Why Are Fantasy World Accents British?

kodiaktau writes "An interesting article from the BBC News Magazine explores the reasons why most fantasy worlds use British as their primary accent. Citing specific examples from recent and upcoming shows and movies like Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit and Game of Thrones, the article concludes British accents are 'sufficiently exotic,' 'comprehensible' and have a 'splash of otherness.' It would be odd to think of a fantasy world having a New Jersey accent, or even a Mid-West accent, which tends to be the default for TV and movies in the U.S., but how do UK viewers feel about having British as a default? More specifically, what about the range of UK accents, like Scottish, Welsh, Cockney? The International Dialects of English Archive shows at least nine regional sounds, with dozens of sub-regional pronunciations in England alone. In the U.S., there have always been many regional accents that might be used in interesting ways. Filmmakers should consider looking at speech accents from other areas of the world to create more interesting dialects."

Comments

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[bigtomrodney]

I have to agree with this article, I've always assumed it was just the American preconception of "old worlde". Different enough to be remote but still in the same language.

On the other hand as an Irishman I often find it hard to find escapism in Irish TV and to a lesser extent, film. The familiarity of it all doesn't work as well while on the other hand so much of our media is American that even when I visit the USA there is an element of otherworldliness about the whole experience.

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[Tablizer]

On the other hand as an Irishman I often find it hard to find escapism in Irish TV and to a lesser extent, film. The familiarity of it all doesn't work as well...

So a New Jersey ("New Joisey") accent would sell in Ireland? Does Bugs Bunny sound sexy to you?

...that even when I visit the USA there is an element of otherworldliness about the whole experience.

Even we in the USA experience such when we turn on Fox News ;-)

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[bigtomrodney]

Would sell? It has already!

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[Phreakiture]

Here's another thought: Think about Vikings specifically. Most often, they are portrayed with either English or Scottish accents (usually the more brutish characters get Scottish) and occasionally Californian (particularly children or teens). Why?

Please take a moment, and imagine Mighty Thor making his presence known in a bouncing, Swedish lilt. Not one that necessarily does the Swedes justice (many speak English in a very near British accent), but something more like the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show.

Now pick yourself up off the floor where you were just ROFLing and consider the question answered :)

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[operagost]

Bugs Bunny has a Brooklyn accent.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't Thor sound.. Icelandic? I mean, after all that's the language we got which is least removed from the ur-nordic language (whatever that may have been).

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[jellomizer]

Well a lot of the fantasy films have a medieval themes to them. So it make sense that they would have an English accent. Because American, Australian, Canadian... Accents are post Medieval times, so you want to have an accent from an area that experience the medieval culture. You could use an accent from an other nation however. Their accent is more from not naively speaking the English language and putting their native languages inflections into the language. So for a movie that is in English British English will seem the most authentic.

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[Tassach]

I have to agree with this article, I've always assumed it was just the American preconception of "old worlde". Different enough to be remote but still in the same language.

This is exactly why Tolkien chose to render Rohirric as Old English -- Rohirric had roughly the same old-but-understandable relationship to Westron (common speech) as Old English has to Modern English. (Incidentally, this creates one of the biggest challenges in translating LotR to other languages)

Tolkien was a linguist above all else, and as such was incredibly sensitive to linguistic nuances, something that's lost on most casual readers. Nevertheless, his work has had a huge influence on modern fantasy and sci-fi. Writers (consciously or unconsciously) mimic elements of Tolkien's style without necessarily understanding why he did it that way.

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[stjobe]

I dare you to watch Hrafninn flýgur (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087432/) then come back and say that Vikings in movies can't speak anything but English or Scottish.

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[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

So a New Jersey ("New Joisey") accent would sell in Ireland?

It does. Syndicated US TV shows are enormous in Ireland, to the point where most programming on Irish television, certainly drama programming, is probably made in the US.

It is effectively expected that in high budget shows, particularly crime dramas and films, the actors will have Americans accents. UK accents will be accepted, to a point, but a film like Die Hard either set in the UK, or having leads with UK accents will certainly not work.

One of the most unusual film experiences I had in recent years was watching "The Wind That Shakes the Barley", a war film set during the Irish war of independence and the civil war. It was frankly a bit surreal to see all the drama, conflict, tragedy, war, bloodshed, and death being played out by people with Irish accents. It was a mentally relieving whenever black and tans would show up to provide a more traditional accent to the manic proceedings.

Occasionally, the Irish broadcaster RTE produces dramas set in Dublin, etc and played by Irish actors. They invariably flop. People can't suspend their disbelief when a drama is set, literally, in their home town, in the very streets and buildings they've been in themselves.

Does Bugs Bunny sound sexy to you?

No. But I will note that when the UK director Gerry Anderson produced Thunderbirds, for a UK audience, he gave the puppets US accents.

(I also feel obliged to mention that, for myself personally, meeting someone with a US accent in the flesh is often a surreal experience. It feels a bit like some kind of a line---probably a glass screen of some kind---has been crossed. The effect has significantly diminished over time, now only a lingering one. And it only occurs for US accents.)

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[Obfuscant]

Does Bugs Bunny sound sexy to you?

This may be an outrageously conservative opinion, but if finding Bug Bunny "sexy" is important to you, you have worse problems than what accent is used in telly programs.

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[bigtomrodney]

Hello fellow Irishperson. It is just too hard...I mean we all hate Fair City and to be fair it's not that bad as much as we just know all the actor's faces and it just feels corny as if your family were acting out the script in front of you.

Same walking around San Francisco or Hawai'i...I felt like Harry Callaghan or Steve McGarrett should be screaming past me in some old guzzler.

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[gbjbaanb]

Does Bugs Bunny sound sexy to you?

No. But I will note that when the UK director Gerry Anderson produced Thunderbirds, for a UK audience, he gave the puppets US accents.

Jessica Rabbit does :)

The thunderbirds puppets were modelled on the US astronauts, so its not unreasonable that (at the time) futuristic people were American. I guess its the same as today where all the terrorists are middle eastern.

There are a lot of British accents in Hollywood... but they're usually the badguy, with the hero as an apple-pie-eating-all-american guy, like Tom Cruise.

I think its alll about keeping things simple for the US audiences, the bad guy speaks with a British accent, the good guy has an American one, the terrorist is dark and swarthy, the charming rogue is Irish... stereotypes make it easy for the audience to know what to expect from that character.

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[gbjbaanb]

and he was an Anglo-Saxon scholar too, which is why the archetypal fantasy world is pretty much set in anglo-saxon-based myth.

Of course, the Hobbits should technically all be Brummie, and I guess the Elves should all speak with a tree-hugging Somerset accent

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[X0563511]

Tolkien was a linguist above all else, and as such was incredibly sensitive to linguistic nuances, something that's lost on most casual readers.

I'd argue that if it's NOT obvious and seems right, then he certainly did the job correctly!

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[snowgirl]

But British accents have undergone enormous amounts of mutation as well. In some ways, they have made more changes than American English since Victorian times.

So, while Americans associate a British accent with what should be appropriate for medieval times, because they're living where the language was spoken during medieval times, the accent being used is still anachronistic, and just as inappropriate as a Jersey accent.

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[PRMan]

I think it started to a large extent with Star Wars. George Lucas wanted the "Rebels" to sound American and the "Empire" to sound British, to evoke the "Revolutionary" feel of the American Revolution.

Many other movies have used this (Pirates of the Caribbean, for instance).

Also, don't forget that George was completely vilified for making some characters sound Asian and Jamaican in the Prequels.

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[PRMan]

Marvel did exactly this in their issue of "What If" that was a series of jokes instead of an Alternate Universe story. "What if Thor spoke in a Swedish accent?"

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[dhasenan]

Old English? Yeah, I liked it when Theoden-king stood up and said "Hwæt, we gardena in geardagum, eodcyninga rym gefrunon, hu ða æelingas ellen fremedon!"

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[Mindcontrolled]

The Swedish lilt is a pretty recent phenomenon in the northern Germanic language family. Icelandic is what you are looking for, for it is pretty much what remains of the language of the Edda. They still sound badass today. Well, it is on my target list, to be tackled as soon as I got the French down to a decent level...

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[rmstar]

it just feels corny as if your family were acting out the script in front of you.

I think that's the center of the middle of the core of the issue. It's called lack of cultural self esteem, and is rather widespread. In parallel universes, people find it corny unless it looks as if their family were acting out the script in front of them.

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[asc99c]

Rohirric had roughly the same old-but-understandable relationship to Westron (common speech) as Old English has to Modern English.

Huh? Old English is not even vaguely understandable - I don't even recognise most of the letters. I thought to myself that reading Beowulf in it's original format would be interesting. It would be, but I'd need to put serious time into learning a new language.

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[Dogtanian]

I will note that when the UK director Gerry Anderson produced Thunderbirds, for a UK audience, he gave the puppets US accents.

Actually, I suspect that it they always had a potential sale to the Americans in mind at the very least. Lew Grade, the owner of ATV and ITC who funded and distributed the programme (along with many others during the 60s and the 70s) was well-known for wanting to sell to the American market.

Apparently, they tried to sell Thunderbirds to the US, but it all went wrong, though it was still moderately successful in syndication.

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[amRadioHed]

But British accents have undergone enormous amounts of mutation as well. In some ways, they have made more changes than American English since Victorian times.

So, while Americans associate a British accent with what should be appropriate for medieval times, because they're living where the language was spoken during medieval times, the accent being used is still anachronistic, and just as inappropriate as a Jersey accent.

That may or may not be the case, but it's irrelevant. We're talking about entertainment. People think an British accent is more appropriate for a medieval setting and so that makes it more appropriate.

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[JSG]

Have you ever tried to read Chaucer? That's Middle English. As for Old English - trust me you (nor I) stand a chance! Modern English dialects are much closer together than what might have be termed dialects back then but there is still a huge difference in accents and many terms and words even today across regions. Then throw in Cumbric, Kentish and many other old languages into the mix. Cumbric was still in sporadic use in the 20th C. That's just in England. Then you have Welsh, Irish and Scots with all the same complexities that exist and existed in England with dialects and probably outright different languages in different regions and ages.

The UK and Eire are a small area landwise but a fair diversity in culture still remains - and long may it continue (IMNSHO).

Have a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaucer there's some samples from his writings with translations. I'm a native en_GB speaker and I find it tough going.

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[Dogtanian]

I have to agree with this article, I've always assumed it was just the American preconception of "old worlde". Different enough to be remote but still in the same language. On the other hand as an Irishman I often find it hard to find escapism in Irish TV and to a lesser extent, film. The familiarity of it all doesn't work as well while on the other hand so much of our media is American that even when I visit the USA there is an element of otherworldliness about the whole experience.

I wonder if this is why people prefer the "film look" for drama. Traditional interlaced video has greater temporal resolution (50/60 fields per second instead of 24 frames) which gives a more fluid "live" appearance more like actually being there. Film has a more "distant" feel, mostly due to its slower frame rate (though there are other differences between the two media).

On paper, video's higher temporal resolution is "better", yet people seem to prefer film. I've heard people complain that TVs with a frame interpolation facility made movies look like a cheap soap opera. Some people have speculated that this is because they're used to "film for big-budget drama, video for cheap and/or live TV" and the preference is learned snobbery. Though there may be some truth in that, I also suspect that film's "distance" may be another form of "abstraction" that aids in suspension of disbelief, i.e. they *don't* just look like people in front of a camera.

Then again, that may just be cultural programming after all, in that video looks like "real life people in front of a camera" because a high proportion of video footage *was* for non-fictional live TV, wheras drama tends to use film. It's surprising how you get used to things, like how Doctor Who (and many other 60s to early-80s BBC shows) used to shoot location footage on film and studio footage on video, which looked very different (especially with the sterile bright lighting required for video back then). Yet you mentally got used to "film = outside, video = inside".

But back on-topic, I suspect that escapism maybe does need some "distance", and that may extend beyond accents.

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[CAIMLAS]

Absolutely. The 'fantasy' denoted is all British-inspired, for that matter.

If you think of swords, fighting, and wizards, people instantly think of Britain, Merlin, and King Arthur to some degree. That's going to hold true for pure fantasy with that kind of setting.

