I know James Callis (Baltar) is from London (his parent own a Bed and Breakfast! an inn in Americanlish) and speaks fairly naturally. RP Queen’s English, almost but not quite, Baltar still uses slang like “doin’ my head in” so is more upper middle class.

Baltar’s Arelon accent is definitely North English Midlands, Yorkshire farming accent with a bit of mucky Newcastle. See James Cromwell in babe for a Yorkshire accent even though it was shot is Oz “That ‘ill do pig, that ‘ill do”

Thanks to the Brits here for your input! It helps to have your perspective. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know how to identify the different British accents. I can hear the differences usually, but have no idea what areas they are associated with.

Nod, lol. I grew up in New York State, up north where a lot of us sound like Tigh. The Ontario accent spills over more than I knew when I lived there. I guess that’s why when I first moved to the South, people asked me, “are you from Canada?” I’ve tried to neutralize a little since then.

Ya sabemos de donde vienes, eduardo. dile “hijito” a lee, el pobrecito, todo lo que quiere es que le digas lo orgulloso que eres de el.

I love that John Patrick can do that parlor trick! I can do it with Buffalo NY area, an old roommate was from North Tonawanda, and it’s so distinctive that I can spot it in a minute

Whether it means anything in the galactaverse? Who knows?

*PTB, powers that be, or maybe pointy-headed-bosses, you choose.

if his accent does not mean anything, then why haven’t we heard more accents in the course of the show? dee is sagitarrian, but has no accent. nor did the other sagitarrians in “the woman king”. and i cannot remember other accents from episodes with quorum meetings or during roslin’s trip to kobol.

But I am so excited now for the final two, even more so than before, after reading on AintItCool.com that “it could very well be the best two hours of
‘Galactica’” to date. They’re BSG fans like us and for them to say that raises the bar on my expectations. I didn’t read anymore because I didn’t want to be spoiled. Remember than in these next two episodes- and it will almost certainly be in the last 10 minutes of the final one lol- we will have someone discover or possibly make it to Earth and another character will discover he or she (not they!) is a Cylon.

I think it would make sense if Lampkin was also Arelon-ian, which might have some impact on the story, but I doubt there’s any stronger relation between him and Baltar. Although I’m open to being wrong if that’s how things turn out.

Oh, and Audra, on Firefly, Badger had a cockney accent, which sounds different enough to me, but that’s probably because I’m English. I can’t personally tell much difference between the American accents or the Canadian one(s?), I guess it just depends on where you’re from.

The two accents are different and being that I hear them most days I think I can place them quite accurately. Baltar’s accent is definitely modeled on a Yorkshire accent. This region is well know for it’s country lifestyle of mining and farming which would seem to fit the description of Arelon. I can’t think of any show to recommend which would show you this in use.

Lampkin, of which I was not sure appears to be London as I had suspected, though it’s is not as you may suspect cockney. This is further proved by his IMDB profile which puts his place of birth as London, England.

I kinda wonder about Baltar’s accent. I feel that with other actors mostly using American type accents, it was always stange that the makers let Baltar keep his. I really don’t think they knew in the beginning that Baltar was going to have a backstory as he does now. I feel like that was added later. Initially, I think that Baltar’s accent was allowed because, in general, American’s think the British sound “smart”. Which of course was very important to the credibility of the mini series.

(I am kinda making the assumption that many actors can change accents.)

If this holds true for Lampkin, What does Irish “sound” like to Americans?

FWIW, I don’t hear Boomer’s accent, but then I didn’t register Tigh’s accent until Audra pointed it out. Now I can’t stop hearing it. Funny how stuff like that works.

There are a lot of different accents/dialects of English in the UK and Ireland, some of our friendly British sociolinguistics specialists might be able to help us in this department, but probably anyone who grew up in Great Britain would be able to tell us that they are different.

One thing I can tell you, Baltar’s “Caprican” accent sounds pretty “RP” to
me. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation)

I can also tell you that Boomer/Athena and the Chief sound Canadian to me, and that Jamie Bamber’s American pronunciation is impeccable, but his American intonation is pretty thin, which comes across in his character as ‘always whiney.’ Compare this to the deep growling intonation of EJO.

In grad school, I once told a friends’ husband that he sounded exactly like my friend from Ephrata, Washington. He exclaimed “I’m from Moses Lake, just 15 miles down the road from Ephrata!” Then everyone agreed that I was the most talented linguist in the world.

Sigh. Then I burnt out on grad school and got a job teaching high school Spanish.

Sigh. And on Friday nights, I sit home alone, making speculative dialectology comments on a Battlestar Galactica blog.

Please somebody shoot me. No! Don’t shoot me, I’ll wake up in a tub of goo…..