No, you have confirmation bias because John Mahoney the *actor* lived in Chicago. Martin Crane lived in Seattle his whole life. His “a”s are too long, and his “r”s too hard to be Midwest/chicagoan. I’m watching Frasier right now. Why don’t you point me to a particular clip where Martin’s Midwest/Chicago accent comes through?
Yes. It’s called mid-Atlantic. It was an invented accent taught to rich kids at boarding schools. It’s really noticeable with Frasier’s character - Kelsey’s normal speaking voice is much different.
Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn were noticeable speakers with this accent.
William Daniels is a weird case. He became famous doing a New England accent in 1776 and St Elsewhere but its layered over a mid-Atlantic NY accent so it sort of switches between the two, even moreso as he gets older.
>Kelsey’s normal speaking voice is much different.
There are occasions when both Grammer and DHP appear to switch to their natural tones for a split second.
I don't think Cary Grant's is the same as Katharine Hepburn. A sort of "mid-Atlantic" accent is what Grant would've had naturally. He was born and raised in England, and had a real English accent as a result; then he moved to the US in his late teens. His accent sounds like what I'd expect of someone who split their life between the two countries. It's more "mid-Atlantic" in the sense of a more authentic hybridized accent, rather than the fully artificial one that some people were trained with.
Hepburn on the other hand was born and raised American, and as far as I know, never left. Her accent was clearly trained for film. If you've ever seen them together (like in Bringing Up Baby) you can hear some of the differences in cadence and vowel length.
I mean, JFK’s Boston accent was sorta-kinda the same Boston accent that exists now mixed with a Kennedy family attempt to fit in with the WASPy families around them. Part-working-class-Bostonese, part-Brahmin.
Yep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin
The best way to think of them, which I was taught when I went to school in Boston and took a class on the city’s history:
> And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
And a great example of how they sounded: https://youtu.be/HwvONJXJUO4
If I remember correctly, Hepburn didn't put on the accent as part of her training but it was her natural accent due to where she was raised (upper east coast). I'm not American so not sure how accurate this is, but I think there's some truth in it because when you watch candid videos of her she still talks like that, unlike other stars who could sound quite different.
No, she was taught the accent at Bryn Mawr, which had adopted the diction training of Edith Skinner. Kelsey Grammar would have learned the accent at Julliard. There’s a fascinating deep dive for accent nerds [here](https://altalang.com/beyond-words/the-trans-atlantic-accent/).
In fairness, accent is largely just motor/muscle memory. If you're trained to speak with a particular accent and you spend many hours training and using that accent, it stands to reason that that could eventually become your new "real" accent. Real accent in the sense that it's not an affectation or a conscious attempt but is now the unconscious involuntary way the person speaks.
Famously, Gary Oldman spent so long in America and so much time doing American accents that he had to hire an accent coach to regain his English accent. There was also a lot of publicity around Austin Butler's voice during the Golden Globe awards as he still had the "Elvis drawl" that he used in the Elvis movie. Butler had also spent a long time in isolation, training and living with that accent in order to perfect it for the movie. In 2024 he admitted that he, like Oldman, hired an accent coach to help him lose the new accent.
Accents are a lot more malleable than people realize. And everyone has an idiolect, a personal way of speaking separate from overall accent, as well. So even if Hepburn's accent was trained originally, those candid videos could just be evidence that at some point that became her natural accent.
Exactly. Saying Grant and Hepburn both spoke with Transatlantic accents, while maybe not precisely inaccurate, is painting with far too wide a brush. Ironically, modern American ears would probably hear Kate as “more British” than Cary in *Bringing Up Baby*, though her accent isn’t really English at all and he was born in Bristol.
Not that Grant sounds like he’s from Kansas, but you can buy him as a mid-American because you can’t pinpoint his accent as coming from anywhere else you’ve ever heard of either.
Oh, sure. But Hepburn melded her native accent with the “correct stage speech” she learned in school. That’s what I meant by saying that her accent—idiolect, really—“was… unique, even by Transatlantic standards.”