On the other hand, there's some 'fantasy' which does not have the British accent, but does not deal in the arcane, and has a decidedly "American" feel:

* Jericho
* Supernatural
* Mad Max

Sure, they're a degree of Science Fiction in them, but they're also Fantasy stories. The author of this article was being disingenuous to make an interesting point: of course you're going to have them sound British if it's British-themed archaic fantasy fiction. You wouldn't want them to be speaking German, because then they'd sound like Nazis. You don't cast a "jin" as a British speaker in something like, oh, Sons of Arabia (theoretically speaking), you give him a Persian English accent (or whatever). Likewise, you don't give your killabikers apocalypse bikers a British accent if it takes place in Texas.

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[GaratNW]

For game players, anyone who played Dragon Age, one of the kind of funny, but very different from the norm things they did was that I personally was quite fond of: each race had an accent, even if it was very mild, but the best decision they made, is I think they had the first dwarves with VO in the last 30 years that WEREN'T FREAKIN SCOTTISH. Hell, my family is almost entirely scottish immigrant, love the accent, but when did dwarves become scots? I mean, the drinking, yes, but.. sheep, bagpipes and tartans? Don't think so!

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[snowgirl]

That may or may not be the case, but it's irrelevant. We're talking about entertainment. People think an British accent is more appropriate for a medieval setting and so that makes it more appropriate.

Indeed... Americans presume that medieval people spoke with a British accent, and therefore our expectations are played to, so that it doesn't put us off.

Like how most cheddar cheese is orange, because we expect it to be orange, not because it should be orange. It appears that it was originally colored with annatto just because the consumers expected an "adulterated product" and wanted it to look orange.

Consumers influence the products that they buy greatly, and meeting expectations to avoid consumers rejecting a perfectly good product—because we don't think it looks right, due to our skewed and wrong expectations—happens a lot. I mean, key lime pie is hardly green at all (my mom eventually gave up on adding food coloring to make it look "right"), and the fruit in yogurt does not bleed the color very much at all, but consumers expect "it has strawberries, so it must be pink/red!", and blueberries blue, and mint ice cream green.

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[0111 1110]

Most cheddar cheese is orange? Most cheddar I have seen is a shade of yellow. Also I don't think it is only Americans who find a British accent more appropriate for a medieval setting than American, Australian, Indian, Singaporean, New Zealand, Bahamanian, Jamaican, African or any other form of colonial English. Personally I would prefer to hear authentic Old English, but I don't think there are many actors who speak it and there is probably no one currently alive who speaks it the way it was truly spoken then.

Perhaps it sounded more like modern French or German than any dialect of modern English, but I would still argue that if you are going to use any form of modern English it should be from the country where English was 'invented' and that would in fact be England itself. Not any sort of simplified accent from the New World or any other distant colony like Australia, South Africa, or New Zealand. The fact is that British English is the only authentic English still spoken. The various UK accents (Irish and Scottish can be included) are certainly more directly descended from Old English than any form of colonial English. But perhaps Catalan or even Latin would sound more authentic than any dialect of modern English. I think the real problem is that many earthlings, particularly Americans, seem to have trouble reading subtitles.

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[identity0]

Yes, but why does it have to be a native English-speaker's accent at all?

The most logical choice would actually be a French accent, as that was a very commonly understood language even in Britain, where the Norman French-speakers took over. Modern French is different than medieval French, of course, but so is English, and if we're making it English anyways, just adding a French accent will do.

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[snowgirl]

Most cheddar cheese is orange? Most cheddar I have seen is a shade of yellow.

Eh... getting the colors accurate is difficult. Cheddar cheese is naturally "white cheddar". The yellow/orange cheddar that you get is adulterated.

Not any sort of simplified accent from the New World or any other distant colony like Australia, South Africa, or New Zealand.

I think you'll find that you're backwards. The American accent is less simplified than any British accent.

The fact is that British English is the only authentic English still spoken. The various UK accents (Irish and Scottish can be included) are certainly more directly descended from Old English than any form of colonial English.

Actually, you're incorrect. They're all equally as descended from medieval English. Just because the UK accents have remained in the same place the whole time does not mean that they failed to change, and in fact, it's common that dialects and accents from a colonizing land show far more variation and change than in their colonies. The reason why is that the selection of accents in the population was diminished, and thus there was a reinforcement to a narrow pronunciation range. (Just like an island population typically has less genetic diversity than a mainland population of the same species.) As a result, American English accents actually show less variation than UK accents, and is typically regarded as closer to older forms of English...

As a bonus, please enjoy a list of changes from the most-recent-common English that American English did not pick up that other accents did.

Most readily apparent, is that a medieval person speaking English would not say "bottle" like in Received Pronunciation, but rather more like an Standard American English speaker.

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[shutdown -p now]

That's because Theoden spoke Westron to the hobbits, not Rohirric. All personal and place-names used by Rohirrim - Theoden, Eomer, Eowyn - are rendered in Old English, however. The "real name" of Theoden in Rohirric was actually "Turac", just as the real name of Merry in Westron was "Kali".

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[Boronx]

In "Beowulf and Grendel" they have the Danes speaking in Swedish accents and the Geats in Scottish accents, I guess because they got a Scotsman to play Beowulf and a Swede to play Hrothgar.

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[sjames]

In fact, the Appalachian accent would be closer to authentic (though still way off).

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[sjames]

Knowing modern German would be more useful than English for trying to make anythuing out in Old English.

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[euroq]

For game players, anyone who played Dragon Age, one of the kind of funny, but very different from the norm things they did was that I personally was quite fond of: each race had an accent, even if it was very mild, but the best decision they made, is I think they had the first dwarves with VO in the last 30 years that WEREN'T FREAKIN SCOTTISH.

So, interesting fact. I know the developer at Bioware in Canada who was responsible for the dwarves. The Dwarves were the last of the three major plot items to make it in the game; they were close to being removed due to time and budget restrictions. It turns out they had American accents, not because it was planned that way, but because they had a budget and L.A. voice actors are cheaper than British voice actors! That's it - they probably would have had British accents otherwise.

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[dwye]

No. But I will note that when the UK director Gerry Anderson produced Thunderbirds, for a UK audience, he gave the puppets US accents.

UK productions that are produced to be sold to the US often used a couple of Americans, or more often Canadians, in major parts so as to given us Americans a point of entry. When he made Space 1999 he used the husband-wife pair from (the real, not Tom Cruise) Mission Impossible as the leads and Barry Morse, a Canadian, as the scientist, for this very reason.

I would note that the BBC still uses the idea. Why else have the Lady of Downton Abbey be an American heiress?

BTW, why is it that the Irish cannot manage suspension of disbelief for dramas set in their backyard using backyard accents, when New York audiences *expect* their movie and TV cops and gangsters to have local accents?

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[dwye]

Actually, it *is* the ur-nordic language, and they go to a lot of work to make sure that it stays like Old Norse/Old Danish. Obviously, there has to be a little shifting, since no one had tape recorders back in the 9th Century, but they still make sure that the rhymes in The Head Ransom from Egil Skallagrim's Saga still rhyme, and all the puns in the sagas and Eddas still work, and that no one introduces new words when something from the old days can be repurposed.

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[C0R1D4N]

The "New Joisey" is actually a Staten Island accent. There are three forms of speech in the state of New Jersey. The north Jerseyans frequently have the Staten Island accent, those close to Philadelphia will have that god awful Philly accent and the shore/center of the state tends to sound more like people do on TV.

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[tylernt]

(I also feel obliged to mention that, for myself personally, meeting someone with a US accent in the flesh is often a surreal experience. It feels a bit like some kind of a line---probably a glass screen of some kind---has been crossed.

I'm an American, and I get the same feeling when I meet someone with an Australian accent. I haven't met an Irish person yet but I bet it'd be the same thing.

I gotta tell you, I love listening to Irish accents on TV. It's elegant, almost musical. American English seems crass in comparison.

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[f()rK()_Bomb]

There are very few curly red heads in Ireland. If they have such hair it's usually dyed and / or straightened.

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[Phreakiture]

Interesting though this branch of the thread is, I'm pretty sure I heard a mighty "whoosh".

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[Phreakiture]

Thank you. I'm glad someone gets it.

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[echucker]

Just for fun, I dropped this into Google Translate, with auto-detect turned on. It thought it was Swedish.

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[Attila Dimedici]

I agree. I think that dwarves should have a germanic accent. I personally would go with a Swiss German accent.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

Different enough to be remote but still in the same language.

The most ironic example of this I've heard recently is our Library of Congress is promoting reading with radio PSA's featuring American authors, but narrated by a Brit. If they do one for Mark Twain, I might just have to shoot my radio (with a revolver, of course).

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[mattack2]

Occasionally, the Irish broadcaster RTE produces dramas set in Dublin, etc and played by Irish actors. They invariably flop. People can't suspend their disbelief when a drama is set, literally, in their home town, in the very streets and buildings they've been in themselves.

That just seems very weird. Sure, people who live in U.S. cities where shows are set see lots of mistakes in shows, but it seems to me that at least some of them like shows being set where they live.

(I don't live in S.F., but "Alcatraz", filmed in Canada, sure makes a lot of mistakes about the SF Bay Area.. it's still is/was an entertaining show.)

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[IrquiM]

Yeah, and I could also find a Norwegian movie where the vikings speak Norwegian...

The issue here is when it happens in Hollywood movies and series. There are exceptions though to this rule. Norwegian is heard in The Thing, 13th Warrior, Hell on Wheels, X-files, etc. I even thing Helen Magnus tried to speak some Norwegian in an episode of Sanctuary, but when it happens, it's most likely not part of the main plot - it's just there to make it sound more authentic.

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[iserlohn]

Actually, they will say "bottle" much closer to a west country accent than to any American one. Both RP and Standard American has had many changes in phonology compared to early modern English (which is about the time when colonization of America started).

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[snowgirl]

Actually, they will say "bottle" much closer to a west country accent than to any American one. Both RP and Standard American has had many changes in phonology compared to early modern English (which is about the time when colonization of America started).

They tend to say "bottle" with a glottal stop rather than a unvoiced alveolar stop. But then Americans did mostly pick up the transition from alveolar stop to alveolar trill regardless of voiced quality that nearly all English dialects now use.

So, yes, SAE has gone through a number of phonological changes from early modern English, but it has still generally undergone less than RP has.

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[jellomizer]

But the French Accent, isn't a regional accent. The accent is due to to speaking English using the phonics of french accent. Unlike English/American/Irish/Scottish/NZ/Australian... Where the language is natural to the speaker.

why do you have a northern accent?

[msheekhah]

Lots of places have a north.

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[gnick]

Yeah, but northern Argentina is a far cry from northern Canada or even Montana.

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[Stargoat]

True, but no so far a cry from northern Gallifrey. Oh wait....

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[Zordak]

Lots of planets have a North*!

*Arguably, this one could go either way.

(Doctor Who and grammar. We all need our little obsessions.)

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[oldmac31310]

Good one.

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[SleazyRidr]

Well, that's because the TARDIS telepathically translates everything for you. No doubt because of the way it works it also translates the accents to fit the roles.

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[electrosoccertux]

Lots of planets have a North*!

*Arguably, this one could go either way.

(Doctor Who and grammar. We all need our little obsessions.)

no then it would be a 'south'

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[zxsqkty]

To distinguish ourselves from you lot doon there.

Re:why do you have a northern accent?

[Patch86]

There are an awful lot of South Wales accents in the Doctor Who universe. Not least because it's filmed in Cardiff.

Obvious...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Do we even need to be asking such an obvious question? British is the foreign language that Americans are most likely to understand...

Re:Obvious...

[Cro Magnon]

I've heard some of those British shows. I find it easier to understand Spanish. And I don't even SPEAK Spanish.

Re:Obvious...

[gnick]

I know you're making a joke, but my preschooler's teacher (English but in New Mexico) was going to visit her family and was asked whether or not they spoke English in England... When she told me that my response was that they may know a version of English, but they certainly don't speak American. I think I'll go smoke a fag and hit the loo. Bloody hell. Bullocks.

Re:Obvious...

[Space cowboy]

Bollocks!

Re:Obvious...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yeah, you're "Normal for Norfolk."

Re:Obvious...

[geekmux]

Do we even need to be asking such an obvious question? British is the foreign language that Americans are most likely to understand...

