This morning, I was watching 'message in a bottle' (great ep!), and the teaser, in which we see data playing Sherlock Holmes, got me wondering. Just how convincing is his British accent, really ? Does he sound 'natural' to a Britishman or more like an American trying to emulate a British accent ? (of course allowing for the fact that he is playing someone from the 19th century, not our time, so perhaps my question should be: would he have sounded natural to British people from that time?) . It's hard for me to tell, as English is not my native language and the differences might be too subtle for me to notice...
Well being an American, it sounded British enough to me to get the point across he was trying to emulate one. Though for how genuine it was, I would defer to someone who's from Britain. Certainly in America, someone from Boston is going to sound very different than someone from Texas. One would assume this very well is the case in different parts of Britain too.
^ Good point. There are many regional differences in British accents (from our perspective at least). I imagine those accents sound different among British people from different areas.
I think more than just emulating a British accent, he was emulating the quintessential Holmes sound, which has been mostly developed from screen portrayals In that way, it was passable, at least to this American