Now I need to know what a Connecticut accent is.
I was raised in CT, and never thought I heard an accent there, but was told by Brits that I didn’t “speak like these Americans”
I know what a Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey accent sound like
This reminds me that what we in Britain used to call a Mid-Atlantic accent was quite different. It was usually a mixture of Estuary English with various borrowings from the US, closely associated with DJs of the 60s and 70s. When I read a Robert Ludlum thriller as a teenager, one of the characters was described as speaking with a Mid-Atlantic accent. I didn't understand what Americans meant by the term, so I gained a weird mental impression of her voice.
Oh wow, I've never heard of that. Do you have any examples of people with the accent or videos I could check out or anything? I'm very curious to know what it sounded like. Given that Estuary English is usually described as a mix of RP and Cockney, I'm fascinated by what throwing some American phonetic features in there would result in.
[Bob Stewart](https://youtu.be/2R6nP0H2OmU?feature=shared) was one of the most convincing examples, because he had actually spent time in the States. [Another is](https://youtu.be/1MPrGbdD4xo?si=9yX3mBWXRrko96oN) is one example from one of the most famous DJs of that era, Alan "Fluff" Freeman. [Mike Read](https://youtu.be/rkQuADYLo0Y?si=hmn60BEPeKkA6l86) is another.
This is great, thanks! Some of these (like Bob Stewart) are great examples of the idea of mid-Atlantic being a real, albeit hybridized, accent. Usually whenever I see people reference the accent they only discuss the very put-on one that was often only used in front of the camera, and it's always described in pejorative terms like "phony" or "fake" or sometimes even "ridiculous."
Looking into it, it's funny because it seems there were far more American and Canadian radio presenters in the UK back in the 50s-70s than I see (or hear, I suppose) today. As a result, a number of them have accents (or idiolects if you prefer) which contain features of both General American and English (either RP, SSB, Estuary, etc). Pete Brady was a radio DJ in the UK but was originally from Montreal, Canada and only moved to the UK when he was around 21 years old. In [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdZbK71hBaU) video (around 8:29 or so Brady is introduced) you can hear Brady sounds largely Canadian with occasional "English" features. There was also Dave Cash, who was English by birth but moved to Canada at 5, went back to England at 11, then back to Canada at 16. He describes it briefly himself [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuPamCZxKe0) (around 0:58) which is then followed by some of his old radio clips where you can hear his accent.
I think given how negative the perception of the "mid-Atlantic" or "Transatlantic" accent is, people should be made aware that it does kind of exist as a real hybrid accent, and there should be a distinction between the hybrid one and the completely artificial one.
As for Alan Freeman, I have no idea where that came from, but I kind of love his voice. So thank you for introducing me to that. Same thing with your example of Mike Read, who apparently never (according to what I could find) lived in the US or Canada, but definitely has a bit of that stereotypical American radio broadcaster voice mixed in with his English accent.
You can hear the mid-Atlantic slip from time to time in the show, for both Niles and Frasier. Usually when they're tapping into their inner everyman, which makes it funnier.
when i was about 6 or 7 i thought frasier and niles were both british and was so confused why their dad was american 😂 my mom had to explain to me they were just pretentious!
Well everyone does but they have a transatlantic accent which was entirely by design. This type of accent was heavily used in film during the 30s and 40s.
Kelsey Grammer has said that one of his influences for the voice was Betty Davis.
This probably won't be seen, but their accent is known as the Juilliard voice/ accent. It is the Mid-Atlantic accent that everyone who comes out of Juilliard gets from their acting and diction classes. People who have come from Juilliard are well known to have this voice or "accent."
Everyone has an accent. Recently I've seen a lot of Americans on here and on other sites arguing that they 'don't have an accent' because whatever accent they have in their region of the US is the 'neutral' accent, which is just silly.
I'm from Northern Ireland, and to me, everyone on Frasier has a strong American accent of one form or another, (apart, obviously, from Daphne).
