I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful
if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.
but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.
the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.
The thing that just destroys me about this, though -- we think of Shakespearean language as being high-cultured, and intellectual, and somewhat inaccessible. And I know people think of Southerners as being ill-educated (which...let's be fair, most are, but not the way it's said). But that whole speech, unaltered, is so authentically Southern. And the thing is: Leaning into that language really amps the mood, in metalanguage. I'm not really sure how to explain it except... like... "Thrice" is not a word you hear in common speech...unless you're in the South and someone is trying to Make A Fucking Point.
Anyway. This was amazing and I want a revival of Shakespeare As Southern Gothic.
One of the lovely things about this, and one of the reasons it works so well, is that from what we can piece together of how Shakespeare was originally pronounced, it leans more towards an American southern accent than it does towards a modern British RP.
In addition, in the evolution of the English language in america, the south has retained many of the words, expressions, and cadences from the Renaissance/Elizabethan English spoken by the original British colonists.
One of the biggest examples of this is that the south still uses “O!”/“Oh!” In sentences, especially in multi-tone and multi-syllable varieties. We’ve lost that in other parts of the country (except in some specific pocket communities). But in the south on the whole? Still there. People in California or Chicago don’t generally say things like “why, oh why?” Or “oh bless your heart” or “Oh! Now why you gotta do a thing like that?!” But people from the south still do.
I teach, direct, and dramaturg Shakespeare for a living. When people are struggling with the “heightened” language, especially in “O” heavy plays like R&J and Hamlet, a frequent exercise I have them do is to run the scene once in a southern accent. You wouldn’t believe the way it opens them up and gives their contemporary brains an insight into ways to use that language without it being stiff and fake. Do the Balcony scene in a southern accent- you’ll never see it the same way again.
This guy is also doing two things that are absolutely spot-on for this speech:
First, he’s using the rhetorical figures Shakespeare gave him! The repetition of “ambition” and “Brutus is an honorable man”, the logos with which he presents his argument, the use of juxtaposition and antitheses (“poor have cried/caesar hath wept”, etc). You would not believe how many RADA/Carnegie/LAMDA/Yale trained actors blow past those, and how much of my career I spend pointing it out and making them put it back in.
Second, he’s playing the situation of the speech and character exactly right. This speech is hard not just because it’s famous, but because linguistically and rhetorically it’s a better speech than Brutus’ speech and in the context of the play, Brutus is the one who is considered a great orator. Brutus’ speech is fiery passion and grandstanding, working the crowd, etc. Anthony is not a man of speeches (“I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man”) His toastmaster skills are not what Brutus’ are, but he speaks from his heart (his turn into verse in this scene from Brutus’ prose is brilliant) and lays out such a reasonable, logical argument that the people are moved anyway. I completely believe that in this guy’s performance. A plain, blunt, honest speaker. Exactly what Anthony should be.
TLDR: Shakespeare is my job and this is 100% a good take on this speech.
definitely one of the challenges I have with reading Shakespeare is that it sounds so weird to me. “The good is oft interr’d with their bones”?? Who talks like that?
Well,,, rednecks. Despite being Elizabethan English, none of this is really out of character for a man with that accent; southern american English has retained not only (I am told) the accent of Shakespeare, and the “Oh!” speech patterns, but also so many of the little linguistic patterns: parenthetic repetition (“so are they all - all honorable men”), speaking formally when deeply emotional, getting more and more sarcastic and passive-aggressive as time goes on, etc.
Someone sent this to me a while ago and I dropped it in my drafts because I wanted to comment on how RIGHT this sounded but I couldn't express why it sounded right, so I'm glad other people have picked it up
There's a theory that Appalachian English in particular retains a lot of the qualities present in Shakespearean english that are now gone elsewhere. Thinking of my Mamaw, who says "twice't" instead of twice and other things like that...
First of all, this is brilliant acting. Second of all, the language analysis above is great for anyone interested in it. And lastly, this video, to me, does a great job of pointing out the effect of type of media on the story you're trying to tell. Shakespeare's plays work best as plays. Not as scripts, not as movies. Plays.