Perhaps the more obvious question is why do you consider "British" a foreign language? Or one that Americans need to "understand"?

Re:Obvious...

[jedidiah]

If you don't then raving nutcases will come flooding out of the woodwork can call you a flaming racist. They will criticize you for which accents you apply to which characters (like Lucas).

Re:Obvious...

[newcastlejon]

Not just bollocks, bullocks' bollocks!

Re:Obvious...

[Brannoncyll]

Do we even need to be asking such an obvious question? British is the foreign language that Americans are most likely to understand...

Perhaps the more obvious question is why do you consider "British" a foreign language? Or one that Americans need to "understand"?

As a Brit living in New York I find that alot of people find it very difficult to understand me (especially people with South American or Chinese descent), and even my girlfriend (native New Yorker) often has difficulty. She said that for the first 2 months after we met she understood about 20% of what I said. My accent is pretty standard for southern England and should therefore be pretty easy to understand. I often get the feeling that British English really is a foreign language.

Re:Obvious...

[funwithBSD]

It helps if you unclench your jaw when you speak.

Re:Obvious...

[Brannoncyll]

It helps if you unclench your jaw when you speak.

So I should mimic 'Cletus the slack-jawed yokel'? :P

Re:Obvious...

[Mindcontrolled]

I am a German who spent part of his PhD work in California. We got a mixed bunch in the lab there, guys from all over the US, some French, some Koreans, and a Londoner - which was the only guy whom I did not understand without problems.

Re:Obvious...

[demonlapin]

Speak a rough approximation of RP. It will vastly improve your comprehensibility. Most Americans can't understand other British accents at full strength because they've never heard them.

Re:Obvious...

[mamas]

> She said that for the first 2 months after we met she understood about 20% of what I said.

Still! she dates you? You must be some piece of work. ;-)

Re:Obvious...

[Brannoncyll]

> She said that for the first 2 months after we met she understood about 20% of what I said.

Still! she dates you? You must be some piece of work. ;-)

What can I say, American girls love a British accent :)

Old World

[SJHillman]

For Americans, I would assume it's because we associate fantasy with the Old World because that's where most of our myths and legends originate. And they have castles. And among the Old World, England is our closest tie (as well as speaking the same language). The majority of fantasy settings are basically just medieval-Europe-plus-wizards-and-dragons even if a location isn't given (or it takes place on another world)

Re:Old World

[MorderVonAllem]

Interestingly enough the British accent we so associate with England came about after the Revolutionary war. I don't recall the source off the top of my head but it's probably on wikipedia.

Re:Old World

[bigtomrodney]

Is it Received Pronunciation that you're referring to?

Re:Old World

[funwithBSD]

Then in England the fantasy actors should sound Germanic, Nordic, or French.

German ones should sound Russian or Indian.

Re:Old World

[flimflammer]

As an American, this is exactly how I feel. We're a moderately new entity in the world. We don't really have the kind of history to use ourselves in a fantasy setting, except for the Wild West. The Wild West is great and all, but that's more about gun slinging and cowboys. When we want fantasy (castles, dragons, etc), we have to look where it would be appropriate. Medieval Europe is the place. As for language, well, it's true that British English is a tad foreign to us and otherworldly, I think it has more to do with just being realistic to the setting, while still being in a language we can understand. We can't have some medieval castle with dragons and everyone speaking with a Brooklyn accent, as humorous as that would be. Even if we're not going for true to life (dragons, etc), it helps to have at least some realistic consistency.

Re:Old World

[FridayBob]

Agreed. These fantasy stories frequently take place in surroundings full of "props" (castles, dungeons, swords alchemy) people (kings, knights, wizards, peasants) and other elements (witches, dragons) that belong to a period that people generally identify with medieval Europe. English was used in that area at the time, and although the way it was spoken then is not easy for most modern anglophones to follow, most would likely recognize it as something from England or thereabouts.

Other English accents, such as American and Australian, are much too modern for that period and whenever they are used in such fantasy film productions it makes the experience seem less "authentic", and therefore more difficult to suspend belief.

In addition, I suspect the Bard is also partly responsible for this situation. Although he lived and died just after the Middle Ages, his plays have been repeated ever since. Remember, his influence is so strong that his style has even helped the British accent cross effortlessly over into science fiction (I'm thinking of Christopher Plummer's wonderful portrayal of General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country).

Re:Old World

[Patch86]

At least as far as LOTR is concerned, you could also make an argument for just staying faithful to the spirit of the original text. Tolkien was an Englishman (moved to England at the age of 3) who would have spoken with either Received Pronunciation or a Black Country accent. The characters he invented and the locations he wrote about would have been based on his local experiences.

So if you want to make the movies sound like Tolkien was imagining when he wrote it, British accents are probably a good place to start (and certainly a better bet that North American accents).

Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT England

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit use British accents -- they're written by an English author and are fundamentally ABOUT England (a.k.a. the Shire).

Age

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a question of cultural depth - America is largely a cultural offshoot of the UK. So when you want a voice for a 'centuries old' sort of tale, you go British. Conversely, the American accent has an association with Modern.

Re:Age

[gnick]

That's what I was thinking - England is old school compared to the US. And for a large part, big budget movies are tailored for American audiences and the rest of the world is a secondary market that will contribute any way.

For example, last time I was in Europe I stayed with my father in Vienna - His apartment was a couple of hundred years older than the United States. My duplex in the US is ancient because it was built all the way back in the 50's.

Dragons and wizards are from a long time ago - English. Star Wars/Galactica/others are in the future (or at least a galaxy far, far away) - American.

Re:Age

[arielCo]

Case in point:
British accents VS American accents

Re:Age

[kwark]

"Star Wars/Galactica/others are in the future (or at least a galaxy far, far away) - American."

Did Lucas replace the English voices with American in the latest rerelease? I could only find a smal trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWh46ClD5Pk

Re:Age

[kwark]

What about old Ben Kenobi?

Re:Age

[Bogtha]

Star Wars/Galactica/others are in the future (or at least a galaxy far, far away) - American.

Both Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica are set in the past.

Medieval times

[neonv]

Most fantasy settings are based in medieval times, and America didn't have English, let alone feudalism and other aspects common in fantasy novels. British accents just fit the real world time period we associate with fantasy settings.

Re:Medieval times

[Anonymous Coward]

But medieval English wasn't much like what they speak in the fantasy movies!

Re:Medieval times

[chromas]

It was now!

Dwarves

[wjousts]

Any why are Dwarves always Scottish?

Re:Dwarves

[Anonymous Coward]

Because We Scots are manly dorfs who punch trees down and eat them for breakfast before we go to work in the mines.

Re:Dwarves

[Tumbleweed]

Any why are Dwarves always Scottish?

Have you ever *heard* a Scottish person talk? C'mon.

Karen Gillan = sexiest dwarf ever!

Re:Dwarves

[busyqth]

Because We Scotch are manly dorfs who punch trees down...

There, I've corrected that for you.

Re:Dwarves

[musicalmicah]

Actually, one of the things I love about the Dragon Age games is that the Dwarves have an American accent. They are also fiercely independent, look down on other cultures, and have an incredibly stratified yet still somewhat democratic society. It seems fitting.

Re:Dwarves

[bigtomrodney]

Scotch adj; a largely obsolescent adjective meaning having to do with Scotland and usually now considered pejorative (unless related to food or drink).

Re:Dwarves

[halivar]

Because we Scotch

I'll have what he's having, bartender.

Re:Dwarves

[damnbunni]

Well, there's a dwemer in Morrowind.

He's old, decrepit, disgustingly obese, and his lower body's been replaced with a prosthetic mechanism from one of the dwemer spiders, but he's in there.

Re:Dwarves

[gbjbaanb]

*I* think its becuase the dwarves are depicted as coming from the north of Middle Earth, where's its mountainous and strange. And in the UK, the 'wild north' is Scotland.

Though, as Tolkien was an anglo-saxon scholar, the dwarves could so easily have been from a northern Scandinavian country instead. Swedish dwarves anyone?

Re:Dwarves

[Tassach]

To be true with Tolkien, the Dwarves are more accurately Jewish: a small, tightly-knit subculture with strong cultural traditions living in mainstream society, but still seen as outsiders. Tolkien explicitly made this connection in his commentaries, and Khuzdul is based on Hebrew.

However, a lot of the same observations can be applied to the Scots as well. The fact that Dwarvish culture is explicitly Clan-based, and that they live in remote, mountainous areas makes the Highland Scots a good cultural template for Tolkien's Dwarves.

Re:Dwarves

[Tassach]

And, to reply to myself, Pratchett takes the Dwarf = Jew analogy even further than Tolkien did. Diskworld Dwarfs are undeniably analogs for roundworld Jews.

Re:Dwarves

[DMUTPeregrine]

I think the Dwarves in Terry Brooks' "Shannara" series are my favorite. They are the people who were driven underground during a big nuclear war, thousands+ of years later they came out. None of them ever want to go underground, they have a racial claustrophobia. They have the best garden/park in the world (like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon). They get along well with the Elves. They're not all alcoholics, etc, etc. They are dwarves, not short underground Scotsmen. They have their own culture and customs, and that makes them far more interesting than the typical cliché dwarves.

Re:Dwarves

[busyqth]

Scotch adj; a largely obsolescent adjective meaning having to do with Scotland and usually now considered pejorative (unless related to food or drink).

I just knew there was a reason I chose that word. Thanks!

Re:Dwarves

[euroq]

Actually, one of the things I love about the Dragon Age games is that the Dwarves have an American accent. They are also fiercely independent, look down on other cultures, and have an incredibly stratified yet still somewhat democratic society. It seems fitting.

So, interesting fact. I know the developer at Bioware in Canada who was responsible for the dwarves. The Dwarves were the last of the three major plot items to make it in the game; they were close to being removed due to time and budget restrictions. It turns out they had American accents, not because it was planned that way, but because they had a budget and L.A. voice actors are cheaper than British voice actors! That's it - they probably would have had British accents otherwise.

Care attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

Engaging Care Mechanism ...3 ...2 ...1 ...0

System fault. Care Mechanism disengaged.

I do not care.

Re:Care attempt

[GameboyRMH]

If you had a good ol' fashioned mechanical care drive you could just put some sand on your care clutch to get 'er running in a pinch.

Also fantasy = medieval

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course another main reason is that general fantasy is most closely linked with the European medieval period. In that period English speakers were generally going to be speaking with an accent from Great Britain. It would strike us as strange to hear someone in a historical medieval period using a NJ accent for much the same reason that it does in fantasy.

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[SJHillman]

One does not merely walk into Parliament.

However, one can try to merely tunnel under Parliament with a good bit of gunpowder...

Re:Simple, really

[wjousts]

You wouldn't use terms such as "poofter" and "rodgering" unless you were a closest Brit. Admitting it would be the first step towards healing.

Now think in American.

[khasim]

Imagine The Lord of the Rings where all the Hobbits had Brooklyn accents.

Other enough to be unusual but still understandable but evoking an entirely different genre (mafia crime drama).

Re:Now think in American.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Rome. They used accents from all over the place (mostly UK variants it has to be said) to give a feeling of being different, but still understandable. It worked really well.

British accents tend to used for villains too... which could be seen as insulting... but actually is quite flattering when you think about it. Really scary villains are intelligent... really intelligent... and Americans associate British accents with being smart (wrongly, but there it is).

Re:Now think in American.

[NEDHead]

Imagine Romeo & Juliet set in NYC with singing & dancing street gangs....oh, wait

Re:Now think in American.

[Samantha Wright]

There's an air of traditionality about it, as well, I think; it's as if to imply that American accents are divergent from the original core. (Although this is somewhat in question, as the evidence says that English pronunciation was rhotic in the 18th Century, like the General American accent and not like Received Pronunciation.) It was particularly peculiar to hear Americans making movies about Russians where they all had English accents.

Re:Now think in American.

[PatPending]

Imagine The Lord of the Rings where all the Hobbits had Brooklyn accents.

Fah gedda boudit

Re:Now think in American.

[mjwalshe]

Hobbits should have RP for Frodo Merry and Pippin - Sam and the Gaffer should have had Black Country accents and used dialect (rural brummie think Noddy Holder )

Re:Now think in American.

[kryliss]

Someone out West may Side with you on that Story.

