fake me

May 8, 2007 7:50 PM

What is the connection between cute semi-naked japanese girls, and Orson Welles' F is for Fake? Momus explains.
posted by vronsky (79 comments total)

Don't blaspheme the name of Lucymisser. She's awesome.
posted by null terminated at 8:00 PM on May 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Cutiemish says she is Chinese.
posted by gubo at 8:03 PM on May 8, 2007

Whaaaa?

I'm not sure I understand what is going on even after reading everything, but the cognitive dissonance involved in hearing an aussie/kiwi accent come from a cute asian girl is awesome.

I mean it makes perfect sense that asian girls with aussie accents exist, but it's so far from my own experience. An australian accent makes pretty much any girl cute, this combination is just ridiculous.

Besides that, I don't understand what is going on here.
posted by Telf at 8:20 PM on May 8, 2007

I only watched the F for Fake trailer. I love it!
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:21 PM on May 8, 2007

Um… Telf, which one do you think has an Australian accent?
posted by tellurian at 8:25 PM on May 8, 2007

I don't understand youtube.
posted by pombe at 8:30 PM on May 8, 2007

Em... so the idea is that the experimental nudist was actually hawking Calbee potato chips? (the consomme are excellent, btw)

Besides, she hardly gave it a chance. Though sure, uninsulated buildings in winter make it difficult, but that's what toasty heaters are for!

also: my god "cutiemish" is obnoxious.
posted by dreamsign at 8:32 PM on May 8, 2007

"…will outlaw aggressive commercial practices such as aggressive doorstep selling, bogus “closing down” sales and pressurising parents through their children to buy products."
*drops idea for a Wiggles vacuum cleaner*
posted by tellurian at 8:39 PM on May 8, 2007

I don't understand youtube.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 8:40 PM on May 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Lucymisser is adorable. Even if she is selling stuff.
posted by stavrogin at 8:49 PM on May 8, 2007

PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. Tomorrow will be the best-viewed day of your video's life. You will be promoted to the top of the "most-viewed" and "highest rated" tabs on YouTube. If you don't post this in at least five other threads, you will be accused of being a shill, and Virginia Heffernan might become obsessed with you.
posted by thecaddy at 8:49 PM on May 8, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

An australian accent makes pretty much any girl cute

Unfortunately the same can not be said for a kiwi accents as kiwi woman are, on the whole, more homely than their Australian equivalents.

But they are warm at night, so I no complain.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 8:57 PM on May 8, 2007

I'm totally crushing out.
posted by I Foody at 9:02 PM on May 8, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

An australian accent makes pretty much any girl cute

Unfortunately the same can not be said for a kiwi accents as kiwi woman are, on the whole, more homely than their Australian equivalents.

Whoah, dude. Have you listened to Ozzie women? I think the UN has declared the accent cruel though unfortunately not especially unusual. And more redheaded Kiwis please.
posted by dreamsign at 9:10 PM on May 8, 2007

EXT. STREET DAY

Bleach blond, strikingly tan AUSSIE WOMAN walks away. She turns around and looks at DREAMSIGN. Her demeanor subtly changes as she tilts her head back and points accusingly at dreamsign.

[AUSSIE WOMAN]
(droning)
OIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

[DREAMSIGN]
(Aghast)
Crikey!

FADE OUT:

THE END
posted by stavrogin at 9:25 PM on May 8, 2007 [6 favorites has favorites]

Perhaps Telf means "cutiemish," the girl in the "Japanese" link... Though her accent just kind of sounds like a generic southern English one to me (but what do I know, my family is all from the north).
posted by incomple at 9:44 PM on May 8, 2007

I'd say dreamsign might be onto something with the 'viral-marketing-for-Calbee-potato-chips' angle (this Lucy also gives prominent display to Kirin beer in another video linked to here). Still, I'm not so sure Japanese companies are really hip yet to YouTube viralism, and if they are, I'm not so sure they'd use a girl speaking in English. The linguisto-myopia here in J-land is pretty strong, and I suspect that if there is viral net advertising going on from companies like Calbee, it'll happen in Japanese-language videos that will more likely be watched and understood by their target market, namely Japanese people.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:55 PM on May 8, 2007

Perhaps Telf means "cutiemish," the girl in the "Japanese" link... Though her accent just kind of sounds like a generic southern English one to me
You're right incomple = Kent.
I wonder if (from her profile) "Occupation: haha i'm actually a actress at last!" means she's being paid to do advertising?
posted by tellurian at 10:07 PM on May 8, 2007

There's an ethnicallly Chinese girl at the open lab I'm at who was born and grew up in New Zealand - and had the Kiwi accent imprinted onto her.