This is the thing that drives me nuts about Shakespeare always being filmed in RP in the past. The actors weren't upper class. They were working in theatres. They had regional and scattered accents. Shakespeare was from Stratford. THere's a whole bunch of of the rhyming structures in the plays don't work in RP accents, because the emphasis and intonation of a sound is different for people with non-RP accents.
There was an incredible version of Julius Caesar done by the BBC a few years ago set in modern Africa and once again, their accents worked beautifully with the language
This is one of the most popular theories on how tonal languages developed! In other words, the natural pitch of a vowel in different contexts is reinterpreted as meaningful to subsequent generations. The consonant is also dropped during this development, leading to canonical CV syllable structures.
On Connor Storrie’s excellent Russian in HR (from a linguist)
Ok it’s time to put my Russian and linguistics (and Slavic linguistics) degrees to work and tell you why Connor Storrie’s Russian and accent work in this show is so freaking good. (Links added for those who want more info about stuff.) Hey other linguists — I’m playing fast and loose with notation here, ok, we’re not doing phonemes and IPA.
We’re going to go over overall mouth shape, palatalization, lack of aspiration, vowel reduction, and intonation with examples from Ilya’s dialogue! I’m going to talk about this from the perspective of an English speaker learning Russian since that’s what Connor (and I) did. Here we go.
1. Overall mouth shape
Every language has what you could think of as its own neutral or resting mouth position (aka, basis of articulation). One way to think of this is what the “I’m thinking” noise is — in English it’s uhh, in Spanish it’s often ehh. In Russian it’s mmm or ehhh or ahhh. The other thing is that the mouth typically does not open as much vertically when speaking Russian as when speaking English, but rather wider (horizontally).
Connor is doing a good job of maintaining a more Russian resting position (and I have a theory that this is one of the reasons his face looks so different as Ilya).
You can see Connor doing this when he says “ehh no” to Shane about whether this is his first time with a man in episode 1.
Also when he’s yelling at Alexei during the funeral in episode 5, we get to see him head on speaking Russian for an extended time, and you can see he is opening his mouth wider but not taller.
2. Palatalization
Every consonant has a place of articulation in your mouth, aka a place where your tongue touches the inside of your mouth or is positioned so that the air flows or is stopped in such a way as to make the sound. Making sounds is all about changing how air flows through our vocal tracts (throat, mouth, nose).
For example, in English ‘t’ and ‘d’ are both alveolar sounds made by touching the tip of your tongue to the hard palate behind your teeth. In Spanish those same sounds are dental, so you touch the tongue to the teeth to make the sound. In Russian you touch the hard palate and the teeth at once - the sounds are dental and alveolar.
In Russian consonants are sometimes palatalized. This means that there is a regular version — for ‘t’, touching the tip of the tongue to the teeth and hard palate. For regular “l”, touching the tip of the tongue to the hard palate or right behind your teeth and resting the body of the tongue along the bottom of the mouth, etc.
Then some consonants have a palatalized version, which happens before certain vowels. You lift the middle of your tongue and use it as the point of contact with the roof of your mouth instead of the tip. So for palatalized ‘t’, the middle of your tongue touches the ridge of the hard palate, and the tip of your tongue moves down to rest behind your bottom teeth. For ‘l’, the same.
In Russian the distinction is meaning bearing. So mat (regular t) and mat’ (palatalized t)’ are different words (cursing and mother, respectively). Another explanation here. Here’s an IPA chart with animation and videos of sounds being articulated. Try clicking on the ‘t’.
Connor is doing this. He doesn’t hit every single palatalized consonant but I’d say he’s hitting 85-90% of them. It’s wild! He was clearly taught by sound/phonetically which is great. But Americans often have trouble learning palatalization as a meaning bearing sound difference (I know this because I’ve taught Russian many times and there are studies) and he’s knocking it out of the park for someone who doesn’t speak the language.