Re:Now think in American.

[justin12345]

Shakespeare is actually Modern English (and he'll Melt with You), not Middle English. Middle English is somewhat nebulously defined, but Chaucer would be a better example.

Re:Now think in American.

[Dr_Barnowl]

More like this, probably

Re:Now think in American.

[spintriae]

There were some New York accents in The Last Temptation of Christ which I found amusing. I wonder if Martin Scorsese even noticed.

Re:Now think in American.

[cpu6502]

Good point, but he spoke early modern It had a heavy brogue and sounded semi-Scottish. Also it was pre-vowel shift, so it sounded little like modern British.

Re:Now think in American.

[mcrbids]

I think you're thinking of the Wiz which is an entirely different take on the Wizard of Oz...

Re:Now think in American.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Chaucer? The Owl and the Nightingale forever!

The niyhtingale in hire thoyhte
athold al this, & longe thoyhte
wat ho tharafter miyhte segge:
vor ho ne miyhte noyht alegge
that the hule hadde hire ised,
vor he spac bothe riyht an red.
An hire ofthuyhte that ho hadde
the speche so for uorth iladde,
an was oferd that hire answare
ne wurthe noyht ariyht ifare.

The bottom line is, if you can understand it, it's not Middle English. (Diachronous linguistics geeks excepted, of course.)

Re:Now think in American.

[Tassach]

As I said in an earlier comment, Tolkien was a linguist and as such was extraordinarily sensitive to linguistic nuances like accent and the effect of social class on speech. If you render the common tongue as English, and keep in mind the history and social status of the various characters, choosing an accent becomes pretty obvious.

Actually if you wanted to Americanize LOTR, the Hobbits would have Southern accents (country bumpkins), the Rohirrim Texan accents (close to the Hobbits, still country but a little more refined), and the Gondorians a neutral General American/ Received Pronunciation accent (educated middle/upper-class).

I'd give the Elves a French accent (refined and a little snooty) when speaking the Common Tongue. Quenya played the role of Latin in Middle Earth (dead language used for formal purposes), and Sindarin was an everyday language evolved from it, so a Romance language would be the closest social analog to it. To an American listener a French accent would best convey the extreme refinement and cultured history (not to mention snobbishness) of the Elves. If you wanted to get even more specific I'd give Elrond and the Rivendell elves a French Canadian accent and the Galadhrim a Parisian accent. Linguistically, a Welsh accent would be most appropriate, as Sindarin was patterned after Welsh, but it just doesn't have the same social/class implications that French does.

If anyone had a Brooklyn accent, it would be a Dwarf. Tolkien explicitly equated the Dwarves with the Jews, and based Khuzdul on Hebrew... so a Brooklyn accent would be extremely appropriate for working-class Dwarves like Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur. Dwarvish nobility like Gimli and Thorin would have a milder, upper-class Jewish accent.

Re:Now think in American.

[peragrin]

They did that it starred that dumb kid in what's eating gilbert grape.

You know the really stupid one.

Re:Now think in American.

[NikLinna]

In my local D&D campaign, all the halflings do have Brooklyn accents--but only amongst themselves. With the "tourists" they talk like Munchkins on ecstasy.

Re:Now think in American.

[Anne Thwacks]

Devon?

Norfolk?

Yorkshire would work well!

Re:Now think in American.

[Mindcontrolled]

You Sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. This analysis is pretty much spot on. One might debate the French Canadian accent for Rivendell, though - I do not fathom those to be so far distant from the Galadhrim (on whose Parisian accent I do agree), so I would pick a more closely related French dialect for those, let's say something along the lines of Franc-Comtois?

Re:Now think in American.

[idontgno]

If anyone had a Brooklyn accent, it would be a Dwarf. Tolkien explicitly equated the Dwarves with the Jews, and based Khuzdul on Hebrew... so a Brooklyn accent would be extremely appropriate for working-class Dwarves like Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur. Dwarvish nobility like Gimli and Thorin would have a milder, upper-class Jewish accent.

So, for real authenticity, Dwarvish should be Yiddish? The only problem with that is that Yiddish has been a comic language in Western pop language for so long (thanks to decades of awesome Jewish-American comedians) that it would reduce the Dwarves to comic relief.

Oh, wait, we're talking about the LOTR movies, where the dwarves WERE reduced to comic relief. Right. Carry on.

Re:Now think in American.

[Chris Mattern]

The bottom line is, if you can understand it, it's not Middle English. (Diachronous linguistics geeks excepted, of course.)

And if you can't understand it even if you *are* a diachronous linguistics geek, it's Old English. That's simply a different language.

Re:Now think in American.

[LordOfTheNoobs]

I was wondering how to pronounce that until I realized it's just a clever bit of german with an outrageous french accent.

Re:Now think in American.

[michael_cain]

Imagine The Lord of the Rings where all the Hobbits had Brooklyn accents.

Gandalf and Saruman with Deep South drawls.

Once upon a time, years ago while I was in graduate school, I saw a national touring company's production of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors set in the Deep South, with Southern stereotypes for several of the characters, and all of the slapstick parts played as slapstick. Half the audience left after the first act; the rest of us were rolling in the aisles.

Re:Now think in American.

[scottrocket]

Imagine The Lord of the Rings where all the Hobbits had Brooklyn accents.

Other enough to be unusual but still understandable but evoking an entirely different genre (mafia crime drama).

I remember a program from about 10-12 years ago that could convert speech into different accents, might be fun to try out at least "FOTR".

Re:Now think in American.

[chilvence]

I was trying to mend my trousers, but I have a terrible problem with my Singer. Make it Sew, Number One!

Re:Now think in American.

[interval1066]

I think it's silly to impose a British accent when the original characters were speaking Middle English (Shakespeare), Old English (King Arthur, Beowulf), Latin (Rome movies), or Celtic (anything pre-Roman).

Yeah, if you're going to do film about King Arthur, do it in the original Anglo Saxon you know; "Sythan aerest weard feasceaft funden, he thaes frofre gebad, weox under wolcum, weorthmyndum thah, odthaet him aeghwylc thara ymbesettendra, ofer hronrade hyran scholde, gomban gylde. Thaet waes god cyning!" (1)
Sure, that will make the film much better.

Wtf are you talking about??? Better a British accent than a mid-western one. Kostner was roundly criticized for his accent in his version of Robin Hood. Seems a film can't win with some people. I suppose you could do like they did with LotR and use subtitles as they did when the characters were speaking Elvish, but producers have studied this and it seems audiences aren't going to put up with subtitles through an entire film, one reason why foreign films have a hard time breaking through.
---
(1) "Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him: for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, and gave him gifts: a good king he!" (From the Beowulf prologue)

Re:Now think in American.

[JoshuaZ]

It may have not been pre-vowel shift. By many estimates the Great Vowel Shift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift was almost completely done by 1500, and Shakespeare is born in 1564. Moreover, when Shakespeare does decide to use rhymes (such as in the end of Richard II) one sees essentially modern rhyme choices, suggesting that the intended pronunciation was not far from ours.

Re:Now think in American.

[masmullin]

Joe Pesci would be an awesome Frodo.

"What theh fuck. My size fucking funny to you? Am I a fucking Halfling or something? You know what? Fuck you!
Here's what were gonna do kay? We're gonna take this fucking ring; and we're gonna SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR FUCKING SAURON THROAT!"

Re:Now think in American.

[Tassach]

No, Dwarvish (Khuzdul) would be Hebrew -- it was their secret language that they only spoke among themselves, pretty much how most American/European Jews use Hebrew.

Everyday at home, as well as when speaking with "Gentiles" (Humans,Elves, and Hobbits) they'd speak the local dialect with an accent appropriate to their social class. Yiddish is a lower-class German dialect; the Brooklyn accent has some Yiddish influence due to the large number of Jews living there, but is still distinctively English, not Germanic. Brooklyn (and it's accent) would be a good model for Lake-Town and Erebor before Smaug - a dwarf trader in Lake-Town would be in the same position as a Jewish shopkeeper in New York. I can totally imagine Bard sounding like a Brooklyn cop.

Re:Now think in American.

[Tassach]

I don't know if a Non-Frankophone would be familiar enough with French accents to distinguish them that much... and there's a definite old-world / new-world split between the Galadhrim and the Imladhrim (to suppose a name for the people of Imladris); the Galadhrim would rightly have regarded the folk of Imladris as colonials.

To extend the analogy, you could think of the Wood-elves of Mirkwood as being Cajuns... an even more remote and rural/unrefined offshoot of their culture. Playing Legolas as a Antebellum New Orleans aristocrat works (and would be pretty bad-ass). He's royalty... but the people of kingdom are, basically, a bunch of hillbillies (to judge from how they act in The Hobbit).

Re:Now think in American.

[0111 1110]

What would a Jewish accent sound like? Would it be the same for Australian, New Zealand, South African, West Coast American, Midwest, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Southeast American (deep south) Jews. And would British Jews also have this Jewish accent regaredless of which part of England they are from? How about Eastern and Western European Jews? Would Russian Jews sound the same as Italian Jews or Dutch Jews?

I guess all Jews sound the same in the same way that all black people sound the same. Whether a black person is from Ethiopia or France or England or Germany or Spain or Australia or Canada or Costa Rica or Chile they all pretty much sound like they speak American Ghetto (ebonics) I suppose.

Re:Now think in American.

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

I thought King Arthur was Celtic (speaking Latin with a Celtic accent) and fought against the Anglo Saxon invaders. And that Robin Hood spoke French, so English would be fake for him no matter what accent is used (not that the movie goers would ever accept this).

Re:Now think in American.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Mordor Orcs would be all East Coast and the Isengard Uruk Hai'd be straight outta Compton.

Or Canadians and Minnesotans, respectively, eh, you betcha, take off you halfling hosers.

Re:Now think in American.

[axlr8or]

Seriously?! Try this on for size. 'Puss in Boots' with guess who? Christopher Walkens. Yes, it does exist. If you wanna see how a city slicker accent can seriously mess up a movie. Watch that one. The movie and Walkens go together like Apple and DRM free music.

Re:Now think in American.

[shutdown -p now]

As a Russian, I can tell you that I vastly prefer American movies about Russians where they all speak English (and I guess at that point they have to use accents to make it sound "foreign") over those where they actually try to put Russian in there - because I haven't seen a single movie where it wasn't hilariously wrong in both accent and sentence structure.

Remember that scene in "Red Dawn" where a Soviet soldier tries to read the sign (in English) at the national park, has to make most of it up because of his poor command of the language, which results in a hilarious "translation"? Well, that scene is doubly hilarious if you're a Russian, because his actual speech is about as close to the English subtitles, as the subtitles themselves are to what's on the sign...

Re:Now think in American.

[ignavus]

the Gondorians a neutral General American/ Received Pronunciation accent (educated middle/upper-class).

I imagine the Gondorians would be more like upper class Bostonians.

Re:Now think in American.

[rainmouse]

Remember Rome. They used accents from all over the place (mostly UK variants it has to be said) to give a feeling of being different, but still understandable. It worked really well.

In the Eagle [2011], I found that the Romans with American accents was an instant immersion killer. I cannot explain why considering giving them English accents should be just as wrong. I guess its something we have grown used to and now expect. Perhaps Romans should have regional Italian accents. Would Italian accents make for better or worse Romans? On a side note it was nice to hear Gaelic in a film even if it was largely Irish Gaelic used.
Certain accents go well with certain types of films. Unleased [2005] was set in Glasgow but featured not a single Scottish accent. Instead the villains all had strong London accents because it suits gangsters and I guess Jet Lee or Morgan Freeman didn't feel up to the task of putting on a kilted accent.

Re:Now think in American.

[dwye]

As Robin Hood was a member of the yeomanry, rather than the nobility, he would have spoken something like Old English but with Middle English grammar, and would probably have sounded Dutch to our ears. If he spoke French, it was because he was speaking the foreign language of the nobility, not because he spoke it natively. I expect that he would be as likely to speak French as would the average Russian during the Napoleonic invasions (like Platon, vs. Pierre B., using War And Peace characters).

Re:Now think in American.

[dwye]

Elrond was a native Sindarin speaker, whereas Galadriel grew up speaking Quenya until the Noldor moved back to Beleriand. Therefore, her French would sound like something spoken by Hugh Capet if not like Clovis the Frank King, not modern French like her subjects. I do not know much about French chrono-dialects, but she would certainly sound very antique.

