Daphne Moon is supposed to be from Manchester, but her accent is definitely NOT mancunian. This 'Manchester' idea is made even more farcical when Daphne's brother arrives for her wedding, along with his COCKNEY accent. Call me crazy, but seeing as the actor who plays Frasier's dad is from Manchester, couldn't they have got the accent slightly closer?
I am from Greater Manchester and I totally agree with you that they cannot possibly think that Daphne's accent is Mancunian, however, there are such things as elocution lessons...
I think that, with respect to the cockey brother, American viewers just think all English accents are the same, I for one can't tell the difference between people from different American states.
True. I'm American and I can TOTALLY not tell the difference between English accents except for Cockney. Besides that one, they all sound the same to me just like all American accents sound the same to you. Weird, huh?
Ok, I'm not going to try to defend the Mockney accent, that's just something that happens way too often in all American shows... I was actually pretty impressed with Daphnes accent for a few reasons - first IT ISN'T COCKNEY! It's nice to see an American show admitting that there are actually other regional accents in the UK. I have to agree that it's definitely not central Manchester, it actually sounds more East Lancashire, maybe the Oldham or Ashton-Under-Lyne area - which brings me to my point. I'm Lancastrian myself and have an accent not much different from Daphnes (except mine is real) and I live abroad, like Daphne (in Germany but the effect's the same). After a while I got sick of explaining the locality of such metropoli as Rochdale, Oldham and Bury - so now, when I'm asked out of politeness / conversation making where I'm from, I say Manchester, since that's the nearest big city that people have commonly heard of! In my opinion, Daphne's just doing the same; she's a Lancashire lass!
I'm British and i don't think that it really matters obviously Jane Leeves (daphne) is English, but none of the actors who play her brothers are, Anthony Lapaglia is Australian, Richard E Grant is from Swaziland and Robbie Coltrane is Scottish so it was hard for all of them to do a british accent never mind a specific regional one.
heck, im american and i can berely tell which states people are from except places like "new england" or "the south." thats about the extent of it let alone noticing the different english accents. a slip up but not a very obvious one for the average person.
actually mcginzo, John Mahoney was raised in Manchester. When i Googled him i found a number of bio's saying he was. He was only born in Blackpool because of what was going on in Manchester at the time. His mother went back as soon as he was born.
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