A few weeks back, we heard that the younger royals were not going to attend this year’s Olympics in Rio. The last summer Olympics were held in London, and Prince William, Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge were some of the “official” ambassadors to those Olympics. That just meant that they got full-access passes and attended various events, but Will, Kate and Harry got a ton of attention for it. Considering that 2012 activity and the fact that so many of their patronages are sports-related, it does feel odd that Will, Kate and Harry have not been more active for Team GB ahead of the Rio Olympics. They’ve done a handful of events (literally, you could count on one hand), but it definitely feels like they don’t really give a sh-t this time around. So… Kensington Palace released a video for Team GB, featuring voiceovers and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances by Will, Kate and Harry. Here you go:
The Duke, Duchess and Prince Harry wish all the @TeamGB athletes good luck ahead of #Rio2016 #BringOnTheGreathttps://t.co/isxyHEv7mM
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) August 4, 2016
You had one job, Kate! And that job was to pronounce “British” correctly. That’s how I say “British” when I’m three sheets to the wind. Hand to God, she said “Bret-is.” Is that supposed to be the posh pronunciation?
Funny story: I don’t think William, Kate or Harry are even in the UK right now. Harry is in Malawi right now, doing work with the 500 Elephants initiative – you can read more about that here. Basically, Harry is volunteering for two months with a worthy conservation project. Will and Kate are on vacation, because the poor sausages are so overworked and exhausted from being so keen all the time. I’m not saying that I really expected Will, Kate and Harry to go to Rio – the threat of Zika is very real and I believe Kate wants to get pregnant, and that sh-t is no joke. But if they’re not going to Rio, why not make sure that you’re really going out of your way to support Team GB ahead of the Olympics? Or is all of that keenness about sports just a means to an end (the end = going on more vacations)?
Also, this is really cute!
We're sure @Andy_Murray's racket handling skills are better than his flag bearing ones!#Rio2016 #BringOnTheGreathttps://t.co/jXozR4VWzw
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) August 4, 2016
Photos courtesy of screencap, WENN.
(Tries to say something nice about Duchess Kate)
I like how, if she loses her keys, she can just slide herself under the door!
Keys are for plebs. When she stops at a door, she waits for it to open/be opened. Sadly, she is rarely disappointed. If the door, for some reason doesn’t open, she calls Carole to sort it out. Sadly, she is rarely disappointed.
These are both very funny comments.
Calico catty! Tee hee!
*half assed joke about how pronouncing things correctly requires work and kate and wills are allergic to work etc*
one word…Zika…I am not a royalist but if I was a young woman who was planning on having more children because of the unanswered questions regarding the Zika virus…I’d stay far, far away from Rio.
Kate has some voodoo contour skills. I just stared at her nose for 1/4 minute because it looks so different.
Idk, I really think she got a second nose job after Charlotte’s birth. It looks so much smaller than nose #2
Meh get over it. She knew she’d have more kids, why bother fixing it beforehand? And also, it doesn’t really need ‘fixing’. It’s natural, it’s life.
Update: On second look, that just looks like where her pants/belt have made impressions on her skin
Ok, so I’m not the only one wondering what’s going on with her face.
definitely not. she has at least 2 nose jobs, plus all the other tweaks to her teeth, eyes, hair, etc.
I wish there was more to her than her physical appearance.
I don’t think it’s a biggie or non supportive that William/Kate/Harry aren’t going to the Olympics. Of course they were much more involved in 2012 because it was in London. Historically British royals don’t really attend them except Princess Anne who was actually in the Olympics in 1976? for horse stuff and her daughter Zara has/is as well. That video– ha good old Princess Anne.
But that video of Kate is taken at a very unflattering angle, yikes.
Haha, gotta love Princess Anne!
The top is the same as the outfit worn when she was out flirting with Sir Ben. Right now she is probably still in France.
I can’t believe they released this video with Kate looking so horrible in it though. Will looks pretty bad too, but her face looks like it’s melting when you compare it to the pics from 2012. I hate to say it but she almost needs the heavy eyeliner here because she looks so washed out.
As a professional photographer I can immediately tell you why they look like they do. They shot this with a wider angle lens at a close distance.
It is never flattering to do so as it brings the center of the image and whatever is closer to the camera forward and out. Giving it a barrel effect. It’s what distorts faces and makes noses look bigger.
I can tell that as an amateur as well, I’m surprised they made that choice, though. Wonder if it was something thrown together very last minute and it’s the only lens their videographer had? 🙂
Interesting. She looks pretty different in this photo.
Interesting to hear what photographers think, the lighting is so off/strange.
I think she needs eyeliner too + lipstick with some color, not the pale stuff she has been wearing.
Probably filmed it right after the sailing event. Why bother to put in more effort? Just read their lines once quickly and call it “working hard”. Then home to supervise Nanny Maria and the housekeeper packing their things for France.