If her eyes were green/grey/blue - I'd kill each and every one of you to impress her (if hunting down and killing each and every one of you was something that'd impress her).
posted by porpoise at 10:14 PM on May 8, 2007

If her eyes were green/grey/blue...



But they're not, so screw her?
posted by lazaruslong at 10:19 PM on May 8, 2007

Perhaps Telf means "cutiemish," the girl in the "Japanese" link... Though her accent just kind of sounds like a generic southern English one to me (but what do I know, my family is all from the north).
posted by incomple at 9:44 PM on May 8 [+] [!]

You're from Ohio.
posted by nonmerci at 10:22 PM on May 8, 2007

Don't blaspheme the name of Lucymisser. She's awesome.
posted by null terminated at 8:00 PM on May 8 [+] [!]

Maybe I read too much into it, but it seemed like she was creating the idea of an African based on what she thinks they do/like from her (perhaps nonexistent) travels in America. The chicken and monkey references seemed awfully ridiculous, as well as the incredibly bad acting she employed (come on, the crying?).

Cutiemish is, however, vastly more annoying, and I agree that she sounds like she's got an English accent, not an Australian one.
posted by nonmerci at 10:24 PM on May 8, 2007

Gah! I just read the link posted by gubo, and everything is in there. Just ignore me.
posted by tellurian at 10:25 PM on May 8, 2007

and I agree that she sounds like she's got an English accent, not an Australian one

That's OK. Americans can't tell the difference.
posted by pompomtom at 10:28 PM on May 8, 2007

But they're not, so screw her?

Are you egging on a dude on the internet to hunt down and kill us?
posted by phrontist at 10:30 PM on May 8, 2007

If her eyes were green/grey/blue...

How 'bout if one of her eyes was one of those colors, but the other eye kinda leaned more toward brown? What if she had a wandering eye?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:42 PM on May 8, 2007

If her eyes were green/grey/blue...

But they're not, so screw her?

My Japanese mentor was very interested in whether or not I found Japanese women attractive, and he pressed me on this issue in our first days together. He seemed satisfied that I did, or could, but insisted that it must be "except for the eyes."

Couldn't be further from the truth, and I'm an eye guy. Not to mention every tenth woman seems to have these huge freakin anime eyes that swallow your soul... if you're into that.
posted by dreamsign at 10:59 PM on May 8, 2007

Yup. Kent, England. Which according to Google is SE of London. So I'm totally wrong. Well let me say that southern English accents are also pretty darn sexy.
posted by Telf at 11:01 PM on May 8, 2007

F for Fake is a masterpiece. If you wanted to teach a class in film editing and could only choose one film as an example F for Fake could take care of business for you.

re: the hall of mirrors of the 'self-brand' in our world of 'post-cold war all is capitalism' perhaps the only way out of being a whore is to continue creating while taking a vow of poverty.
posted by jettloe at 11:22 PM on May 8, 2007

If not for the presence of Orson Welles, I'd be calling my minions in here and demanding your head. I'm talking to you vronsky.

The top down broadcast model is dying and/or dead. The respective advertising of broadcasting is also on life support. (See: podcasts, blogs, flickr)

If my tone reads superior, It's because I am. I am my own media empire and I can sell anything to anyone on the great electronic way.

My name is my brand.

Welcome to Capitalism 2.0

(And Asian chicks would be hot if they spoke with a Martian accent.)
posted by SinisterPurpose at 11:22 PM on May 8, 2007

Well let me say that southern English accents are also pretty darn sexy.

Nothing, I say, nothing is as sexy as a West Country accent. Arrrrrgh, take off yer pants, me hearty!
posted by stavrogin at 11:47 PM on May 8, 2007

reon kadena (nsfw)
posted by vronsky at 11:48 PM on May 8, 2007

I watched that whole video waiting for her to uncover her breasts. Was that some sort of test? Am I a better person now?
posted by stavrogin at 11:58 PM on May 8, 2007

For the record, I thought her accent was Aussie (or Kiwi) as well. To Americans, it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes between the UK and Down Under. (Aussies/Kiwis/Brits, I know that sounds weird, but it's just the way it is.)
posted by zardoz at 12:59 AM on May 9, 2007

Lack of exposure. Once you've heard a good bit of the Aussie buzzsaw, you won't mistake one for the other again.

