Accents and Dialects in Movies

Just figured I'd type out a little bit about the use of accents and dialects in movies and give my feedback on their accuracy. If you're studying a particular accent or dialect, I recommend watching the following:

First off, I'd like to distinguish the difference between "accent" and "dialect" - as far as linguists are concerned, the two terms may as well be meaningless except within the context of describing them to someone who doesn't know much about linguistics. And I'm not trying to put down the layman, of course, but just to be clear - to linguists, there is no such thing as a "language" - meaning that to a linguist, languages don't exist as the kind of monolithic structures we think of them as when we look at them on the printed page - writing is NOT language, and never was. It does, however, impress upon us the notion that a language is ONE thing, and that variations are aberrant forms of the printed standard. It's just not true. Languages exist as bundles of related but separate variations. It's the case with ALL languages, and it's the case with English today.

Theatrically, however, it does help to make a clear distinction between what should be looked upon as a "dialect" and an "accent". In theatrical terms, a "dialect" is a variation of a language as spoken by a NATIVE speaker. That means that following variations of English should be looked upon as dialects: Estuary English, Cockney, West Country varieties (such as Hampshire and Bristol), Welsh English, Scouse (spoken in Liverpool), Yorkshire, Mancunian (spoken in Manchester), Glaswegian, Hiberno English (aka Irish English), East Anglian varieties, the many, many Scottish English varieties, etc. In America, there is New York, Bostonian, Mountain Southern, Deep Southern, Texan, Californian, Inland Northern (Chicago, Detroit), Northern/Canadian, Downeast New England, etc. In the southern hemisphere there is the many takes on Australian English, and South African English.
These are DIALECTS of English, spoken by native speakers. The "mistakes" often attributed to these forms are not actually mistakes - they are features. A native speaker of English hailing from Bristol is NOT making a mistake when he says "he be" instead of "he is" - that's a feature of West Country English that comes down directly from West Saxon - likewise, a Cockney speaker who pronounces "threw" as "frew" is not mispronouncing the word - he's pronouncing in perfect phonological step with Cockney's direct ancestor, Kentish.

Accented English, to contrast, is English spoken as a second language with accented tones from the speaker's first language.

New York
There are movies that use this dialect even where it shouldn't be present (a few of the actors in Predator 2, set in LA, come to mind - the guy playing the police chief, in particular) - if you can't find a movie featuring New York speakers, you clearly aren't looking hard enough.
To hear the New York accent imitated at its finest, look to movies such as The Godfather, Goodfellas, Ghostbusters, and Gangs of New York - Daniel Day Lewis' NY imitation is NAILED down.

Boston
Yeah of course we all know about The Departed - Matt Damon, having been born and raised in Boston, of course speaks it perfectly. Mark Wahlberg also performs flawlessly. DiCaprio does a pretty decent job, but at times it sounds sort of "not quite right" (the "no waahyiz!" line comes to mind as being WAY overstressed). By and large, he pulls it off nicely. The Southie way of speaking isn't the easiest to put on. I would have expected a little better of Sheen... I read a guy's forum post once who thought he sounded like a Kennedy - I agree. Having played one once though, I suppose that could be expected. The problem is - and this was addressed by the guy's post as well - nobody's sposed to sound like a Kennedy except the Kennedys.

Then there's Good Will Hunting, often cited as another textbook example of Boston dialects used in film. I would agree with this, since there's a perfect contrast made between good imitations (Matt and Ben's dialects are, of course, perfectly done) and bad imitations (Robin's is a goofy sounding mix of Californian, New York and really overdone Bostonian "-ar" sounds - basically he gets every sound wrong except that one, and he really overblows the one he does right).

Cockney
One of the most commonly imitated - and butchered - dialects is Cockney. Dick van Dyke's Cockney in Marry Poppins is legendarily bad. One of the most difficult aspects of Cockney for Americans to nail down is the resonance - it's actually very similar to New York's resonance, with words being pronounced very forwardly in the mouth, and down, with a lot of action from the lower jaw. Most American varieties resonate at a more or less centered position, which is why van Dyke's impersonation sounds so peculiar.

The best way to hear Cockney speech in its truest glory is to simply watch movies based in London that are also FILMED in London by real Londoners. On that note, Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smokin' Barrels by Guy Ritchie are the two best presentations of modern Cockney that I've ever seen. The accents are all genuine (except for Brad Pitt's and Benitio del Toro's, but I'll cover that in a second), and have lots of variation (listen, for example, to the subtle differences between the speech patterns of Bricktop, Tommy, Turkish, Vincent and Sol. They're all speaking Cockney, but slightly different versions of it. It is true, there is more than one spin on Cockney speech. The variations aren't nearly as intense today as they used to be, but they are still there. Brad Pitt and del Toro played non-Cockney characters; Pitt was an Irish Traveler (also known as Pikers, Pikeys, or, incorrectly, Gypsies) whose speech was meant to be barely comprehensible - he is actually speaking lines, by the way - none of his lines are gibberish. Dennis Farina sports his native accent, Chicago, all through the movie, and is an excellent example of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in action.

West Counties England
Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, made by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, are supreme examples of the West County dialects. Pegg hails from the westerncounty Gloucestershire, and bases his movies there. Characteristic of the dialects is the distinct rhoticity present in virtually all positions. The west counties, by the way, also birthed what we know today as the "pirate accent". The essential pronunciation is straight out of places like Hampshire, Bristol, and Cornwall, but obviously exaggerated. West county dialects were also the basis for today's Irish dialects, stemming from long-past migrations of people from the west counties to Ireland. Compare the pronunciations - the many similarities will show themselves in very short order.

Upper Central Midwest United States
The best movie to watch for the quintessential portrayal of this dialect is Fargo, without question. Aside from being (in my opinion) one of the best movies ever made, the use of the dialect here is second to none. It's extremely distinctive and shows many influences from the ancestral origins of the people who live there. Such ancestry includes Scandinavian, German, Finnish, and