When I saw this my first thought was “well, no wonder she wears so much slap.” Bless her heart (second thought).
Wow she looks so old without the heavy makeup. Harry needs to be King. I don’t see the monarchy lasting with Charles and William. Have you noticed after Diana, no one has been as popular as her. I felt as if the public and media were emotionally invested in her and it was a fairytale story. Nothing like it since her death. I wonder why.
I think the Monarch will be just fine with “Charles in Charge”, Willy on the other hand what a disappointment
She’s not that off in terms of pronouncing the word… The British and American pronounciations are different and, when saying a word in the middle of a sentence, pronounciation always changes subtly because of the words before and after… It’s something I’ve learnt while studying English phonetics…
Andy Murray being the one to hold the Union Jack has caused a great deal of consternation with the cyber-nats (rapid supporters of the Scottish National Party and independence) on Twitter- some have called him a “traitor”.
I think Kate affects the clipped tones she thinks befitting of being a Royal – she somewhat over clipped in that audio.
Why not meet with the Olympic team personally prior the games? This video message is pointless. But then, why work for two days when you can ram as many things as you can into one outing?
Our lazy duo shot this „special video message“ the same day they attended the America’s Cup World Series in July.
You can see they are both wearing the same T-shirt. For the video they even had to blur Henri Lloyd logo from William’s shirt (left shoulder). And that’s why Kate changed her hair throughout the visit. She came out of the car with her classic full blowout, then they were shooting this video spot (possibly on a windy roof, so someone added two small hair clips to get her hair out of the face) and then finally after the boat ride she put her hair up into a ponytail.
French vacaition – well deserved!
https://67.media.tumblr.com/e2f6d0cefe1a5712ac3cbd9816698560/tumblr_obfh95WYxN1ub56y4o1_1280.jpg
https://66.media.tumblr.com/2544d5760af3d0b70781eccc781192dd/tumblr_obfh95WYxN1ub56y4o2_1280.jpg
After watching that Cumberbatch video where he pronounced “penguin” like in 5 different ways, nothing surprises me anymore about UK English pronunciation troubles.
Oh my gosh, that was featured on Jimmy Fallon- totally made fun of him.
What’s up with her face in that top photo?
Wondering the same thing. She looks crazy different.
wide-angle lens and horrible lighting
I love Princess Anne. She looks so dour but seems to have great fun. She’s always fooling around with her grandkids though. Never realised Evil Seb Coe was so little.
And thet 2012 pic is troubling me. It looks like Kate has a massive scar on her stomach.
Poor Andy has no idea what to do with the flag! But Anne is a great sport, love the faces she was making! She is truly her mother’s daughter: a steady BRF workhorse who can be counted on to get things done. And she did it while competing in the Olympics and raising two children.
That 2012 photo jumped out at me, too! To me it looks like a photoshopped hairy man’s belly. Very disconcerting.
If you look at the larger version, you can see that it’s the imprint of her belt in the skin from when she was seated. If she’d worn a longer shirt or tucked it in, it wouldn’t be a problem, but of course she had to wear the tightest, skimpiest clothes she could find, so now we can see everything.
I was coming down here to comment on that picture of Kate. The coloration made me think it those are stretch marks and, honestly, I found it the most endearing thing about her I’ve ever come across. I still have no sympathy or tolerance for Will and Kate’s lazy layabout lifestyle, but I was afraid that with all the legitimate reasons to go after her (so, so many reasons), I’d see lots of unpleasant comments about that photo. Shame on me-I underestimated you all!
voting for crepey post-baby belly. Royals are just like us!
Susanne: photo was taken a year before her first baby. At the 2012 Olympics.
Maybe she got confused and was going to say Brexit?
No, it’s phonetics, words change pronounciation slightly when in the middle of a sentence or when alone…
K first, Harry is fine as hell. Secondly, what has happened to kate in the last four years? How does she look better in the random audience footage from London compared to now? Is she losing her hair? I’m so confused. She looks haggard.
It sounds like she is saying Brettish to this Britisher. That’s just her trying to fake the cut glass accent, I think.
The truly plebbish amongst us say British without the T and with a glottal stop.
So it kinda goes Brih-ish.
The middlingly plebbish amongst us got a clip round the ear from our mothers when we did that, so do actually pronounce our middle Ts all proper-like. Not a t-drop to be heard if you respect your mother!
But if you’re Northern Irish, your British sounds more like Briddish, just as your British sounds more like Briddish if you are American.
Ok. I’ll shut up now.
/brɪt.ɪʃ/
British accent according to the Cambridge dictionary..