I used to torture an old girlfriend occasionally by reading random snippets of whatever was to hand in an atrociously haaaash Australian accent, sometimes provoking laughter but usually also violence.

(otoh, I've more than once mistaken a French person for German or v.v., and they just love that, they do)
posted by dreamsign at 1:38 AM on May 9, 2007

She's English, not Australian. Lock her in the dark for three months and then shine the brightest light you can find right in her eyes - that's how you create an Australian accent from an English one.
posted by vbfg at 2:21 AM on May 9, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

SinisterPurpose : "I am my own media empire and I can sell anything to anyone on the great electronic way."

But are you a self-facilitating media node?
posted by Drexen at 2:36 AM on May 9, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

...that's how you create an Australian accent from an English one.

But doesn't the person have to also be descended from penal colony inmates? Just askin'...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:38 AM on May 9, 2007

She's English, not Australian.

And that's why her voice itself didn't compel me to shout KILL ME when watching her video. Her singing did, mind.
posted by dreamsign at 2:41 AM on May 9, 2007

When the producers of the Harry Potter films were trying to cast the part of Cho Chang, thousands of young Asian (or what British people refer to (sadly) as 'Oriental') actresses auditioned for the part.

The girl who got the part was chosen mainly for her thick Scottish brogue... so you guys aren't the only ones who are bowled over by the combination of Asian heritage and a British accent. It's the new Sleestak.

Just ask Nick Currie (Momus): he's somewhat of a expert (being Scottish man who only dates Asian women).
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:36 AM on May 9, 2007

thousands of young Asian (or what British people refer to (sadly) as 'Oriental'

In recent years the term 'Oriental' has indeed become a politically incorrect one, perhaps as a result of the popularity of Edward Said's book, Orientalism. As is often the case in determining which terms are kosher and which aren't, it was people in the US, I'm pretty sure, who were at the vanguard in assigning the status of inappropriate (or somehow demeaning) to the word 'oriental'. I don't particularly agree, though, that the word should've been banished. The term is in relatively wide use here in Japan, where people often use it as a descriptor for things Chinese and Southeast Asian. Anyway, one problem I personally find with using 'Asian' as a replacement for 'Oriental' is that the former is just too big a word. 'Oriental', as it had come to be used in recent times, meant East Asia, basically, but now everyone from India (or maybe Afghanistan?) all the way to Tokyo is an 'Asian'. So, I dunno, maybe it's not so sad the Brits are still using the term Oriental. It seems not such a bad qualifier, if one simply thinks of the Orient as a geographic reference. It's more specific than 'Asian'. Perhaps there have been vile and vindictive usages of the term 'Oriental' that are on a par with something like the way the word 'nigger' was used by white people, but if so I am unaware of such usage. Why, exactly did 'oriental' become a bad word? I'd be curious to hear from anyone who might be able to shed a little more light on this subject.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:03 AM on May 9, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

The top down broadcast model is dying and/or dead. The respective advertising of broadcasting is also on life support. (See: podcasts, blogs, flickr)

Have we reached the point yet where the least watched network television show gets less eyes than the most read blog? Do more people read Gawker than watch (or rather watched) Andy Barker, P.I.? My gut says no, but I don't have numbers.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 4:25 AM on May 9, 2007

Well, I'd love it if the most-watched TV show got fewer eyes than the least-read 'blog...keep on dreaming, Pax...
posted by pax digita at 5:05 AM on May 9, 2007

fair suck of the sav dreamsign, aussie sheilas are top sorts with bonza little accents.

Kiwi woman on the other hand may be considered... a little... sheepish
posted by mattoxic at 5:26 AM on May 9, 2007

Perhaps there have been vile and vindictive usages of the term 'Oriental' that are on a par with something like the way the word 'nigger' was used by white people, but if so I am unaware of such usage. Why, exactly did 'oriental' become a bad word?

I was told, by someone who had just finished reading the seminal anti-the-word-Oriental book that you mentioned, that it was because "Oriental" derives from a word meaning "foreigner".

This didn't actually seem all that horrible to me, but hey, whatever. In any case, though, it's blatantly false.

"Orient" and "occident" derive from the Latin "oriri" and "occidere", which respectively mean "to rise" and "to go down".