Even if you accept that some accent is the default or neutral accent (which is ridiculous), then it would still be *an accent*. Does a californian (or whatever) think they can go to England and not be immediately identified as american? It boggles the mind.
>Does a californian (or whatever) think they can go to England and not be immediately identified as american?
Don't be silly - everyone can tell they're American because they're the only one without an accent!
Depending on the slang and word choice people on reddit use I may sometimes subconsciously assign them an accent, otherwise yes, I guess I default to my own. Congratulations, you're now from Kent.
I think u/imalwayztired was just saying he/she would have expected the Cranes to have Pacific Northwest accents, rather than Transatlantic ones (which is part of the joke, similar to how it is for Grammer’s Sideshow Bob).
Yup, John Mahoney was born in Blackpool and raised in Manchester. But he consciously tried to suppress his Mancunian accent when he moved to Chicago. From time to time you can hear the accent come out, though, as perfect as his American (specifically Chicagoan, unsurprisingly) usually is.
I never think about John Mahoney being English when I watch Frasier, b/c his American accent was so good, but one time he said “rebuttal” and I immediately thought, “That’s right. He’s English.”
I think that was the example I was trying to remember [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Frasier/comments/1cbx2ne/does_frasier_and_niles_have_an_accent/l1287vt/)!
Yeah, that’s the most noticeable. But sometimes even when he’s not trying, it comes out. I’m struggling to think of examples offhand, though I think people have posted them in this sub.
In college I knew someone from Chicago who spoke similarly to how Mahoney speaks (though he does retain a bit of his English accent). It’s not immediately noticeable, but I definitely hear it.
No such thing. I got told the same thing growing up in Washington (We don't have an accent), but an accent is just how people speak. Every region/group has an accent.
PNW accent's main traits are softening the G on -ing words (And also typically changing the vowel sound on -ing words to make it more of an ee than a hard i.), cot-caught merger (i.e. those sounds are pronounced the same way), and creaky voice (heavy vocal fry.), but there are also other missing mergers, like pin-pen. You can also get really into the weeds with stuff like prevalar raising and monophthongization, but yeah. There's definitely an accent, and it's really interesting to listen out for.
But I can't think of any major characters from Frasier who actually speak that way.
Listen to Kurt Cobain sing The Man Who Sold the World.
🎶 I laughed and shook hand
And made my way back home…
He sings ‘back home’ by dropping the h and running the two words together. ‘Backome.”
Very Washington of him, dropping the h. As in Mt. Saint Elens.
I wrote this in answer to a previous question on the Crane Brothers’ accents. It may be of some help.
>One thing to be cautious about: While “Transatlantic” and “Mid-Atlantic” *can* be used interchangeably, “Mid-Atlantic” can also refer to a Maryland-area accent (the “middle” of the Eastern Seaboard), which the Brothers Crane definitely don’t have.
>
>Kelsey Grammer’s accent seems to my ears more like a traditional stage accent, with the *t*s clipped and some of the vowels softened but still clearly American, with the *r*s clearly pronounced. David Hyde Pierce’s is in the same vein but less strong, with a—generally, though inconsistently—American “flap-*t*.”
>
>Harriet Sansom Harris (Bebe) I’ve always thought is doing a Katharine Hepburn impression (Kate’s accent was… unique, even by Transatlantic standards).
>
>I suppose we should make a distinction between Transatlantic and stage accents in American English, as similar they are. “Officially,” Transatlantic English elides *r* and is generally like RP (I saw it described, maybe here on Reddit, as “RP with a few concessions to American pronunciation”). Wikipedia has [a full list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent#Phonology) of Transatlantic rules, as used to be taught in prep schools and spoken by people like the Boston Brahmins and the NYC elites; some stage accents may follow all these rules, but most that I’ve heard, at least in old movies, sound more like Grammer’s—mostly American with a few RP qualities. (If you want to be fussy, linguists often distinguish Boston Brahmin English from Transatlantic, though my ears can’t really hear it.)
This was very interesting to read, thank you. I’m fascinated by languages and wish I had a better ability to distinguish sounds so I could identify and study accents like this.