Re:Now think in American.

[euroq]

the Rohirrim Texan accents (close to the Hobbits, still country but a little more refined)

HA! Where'd you get the idea that Texas accents are more refined than other Southern accents? Nothing from Texas is "more refined" than anything. ;)

Re:Now think in American.

[Rei]

Perhaps it's not reasonable to ask things to be performed in the original language, but why always British is the question. Just to pick an example, your average Icelander speaks perfect English, but most have at least somewhat of an accent -- be it rolled "r"s,"w/v" mixing, vowel sounds that tend to go down at the end instead of up (for example, an "e" or "o" briefly starts to sound more like an "a" before it ends, while with most English speakers, it briefly starts to sound more like an "i"), breathy/dulled trailing consonants, things of that nature. The accent is understandable but unfamiliar to your average American. So why not? Why not Danish-accented English? Norwegian-accented English? Swedish-accented English? Again, most of them speak excellent English, but with different accents than your average movie fare. The issue is that the "unusual" accent roles needed for movies are almost always British, and that's kinda strange.

Re:Now think in American.

[interval1066]

Yeah, I dunno. Brits sound alien to us (not me so much, spent a lot of time in Europe) I guess, but we can still pick up the jive. Kinda stupid I guess, but; there 'tis.

Re:Now think in American.

[_Shad0w_]

Erm, I had to study Chaucer in Middle English when I did English Literature at A-Level. Middle English is understandable if you want to, Old English would require you to learn a new language entirely.

Re:Now think in American.

[_Shad0w_]

Only Roman Legionaries were Roman citizens, the Auxiliaries were all from different parts of the Roman Empire, so they should have a wide range of national and regional accents. In fact The Eagle was set in the mid 2nd Century CE, at which point the balance between Legionaries and Auxiliaries was about equal.

Re:Now think in American.

[_Shad0w_]

That depends which version of the Robin Hood story you're reading. In some versions he's the Earl of Huntingdon, although that didn't seem to start happening until the C16th or C17th, when he started becoming the noble Saxon standing up against the Norman French.

Re:Now think in American.

[_Shad0w_]

Given they're from the Shires, you could pick ones of the Shires. Although that does cover about half of England.

Re:Now think in American.

[_Shad0w_]

I seem to recall Tolkien was quite explicit that The Shire was rural England. Rivendell is approximately Oxford, iirc. Gondor ends up somewhere in Northern Italy, I think, which might explain the style of the armour being predominately Gothic Plate (that's kind of the southern extent of the Holy Roman Empire).

Re:Now think in American.

[TheRaven64]

The BBC article[1] mentions this. The advantage of British accents is that they're generally understandable by English speakers the world over (well, except for something like a thick Liverpudlian accent, but that's very rare to see in films). A Calabrian accent may be more authentic for a Roman, but a lot of English speakers would find it difficult to understand.

[1] Sorry, I didn't meant to RTFA, but it popped up in my RSS feed yesterday...

Re:Now think in American.

[BlueScreenO'Life]

It was particularly peculiar to hear Americans making movies about Russians where they all had English accents.

By contrast, the pathetic attempt at Russian accents in K19 was rather annoying.

Re:Now think in American.

[Tassach]

Not necessarily... given her extraordinary talents and thousands of years of practice, her accent would be whatever she wanted it to be. We're talking about someone who defied the Valar (gods, basically), led a rebellion, and reigned for thousands of years as a beloved and respected monarch; as such one would assume she was an extremely gifted public speaker and politician, one of the best in Arda's history. Tolkien described her as "greatest of elven women" as well as "the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth".

Re:Now think in American.

[Tassach]

The Black Speech is in a completely different linguistic group than the others, and has a preponderance of gutteral consonants.

German or Arabic wouldn't be a bad substitute, Russian might work too; and any of those would work as the language of the enemy to an American movie-goer.

Re:Now think in American.

[BlueScreenO'Life]

I guess you can't generalize much. I've never been to Texas myself, but the people I know from Austin are well cultured and their accent does sound educated.

Re:Now think in American.

[BlueScreenO'Life]

Shakespeare's pronunciation was almost certainly post-vowel shift. Country matters.

Re:Now think in American.

[BasilBrush]

No, not at all like scottish. Closer to west country - the very opposite end of Britain. In this vid you can hear the best approximation to what the original pronunciation of Shakespeare was like, together with some information about how they know that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

Re:Now think in American.

[Patchw0rk F0g]

Imagine The Lord of the Rings where all the Hobbits had Brooklyn accents.

Hey, you lookin' at me? You lookin' at me, orc? I'll take ya downtown, punk. I tellya, dis Minas Tirif ting, it's ours, man. Don't even TINK about goin' dere!

Re:Now think in American.

[Patchw0rk F0g]

Imagine The Lord of the Rings where all the Hobbits had Brooklyn accents.

You talkin' ta me? You talkin' ta me, orc? I tellya, dis Minas Tirif ting, it's our turf. Don't even TINK about goin' dere! Faggot orcs!

Re:Now think in American.

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, Robin Hood was a member of the minor nobility (one of the few remaining Anglo-Saxon nobles in a country where the nobility were predominantly Normans). The merry men were all from the yeomanry. So, Robin Hood would probably have spoken French fluently as a second language with Middle English as his primary language (Middle English was fully developed by 1400 and Robin Hood is set in the mid to late 1400s).

Re:Now think in American.

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Believe it or not Scorsese actually took that into consideration. Link

Harvey Keitel as Judas has been the subject of debate because of his NYC accent. Scorsese chose to depict Colloquial language, Generally choosing a “formal” British accent for Romans, and various other accents (American, Canadian, Southern, New York,etc for the common people, such as those Jesus associated with. Scorsese’s research showed that Galilean accent was strong, ridiculed in Jerusalem.

Or:

I mean, basically, they say, okay, this is a defense, in a way. We don't have to get too emotionally involved because this happened a long time ago and people spoke funny. We said no, this man talks like you, talks like me, some guy has a Brooklyn accent, another guy has a Canadian accent... where does it say that everybody in ancient Judea spoke by listening to the BBC?

I was going to link to a clip of Tony Curtis saying "Yonder lies the castle of my fodda" in The Black Shield of Falworth but turns out that's apocryphal...but dig how thick the Brooklynese is in this bit from Son of Ali Baba. Point being that Scorsese at least put some thought into these matters, unlike the wholly cavalier attitude that obtained before. Not that people don't put LTOC on lists of 10 Worst Film Accents anyway.

Re:Now think in American.

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

I think you misunderestimate how lowbrow Texans can be.

Re:Now think in American.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Shakespeare's pronunciation was almost certainly post-vowel shift. Country matters.

Obligatory: Doctor Who, 3x02:

[Shakespeare comes out and takes an exaggerated bow and blows kisses. Audience goes wild and cheers even louder.]

MARTHA: He’s a bit different from his portraits.
...
THE DOCTOR: Genius. He’s a genius - THE genius. The most human Human that’s ever been. Now we’re gonna hear him speak. Always, he chooses the best words. New, beautiful, brilliant words.
SHAKESPEARE: Shut your big fat mouths!
[The audience laughs.]
THE DOCTOR (disappointed): Oh, well.
MARTHA: You should never meet your heroes.

Re:Now think in American.

[hythlodayr]

That was amazing. Thank you.

Re:Now think in American.

[dwye]

> (Middle English was fully developed by 1400 and Robin Hood is set in the mid to late 1400s)

I thought that Robin was associated with Henry II, Richard I, and John during his regency. Given that Runnymede was 1215, that would put Robin in the 1180s and 1190s. In that period, he would be speaking the creole that developed between Old English and Old Danish, which was probably basically Middle English with Frenchisms not yet absorbed.

The 1400s is during the Hundred Years War, and the Great Plague that caused 1/2 of all existing English boroughs to be abandoned, and probably killed well more than half the population. The royals that would have become associated with Hood would be Edward III, Edward Prince of Wales, John of Gaunt, Richard II and his guardians, and maybe Henry IV.

Re:Now think in American.

[Attila Dimedici]

My mistake, I looked up the wrong Richard and got the dates wrong. You are correct about the English version being spoken at the time. Although I still think it probable that Robin Hood was fluent in period French (the language of the nobility).

Re:Now think in American.

[thejynxed]

And the doubly sad thing is, when they aren't outright faking the accents, they are insulting our intelligence by substituting actors from Slovak regions (Chech, Slav, Serbs, etc) and pretending they are Russians.

There's also been a few movies where the actors/actresses were yapping in whatever Ukrainians speak natively, but it sure wasn't Russian.

This is what Hollywood tries to pass off as legitimate. >.

Re:Now think in American.

[LihTox]

You mean the dwarves who went to steal a horde of gold from a dragon without bringing any weapons? Who tease Bilbo with a song about busting up his crockery, and leave clarinets among the walking sticks, and whine about the lack of food on their journey almost as much as Bilbo does?

Tolkien's Dwarves definitely have their silly moments.

(I believe it's a stretch to say that the dwarves are equated with the Jews, though inspired might be somewhat nearer the mark.)

Re:Now think in American.

[arkane1234]

You're saying USian.
That's like calling a Chinese person a PRian. It's okay though, we forgive you.

As far as 'very rural' in the US, that'd be large segments of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Alabama.. I'll stop there. Lots of the USA has not been populated.

Re:Now think in American.

[DarthVain]

I always loved how the Empire in Star Wars were all British sounding... Evil Imperialists!

Re:Now think in American.

[mariegriffiths]

Hobbits should have had Midlands accents, here J R R Tolkien narrates how the accents should have been.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYS49ctxqUU

Re:Now think in American.

[mariegriffiths]

Have a look at my other reply.

It's obvious:

[OneMadMuppet]

Good SciFi / Fantasy is filmed outside the US - Game of Thrones and Dr. Who in the UK, and LotR in NZ.

Re:It's obvious:

[captaindomon]

Filmed outside the US, but usually bankrolled, produced, and distributed by multi-billion dollar US conglomerates (in the case of LOTR, for example).

SWTOR

[Garnaralf]

Well, I know in Star Wars: The Old Republic, the British accent is to emphasize the Empire part of the Sith Empire. The Rebellion, or Republic, side uses an American accent. That, and the original Star Wars used a whole lot of British actors.

Re:SWTOR

[kryliss]

Sherlock Holmes was part of the Empire!!!!

Re:SWTOR

[R3d M3rcury]

I was going to add that if you consider using other dialects or accents for villains, you're a racist.

Is it really a mystery?

[shaitand]

"Fantasy" themes are generally based on mythical creatures and legends that stem from the UK. Hell even today you can't scan through 8hrs of BBC without finding something that is based on Robin Hood, Arthur/Merlin, Druids, or Sherlock Holmes so apparently the UK associates the UK with these themes as well. They even continue to add to it, the latest popular addition being Harry Potter. Again tying sorcery with the UK.

Re:Is it really a mystery?

[geekmux]

"Fantasy" themes are generally based on mythical creatures and legends that stem from the UK. Hell even today you can't scan through 8hrs of BBC without finding something that is based on Robin Hood, Arthur/Merlin, Druids, or Sherlock Holmes so apparently the UK associates the UK with these themes as well. They even continue to add to it, the latest popular addition being Harry Potter. Again tying sorcery with the UK.

Yes, and what does the US have to offer in the way of rich cultural brogue?

Jersey Shore.

No wonder people look elsewhere to try and put an emphasis on rich culture in fantasy. Needless to say, you're not going to get the same look at feel with a fat orange midget running around Hogwarts looking for the tanning salon.

Re:Is it really a mystery?

[Mindcontrolled]

Well, if you guys would look to the rich mythical offerings of those who where there before you, you'd find a metric fuckton of mythological inspiration. *pours a libation to Coyote*

Absolutely silly

[Anonymous Coward]

So, they cite two movies based on books by a BRITISH author and a third that is (as far as I can tell from not watching it) set in a variant of medieval England.

The real question they should ask is why not all Robin Hoods can speak with an English accent.

Re:Absolutely silly

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question they should ask is why not all Robin Hoods can speak with an English accent.

It's not our fault. They changed their accent after we got here.