You can hear it in his very careful pronunciation of I love you to Shane in ep6 - palatalized consonants in this phrase are the t, b, l, and b and l together: я тебя люблю/ ya tebya lyublyu.
Also every time he says the word хрень/ khren’ (shit/fuck) - he says this in episode 1 on the phone with Alexei twice and in the monologue to Shane in episode 5. The kh, r, and n are all palatalized, he nails it.
He even gets it in some tricky spots:
In episode 1 on the phone with Alexei with the baby crying in the background, he says the words для/ dlya (for) and блядь/ blyad’ (fuck). These are both notoriously tricky for English speakers learning Russian because every single consonant is palatalized. He gets both right.
He says the word больше/ bol’she (more) a lot during his monologue to Shane in episode 5 and nails the tricky palatalized ‘l’ in the middle every time.
3. Lack of aspiration
In English we have some aspirated consonants. The means that when we say them we sometimes produce a little puff of air with them: p, t, k. The aren’t aspirated 100% of the time but we don’t use aspiration for meaning like some languages do (ex. In Hindi kal (no aspiration) and khal (aspirated k) are two different words (time, skin)).
In Russian these sounds (p, t, k) are not aspirated. It’s difficult for English speakers to pick up this difference a lot of the time because it’s so subtle and hard to self monitor when you’ve never had to do it before.
You can feel it by putting your hand or a piece of paper in front of your mouth and saying “tik tok” or “cat”, you’ll probably notice the little air puffs.
In Russian similar words have no aspiration-так/ tak (‘so’) and кот/ kot (‘cat’)
Connor is doing this pretty well. He struggles with non-aspirated ‘t’, which is pretty normal. He’s better with p and k.
The times his “okay” sounds really Russian? Not aspirating the k is part of that.
He does a good job not aspirating the k sound in fuck in English, which adds to his accent.
In episode 1 he asks Alexei on the phone (when the baby is crying) как папа/ kak papa (how is dad), and overall does a good job with not aspirating any of those k’s or p’s.
His non-aspiration is pretty good overall in the long monologue with Shane in episode 5.
In my experience as someone who learned Russian as a second language and then has taught it to others, it feels a little bit like swallowing back or speaking from the back of your mouth to avoid aspirating. Or try putting another sound in front of the aspirated letter. (ex. In English, peak vs speak - the p in speak is not aspirated)
4. Correct vowel reduction, mostly
In Russian, word stress affects vowel sounds. In the syllable that is stressed (emphasized), the vowel has its most typical sound. In all of the unstressed syllables around it, the vowel sounds “reduce.”
Ex. the word for milk is молоко/ ‘moloko’ and the last syllable “ko” is stressed/where you will put the emphasis. The other two o’s don’t sound like o’s as a result. Correct pronunciation of this word is more like muh-lah-koh. As you get farther from the stressed syllable in either direction, the vowels get more reduced (o reduces to “ah” and then ə (“uh”) when fully reduced). (Tricky note: in this word the first syllable, muh, isn’t as reduced as it could be because it’s first, so it gets a little boost from that.)
Connor is doing this pretty beautifully throughout. Even when the consonant palatalization or the vowel quality is a little off, he’s knocking vowel reduction out of the park, for the most part. I imagine this is because he learned it phonetically.
Every time he says отец/ otets (father), he correctly pronounces the ‘o’ as ‘ah’.
There are many good examples in episode 1, but here’s a couple that stood out to me — when he’s watching Shane speak French, he says просто отлично/ prosto otlichno (just perfect/excellent) and correctly pronounces it “prostuh ahtlichnuh”.
He says the word теперь/ teper’ (now) a couple of times, and correctly pronounces the first e more like i (и).
When he and Sveta are talking about the ASG and votes in episode 4 on the bed, he says голосовали/ golosovali (they voted) and correctly reduces all 3 o’s, since the syllable ‘va’ has the stress: “guhluhsahvali”
5. Intonation of questions, sentences
Something you might know about English is that yes/no questions have rising intonation, aka we contour our pitch/voices up at the end. Like if I asked you “do you know the way to the store?” I would raise my intonation/pitch at the end to indicate it is a question. We also use falling intonation but often differently from Russian.