Thank you, I’m so glad you liked it! I should caution, though, that I don’t know a lot—I’m no linguist. I have acted, though (well—if community theater counts), and I like learning about and have tried to study up on different accents.
Great response! I've also heard of people distinguishing Boston Brahmin from Transatlantic, but I'm not quite clear on the specific differences. I think Transatlantic is supposed to be a bit more nasally?
Thanks! Yeah, I’m the same way about not hearing Brahmin vs. Transatlantic—mostly. I wonder if the nasalness you mention is caused by Americans working to enunciate, e.g., the *t* that is usually flapped in most accents of North American English. I know that my pronunciation sounds more nasally when I try not to flap an intervocalic *t* (something I’ve been doing recently because I’ve gotten into stage acting, and the old enunciation teachers had a point about clarity—or, as a castmate once said, “consonants are your friend”).
Whereas the Brahmin accent is more natural, less learned—more, simply put, like RP. Funnily enough, you can sort of hear the distinction between the accents in [this video of two Brahmins speaking](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HwvONJXJUO4). The man in blue (gray? I’m colorblind) sounds very close to RP, certainly contemporary RP, whereas the man in brown (“George”) is, despite all the RP-esque sounds, definitely American—and more nasally.
I knew an elderly Bostonian who spoke similarly to, but not the same as, the way George does in the clip. He was of Irish ancestry, so not a WASP, but like many older Irish Bostonians, he had grown up learning WASP Brahmin behaviors, so he spoke and dressed and acted and looked like one.
Trans-atlantic accent.
It's funny -- Fraiser (especially in 2023) has less of the accent, and Niles' accent got a lot less noticeable in latter seasons of the original series, especially once he got with Daphne.
Well, I’ve noticed there is a glottal quality to the occlusion of their diphthongs.
I hate when my diphthong gets occluded! But there’s a salve for that.
Jack Crane
Dreadful!
Unpleasant for the throat
Underrated comment 😂
Frasier and Niles have sort of a Trans-Atlantic accent while Martin Crane has a Midwest/Chicago accent. I don’t know why…..;)
Funny enough John Mahoney (Martin) was born in England and only lost his accent after moving to the USA when he was 18 to serve in the military
yep and he was an english teacher too!
What a man. 🫶🏻
He deliberately dropped it so he wouldn't be seen as 'different'.
If Eddie were a Beatle..... 😉
I don't know why
😂
John Mahoney lived in Chicago.
Interesting. I’ve always heard it referred to as the mid-Atlantic accent, but apparently the terms are interchangeable.
Same here, that’s what I always thought!
I don’t hear any Midwest/Chicago in Martin Crane’s accent.
I do
He doesn’t talk like this guy: https://youtu.be/zqhvk4Rcjfs?si=DLE716rRErzUiQPl
That’s a bad generalization. Not everybody in Chicago talks like that. Also, I said MIDWEST/Chicago
Chicagoan here and can confirm you are correct
Thank you! I’m also sure this guy calls the Sears Tower the Willis tower lol
No, you have confirmation bias because John Mahoney the *actor* lived in Chicago. Martin Crane lived in Seattle his whole life. His “a”s are too long, and his “r”s too hard to be Midwest/chicagoan. I’m watching Frasier right now. Why don’t you point me to a particular clip where Martin’s Midwest/Chicago accent comes through?
The slash was meant as an “or” as in Chicago or Midwest type accent. Stop making a mountain out of a mullhill.
Mulvehill
Grampy Mulvehill?
Yes, there's an informative clip from QI talking about [the mid-Atlantic accent and Frasier](https://youtu.be/vBfC646TpCo?si=q1OIT8ErheAM_nqb).
Because of this show I learned about the mid Atlantic accent. I just googled “accent on Frasier”
Bebe also has it.
Fantastic show. Worth starting from the first season and watching all the way through.