Re:Simple, really

[Eponymous Hero]

actually, we took their colony away from them, but i'm totally fine with that. they really were shitting where they ate.

Why do they use foreign accents....

[swb]

...in American movies set in non-English speaking countries?

This dawned on me while watching "The Reader" -- Kate Winslet speaks her lines in English, with a German accent during the course of the movie.

Either the entire movie should be in German with subtitles, or the actors should all speak their lines in a common accent of English. It makes no sense to have a film set in a "foreign" country have its actors speak their lines in English accented by the locale's native language.

It kind of makes me wonder if a German movie set in America has its actors speak German with an American English accent.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[b4dc0d3r]

That should be obvious. The target audience doesn't want to have to read. The accents keep reminding you that you are in a different country.

It's no different from the ridiculous computer programs that crime dramas use. They want to tell you what the computer is doing without either the actors explaining it, or having to read anything other than the word "Searching..." while faces pop up on a screen.

I think it's the best of both worlds - maintaining the culture as well as possible, but integrating the audience's native language. I would never watch a dubbed film, because I want the actor's natural expression to match physically and verbally.

The only time it sucks is when the accent is terribly done. Then it's a travesty.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[puregen1us]

Traditionally WWII movies use English actors to play Nazis too - for most of the 20th century anyway, less so more recently.

The stronger, more aristocratic and English the accent, the more evil the Nazi.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[gnick]

It kind of makes me wonder if a German movie set in America has its actors speak German with an American English accent.

That's just silly talk. It's the rest of the world that has accents - We talk normal.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[XxtraLarGe]

It gives an illusion of being in a foreign language. If they spoke with a southern American accent, it would be incongruous. For an example of this, check out "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." Yeah, I know it's an English movie, but Kevin Costner drops his English accent about 1/4 of the way into the movie, and it's extremely noticeable and jarring.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[swb]

I always assumed that they were just basing those characters on Oswald Mosley.

Of course the larger irony is that Edward VIII was accused of Nazi sympathies during WW II and there was some sympathy for the Nazi party among English aristocrats prior to WW II.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[bfandreas]

Actors don't speak all foreign languages. In fact most of the time when you hear a American or British actor speak German or French in a movie it sounds rather atrocious.

I'm looking at you, Kevin Bacon in X-Men: First Class and Mr. Merovingian in the second Matrix movie. Please do not inflict it on them. Also faked accents are GODAWFUL!

I've yet to hear a non Scot to fake it convincingly. And there is enough Mockney in the world.

But in the past few years I think that a lot more movies have language befitting the setting with subtitles. But not for the main actors.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[gbjbaanb]

oh, but there is...

once upon a time, there was a TV comedy show called 'Allo 'Allo
This was set in occupied France, and to keep things amusing and simple for the viewers, it was decided that each character would speak english, but in a phoney accent of the country they were depicting.

So the French bartender "spook like zees", and the escaping British airmen "spoke jolly good proper English what"! etc.

It got sillier when the foreign characters spoke in english, ie the french resistance fighter woudl speak with "ze french accent" when talking 'french' to the other french characters, and then change to a pseudo-jolly-what accent when she spoke english to the English airmen. Of course, they had to add a English spy character who didn't speak french very well later on (like Peter Seller's Clouseau)

It was silly, and probably no-one except the Germans would get the joke (except it was never shown in Germany due to it being set during the war and thus illegal due to the German characters and symbols being in it). Shame, they'd have really liked it. For fairness, it did take the piss out of every European race.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[reverseengineer]

Despite his last name, Lambert Wilson (the Merovingian in the Matrix sequels) is French, with more French language credits than English. "Atrocious" or not, that's the guy's actual voice.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[krouic]

Actually, the speaking Laurel & Hardy movies were dubbed in French with a heavy american accent, which, in my option ruined the whole experience.

Re:Why do they use foreign accents....

[bfandreas]

So he has got quite an uncommon sense of humour. His French swearing got my heckles up. Nobody talks like that.

Well, maybe the Canadians?

The shortest answer

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Because Peter Cushing and Chritopher Lee are British. Precedent wins.

Re:The shortest answer

[captaindomon]

Isn't that Sir Peter Cushing and Sir Christopher Lee? Not to mention Sir Patrick Stewart, of course.

Maybe because that is where they are based on?

[Baloroth]

It might have something to do with the fact that the fictional country Game of Thrones is set in (at least in the TV show, not very subtly either) is based off of England. The politics and geography bears an extremely striking resemblance.

And Tolkien (British) created the Shire in The Hobbit and LotR based off British countryside. Fantasy, in particular, is almost universally set in a Middle-Age-England-type setting and is often based heavily off of their mythology. It almost wouldn't make sense not to have a British accent. Don't blame the Americans: the British were doing that a long time before Americans were (hell, before America was even a colony). And of course Narnia (by C.S. Lewis, British) is actually set partly in England as is Harry Potter (again, a British writer).

obvious

[alienzed]

because there are lots of English actors and it's not that hard to train to sound that way? Imagine trying to teach an entire acting crew to speak a 'new' accent. There'd be no reference, no clear marker for success.

Re:obvious

[MightyMartian]

What irritates me is that why, with all those rather good British actors, they keep having to bring in Americans with bad English accents to replace them. I watched the Nanny McPhee sequel and kept thinking through the whole film, "Surely they could have gone out on to the street and found someone with a better accent that Maggie Gyllenhaal."

Re:obvious

[gbjbaanb]

and when they do it the other way round it's even worse!

I mean no-one believed that old Etonian Dominc West wasn't really New-York-Irish!

See him in The Wire, then watch an interview with him. That required some serious dedication and skill with accents. If only Maggie et al could dedicate some of their time to being taught to speak (and act).

Re:Obvious

[serviscope_minor]

Rainy weather, sure, . But, stifiling bureaucracy? Having dealt with both the Inland Revenue (yay @ PAYE and automatic do absoloutely nothing tax returns), and the double-whammy of the IRS and state taxes, I know which I prefer...

Re:Obvious

[unitron]

You forgot about the cars wearing bonnets as well.

Brings up the question

[Anonymous Coward]

It just brings up the question: Why does british television (and others, like discovery channel) want their programs to sound like fantasy.

In the Netherlands, its commonly accepted to use common dutch on television, even if the talker has another native dialect, about everyone can -and will- speak common dutch. A slight belgian accent will be forgiven, but on the other hand, its usually what it is - an accent, not the dialect.

However, when i watch something british, it seems they have some fetisjism to use the most obscure scottish, welsh or irish dialect they can find, and any narrator is free to use it. High british - the stuff we learned at school, is something rarely heard. And we just sit, pondering, why...

Re:Brings up the question

[Alioth]

This is probably because there's no such thing as "high British", unless by that you mean the neutral BBC accent. But no one in the street speaks like that.

Re:Brings up the question

[thetoadwarrior]

Many people may not but there are people that speak that way. It's certainly better than people who sound mentally retarded and do things like pronounce something as somefink.

here's the real reason why ..

[Anonymous Coward]

its because most of the good fantasy writing was British...
next please ..

Because these fantasies are based on Britain

[mattdm]

Westeros is transparently (if not particularly faithfully) based on a fantastic reinterpretation of Britain, right down to the the Wall and the . And all the knights and chivalery (and non-chivalery) and so on are clearly Arthurian legend, which is unquestionably British even if it owes a big debt to France — which, speaking of, is of course right across the "narrow sea". Middle Earth is less literal with the geography, but Tolkien has said (were it not already obvious!) that the Shire is rural Britain in spirit, so of course the hobbits speak with the appropriate accent.

Re:Because these fantasies are based on Britain

[someone1234]

Westeros is more like western Europe, not just Britain.

Re:Because these fantasies are based on Britain

[mattdm]

Oh, sheesh; yeah. The Lannisters come from Lancaster. (I mean, on the map; not just in similar names.)

Re:Because these fantasies are based on Britain

[gbjbaanb]

Anglo-Saxon europe particularly, including the Normans (ie the norse-men, ie the danes/swedes).

You can see the Norman influence in Gondor, and the Saxon influence to the Rohirrim.

Re:Because these fantasies are based on Britain

[Wraithlyn]

Correct, one of the inspirations for Game of Thrones/ASOIAF was the War of the Roses, with Lancaster => Lannister and York => Stark.

Re:Because these fantasies are based on Britain

[mattdm]

And there's even King's Lynn on the real-world map roughly where King's Landing would be.

Reading Stories To Kids

[szyzyg]

I'm an oft requested storyteller at school events because I make up voices for all the characters, and yes, I fall into the trap of giving most characters regional british accents. Bad guys frequently end up with some non-specific eastern european accent, and some more exotic characters get asian or scandinavian tilts.

But I never use american accents... not sure why, I just don't find enough characters that fit.

Star Wars Accents

[Baby Duck]

Filmmakers should consider looking at speech accents from other areas of the world to create more interesting dialects.

It's dangerous thinking such as that which lead to the atrocity known as Jar Jar Binks. In all seriousness, look at the accents of Watto, Yoda, the head honchos of the Trade Federation, Emperor Palpatine, Admiral Ackbar, Jango Fett, etc.

Re:Star Wars Accents

[sacdelta]

And the use of those accents led to accusations of ethnic stereotyping. It's a very dangerous path to traverse in our hypersensitive society and I don't blame filmmakers from avoiding the subject altogether.

Re:Star Wars Accents

[Asmodae]

Would it have something to do with the character that was assigned that accent? Say if Jar Jar was not a bumbling fool, but a really smart character type that helped solve many of the main plot problems instead of the supposed comic relief and buffoon, would there have been as much outrage/disgust?

Re:Star Wars Accents

[kryliss]

IT'S A TRAP!!

Re:Because to Americans

[gnick]

Even the dumbest character with a British accent sounds smarter.

At the same time, characters with a Jersey accent sound arrogant and idiotic, a southern drawl makes them sound dumb, hick, and quite possibly inbred and crazy, and a Texan accent makes them sound Texan.

why does the Geico Gecko have a British accent?

[circletimessquare]

I'm not an advertising exec, but I bet you there is some study some where that Americans subconsciously associate British accents with greater trustworthiness and/ or authority

As for fantasy worlds: I disagree, the fantasy worlds cited are specifically medieval in quality, which conjures Europeanness, which conjures Britishness, as Americans don't deal well with foreign languages: no Flemish cave trolls or Hungarian dragons, for example (nevermind Cornish, Welsh, or Gaelic).

If we were talking FUTURE fantasy worlds, Avatar or Star Trek, for example, there is no association with Britishness. Although, Australian accents and actors figure heavily in that realm. Which is a whole other subject matter?:

Britain: the past, Australia: the future, from an American perspective.

(sorry Kiwis, Americans tend to group your accent with Australia, I don't want to step on any issues of national pride here)

Re:why does the Geico Gecko have a British accent?

[Hatta]

The Geico Gecko didn't always have a British accent. Kelsey Grammar originally provided the voice, in his normal narrating voice. He sounded less exotic than Sideshow Bob at the time.

Re:why does the Geico Gecko have a British accent?

[Pfhorrest]

The Geico Gecko may not actually have a British accent per se. There was one commercial where someone assumed he was British, someone else said they always thought he was Australia, and he began to say "Well actually, I'm--" and the scene cut away. So, I don't think they want to pin down a nationality for him.

Re:why does the Geico Gecko have a British accent?

[dbIII]

Isn't Fantasy Ancient Greece full of NZ accents :)

FUTURE fantasy worlds ... Australian accents and actors figure heavily in that realm

Oddly enough it's mostly because the film companies don't have to pay for health insurance and instead pay just a bit more in tax than they would in the USA that created the situation where filming is being done in Australia, Canada etc. With SF the actors don't need to put on the US accents since they are supposed to be playing aliens or something anyway. Since we don't have much of a film or TV industry nearly every working actor in the country has done a lot of stage work before they even get considered for a role.

Re:why does the Geico Gecko have a British accent?

[dwye]

In the latest commercial, they have him speaking in a Saturday Night Live version of the Chicago dialect, even adding a gratuitous "Da Bearss" at the end.

It makes perfect sense

[quietwalker]

... how else can you explain why all dwarves speak with a Scottish accent?

