There will be retroflexion

Filed under:Media — posted by squires on 1/29/2008 @ 9:29 am

Has anyone else seen There Will Be Blood yet? Daniel Day-Lewis’s dialect sounds more-than-vaguely like Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery…discuss.

No seriously, has anyone thought about or read a decent account of what historical basis there is for DDL’s linguistic portrayal? (Immigration patterns, migration patterns, etc…) It’s got some interesting features, including retroflex fricatives, not much postvocalic /r/, and some vowels way further back than I’d expect. Also, William Bandy sounds like he’s from Michigan but then says “water” like he’s from Jersey (nowadays). What?

On a fairly related note, I’m reading Thomas Paul Bonfiglio’s Race and the Rise of the American Standard - *hightly* recommended.

4 comments »

  1. Videos’re no longer available. :(

    Comment by Therese — 1/30/2008 @ 1:55 am

  2. I take that back — they *are* available. Error on my side. Sorry!

    Comment by Therese — 1/30/2008 @ 1:57 am

  3. Incidentally, a commenter at Ken Jennings’ blog pointed out that THERE WILL BE BLOOD is an anagram of ROBBED THE OIL WELL.

    Comment by Skullturf Q. Beavispants — 2/2/2008 @ 9:52 pm

  4. I read somewhere, though of course I can’t find it now, that he watched a number of videos (of senators? of oil men?) shot at about that time.

    Comment by John — 2/21/2008 @ 11:48 am

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