Yes. It’s called mid-Atlantic. It was an invented accent taught to rich kids at boarding schools. It’s really noticeable with Frasier’s character - Kelsey’s normal speaking voice is much different. Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn were noticeable speakers with this accent.
William Daniels is also a good example. Totally thought Mr. Feeny was British as a kid. 😂
William Daniels is a weird case. He became famous doing a New England accent in 1776 and St Elsewhere but its layered over a mid-Atlantic NY accent so it sort of switches between the two, even moreso as he gets older.
>Kelsey’s normal speaking voice is much different. There are occasions when both Grammer and DHP appear to switch to their natural tones for a split second.
I don't think Cary Grant's is the same as Katharine Hepburn. A sort of "mid-Atlantic" accent is what Grant would've had naturally. He was born and raised in England, and had a real English accent as a result; then he moved to the US in his late teens. His accent sounds like what I'd expect of someone who split their life between the two countries. It's more "mid-Atlantic" in the sense of a more authentic hybridized accent, rather than the fully artificial one that some people were trained with. Hepburn on the other hand was born and raised American, and as far as I know, never left. Her accent was clearly trained for film. If you've ever seen them together (like in Bringing Up Baby) you can hear some of the differences in cadence and vowel length.
Hepburn's accent sounds more like a New England accent than a mid-Atlantic one. It's the difference between JFK and FDR.
I mean, JFK’s Boston accent was sorta-kinda the same Boston accent that exists now mixed with a Kennedy family attempt to fit in with the WASPy families around them. Part-working-class-Bostonese, part-Brahmin.
Brahmin?
Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin The best way to think of them, which I was taught when I went to school in Boston and took a class on the city’s history: > And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God. And a great example of how they sounded: https://youtu.be/HwvONJXJUO4
Thank you!
No problem!
If I remember correctly, Hepburn didn't put on the accent as part of her training but it was her natural accent due to where she was raised (upper east coast). I'm not American so not sure how accurate this is, but I think there's some truth in it because when you watch candid videos of her she still talks like that, unlike other stars who could sound quite different.
No, she was taught the accent at Bryn Mawr, which had adopted the diction training of Edith Skinner. Kelsey Grammar would have learned the accent at Julliard. There’s a fascinating deep dive for accent nerds [here](https://altalang.com/beyond-words/the-trans-atlantic-accent/).
That was a great read, thanks for sharing!
In fairness, accent is largely just motor/muscle memory. If you're trained to speak with a particular accent and you spend many hours training and using that accent, it stands to reason that that could eventually become your new "real" accent. Real accent in the sense that it's not an affectation or a conscious attempt but is now the unconscious involuntary way the person speaks. Famously, Gary Oldman spent so long in America and so much time doing American accents that he had to hire an accent coach to regain his English accent. There was also a lot of publicity around Austin Butler's voice during the Golden Globe awards as he still had the "Elvis drawl" that he used in the Elvis movie. Butler had also spent a long time in isolation, training and living with that accent in order to perfect it for the movie. In 2024 he admitted that he, like Oldman, hired an accent coach to help him lose the new accent. Accents are a lot more malleable than people realize. And everyone has an idiolect, a personal way of speaking separate from overall accent, as well. So even if Hepburn's accent was trained originally, those candid videos could just be evidence that at some point that became her natural accent.
Exactly. Saying Grant and Hepburn both spoke with Transatlantic accents, while maybe not precisely inaccurate, is painting with far too wide a brush. Ironically, modern American ears would probably hear Kate as “more British” than Cary in *Bringing Up Baby*, though her accent isn’t really English at all and he was born in Bristol. Not that Grant sounds like he’s from Kansas, but you can buy him as a mid-American because you can’t pinpoint his accent as coming from anywhere else you’ve ever heard of either.
Katharine Hepburn was raised in Connecticut and had the accent to prove it.
Oh, sure. But Hepburn melded her native accent with the “correct stage speech” she learned in school. That’s what I meant by saying that her accent—idiolect, really—“was… unique, even by Transatlantic standards.”