I leave it as an exercise to the reader how "to rise" and "to go down" might become broad names for people from certain parts of the world, but here's a hint: It's not even remotely offensive.

Anyway, I'm down with calling people whatever they want to be called, but I think that the answer to your question is "It became a bad word because some people wanted to be offended, and other people believed their lies".
posted by Flunkie at 5:39 AM on May 9, 2007

thousands of young Asian (or what British people refer to (sadly) as 'Oriental'

The hopelessly inadequate term 'Asian' is already taken by south Asian people, i.e Indians and Pakistanis, etc, and would confuse the fsck out of Brits if we attempted to apply it to a whole different bunch of Asians altogether.
posted by vbfg at 5:42 AM on May 9, 2007

...besides, as an employee of a university with 20% of its students visiting from China, I don't recall ever hearing anyone refer to anyone as oriental.
posted by vbfg at 5:44 AM on May 9, 2007

Before this gets any further - I would like to say that I'm fine with 'Oriental' these days (I've gotten used to hearing it, if not using it myself). It's in use in the UK and is not meant in a derogatory way.

The word I can't get used to (as an American living here) is 'Chinky' - which is used to describe a Chinese take-away restaurant. It's not used everywhere by everyone, but I certainly do hear people use it (especially up north). Again, it's probably not meant in a derogatory way, but it's very, very hard for me to get used to hearing people say it so lightly.
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:17 AM on May 9, 2007

vbfg wrote: The hopelessly inadequate term 'Asian' is already taken by south Asian people, i.e Indians and Pakistanis, etc, and would confuse the fsck out of Brits if we attempted to apply it to a whole different bunch of Asians altogether.


I know, I know... it's very hard to overcome these things. Americans are (usually) taught that it's an epithet of some sort. It's also hard for most of us to recognise whether someone is Japanese / Chinese / Korean / etc - so it's hard to be as specific (which would render all this moot).

Refer to: alllooksame.com - maybe we need an allsoundsame.com for Kiwis, Aussies, and Brits ??

However people self-identify is fine with me, but it's hard to find a general term that works everywhere.

Before this gets all flame-tastic, I should say that I've been through all this before elsewhere on the net.
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:24 AM on May 9, 2007

flapjax - I hesitate to point to a wiki, but... Points to a wiki.

I will always use the term to refer to a thing and not a person... but I've never used the word the way it's sometimes used here.
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:30 AM on May 9, 2007

The hopelessly inadequate term 'Asian' is already taken by south Asian people, i.e Indians and Pakistanis, etc, and would confuse the fsck out of Brits if we attempted to apply it to a whole different bunch of Asians altogether.

Heh, here in Australia I've never heard anyone refer to Indians/Pakistanis/etc as Asian. Asian here means Japan/China/Korea/Vietnam/Thailand etc. I've also never heard anyone use the term "oriental" in any manner.

And the chick in that second video so OBVIOUSLY has an English accent. It's not even close to an Australian one!
posted by VirtualWolf at 6:48 AM on May 9, 2007

...although to be fair, I really cannot pick the difference between American and Canadian accents.

Anyone who can, and can clearly tell the difference between Australian/English/Kiwi/South African accents, is there as large a difference between Canadian and American accents as there is between ours?
posted by VirtualWolf at 6:50 AM on May 9, 2007

VirtualWolf,

I maintain that there are just as many, but due to the sheer size of the US, the differences are much more spread out and a little harder to discern.

Because the UK is so compact and the differences between neighboring accents is often so distinct, one is given the false impression that there are MORE. If you do the maths, though, you'll soon come to the right conclusion: there is no fucking way that a place like North America, with its huge, ethnically diverse population, couldn't have just as many (if not more) different variations.

[oddly, I've also discussed this previously in a UK/US comm, and it also ended in tears]
posted by chuckdarwin at 7:17 AM on May 9, 2007

Oh, crap! I misread your question, VW! Allow me to amend my answer, please:

IMO, the differences between American and Canadian accents can't be easily compared because there are too many types of American and Canadian accents.

If there was one of each, you could compare... but there are hundreds of American accents and hundred of Canadian accents and near the border, they bleed into each other.
posted by chuckdarwin at 7:19 AM on May 9, 2007

Speech Accent Archive
posted by chuckdarwin at 7:22 AM on May 9, 2007 [4 favorites has favorites]

I knew a Kiwi family who claimed they could identify something like 8 Canadian accents, so I'm guessing yes, but that's a heavy level of familiarity. Me, I could do maybe 5 -- maritime, Quebecois, Ontario, MB/Sask/AB and BC. And hey, I'm forgetting completely about the north. American accents -- I could probably distinguish a half dozen though I couldn't necessarily identify them all.

