how to speak like Clouseau

[Clouseau]

as you know, originally, Clouseau had a straightforward French accent, but over the course of a few films, his accent evolved significantly, getting more and more difficult to understand and fun to imitate... Peter Sellers is said to have practiced the accent for weeks/months leading up to the filming of new Panther films in order to reach a point where i flowed effortlessly whenever he wanted to step into character...

occasionally, in the spirit of fun, i've noticed some of Clouseau's words like "pheone" and "beump" slipping into my vocabulary, and it got me to thinking, for Sellers to really "practice" the accent, there must be some sort of system to it...

some months ago, i came across one attempt to define the "rules" of speaking like Sellers' Clouseau, laid out at InspectorClouseau.com:

• Any word with a 'ah', 'oh', or 'oo' sound, you must add a short 'eh' sound before it.
  Examples: bomb = "behm", phone = 'pheone', room = 'rheum'
  
• Any word with a 'uh' sound, you must replace it with a 'ih' sound.
  Ex. monkey = 'minkey.
  
• Any word with a long 'ay' or 'ee' sound, replace it with a short 'ah' sound, but don't apply rule #1.
  Ex. crazy = 'crahzy', repair = 'rahpair'.
  
• For a past tense word ending with an 'ed', you must split the word in the wrong place or accent the wrong syllable.
  Ex. solved = 'sol-ved', received = 'rah-ceived'.
  
• To reflect anger or dissatifaction with an object, animal or person, add the word "swine" before it.
  Ex. 'swine' moat, 'swine' parrot, 'swine' maid.
  
• If you are ever presented with information or facts you are unaware of, immediately respond as if you already had knowledge of it.
  Ex. "Yes, I kneuw that... I kneuw that". (remember to apply rule #1 to the word 'know')
  
• Any person who does not understand a word you are saying must be referred to as a fool or an idiot.
  Ex. "Yes, a rheumm... that is what I have been saying you idiot!"
  
• Any reference to Kato must include the word "yellow".
  Ex. "Kato my little 'yellow' friend, I'm 'heum!"'. (rule#1 again to the word 'home').

now here's what i'm wondering:

1. what do you think of the above-proposed system? does it work? or would you add/revise something??
2. is it possible to come up with similar systems to cover the other accents of Clouseau?:

• Alan Arkin's Clouseau
  
• Richard Mulligan's Clouseau Sr
  
• Roberto Benigini's Clouseau Jr
  
• Steve Martin's Clouseau

Clouseau Sr's accent may be the easiest to figure out, since it draws so heavily on Sellers' Clouseau's accent, but you may find some of the others to be fairly difficult to define...

[pinkadilly]

i dunno bout the whoe thing, but for steve martins clouseau, one thing is he prounonces all his Rs as Ws.

[Dreyfus]

Thats actually quite fun. Hopefully this can make my awful Clouseau impression a bit better.

[pinkadilly]

i thought of another thing for steve martins clouseau: he mispronounces words that start with H so that if its supposed to be silent, he says it, and if its supposed to be said, he doesnt say it.

for example, words like hour and honesty would have hard Hs, and words like how and humor would have silent Hs.

[pinkadilly]

and another one for steve martin's clouseau, although its more like something from just a typical french accent: all his 'th' sounds are replaced with either Zs or Ss.

[in-the-pink]

Steve Martin's accent is really hard to figure out! What you have above seems to be right, but there's so much more I can't really put into words, like the way he says "poomps" instead of "pumps", but he doesn't seem to say all his Us like that, so I'm confused.