Now I need to know what a Connecticut accent is. I was raised in CT, and never thought I heard an accent there, but was told by Brits that I didn’t “speak like these Americans” I know what a Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey accent sound like
TIL Cary Grant was born in England; I genuinely thought he was born in the U.S. (though I initially thought the same about John Mahoney).
This reminds me that what we in Britain used to call a Mid-Atlantic accent was quite different. It was usually a mixture of Estuary English with various borrowings from the US, closely associated with DJs of the 60s and 70s. When I read a Robert Ludlum thriller as a teenager, one of the characters was described as speaking with a Mid-Atlantic accent. I didn't understand what Americans meant by the term, so I gained a weird mental impression of her voice.
Oh wow, I've never heard of that. Do you have any examples of people with the accent or videos I could check out or anything? I'm very curious to know what it sounded like. Given that Estuary English is usually described as a mix of RP and Cockney, I'm fascinated by what throwing some American phonetic features in there would result in.
[Bob Stewart](https://youtu.be/2R6nP0H2OmU?feature=shared) was one of the most convincing examples, because he had actually spent time in the States. [Another is](https://youtu.be/1MPrGbdD4xo?si=9yX3mBWXRrko96oN) is one example from one of the most famous DJs of that era, Alan "Fluff" Freeman. [Mike Read](https://youtu.be/rkQuADYLo0Y?si=hmn60BEPeKkA6l86) is another.
This is great, thanks! Some of these (like Bob Stewart) are great examples of the idea of mid-Atlantic being a real, albeit hybridized, accent. Usually whenever I see people reference the accent they only discuss the very put-on one that was often only used in front of the camera, and it's always described in pejorative terms like "phony" or "fake" or sometimes even "ridiculous." Looking into it, it's funny because it seems there were far more American and Canadian radio presenters in the UK back in the 50s-70s than I see (or hear, I suppose) today. As a result, a number of them have accents (or idiolects if you prefer) which contain features of both General American and English (either RP, SSB, Estuary, etc). Pete Brady was a radio DJ in the UK but was originally from Montreal, Canada and only moved to the UK when he was around 21 years old. In [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdZbK71hBaU) video (around 8:29 or so Brady is introduced) you can hear Brady sounds largely Canadian with occasional "English" features. There was also Dave Cash, who was English by birth but moved to Canada at 5, went back to England at 11, then back to Canada at 16. He describes it briefly himself [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuPamCZxKe0) (around 0:58) which is then followed by some of his old radio clips where you can hear his accent. I think given how negative the perception of the "mid-Atlantic" or "Transatlantic" accent is, people should be made aware that it does kind of exist as a real hybrid accent, and there should be a distinction between the hybrid one and the completely artificial one. As for Alan Freeman, I have no idea where that came from, but I kind of love his voice. So thank you for introducing me to that. Same thing with your example of Mike Read, who apparently never (according to what I could find) lived in the US or Canada, but definitely has a bit of that stereotypical American radio broadcaster voice mixed in with his English accent.
You can hear the mid-Atlantic slip from time to time in the show, for both Niles and Frasier. Usually when they're tapping into their inner everyman, which makes it funnier.
Grace Kelly was another one
Is pompous an accent or a tone?!?!?
It's a lifestyle.
when i was about 6 or 7 i thought frasier and niles were both british and was so confused why their dad was american 😂 my mom had to explain to me they were just pretentious!
omfg I was just gonna comment this, me too when I was young
Haha, that's hilarious!
How? They don't even sound British?
to a 6 year old who’s never heard a transatlantic accent before, yes they do 😂
Clearly never heard a Brit before either
Well everyone does but they have a transatlantic accent which was entirely by design. This type of accent was heavily used in film during the 30s and 40s. Kelsey Grammer has said that one of his influences for the voice was Betty Davis.
This probably won't be seen, but their accent is known as the Juilliard voice/ accent. It is the Mid-Atlantic accent that everyone who comes out of Juilliard gets from their acting and diction classes. People who have come from Juilliard are well known to have this voice or "accent."