And yeah, "Oriental" gets used a lot in Asia, though usually with regard to things rather than people. Out of habit I call anyone from the region whose particular ethnicity or nationality I don't know "Asian" and nobody bats an eye.

on preview: yes to bleeding across the border. Big countries means more in common just across the border than elsewhere in your own country. The prairie folk (ND, SD, Minn, MN, SK), western (MO, AB) and coastal (WA, OR, BC) folk tend to sound alike, I find.
posted by dreamsign at 7:22 AM on May 9, 2007

Hey, supercool link, chuckdarwin!
posted by dreamsign at 7:23 AM on May 9, 2007

and I agree that she sounds like she's got an English accent, not an Australian one

That's OK. Americans can't tell the difference.
posted by pompomtom at 10:28 PM on May 8 [+] [!]

Yup. Kent, England. Which according to Google is SE of London. So I'm totally wrong. Well let me say that southern English accents are also pretty darn sexy.
posted by Telf at 11:01 PM on May 8 [+] [!]

Oh really, pompomtom? It's the Americans who can't tell the difference? :)
posted by nonmerci at 8:11 AM on May 9, 2007

...and the whole F for Fake element of this post leads back to the current release The Hoax. Watch this space for a permalink to a full review of that fine film on Oja Kodar's blog.
posted by Pliskie at 10:08 AM on May 9, 2007

If I was smart enough to understand this I think it might be cool. I'll forward it to one of my smart friends so they can explain it to me.
posted by tkchrist at 10:27 AM on May 9, 2007

psst - people use youtube to sell you stuff
posted by chuckdarwin at 10:50 AM on May 9, 2007

But are you a self-facilitating media node?

Wow. I'm actually proud I don't know what that means.

Have we reached the point yet where the least watched network television show gets less eyes than the most read blog? Do more people read Gawker than watch (or rather watched) Andy Barker, P.I.? My gut says no, but I don't have numbers.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:25 AM on May 9

I think the more appropriately tuned question would be: Do more people look at Google News (or any other aggregator for that matter) in a day than read their local newspaper. I think the answer is YES. I spend more time listening to podcasts than I do terrestrial (or satellite) radio. I watch more Youtube videos per week than I watch network television. In fact, thanks to CBS embracing Youtube, I use Youtube to tell me when to watch network television.

Also, I can describe in one word the edge that internet media has over traditional broadcasters: Perpetuity.

What did your local news broadcast lead with on November 15th of 2005? Here's what some random blogger said.

Are newspapers, broadcast television, and terrestrial radio going to fade into nothingness any day now? Probably not.
They're just going to be the Roger Clinton in the equation.
posted by SinisterPurpose at 10:58 AM on May 9, 2007

psst - people use youtube to sell you stuff

Oh. Okay.

Orson Wells... Um. Whut?
posted by tkchrist at 11:29 AM on May 9, 2007

Tk.. don't make me give you a fucken glassing. Cause I'll do it brah.

I mean, cute asian chicks, Orson Welles and sleestaks? What more could you ask for?
posted by vronsky at 2:04 PM on May 9, 2007

"I watched that whole video waiting for her to uncover her breasts. Was that some sort of test? Am I a better person now?"

It's called softcore stavrogin. It is what all the cool kids are into these days. Hardcore is for pervs and losers, and totally passe. Get with it broseph.
posted by vronsky at 2:10 PM on May 9, 2007

Yeah, chuckd, that Accent Archive link is great! Thanks for that!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:23 PM on May 9, 2007

but there are hundreds of American accents and hundred of Canadian accents and near the border, they bleed into each other.

This is an overstatement. You'll find a lot more variety in England alone, where regional accents have been brewing for hundreds of years. America--not so long.
posted by zardoz at 4:48 PM on May 9, 2007

I don't understand any of this.

One of my biggest crushes was a girl from Long Island who was born in Korea and adopted by Sicilians; she sounded very Jewish.