Re:Because to Americans

[busyqth]

Actually I think it's just run-of-the-mill affirmative action.

You have to let the minority dialect have it's own niche, however insignificant.

Re:Simple, really

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm. So I guess the complete disgrace of a nation that America has become over the last 200 years or so is down to you guys then. Good to know.

As for how gay the two societies are, a quick google search "gay percentage uk|us" will reveal that there are more people identifying themselves as gay in the US. It's hard to draw any firm conclusions from that (societal pressures are different in different regions of both countries, and that drives a lot of the self-identification) but the little data we have seems to support that there's more openly-gay people in the USA than in the UK, by percentage of population - obviously there's more gay people in the USA than the UK by headcount!

Not to mention that if the UK was entirely gay as you suggest, the society would have necessarily ceased to exist by now whereas it seems to be going reasonably well over in Blighty...

  - Free healthcare to all, at much cheaper rates than the US private healthcare system. I've tried both, and I'd take the NHS in a heart-beat.
  - Significantly subsidized education. You don't come out of college desperate to find a job to pay off your immense loans.
  - They're not currently at war with any chemicals, nouns, or indeed any nation-states as far as I'm aware.
  - There's no gate-rape or sanctioned government-grope at the borders
  - They don't have 1 in every 31 adults behind bars or on parole / being monitored. Think about that for a second. One in Thirty-one.
  - They live longer, and have less infant deaths
  - They have a genuine choice in politics - left, center, or right. As opposed to right and crazy-town here in the US.
  - Their police won't handcuff you, lie you on the floor, then shoot you dead on a subway train.
  - No metal-detectors needed at schools. Schools, for $deity sake!
  - There's no software patents :)

All told, the UK society seems to be functioning as well as any enlightened Western society should, unlike the USA. On the other hand, California has good weather. Can't think of any other reasons to prefer the US over the UK...

Next question:

[kwark]

Why are is the evil scientists always speaking with a German accent?

Re:Next question:

[kryliss]

Due to post WWII where the US got possession of several German scientists.

Re:Next question:

[kwark]

German scientists working for the US, wouldn't that make them the good guys...

Re:Next question:

[kwark]

When I was working at the local multinational doing some re-researching into wolfram filaments the library and archives was full with German language publishings (1895-1920). The physics library at the local technical university has tons of books in German aged pre 1950. Only the more modern subjects (like computer simulations) were in English.

Re:Next question:

[martas]

*uncomfortable silence, shifting looks*

The "Mid-West" accent?

[HeckRuler]

...Mid-West accent...

Wait, we have an accent?
I mean, there are jokes about California "valley girls" and Brooklyn accents, but those are stereotypes and most people from the coasts don't actually talk like that. So... if the universal average of the English language is the "Mid-West" accent... wouldn't that mean we don't have an accent?

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[fiannaFailMan]

...Mid-West accent...

Wait, we have an accent?

I mean, there are jokes about California "valley girls" and Brooklyn accents, but those are stereotypes and most people from the coasts don't actually talk like that. So... if the universal average of the English language is the "Mid-West" accent... wouldn't that mean we don't have an accent?

There's no such thing as "not having an accent." Everyone has an accent. You always sound different to somebody. Go to Scotland and you'll stand out a mile with your American accent.

(Who said "universal average of the English language is the "Mid-West" accent" anyway? Is that in TFA or something? If ever a citation was needed it was with that bizarre statement!)

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[HeckRuler]

Oh, right. Sorry about that. I was stuck in the states there for a bit. How about "Average American accent"?
But, since apparently Hollywood has decided that "mid-west" is the norm, that means that the standard that other countries are trying to achieve is American standard. A while ago you could spot the Indian guy who learned British standard. That's less common now. So when people try to reduce their accent, they're going to try emulating American standard. So, sorry for being ethnocentric, but there's a good reason for it.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[Chris Burke]

Heh. I know, I felt the same way "I talk normal, everyone else has an accent." and pretty much everyone from the Midwest sounded like me, and like people on the news. Then I met someone who determined I was from Michigan just based on my accent (and I'm not a Yooper). Mind was *blown*.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[fiannaFailMan]

A while ago you could spot the Indian guy who learned British standard. That's less common now. So when people try to reduce their accent, they're going to try emulating American standard.

I'm gonna need another citation for that. Indian people who speak English when living in places like, say India or England, certainly don't try to emulate American "standard" (whatever that is). The tendency for ex-pats who moderate their accents is to moderate towards the prevailing local accent, like the guy I know from Turkey who has moderated his accent towards Mancunian because he has lived in Manchester for so long.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[Xtifr]

The standard term is General American" (GE) or "Standard American Accent" (SAE). It's not an average (or even just average).

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[camperdave]

Nobody has an accent unless they travel or speak to foreigners, which is why Americans don't have accents.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[Noren]

There's no obvious way to know now what spoken English actually sounded like back in, say, the 1600s.

However, we do know that on average accents will change faster the more crowded and interconnected the people speaking it are.

Therefore, it's quite likely that the accent in the historically more densely populated British Isles has diverged farther from the common ancestor accent than did the accent in the relatively sparsely populated Americas.

A back-country Appalachian accent is probably the closest modern approximation to a Shakespearian accent.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[snowgirl]

(Who said "universal average of the English language is the "Mid-West" accent" anyway? Is that in TFA or something? If ever a citation was needed it was with that bizarre statement!)

General American/Standard American English. This is the accent that most anchors attempt to emulate as it is generally regarded as the most easily accessible accent. The article has a nice depiction of where the local accent is closest to SAE... you'll notice its location in the Midwest.

Now, for (unnecessary?) qualifications: I'm not saying that SAE is the "universal average of the English language". It's just widely adopted as the most clear and articulate way to speak by the media industry. And this does not mean that it objectively _IS_ the most clear and articulate way to speak, just that the American media considers and uses it as such.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[PRMan]

Actually, there was a study that the most pure English was in California and the US MidWest. This will only increase because of the sheer amount of media produced in Southern California.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[fiannaFailMan]

The midwest accent as "standard" is actual a radio thing. Apparently, the American midwest accent was the most intelligible over poor-quality radio back in the day, so most people on the radio had to cultivate an American midwest accent.

I'm not sure (though I'm doubtful) that this was true in Britain.

BBC English in those days was very prim and proper, I don't know if anyone on the street spoke like that but we see a lot of it in the old TV and films of the day. Only the Queen comes close to sounding like that nowadays.

The BBC has embraced a regional accents in their nationwide broadcasting more recently. I particularly like listening to Hugh Edwards who has a nice soft Welsh accent.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[dbIII]

The last couple of times I rang the USA I got a "valley girl" receptionist in California that made me understand that the accent was toned down a LOT even when used as parody in "Buffy" and a guy in Georgia that made me understand the same about "Dukes of Hazard". Initially neither of them could catch what I said in my Australian accent either, and each time we had to slow down on both sides before we had any hope of understanding each other.
Is a midwest accent the sort of accent Garrison Kiellor has?

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[SofaMan]

BBC English in those days was very prim and proper, I don't know if anyone on the street spoke like that but we see a lot of it in the old TV and films of the day. Only the Queen comes close to sounding like that nowadays.

That's Received Pronunciation (aka the King's/Queen's English) you're describing. More common now is Estuary English.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[LanMan04]

Nah, Garrison Kiellor has a very unique voice and accent. I can't even really place it, the way he hangs on certain words is just weird. Poetic and pleasant, but I've never heard someone "naturally" sound like him.

Here's a random video from a Chicago newscast:

http://www.nbcchicago.com/video/#!/news/local/Chicago-Marine-Killed-in-Afghanistan/141258583

The female narrator has a midwestern "standard" accent, which a lot of people associate with hollywood movies where the people are supposed to have a non-ethic, "neutral" accent. Not from New York, not a Sarah Palin-esque "north woods" accent, but is supposed to be just "normal people"-sounding. Most American TV shows feature this accent.

The man speaking in the video (the Marine's father) has a somewhat Chicago-sounding accent, but not too strong.

Both fairly good examples of a midwest accent.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[dbIII]

Thanks, all the people I've met from the US seemed to have toned down their accents by the time I talked to them, so it's become clear that there's a lot more variation than comes across with tourists and the movies. After the airport hassles of the last decade I've turned down a few chances to go there in person.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[arkane1234]

From experience I can say otherwise. I've spoke to many people who are native to the area I'm in and they're accents are very different from each others. It's more about the people you're around and influenced by when you're young.

Re:The "Mid-West" accent?

[HeckRuler]

"The more you know"
Also, I'm getting a kick out of this as I grew up with a speech impediment in Omaha, NE smack dab in the middle of that.

Obvious

[mr_spatula]

Because there's no better fantasy shared by the common public than to escape to than one of rainy weather, bland food, a stifling bureaucracy, and one of the largest surveillance networks concieved of.

It's obviously a made-up world, with their shillings and their stones - one where cars wear boots... I mean, that's just pure insanity.

GPS must be British!

[markdavis]

I can't wait to hear the answer from our British friends. As an American, I have an odd fascination for the British accent (and Australian accent too) and love hearing it. I even set my GPS to speak British English instead of American English. Seems I am certainly not alone in this, either.

How about it? Do the British (and even Australians) have any similar fascination with hearing American accents?

Re:GPS must be British!

[snowgirl]

How about it? Do the British (and even Australians) have any similar fascination with hearing American accents?

I can't speak for the British, but I do speak German fluently, and when I was in Germany studying German, the single most jarring accent in German was English.

We had a new guy come into our class super late, and the moment he started speaking, I was like, "This guy is from America. Probably the North West." Sure enough he was. His accent was grating and biting.

I'm actually quite proud that my German accent doesn't sound anything like an American accent (except for a few random words, like "amerikanisch" which I cannot seem to help but pronounce as "uhmerikanisch")...

Re:GPS must be British!

[turgid]

How about it? Do the British (and even Australians) have any similar fascination with hearing American accents?

No. I'd much rather listen to Charlotte Green reading the Shipping Forecast or Stephanie Flanders explaining the intricacies of the current European financial crisis.

Re:GPS must be British!

[PPH]

I even set my GPS to speak British English instead of American English.

So did I. But only because they didn't have English with a female German accent. Replace the annoying 'beep' with the snap of a riding crop on bare flesh and I'm there!

Re:GPS must be British!

[AbRASiON]

To be brutally honest, American accents are ghastly things and most of us cringe when we hear them in real life (It's the loudness)

Oddly enough, Australia has a heap of US media playing on the idiot box, yet there the American accents are fine. It's just in person they make us homicidal.

English accents are revered though as they sound classy.

Re:GPS must be British!

[Inquisitus]

Not really; the American accent is so ubiquitous that pretty much everyone, English speaking or not, is just thoroughly used to it.

Re:GPS must be British!

[dbIII]

As an Australian man, women with accents from the US state of Georgia make me melt. I blame the movies.

Re:GPS must be British!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not encountered anyone in Britain who has a fascination with hearing American accents.

Re:GPS must be British!

[arkane1234]

-- quote -- ... and most of us cringe when we hear them in real life (It's the loudness)
-- end quote --

You've seriously been around the worst case of American english, then. The average person is not loud, it's the asshats that think if they speak louder people will understand them better.

Re:GPS must be British!

[arkane1234]

It sounds like you're level of learning about an accent (or dialect) is by television.
Might I suggest you expand your horizons, since even myself, as an American, feel the same way about television accents.

By the way, that southern accent you're referring to is one that we in America refer to as "redneck", or "hillbilly". It's not normal for a southern American to be that bad. (YMMV)

That being said, I'm so glad that the old American television accents on TV back in the 40's & 50's are gone... I'm STILL trying to figure out where it even came from. South Park constantly makes fun of it by using it, sometimes.

Re:Because to Americans

[HeckRuler]

Ouch, that's pretty harsh on them thar Texans.

Accent fail

[fiannaFailMan]

Anyone ever see that godawful film Alexander starring Colin Farrel as Alex the Great? They gave the Macedonians Irish accents! That was even more distracting than the constant jumping back and forth between three different time periods and creepy chemistry between Farrel and Angelina Jolie who was supposed to be his mom!

Re:Accent fail

[UdoKeir]

I think that's because an Irish accent is the only one that Colin Farrell can do. So they had all the other actors match him so that he didn't seem out of place.