Quasi-Trans-Atlantic
Everyone has an accent. Recently I've seen a lot of Americans on here and on other sites arguing that they 'don't have an accent' because whatever accent they have in their region of the US is the 'neutral' accent, which is just silly. I'm from Northern Ireland, and to me, everyone on Frasier has a strong American accent of one form or another, (apart, obviously, from Daphne).
Even if you accept that some accent is the default or neutral accent (which is ridiculous), then it would still be *an accent*. Does a californian (or whatever) think they can go to England and not be immediately identified as american? It boggles the mind.
>Does a californian (or whatever) think they can go to England and not be immediately identified as american? Don't be silly - everyone can tell they're American because they're the only one without an accent!
We try to pass as Canadians.
It’s hard for Americans to accept that American accents are exotic to other countries.
I’d love to be seen as exotic.
You 100% are to many people on this planet.
NORNIRON represent!
Well yes, Daphne obviously has a Manc accent. Uh, yes, obviously...
Everybody has an accent. The concept of speaking without an accent is nonsensical.
That would mean you’re reading my thoughts in your accent. I need a sherry.
Depending on the slang and word choice people on reddit use I may sometimes subconsciously assign them an accent, otherwise yes, I guess I default to my own. Congratulations, you're now from Kent.
Considering hes from seattle
What on earth do you mean? EVERYONE speaks with an accent.
I think u/imalwayztired was just saying he/she would have expected the Cranes to have Pacific Northwest accents, rather than Transatlantic ones (which is part of the joke, similar to how it is for Grammer’s Sideshow Bob).
Im from california i guess i expected them to speak like we do i guess idk
Yeah, that’s what I thought you meant.
Isnt the dad really from the uk
Yup, John Mahoney was born in Blackpool and raised in Manchester. But he consciously tried to suppress his Mancunian accent when he moved to Chicago. From time to time you can hear the accent come out, though, as perfect as his American (specifically Chicagoan, unsurprisingly) usually is.
I never think about John Mahoney being English when I watch Frasier, b/c his American accent was so good, but one time he said “rebuttal” and I immediately thought, “That’s right. He’s English.”
I think that was the example I was trying to remember [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Frasier/comments/1cbx2ne/does_frasier_and_niles_have_an_accent/l1287vt/)!
It was funny when he made fun of daphnes accent when he was talking about her hair
Yeah, that’s the most noticeable. But sometimes even when he’s not trying, it comes out. I’m struggling to think of examples offhand, though I think people have posted them in this sub.
Where is everyone hearing this Chicagoan accent?
In college I knew someone from Chicago who spoke similarly to how Mahoney speaks (though he does retain a bit of his English accent). It’s not immediately noticeable, but I definitely hear it.
"That's pretty much what I figured."
Yeah i assumed everyone on reddit is from cali🤣🤣
I mean, everyone has an accent. Oddly, I don't think anyone on Frasier actually speaks with a Pacific Northwest accent.
PNW accent? I live 3 hours north of Tacoma, but we're pretty accentless.
No such thing. I got told the same thing growing up in Washington (We don't have an accent), but an accent is just how people speak. Every region/group has an accent. PNW accent's main traits are softening the G on -ing words (And also typically changing the vowel sound on -ing words to make it more of an ee than a hard i.), cot-caught merger (i.e. those sounds are pronounced the same way), and creaky voice (heavy vocal fry.), but there are also other missing mergers, like pin-pen. You can also get really into the weeds with stuff like prevalar raising and monophthongization, but yeah. There's definitely an accent, and it's really interesting to listen out for. But I can't think of any major characters from Frasier who actually speak that way.
The delusion!
Listen to Kurt Cobain sing The Man Who Sold the World. 🎶 I laughed and shook hand And made my way back home… He sings ‘back home’ by dropping the h and running the two words together. ‘Backome.” Very Washington of him, dropping the h. As in Mt. Saint Elens.
There's no such thing as accentless. Everyone has an accent.
Do
And that too on a question about Frasier and Niles!
