If you need to tell me something, say it with an accent. You have no idea what kind of an effect it could have on me.
Because the truth is, I love accents. All of them. I love the Southern twang and the tough Bronxian. I enjoy the Michigan A and the Boston R. I like the smooth Californian surfer talk, the West Virginian y'all
the spicy Latin fast-talk and the Canadian sorry.
And above all, I adore a British accent. Tell me my dog died, that you're leaving me for my best friend, that Survivor will no longer be aired - but say it like one of the Monty Python boys and life will still be beautiful. Beauuuuuuu-tiful, even.
I am not sure at what point in my life this obsession with the British tongue first appeared. I may even have been mimicking the Queen from the womb. I do remember watching My Fair Lady at a young age and happily dancing around the living room with my sister singing All I want is a room somewhere in my best Yorkshire. Perhaps it was Audrey who first got me hooked.
Whatever the case, by the time I reached sixth grade, I was weirdly addicted to not only the accent, but to all things British and, by association, Australian. I met my best friend in middle school by slipping her a note I'd penned pretending to be Ana from Down Under. A complete stranger whom I'd thought looked like someone I wanted to be friends with, Jess took the bait and responded as Elisabeth from England. We were instant BFFs and continued correspondence throughout junior high. I even looked up Australian slang in the school library to toss into my letters to make them more authentic, and Jess wrote with apostrophes on her vowels to represent Yorkshire dialect.
Sometimes I still leave accented messages on her answering machine.
Recognizing my addiction, my parents occasionally try to get in on the fun by striking up lively conversations in British accents.
Won't yuuu duuu the dishus? My mom will ask, in her not-so-bad accent. My dad's, however, is somewhere in a cross between Crocodile Dundee, Jimmy Stewart and Jackie Chan - but I appreciate his efforts.
Today, so many years after my silly make-believe days, I still am a struggling Anglophile. I can't watch a Ewan McGregor or Colin Firth film without swooning. What am I saying? I can't say their names without swooning.
Ewan. Colin.
Oh, dear. I love to read books about single British media women trying to make it in the big city. Monty Python's boys? They're like brothers to me. Sometimes on back roads at home I try the left side of the road, just to see what it's like. I bloody love English slang.
And some day, in the not-so-distant future, I hope, I finally will make my way to London, the capital of the culture that has captured my interest for so long. London, a city that probably will be much dirtier and less magical in person than it is in my mind and in such movies as Notting Hill and Mary Poppins.
But as long as the driver of my taxicab or double-decker bus speaks a very accented English, it will all be beautiful to me.
movie to come out and, amazingly, prefers coffee to tea. Send her an e-mail at waitasecbec@hotmail.com 17
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Becca Manning
