Watching “Beyond Paradise” . Quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. "History is a set of lies that we have agreed upon ". Or something like that.
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I watched Top Chef. And I have a question!
I’ve never been to the US, or England, or Australia, or anywhere. But from all the Englishes I have heard, Top Chef host Padma’s English is strange. Is that only me? Her pronunciation has too much of the sounds /tch/ and /sh/ as I hear it. And some other strange “twists” of sounds.
I am genuinely interested in knowing whether that’s a natural dialect of English from America, or not. This is a genuine question which I would like to get an answer from those who live there and are experts.
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Seriously? I’m surprised, given GOT…
Agree. Great cast, lovely story and treatment.
I don’t have a good answer for you, and haven’t noticed anything unusual about her speech, but I think there were many cultural influences in her upbringing (born in India, raised in Queens, New York, so there’s that. Lots of languages and accents there) , and she speaks about four languages fluently. I’m always stunned when she does it on Top Chef.
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My favourite is the graffiti of Bombolini’s saying of “better live hundred years.” 
I’m watching the latest season of My Kitchen Rules: Australia on Amazon Prime Video. Pete Evans is gone as a judge, replaced by Nigella Lawson for the first half of the season and Matt Preston for the second half. Other than that, the show seems about like usual with the typical assortment of talented and untalented competitors, some goofy but none as obnoxious as some of the contestents in past seasons…so far, anyway. I’m only mid-season now.
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Oooo! Hope that’s up next! Thank you @Annegrace for helping me find unseen seasons of The Great British Menu! I’m in heaven.
I’ve only just found this show on Tubi. Only season 9 seems to be there. Where else (in the US) can one find more of this?
On an app called Dailymotion.
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Good news! MKR was my go to during covid lock down. I wondered if there would ever be other seasons. Thanks.
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I have to agree with shrinkwrap in that I don’t hear anything off in her speech at all. In fact I find her speeches to be pretty much ‘perfect’ and without accent or unusual pattern. There are so many people in the States from so many different places (both here and around the world) that it’s possible you’re not used to hearing accentless English. If you can watch any of the US cable news channels (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) I’d suggest that most of the presenters also speak with no accent. I may be missing something here but that’s my take.
Maybe that’s it! Padma and other presenters may be the exception, but I was thinking everyone has an “accent”, if that means their way of speaking is influenced by who they talk and listen to.
Maybe that’s not what it means. Of course I don’t always notice it where I live, but I was just in Brooklyn, and I don’t know if I met more than a few people who seemed like English was their first language.
EVERY speaker has an ‘accent’. There is no such thing as ‘accentless’ speech because pronunciation is NOT codified (as much as some might believe otherwise). The UK has ‘RP’ (Received Pronunciation) or as it more properly called these days, SSBE (Standard Southern British English). The US never really got on the standardized pronunciation train the way the UK did, though in general, ‘accentless’ US speakers are tending toward a flatter, upper-midwest accent, which is typical in places like Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and in most major non-east-coast, non-southern cities.
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Well, yes. Everyone has an ‘accent’ I suppose, but I’ve always thought there is a manner of speech in the US that is without any regional or otherwise geographic dialect. My mind went directly to TV news presenters and this article suggests that’s where you’re likely to find examples.
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What do you think of the article I posted below? I actually was composing that post while you were posting yours.
It basically says what I said, but more exactly and more thoroughly. There is no such thing as ‘accentless’ speech. There is no such thing as a General American accent, though the closest thing we have to it tends to favor (now somewhat outdated) speech patterns of the upper midwest.
Go back to the mid-20th century and you have the ‘Mid-Atlantic’ accent that was pushed quite heavily in posh boarding schools (mainly along the east coast). That gets you that vaguely not-british-but-maybe-sorta? accent of Cary Grant and Jackie Kennedy and Betty Davis and other “uppah clahss” types.
All of which is to say: Speech (and language in general) is DEscriptive, as opposed to PREscriptive. Speech that effectively conveys the desired meaning from speaker to listener is ‘correct’, regardless of the formal adherence to grammar, dictionary, and pronunciation guides.
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I get it. But I grew up on Long Island and, except for a few things (most of which I’m told I lost after moving to California years ago) I’m told that I have no accent. People call it a radio voice. I suppose they mean that, whatever my accent is, it’s not something that they can place geographically.
‘Lawn Guylind’ 
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Mostly an “a” thing for me. I used to say “are-a-gone” and was taught to say “ore-a-gun” for Oregon. . I had a friend in New York named “Garry”, but was corrected her to say something closer to “Geary” once I came West. I suppose Those show a California accent.
My English should sound super flat for any of you because I’ve never learned to speak in any particular accent. When I was learning I used to refer to British English, mainly the Oxford dictionary and British books. So I guess my English is far from American English, nor is it British.
When I speak, people ask me “how did you learn to speak good English like that?” I would tell them I don’t know. But that’s the Sri Lankans who have hardly spoken to a native English speaker. Lol. I know that my language is poor, but in the absence of anything better, even my English may be “great” sometimes.
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