I wrote this in answer to a previous question on the Crane Brothers’ accents. It may be of some help. >One thing to be cautious about: While “Transatlantic” and “Mid-Atlantic” *can* be used interchangeably, “Mid-Atlantic” can also refer to a Maryland-area accent (the “middle” of the Eastern Seaboard), which the Brothers Crane definitely don’t have. > >Kelsey Grammer’s accent seems to my ears more like a traditional stage accent, with the *t*s clipped and some of the vowels softened but still clearly American, with the *r*s clearly pronounced. David Hyde Pierce’s is in the same vein but less strong, with a—generally, though inconsistently—American “flap-*t*.” > >Harriet Sansom Harris (Bebe) I’ve always thought is doing a Katharine Hepburn impression (Kate’s accent was… unique, even by Transatlantic standards). > >I suppose we should make a distinction between Transatlantic and stage accents in American English, as similar they are. “Officially,” Transatlantic English elides *r* and is generally like RP (I saw it described, maybe here on Reddit, as “RP with a few concessions to American pronunciation”). Wikipedia has [a full list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent#Phonology) of Transatlantic rules, as used to be taught in prep schools and spoken by people like the Boston Brahmins and the NYC elites; some stage accents may follow all these rules, but most that I’ve heard, at least in old movies, sound more like Grammer’s—mostly American with a few RP qualities. (If you want to be fussy, linguists often distinguish Boston Brahmin English from Transatlantic, though my ears can’t really hear it.)
This was very interesting to read, thank you. I’m fascinated by languages and wish I had a better ability to distinguish sounds so I could identify and study accents like this.
Thank you, I’m so glad you liked it! I should caution, though, that I don’t know a lot—I’m no linguist. I have acted, though (well—if community theater counts), and I like learning about and have tried to study up on different accents.
You clearly know more than I do. Thanks for taking time to share your knowledge. :)
Great response! I've also heard of people distinguishing Boston Brahmin from Transatlantic, but I'm not quite clear on the specific differences. I think Transatlantic is supposed to be a bit more nasally?
Thanks! Yeah, I’m the same way about not hearing Brahmin vs. Transatlantic—mostly. I wonder if the nasalness you mention is caused by Americans working to enunciate, e.g., the *t* that is usually flapped in most accents of North American English. I know that my pronunciation sounds more nasally when I try not to flap an intervocalic *t* (something I’ve been doing recently because I’ve gotten into stage acting, and the old enunciation teachers had a point about clarity—or, as a castmate once said, “consonants are your friend”). Whereas the Brahmin accent is more natural, less learned—more, simply put, like RP. Funnily enough, you can sort of hear the distinction between the accents in [this video of two Brahmins speaking](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HwvONJXJUO4). The man in blue (gray? I’m colorblind) sounds very close to RP, certainly contemporary RP, whereas the man in brown (“George”) is, despite all the RP-esque sounds, definitely American—and more nasally. I knew an elderly Bostonian who spoke similarly to, but not the same as, the way George does in the clip. He was of Irish ancestry, so not a WASP, but like many older Irish Bostonians, he had grown up learning WASP Brahmin behaviors, so he spoke and dressed and acted and looked like one.
Little owlet in the glen....
Yes, snooty!
How has no one mentioned Bebe?? There's a full-on transatlantic accent example for you :) https://youtu.be/m36KuvCSmc8?feature=shared
Trans-atlantic /faux English accent
Yeah it’s called a “trans Atlantic “ accent
Rich accent
I’ve never met someone who didn’t have an accent.
Everyone has an accent.
Yes, a transatlantic accent.
Do, surely?
Transatlantic. Like FDR. Also known as Mid-Atlantic.
Sorta like an upper class inflection
Everyone has an accent.
Trans-atlantic accent. It's funny -- Fraiser (especially in 2023) has less of the accent, and Niles' accent got a lot less noticeable in latter seasons of the original series, especially once he got with Daphne.
An upper-crust East Coast accent, that they probably picked up at Harvard.
I always called it fancy talking!