My partner and I were arguing over which part of UK the magnus characters sound like they are from. I speak Korean, he speaks Japanese, we both speak American English, and I argued that Jon has an upper class British accent and my partner said he's Cockney. Please help us. Please tell us the regions
ohohoh. ok first of all im not a linguist of course but i DO love talking.
so. jon definitely does not sound like a cockney. 'upper class' english would be much more accurate. so im with you!
there may be a littleeee bit of nuance here as jons accent does sort of change sometimes.
VERY early series jon is extremely formal, enunciating in a very 'posh' sounding way. another name for that sort of accent is 'received pronunciation' (or RP). this accent is associated with the south (particularly south-east) of england, but was also historically a sign of good (private) education (like the standard accent for the ruling classes/educated people, no matter where they were from).
something fun about the way early-jon talks is that its also pretty dated. like jonny is definitely hamming it up a little, exaggerating slightly old fashioned RP conventions - lots of vocal fry, and even at one or two points uses a 'tapped' r (like in the word 'various', allowing the tongue to tap the roof of the mouth when pronouncing the 'r' so that it almost sounds like a 'd'). like. that's some Edwardian shit. HES A MILLENNIAL HE HAS NO BUSINESS DOING THAT.
im probably giving way too much detail there lmao
but basically, thats as much a regional thing as it is a class and era thing. like yes, his accent sounds southern english, but cockney is ALSO southern english (albeit traditionally specifically london. Specifically working class. And also viewed as pretty "dated" as well. There are certainly people who call themselves cockney and many people who have a cockney-ish accent, but still, as a term it does sort of evoke Victorian era.)
anyway, jons accent early on feels really old fashioned at times. it feels like jonny was maybe using it to set the scene and create a 'spooky gothic horror crypt-keeper' vibe by evoking victorian/edwardian speaking conventions. plus i guess to characterise jon as pretentious.
but once time goes on a little and we get more of a sense of him as a person in the world who has to interact with other people, he gets a little less ✨dramatic with it. More natural, less affected. he still sounds pretty posh, just because he enunciates a lot.
ANOTHER point is that he quite often changes his voice when giving statements, sounding less extremely RP. In his read of lee rentouls statement in piecemeal, I feel like he goes a step further and emulates the statement givers accent. thats probably the closest jons ever sounded to 'cockney'. That's a bit of an anomaly though, it's not like he does a french accent if the statement giver is french. ALTHOUGH (and this is sort of a tangent), gertrude does do a bit of a welsh accent when recording 'uncanny valley' (set in wales)! so thats interesting. And adds a touch of American to her reading of "dust to dust", set in Oklahoma, iirc. might have just been sue sims (gertrude's VA and jonny's irl mum) doing some creative license.
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