A: So they don't leave snail tracks.
posted by davy at 5:15 PM on May 9, 2007

Cutiemish's accent reminded me of one of the Spice Girls, or Liz Hurley in the Austin Powers films.
posted by vronsky at 6:04 PM on May 9, 2007

Momus sums up nicely in his comments -

The "selling snake oil you believe in" thing is very Jeff Koons, too. I think such conviction is essential to the really good bluffer -- the fact that it isn't a bluff at all. And I like the concept of the self-constructed self being more real than the self constructed for one by others. Agreed, and I think the essential idea here is that there is no natural self, and that the self is created by a great many people, and that there's a battle of interpretation going on which it takes skill to win.
posted by vronsky at 8:01 PM on May 9, 2007

Let us end with some MOM U S shall we.
posted by vronsky at 8:48 PM on May 9, 2007

While we're on the subject of Japanese and accents. My Japanese housemate tells me that there are no accents in Japan. She says that you can only tell which area someone comes from when they use an idiom peculiar to their district.
posted by tellurian at 9:40 PM on May 9, 2007

Tellurian: That's totally untrue, which makes it really, really odd that your housemate, being Japanese, would say it. Perhaps they just haven't been exposed to much outside of Tokyo? Japanese regional dialects feature different idioms, different vocabulary, different accents, and different intonations. The idiom jump is just the most obvious.
posted by Bugbread at 12:39 AM on May 10, 2007

Personally I'm always faintly surprised when Chinese people don't have really thick Scouse accents, just because I didn't meet a Chinese person who didn't have a Scouse accent until I was about 20.

As for the Oriental thing - I'm really surprised by that, since the only time I've ever heard that used is by old duffers or in dusty textbooks. (In general, I think people tend to say Chinese, Japanese, etc. as appropriate, or assume everyone from that part of the world is Chinese.)

'Chinky' for Chinese take-away is only used by the sort of people who also refer to 'Paki shops' and start a lot of sentences with 'I'm not racist, but...'.
posted by jack_mo at 10:05 AM on May 10, 2007

I found it hard to believe too, bugbread. It came up while we were watching a British TV show (The Bill) and she was astounded to find out that there are different accents within the same city (London). We discussed it at length because I wasn't sure if we were talking about the same thing (part of the reason she's in Australia is to improve her English, which is a little shaky). I asked questions like, "So a country farmer speaks the same as a businessman in Tokyo"? and "Someone from Hokkaido sounds the same as someone from Okinawa"? she assured me that was the case.
posted by tellurian at 6:40 PM on May 10, 2007

I will say that the area of each accent is much bigger in Japan than in the UK, though. For example, inside Tokyo proper, there is only one accent. Once you add the prefectures immediately around Tokyo (Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, etc.), you're still dealing with only one accent, but you may have a few regional words (they may use a certain word/expression more in Chiba than Saitama, etc.). Just a little, mind you, we're not talking Cockney levels of vocab change. Once you start getting your net wider, you'll come across more and more variances in terminology, and you'll start getting differences in accent. Up north you start getting an accent that sounds like the speaker has a stuffed nose, which (I believe) is due to people trying to avoid speaking through their nose to avoid the cold air getting in. To the west (Kansai), you get similar pronunciation with different intonation (i.e. the consonants sound the same, the vowels sound the same, but the stressES fall on diffERent parts of the senTENCE), and a whole lot of different vocabulary/ways of conjugating verbs/etc. But when you go into the countryside, you'll generally get both different vocab/conjugations/intonations AND accents.

What I do notice, however, is that the giveaway is the idiom. In the UK, you might hear a pronunciation and think "Ah, he's a Glaswegian". In Japan, you're far more likely to hear a certain word and think "Ah, he's from Hiroshima", as opposed to the accent itself.
posted by Bugbread at 4:04 PM on May 11, 2007

Fascinating. Thanks bugbread. I'll show her this tonight and post her response.
posted by tellurian at 10:29 PM on May 11, 2007

sticks tongue out at Jessamyn. Give art a chance. Why does art need to make sense? C'mon.

Art Car The Alexander Calder BMW is amazing

Jenny Holzer
posted by vronsky at 9:28 PM on May 12, 2007

Okay bugbread, she pretty much agrees with what you wrote. It was a misunderstanding on my part that there are no accents at all. She was trying to get across what you said in your last paragraph. For example, she says that people from Fukuoka have a thick accent but they can disguise (I don't think she really meant 'disguise' here, but I had trouble working out what it was she was trying to say) it quite easily. The cues she gets are more likely to be the use of 'be' (she's from Tochigi), 'jaken' - Hiroshima, 'sa' - Okinawa, etc.
posted by tellurian at 5:20 PM on May 13, 2007