This is the kind of sentiment I have when a question is asked on “do Japanese people talk like anime characters in real life?” And the straight answer is no. Is it the same with “do Americans talk like in Netflix” or is that a load of garbage?
It happens with some people thinking anime speak is how Japanese people interact but in the end they appear stupid as no one talks like that IRL. Now, is the manner of speaking from US Dramas or TV representative of a real life conversation?
A lot of media is a midwest accent which is considered the most plain. Many movies have various regional accents depending on location. california, southern, boston, chicago, etc. regions and cities and areas of cities have accents but the city ones especially can be a bit rare unless your in a pretty specific area. Heck I did not even know about the northern middle country thing that sounds more canadian until fargo.
Actually, I’m a linguist from Prussia (in Germany, not Pennsylivania) and coincendentily I have studied this in detail. During my research I have discovered that Hollywood uses a arsinal of “speech drugs” - substances that alter speech! Tablets, injections, all Chemical stuff to modulate the voices of the actors, so that they are more becoming to the audenices. So, for instances Clooney has a voice which is several octaves higher than on the screen, he sounds like a barmaid after inhaling laughing gas. And Signorey Weiner has a raspy Bariton. Tom Cruise has a voice more in line with his pint-sized bodily built. Jennifer Aniston screetsjes like finger nails running over blackboard. Only Adam Sandler has a hallway acceptable voice, but he happens to be a jerk.
I think that the question is really, really broad. “Netflix” covers a lot, and “Americans” covers a lot, and “how someone talks” covers a lot.
Movie scripts are going to have more time spent on them than text that someone comes up with on-the-fly. They have carefully-crafted one-liners. They have professional actors, who are often going to be, say, better-looking and more-suave sounding.
On the other hand, relative to English in whatever country you live in, there probably is slang and any number of things local to the US that does show up in Hollywood movies more than in your country.
So I think that any answer pretty much has to be “yes…and no”.
If you can narrow your question down to a very specific, like, oh…“do people actually say X in the US in real life”, you might get a more-meaningful answer.
TVTropes has a whole list of things that people do on phones in film, for example, that typically aren’t reflective of real life. To choose one, people on one end of a phone call repeating what the remote person has said so that the audience can hear it. People don’t do that in real life; it’s a technique to help storytelling in movies.
Or another one of my favorite quirks — I like a lot of military history. Often, you’ll have war movies where very-expert characters, like General or Admiral So-And-So, will basically be explaining big-picture things in very basic terms to each other on some kind of pretext. That’s for the benefit of the audience, so that the characters can basically act as narrators for the audience. That wouldn’t be done by those characters in real life.
But that doesn’t mean that real American culture and mannerisms aren’t present in movies.
No. People interrupt each other, stumble over words, and sometimes need time to think before speaking. None of that happens when the dialog is pre written and rehearsed.
We dance to live music and Dont just add it in post. We also go to the bathroom and choke on our own spit randomly.
As in an “American equivalent” to the “anime voice” type thing? Um no… Not that I’m aware of except maybe cartoons do that.
Or do you mean like the overall speech including word choices and how sentences gets put together? I think TV is just way too polished. Irl is more like a police bodycam footage, or a random street interview thats unscripted (i mean even those street interview youtube videos are kinda overedited/polished compared to off camera conversations).
I mean as in lots of filler words and awkward silences. Lots of: “um…” “so…” “like…” wait…" “you know…”
Lots of colliqualism you dont really see on TV.(btw I type exactly like how I would speak irl)
But on the other hand, idk if all the Breaking Bad type of “talking like a gangster” thing even is real either cuz I never been in those circles but when i was in K-12, like in highschool, I overhear lots of those “yo” “whatup” “fam” “dude” “bruh” a lot between classmates, and these are the most “gangster” looking kids (I mean as in they are the disruptive ones in class) so maybe the “yo” thing is actually what gang members use, or maybe its to show that they dont use formal speech and use heavy colloqualism to imply that “these people dont have college education”.
So yeah police bodycam footage (theres lots of those from the US due to Freedom of Information Act) captures lots of those IRL moments of awkwardness, even without a stressful factor like being in proximity of a cop, lots of those awkwardness really does happen with average conversations.
-Hi from Philly :D
Lots of colliqualism you dont really see on TV.
That and sharing are probably the biggest differences. Most people (and scripwriters) tend to “tame down” their language when on camera. They will shift more towards “standard” English (or what they perceive as standard), and use less colorful language.
The US iٌs large and varies widely by region and subculture. Also life of the upper middle or lower upper class is often depicted. No one is acturally shown working mostly.
for the most part americans talk like the people surrounding them growing up. if they intentionally want to change their speech, they may choose someone on tv to sound like, but generally speaking that’s rare. southerners sound like they’re from the south, no matter how much tv they watch, bostonians sound like they’re from boston, same for new yorkers, minnesotans, cajuns, etc
edit: if you want to hear a fantastic minnesota accent, check out that movie Fargo
Depends on the film, and I believe the same can be said for a lot of places (just my opinion).
Like, you’re bound to have Hollywood films more representative of life in America, however it will of course have some theatrics added.
There is also the elephant in the room: how bloody massive the US is. I’ve travelled through a bit, stepped foot in 39 States (if I’m honest I travelled around only about 25-28 or so), and it was easy to see a good variation in the way people talk, not just the differences in slang.
In a lot of cases the representation of a character would be based on the influence of a real person, however the amount to which the impression is exaggerated depends on the film or show.
I would not say my friends and family remind me of any film to a great degree, yet there will be some aspects within. However the same can be said about here in the UK.
We all know a bit of a Rodney, etc.But in my experience I’d say no, I’ve rarely met someone who genuinely behaved fully like a TV or movie character whilst visiting and living there, unless they were trying to make an impression of the characters.
Hope this made sense.
However the little things are a real life thing. Like, when films and shows of the 90s depicted people, on a street corner, with a boombox and folks just breakdancing for fun… Things like that definitely happened and were very cool to see as a kid in New York.



