Why do the English and Australians?

Question

Why do the English and the Australians speak with their respective accents but seem to sing with an American one. I've never quite understood this and I know I am not the only one hearing it?

Answer 1

I think you may find the British saying the same thing about Americans!! Leaving out certain popular genres in which one specific strong regional accent is commonly used (e.g., country), and the fact that for SOME pop groups make their local accent VERY pronounced (there are a number of British singers who do so). . . the sort of singing diction singers are generally taught tends to minimize the regional/dialectal distinctives.

Now that MAY sound to you like "they're all singing with an American accent" -- and for SOME sounds what they sing MAY be more like American dialects. But for others you just don't tend to notice OR people even use a more "British" sound.

Major example of the last point -- when singing, "unvoiced stops" (p, t, k), and esp. the "t" sound are "aspirated", that is, followed by a puff of air. This actually is the BRITISH way. Note, for example, the difference between how Americans and those speaking the "Received Pronunciation" of (British) English say "British" -- the LACK of aspiration in the American pronunciation has even led people to think that Americans are making a D-sound (which is usually NOT the case).

Another example would be R-sounds that are very pronounced in most American English dialects but "dropped" in most British dialects. Listen carefully and you should hear something "in between" -- the R sounds ARE pronounced, but more softly/lightly than 'r-pronouncing' dialects may do.

Another piece of this is that singers in general are taught to sing "purer", more open VOWEL sounds --instead of the VARIOUS slightly modified vowel sounds that may be distinctive to different dialects of English. (And quite often it is these vowel sounds that are the strongest distinctives of a dialect.) That's not necessarily to try to cover over regional accents, so much as that these types of vowels are much more singable (and generally sound 'more pleasant' to the hearer).

Going back to square one -- there are SEVERAL dialects of American English, even more of British English!! Yet when you put say, a group of people from across the U.S., together in a choir, if they sing properly, you generally cannot hear the sounds of the different regions.

Answer 2

This is such a great topic to bring up, because I think that while we have been more British than American, things are changing. While programs like Word do have an Australian dictionary built in, I don't really think that 'Australian English' really does exist. To my honest recollection, I don't think there's a difference between Australian and British. There are still obvious differences between Australian and American though. What I find interesting is that I'm studying a medical science course at the moment, and our lecturers who are currently employed in our field of study have basically said to us that when it comes to medical terms, we in Australia are adapting the Americanised way of spelling - e.g. the American term fetus is preferred over the Australian/British word foetus. But I do agree with the points above - I hate it when different programs try to correct my 'ise' as 'ize' and my 'mum' is definitely not a 'mom' (and she would argue with anyone who says otherwise!!). With America supposedly the most powerful country, it's bound to happen that we'll be using their spelling before too long. It'll be our generation that fight it. "In my day, we had our own method of spelling." Hehe, I can see it now. So, short answer, right now it's more British, but it's beginning to revert to more Americanised/Americanized spelling. :o)

Answer 3

I don't know. I used to think it was because they were imitating Americans, but I don't think that is it. I notice if you listen closely to some songs, you can hear the accent come through on some words. I think it might be because all the pitch changes in singing masks the accent.

Answer 4

You could say it's because of emulation of others in the genre but I think it's more along the lines of... it's harder to sing certain octaves while maintaining a certain accent, some pitches and tones just will not support certain accents very well. Thats what I think anyways.

Mateo

Answer 5

Because when people sing music from a certain genre, they tend to emulate the accents of others from the same genre. If they sound American, it's probably because their genre happens to be dominated by Americans. For example, If I tried to sing country music, I'd probably try to sing it in a southern accent, because that's how most people sound who do that type of music.

Answer 6

i noticed that when i was like 8 years old and never quite understood it. i thought that some british pop bands were american because they sounded, well, american. haha.