In many of the situations where we use rising intonation in English (including yes/no questions), Russian uses falling intonation. So the question goes down at the end instead of up.
There’s more to it than this but you can hear Connor do this very clearly when he asks Svetlana questions.
In episode 5, he asks her if Shane is also mediocre when they’re talking about other players on the bed before the ASG. And he uses falling intonation perfectly.
In episode 2 he says “this year?” When Sveta is telling him he could win the cup that year. His intonation falls perfectly again - а этом году? / v etom godu?
He also says a word in ep1 that I don’t think gets translated (the subtitles say “speaking Russian”) and his intonation is just so good - Неужели/ neuzheli (really). (His palatalization here is also great!) He says it to Shane when Shane asked him not to tell anyone in the first hotel room together.
Anyway. Connor, as we know, is hitting it out of the park with his Russian, and here are some of the reasons why. He picked up palatalization, mouth position, non-aspiration, intonation, and vowel reduction!! Like, damn.
Do you pay attention to the physical sensation of speaking/singing/shouting?
Yes
No
I’m Deaf
I’m bald/nuance/uwu click poll
Voting ended onAug 18, 2025
Feel free to elaborate/explain yourself. I’m hard of hearing and sometimes have to judge my volume by touching my neck, and I’m wondering if other people pay attention to/notice this in themselves. Please reblog for a larger sample size!
hey man. nice regional dialect. mind if i apply some baseless assumptions about your personhood to it? i was also gonna prescribe morality to it as well. if that’s cool with you
That ol’ chart of mine makes the rounds online periodically and it drives me crazy because it’s frankly not very good. So, I finally got around to remaking it.
I doubt this will get anywhere near as popular, but I wanted to make it.
Good reference for animation, comics, and for visualizing phonetics!
the most disorienting thing thats ever happened to me was when a linguistics major stopped in the middle of our conversation, looked me in the eye, and said, "you have a very interesting vernacular. were you on tumblr in 2014?" and i had to just stand there and process that one for a good ten seconds
#i was in a car with a linguist i had never met before the car trip and like half an hour in he looked at me#after i finished describing a geology thing that was happening out the window and asked if i'd ever spent much time on tumblr#the fuckor of it all#and then we spent six more hours driving#it sure does leave linguistic markers! i'm not sure i'm good with it (tags via @thoughtsformtheuniverse)
Hi! I was wondering if you please explain the function of "it" in sentence "It behooves the athlete to keep his grades up." What is "it"? Thank You!
it's a dummy pronoun or dummy subject! grammatically, english can't have an empty space where the subject should be, so in cases where there isn't really a referent we just plug in this semantically empty word for the syntactic vibe.
dummy pronouns, unlike regular pronouns, actually specifically do not have a referent! try replacing "it" in the ask with this phrase, and you get:
*the risk of losing a scholarship behooves the athlete to keep his grades up
which doesn't grammatically make sense – behoove doesn't take a subject that way! (which is why i wrote it with an asterisk; that's how an ungrammatical utterance is marked in linguistics literature.) "the risk of losing a scholarship" might be an implication of the statement, but you can't slot it in there without restructuring the entire phrase.
the reputations Scots and Dutch have as being "English but funny" are somewhat Problematic but usually well-meaning, and only sometimes are representative of a more general xenophobic attitude. every post on the anglo internet showing examples of Naija (Nigerian Pidgin/Creole) text is doomed to have the worst comments and replies of all time
Antarctica is a bleak, remote and dark place during the winter, but a handful of people each year brave the conditions to live in almost tot
"Harrington and his colleagues used computational models to predict how this melting pot of winterers might influence one another. The model used recordings made before the winterers left to simulate what might happen to their accents as they spent time together. Their prediction was unerringly accurate, even if it did exaggerate the effects compared to what happened in real life. The winterers themselves wouldn't have noticed either as they happened over time. But when the sounds were analysed the changes could be seen within the acoustic waves."
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