Sadly, too many regional accents for it to really matter. Oxford and Cambridge – and most British dictionaries – all give the RP pronunciations, even though RP is spoken by only a tiny proportion of the population. So I wouldn’t use those as my bible. Alicia Vikander clearly does and she gets told off on here for sounding as though she is trying to fake a posh English accent.
Having said that, RP is what Katie Bucket was aiming for (and slightly missing) here.
Alicia got told off? How is she supposed to sound considering English isn’t her first language?
I would like to add that when you attend British schools abroad, or learn british english somewhere else, you get taught RP, that’s why so many “international” foreign english-speaking people, like Alicia, use RP.
Most of my friends sound like TQ (I, for some reason, ended with a standard american accent LOL)
Well, many Alicia detractors on this site! She’s not popular. A few months back people were moaning that her accent was affected because she wanted to sound posh. There was a bit of a to and fro in which the points Cee makes were brought up.
Here you are, Locke – you were talking yourself!
http://www.celebitchy.com/473100/alicia_vikander_in_erdem_at_the_wif_film_is_great_events_cute_or_cloying/
Kaiser thinks her accent is hokey and so do many of the commenters.
Perhaps a lesson for Nighty to beware Oxford Dictionary RP pronunciation guidelines!!
I think that her obsession with her accent is a dead giveaway of her insecurities. It keeps getting more and more affected. Her accent in the Queen’s documentary was downright strange. I tend to think that Pippa in her position would own her middle class accent, but Kate had to go and poshify it.
But then again I think that Mary and Maxima both also changed their accents, no?
@Cee is right, as an English teacher in Portugal (and Portuguese), I teach my students and have been taught RP English, because that’s the official English accent…
@Sixer, I usually follow Cambridge guidelines, not Oxford’s.. Oxford’s would be /’brɪtɪʃ/ that means the stonger syllable would be Bri, whereas Cambridge says it’s the Ish part…
I said then that I’m surprised that she has an English accent. And I was. Here we learn British English, so we spell things the British way, but everyone pronounces things the American way,even teachers (things like dance or can’t are said the American way) because the American accent in much more prevalent in the media. I kinda assumed every foreigner does that. Now I see we are the exception.
This is a Croatian skier, Ivica Kostelić, speaking English. That’s pretty much how we sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbeiS254nsY
But if a foreigner speaks the British way, of course they will speak RP English. Is she supposed to sound Geordie or something? People just don’t like alicia so they shade her for everything.
I was just amazed that it was taken as something to have a pop at Vikander about. It’s not at all.
Katie Bucket does clearly miss good RP in that pronunciation of British, though. It’s just that tiny bit off.
Solanaceae – sorry, darling. Wasn’t being critical. Just messing about.
But I made the same comment also… And as I’ve explained, words change pronounciation when in the middle of sentences,,, so,,, nothing amazing at that or worthy of criticism,,,
@Sixer sweetie, I know, we’re just exchanging ideas.. 😀
And most POrtuguese English teachers have an American-ish accent, most of my students always ask if I’ve lived in the UK, because my accent is more “Britisher”
@Maia – Queen Maxima did not change her english accent, nor does she affect it. I attended the same school as hers and that’s the pronunciation we are taught. Not everyone manages to graduate with an RP pronunciation, though, even after 15 years of being exposed to it.
@Cee – same here re: taught British English in school!
I’m from India so we obviously don’t all turn out with actual British accents, but the spelling and pronunciation we are taught in school was the British kind – ‘can’t’, ‘dance’, etc pronounced with the long A sound, the R’s at the end of ‘car’, water’ etc not pronounced, ‘lieutenant’ pronounced as ‘lef-te-nant’ instead of ‘lieu-te-nant’ etc. That remains even with English accents.
Obviously American English is the kind most commonly heard in Hollywood movies and English-language entertainment on tv, but India didn’t really have much exposure to/availability of American media till about 20 years ago, and only a very niche population watches that in any substantial amount.
The vast majority still stick to British-modelled Indian accents when speaking English – people are quite sensitive to any attempt to ‘put on’ an accent so anyone who actually tries to give themselves an American accent (or even an obviously fake Anglicised one) will be pretty swiftly ridiculed.
@teacakes – I’m the same! I pronounce words the british way, also spell like them, but my accent is standard american, which confuses people. I was once asked where I had bought my pants and I freaked out because I thought the person could see my underwear… she just meant my trousers LOL
I wanted to be bilingual from a young age so I begun to watch films and TV without subtitles and most of them were american so I suppose that’s why I ended up with that accent. However I can imitate other accents when needed, especially when surrounded by it, but it’s not my “natural” accent.
Interesting comments. I was watching a video of this Lithuanian Olympic swimmer yesterday. She moved to the UK when she was 14, she’s 19 now. I thought she would have a Lithuanian accent but she sounds British, with the “Brih-ish” pronunciation that Sixer described. Not what I was expecting, it was fascinating to me.
