I'm curious to know, because it is a good example of what was once called a "Harvard accent."
(I think in reality this is a "prep school accent," acquired at the elite private secondary schools that prepared students for Harvard, Yale, and Princetod... and in any case Buckley went to Yale and if he were still alive would probably be deeply offended to hear it called a "Harvard" accent!)
To U.S. ears, this sound very much like a "British accent." How does it sound to British ears? British? "Mid-Atlantic?" Just weird?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xxGchy14pE
And while we're at it, what about songwriter Cole Porter's accent?
His accent certainly doesn't sound British at all to the British ear. For British listeners, he is very clearly American. We are all programmed to notice differences, and there are a number of significant differences between the way that Buckley pronounces his words and the way that an English person would.
Out of curiosity, I tracked down this article about Buckley's famous accent:
According to this article, 'he drops his 'r's". Well, no, he doesn't - at least not all the time. There is a fairly clear American 'r' in the way he says 'expert', 'born; 'articles and 'parties'.
It also says that "He pronounces the 't' in words like writer". Really?? I noted 'writing' 'matter' 'later' and 'systematic' - in all of these words, he used a typically North American alveolar flap rather than the voiceless alveolar stop that an RP speaker would use.
Other phonemes that stood out were the 'o' in words such as 'not' - an American /nɑt/ rather than an RP /nɒt/ - and the 'a' in 'half' and 'after' - an American /hæf/ rather than an RP /hɑːf/.
I can hear what the article means about the 'artistocratic drawl', but, he is very obviously an American 'aristocrat', not a British one!
Gosh to me it doesn't sound British, it sounds (sounded) New England, specifically very Boston Brahmin.
Cole Porter's singing voice could be that of an RP speaker, except for the word "top", a few "r" sounds and a few "a" sounds like in "master". I've never heard an American singer sound so English.
"I did however find a clip of his speaking voice..." Thanks! Found it, it's interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfjmqHdOvOY
I agree, he is obviously American. The only way this guy would convince any Brit that he were British would be if they had an extremely poor ear for accents. The vowel sound in words like after and dancer stick out a mile to a Brit as American pronunciation. In the UK, depending on where you come from, there are two possible pronunciations of those words. A short 'a' like in 'cat', or a long 'a' like how most English people pronounce 'father'. His pronunciation is somewhere in between the two. I too can see what they mean when they say he speaks in a drawl, he seemed to be very careful in his pronunciation of each word.
The clip of Cole Porter isn't that helpful, because a lot of people sound more Americanised when they sing. I did however find a clip of his speaking voice, when he presented a number of awards at the Academy Awards in 1950. His was more of a Transatlantic accent, much more so than William Buckley. Of course, it was only a brief clip but his accent was very neutral, with hints of both American and British pronunciation with the British pronunciation probably more predominant in my view.
