mean they could have gone worse, of course, but it seems unlikely the hardcore nationalists that voted for the other guy are going to rally en masse around the weird coalition the CHP have pitched together.

[Sheilbh]

The results of the Turkish election, at least as reported, don't look great. I mean they could have gone worse, of course, but it seems unlikely the hardcore nationalists that voted for the other guy are going to rally en masse around the weird coalition the CHP have pitched together.

Fair - although the opposition have replaced their entire PR team so maybe with a new strategy for the last two weeks

I do find it weird that the opposition managed to unite on running a joint candidate but, by all accounts, the CHP insisted on the candidate being their leader - who has been leader since 2010 and is Alevi. Part of that is obviously just bigotry but from a strategy point of view I feel like you'd want to go with a fresh-ish change candidate. He wasn't always the CHP candidate in the last 13 years but I think he probably definitely feels like a bit of a boring/part of the furniture candidate.

I don't fully get why they didn't go for Yavas or Imamoglu, who are newer and have both beaten the AKP. Instead they were kept as VPs. It feels like an odd decision

[Syt]

[Zanza]

[Syt]

Yup, always sitting down at home or when visiting friends. Work, restaurants etc.: stand.

[Admiral Yi]

How bizarre.

[Josquius]

I even find sitting to poo disgusting.