But to a Brit she would sound Lithuanian.
Sixer,
I am curious……………….do you folks there in the UK think Kate is trying too hard with her accent? I’m in the USA, and it’s difficult for me to figure out. Most the time I can barely understand what she’s saying. All I know is that it seems to me as if she is PHONEY with her accent. Do tell?
Yes.
She sounds posher than The Queen.
To an Irish ear it sounds affected, make sense given that she’s got a middle class background.
I know this may sound odd but the top photo of Kate reminded me of a Beagle.
Not surprising that Kate mispronounced the word “British”. She is not exactly known for her eloquence.
I’m sure one or both of them would have put in an appearance at Rio if there was no zika virus. Its not like the Dolittles to pass up a trip to a major sporting event at taxpayers expense.
Poor Andy has no idea what to do with the flag! But Anne is a great sport, love the faces she was making! She is truly her mother’s daughter: a steady BRF workhorse who can be counted on to get things done. And she did it while competing in the Olympics and raising two children.
So, remember a few weeks back, that scathing mic-drop the writer did, leaving People or something? And she said that Kate’s face is basically melting and unless she smiles continuously, it looks like it’s just sliding off her skull (or words to that effect)? I think that the extremely unflattering light of the taping for this spot really highlights her filler game. I don’t envy her. I have a friend that is super-super-skinny and feels the need to filler her face, as well. She now has a lollipop chipmunk head on a milkshake straw body – and it’s all filled and Botoxed out. It’s creepy in person.
Slightly off-topic but did anyone read about the state visit from the Prime Minister of Singapore and how his wife showed up with a clutch that cost less than $20? Turns out, it was made by an autistic student of a school on which she sits on the board of advisers. And now the clutch is in high demand and she has brought attention to the talents of the school’s children
What a difference from waity. A very rich and successful in her own right businesswoman could have shown up to the White House holding any expensive Italian brand but instead she chooses to highlight a cause which she cares about, fashionistas be damned. Meanwhile, Dolittle couldn’t even be bothered to even browse at one of the shops that supports one of her patronages.
Both Harry and William have the most annoying nasal voices.
And Harry’s conservation trip also sounds like a vacation. And does he also hunt like Wills?
Harry gets no slack from me. I do think it’s another of his endless exotic holidays where he gets to hang out with fabulous animals. For three months! Yowza!
Chutney has a tendency to mispronounce – palliative is another one she can’t say properly. You can tell when people fake the poshie, cut glass accent, they can’t pronounce words properly.
Other than the fact that who ever shot this video was using the wrong lense, they both look rough. The press have stopped photoshopping the pair of them to within an inch of their lives. And yes she def has had a lot of work done on her face – which is so sad.
Wow that first picture is horrid. Whoever took it must really not like her.
In the top pic she looks like she face swapped with herself on Snapchat.
I love that in the last pic you can see her stomach with stretch marks from being pregnant. That looks so normal to me and somehow oddly comforting that she’s got loose skin too.
that was from 2012, before prince george.
That photo was taken at the Olympics 2012 a year before she had her first child.
What you are seeing is impression marks made by the belt when she was sitting down.
Her stomach is flat and without marks.
+1, the belt, been there.
Oh poor little Dolittle, next the we know the palace is going to release video of her practicing, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”
Ha! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribgRjspx28
I want to like her but I can’t find the real Kate – she pronounces every word overly posh, I can accept her trying hard to be posh no harm in that at all but that interview when they first got engaged made me fall off my chair when in the uncut version she asks if she can put a pillow behind her back to sit up dead straight- groan!!
My RottenRoyals Film Review:
Harry: (caramel butter world hope teddy bear tones and animated warmth as always)
William: “please leave this Club immediately, bring me a gin first”
Kate: I shall place you on this list scribed on vellum for the boots in your size
It’s strange how prevalent American pronunciation is becoming in Australia, given that we’re a commonwealth nation who has used British pronunciation since our inception. It really is the influence of American media. I’ve also noticed people from the eastern states are more prone to Americanised speech (especially words like dance) than people from central and western Australia.
I went to posh schools that cared about correct pronunciation (read: our version of RP) so I think I notice it more than most.
I have a difficult time understanding what Kate says. William and Harry don’t puzzle me much. But really what I want to say is I can’t wait to visit Australia sometime……….every Aussie I ever knew, I loved.
I agree with you, Vava, sometimes she’s unintelligible. I thought she garbled “showcased” and had to replay the video a few times to understand her.
Agreed vava! I find Harry and William to be pretty clear but I have to focus and replay several times to understand her.
She sounds like Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet!)
Heh! This imposter sounds nothing like me…..😛
I didn’t read the comments but I’m sure it’s already stated: holy shit, that cover photo is terrible. Terrible.