Re:Accent fail

[dwye]

Well, the Macedonians WERE considered the wild, uncivilized cousins of the Greeks. Also, the Doric dialect tended to turn the "th" sound into a "d" sound, much like Irish stereotypically does. Certainly from an Athenian perspective, it would make sense. OTOH, Ptolomy I, the narrator played by Anthony Hopkins, was also a Macedonian, wasn't he?

Isn't it just down to Tolkien?

[nickrjsmith]

Is it not just because the classic fantasy authors (Tolkien/Carol) are English? Just like American villains are always English due to the English being the baddies during the American civil war?

Re:Isn't it just down to Tolkien?

[arkane1234]

While France & Britain were very close to providing resources to the south during the American civil war (they didn't), I do think the poster meant the American revolutionary war.

Except in The UK, of course

[EmagGeek]

" Citing specific examples from recent and upcoming shows and movies like Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit and Game of Thrones, the article concludes British accents are 'sufficiently exotic,' 'comprehensible' and have a 'splash of otherness.'"

Or, they could just sound like everyone around you if you live in the UK...

Re:Except in The UK, of course

[Dr_Barnowl]

Even that fit right, to a degree. They chose regional accents for Game of Thrones that fit the fictional geography as mapped to the real UK - the Northerners sounded Northern, the rich Lannisters were clearly from the more affluent Southern regions, etc. They didn't sound like everyone around you, wherever you lived, but they did sound appropriate to their parts.

Different accents?

[Vinegar Joe]

Right. Jar Jar Binks was a great idea.

Re:Because to Americans

[iceaxe]

... a Texan accent makes them sound Texan.

Strider sidles into the Prancing Pony, spurs jingling.

STRIDER:

Howdy, y'all!

BUTTERBUR:

Whatcha drankin', pardner?

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[H0p313ss]

Absolutely correct, and yet also so wrong. Yes, there are regional British accents, but when considered as a whole they are clearly distinct from American ones. Any fool can identify that someone from Cornwall or Glasgow is clearly not American, and if you take someone from New Jersey or Texas nobody is going to mistake them for someone from Yorkshire.

Australian Accents

[Phoenix666]

Work pretty well in place of British ones in fantasy and sci-fi settings (think Farscape). Same for Irish. The South African accents in District 9 weren't bad either. Any of them impart "otherness" to an American audience.

Chris Perkins, DM

[avajcovec]

I find it interesting to watch Chris Perkins DM for the Penny Arcade guys in the Dungeons & Dragons games they've played. He seems to make an effort to use a variety of accents (and voices) to keep his characters interesting. He even went with Southern-California-Surfer for one character in the 2010 live game at PAX.

PAX 2010 Live D&D Game, Part 1

PAX 2011 Live D&D Game, Part 1

PA / PVP D&D Podcasts

The Princess Bride?

[TheDawgLives]

One of my favorite fantasy movies was The Princess Bride. They had generic/American and Spanish accents. They worked really well for me.

Re:The Princess Bride?

[Lucidus]

Except there were a number of British accents in that movie, including Wesley's.

Re:The Princess Bride?

[MLease]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Because to Americans

[gnick]

I'm allowed - I are one. I don't live there now and haven't in more than a decade, but that's where my family's from and where I were born. Even though I mostly grew up elsewhere, "Howdy" and "y'all" are part of my regular lexicon. Although I'm not redneck enough to ever use the two together.

Actually modern American English sounds more...

[f97tosc]

"For Americans, I would assume it's because we associate fantasy with the Old World because that's where most of our myths and legends originate."

Yes, but we associate wrong because modern American English actually sounds more like old English than does modern British English.

Re:Actually modern American English sounds more...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but we associate wrong because modern American English actually sounds more like old English than does modern British English.

This is a popular myth, but not actually true. Both American and British accents have diverged greatly from the accents the Pilgrims would have had. They have diverged differently, but both would sound equally alien to someone in 16th-century Britain. Just because American speech retains some archaic features, like rhoticism, doesn't mean it hasn't innovated wildly in other areas! Your vowels have mutated wildly, for example.

And the speech of 16th-century Britain would itself have sounded rather strange to someone actually living in the middle ages when stereotypical fantasy is set.

Re:Actually modern American English sounds more...

[serviscope_minor]

Yes, but we associate wrong because

No, because the association is with a location, and the accent chosen is an artefact of the location, not the other way around.

Re:Actually modern American English sounds more...

[maiki]

This is a popular myth, but not actually true. Both American and British accents have diverged greatly from the accents the Pilgrims would have had.

There's some truth in it---diaspora communities generally retain original language features longer than the mother community. But you're right because Americans have long since stopped deferring to the UK as the mother community, and have accepted their own variations as "correct" instead of as "deviations". This is evidenced by the fact that Americans refer to UK Englishes as accents and consider themselves to have no accent.

Re:Because to Americans

[Aighearach]

They sound fancy and smart. Even the dumbest character with a British accent sounds smarter.

Like Johnny English, or Black Adder?

Re:Simple, really

[KevReedUK]

- Their police won't handcuff you, lie you on the floor, then shoot you dead on a subway train.

I think the family of Jean Charles de Menezes may disagree with you on that point...

Otherwise, though, I am minded to agree with the bulk of the other points you make.

Emma Peel ...

[gstoddart]

Emma Peel, as played by Diana Rigg is the reason why all of my fantasies involve a British accent.

Oh, wait, did you mean something else?

Re:Emma Peel ...

[unitron]

"Emma Peel, as played by Diana Rigg is the reason why all of my fantasies involve a British accent."

Hear, hear.

Its a Jersey thing

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

"It would be odd to think of a fantasy world having a New Jersey accent" There's already a fantasy world based on that but its not one most people would want to visit or live in...Its called "Jersey Shore".

an idea..

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

A MORPG based on Grand Theft Auto would be interesting...if not controversial.

Lord of the Rings is a bad choice

[Tanman]

Some things, like Game of Thrones on Another Planet are a good focus for the article. Lord of the Rings, however, is not. That series was written to establish British mythology because Tolkien wanted his culture to have stories to tell like Greek culture. Ergo, it is going to be with British accents.

Re:Simple, really

[kryliss]

What was the UK like in it's first 200+ years?

Re:Because to Americans

[funwithBSD]

Unless it is a soft genteel southern accent.

Think Val Kilmer as doc holiday.

Be my huckleberry...

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[Xtifr]

Yes, there are regional British accents, but when considered as a whole they are clearly distinct from American ones.

Yes, that's why Americans so often think that Aussie or Kiwi or Boston accents are British. Because the set of British accents is so clearly distinctive.

English people don't have an accent

[KrazyDave]

... since the language of the English is, well, English, technically they are the only speakers of English who lack an accent of that language. It's we (everyone else in the English-speaking world) who speak English with accents.

Re:English people don't have an accent

[dwye]

Actually, they all have accents, too, as the supposed British accent, called Received Pronunciation or Public School Speech, was made up in the 1760s and is apparently only used natively by 3% of the population. A REAL English accent would be what Hengist and Horsa spoke when they lead the invasion into Britannia, which would sound like Dutch.

Re:English people don't have an accent

[arkane1234]

I do not think accent means what you think it means.
Accent is used as a way to describe the way the language is spoken.

Here's a definition:
A distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, esp. one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class.

Some accents just don't fit the expected pattern.

[gh0st1nth3mach1n3]

I'm just trying to imagine a Science Fiction or Fantasy cast using a Newfoundland accent and it's just not clicking in for some reason. "What're ye at wit dat sword, me son?" Nope.

what???

[hesaigo999ca]

Game of Thrones....isnt that like the knights and during the times where they had all that camelot crap?
I imagine if they called it Shogun's run and had samurai's running around all talking with british accents, that could be a point...

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[Hatta]

People from Texas sound more like people from Maine than either sound like the British. There is actually an "American accent". It's the one you see on the news every day in any part of the country.

Want an Elf Queen that talks like Fran Drescher?

[leftie]

No. Nobody wants that.

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[nine-times]

That was my immediate response to this. Lord of the Rings is a book written by a British author, inspired by old English (i.e. Celtic/Norse/Germanic) mythology, set in a world that is based on England. Why would you not have English accents? It's not quite as bad as asking, "Why do do the characters in 'Gone With the Wind' seem like they're from the American South?" but it's close.

I'm not as familiar with Game of Thrones, but I assume it's based on similar stuff. Tolkien is the grand-daddy of a lot of this fantasy stuff, so it shouldn't be too weird that it's all vaguely British.

What's a little more interesting is all the other characters that end up being British. Whenever you see depictions of the Roman empire, they tend to be British. In Star Wars, the Empire is generally British while many of the Rebels are vaguely American. Someone else has already pointed out that we (Americans) use British accents in media to signify ancient societies, Empirical rule, and general authority figures.

Re:Because to Americans

[uigrad_2000]

They sound fancy and smart. Even the dumbest character with a British accent sounds smarter.

Hey, you need some qualifiers in that statement. There are a lot of different British accents, and even us Americans can pick up the differences.

Think about it... A lot of the humor in Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail is based on different types of British accents, many of which cause the actor to appear as a dumb character.

Re:Simple, really

[Fishchip]

Is this a trick question?

Why not create a new accent

[bossk538]

There seems to be a trend to create entire fictional languages for fantasy films, so why not create fictional accents for fantasy realms?

Foreign to many in Britain too

[Chemisor]

Why can't the English, why can't the English, why can't the English learn to speak? - H.Higgins

Re:Foreign to many in Britain too

[dwye]

Written by an Irishman. :-)

Re:Foreign to many in Britain too

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Shaw wrote the play, the song is from the musical based on it, and composed by Lerner and Lowe, a New Yorker and a German respectively. Enjoy some more dialectical distortion: SCTV: "MY FAIR LADY" (PIRINI SCLEROSO) - Youtube

Re:Some accents just don't fit the expected patter

[Fishchip]

You know, I was just thinking that. But it could work, if people didn't have to work too hard to decipher it (a-la Brad Pitt in Snatch).

Perhaps

[kenp2002]

I offer this: British accents (accounting Welsh, English, Scottish, and Irish variations for discussion sake) are varied enough but understandable to be "exotic" against one another while still being familiar.

Female British Voice

[DaMattster]

There is something undeniably very sexy about the female British voice.

Re:Female British Voice

[Antony T Curtis]

There is something undeniably very sexy about the female British voice.

I am British and I would disagree with your statement.

Re:Female British Voice

[thetoadwarrior]

That depends entirely on the accent. There are many with accents that make you want to stab them in the face.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[MrFlibbs]

Reminds me of a story I heard on NPR years ago. The Scottish speaker said he was at an American dinner party when someone used the term "you Brits". He kept looking around until he realized she was referring to him. He didn't consider himself British, so to answer the question, "Who is British?" he told a story that went something like this:

As a young college student attending freshman orientation at Oxford, he met a nice fellow from Wales. They discovered that, if they both spoke slowly, they could just understand each other through their strong regional accents. They both needed a flatmate and so decided to room together. Finding a flat listed in the paper at a reasonable location and price, they set forth. The woman who answered the door spoke such a thick Irish brogue that neither of them could understand a word she said. So, she fetched a gentleman from down the hall to act as interpreter. But his cockney accent was so severe they couldn't understand him, either. Eventually, he pointed at the newspaper listing, she held out her open hand, and the two of them put in the first month's rent. So, which of them is British? His conclusion was that, technically, they all were, but in practice they were all something else. He supposed the Queen was authentically British, but if anyone asks, he's a Scotsman!

Re:Because to Americans

[Sponge Bath]

Arlen, Texas Accent:

Strider Hill: It's dangerous out there, I'll tell you what.
Butterboomhauer: Big ol' dang ol' um talkin' 'bout Nazgul, man.

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[UpnAtom]

Lord of the Rings is also inspired by the Third Reich from an English perspective.

Now imagine that the North Sea was actually landmass. So starting from the Shire, Sauron is pretty much where Hitler was from England, you've got this big sea off to the West, the Elves and Dwarves correspond with Scandinavia and Aragorn is exiled in France.

Also, as others said, the West Country English accent is much like the medieval English accent whereas modern American accents didn't exist.

American is more associated with futuristic sci-fi.

Re:Simple, really

[newcastlejon]

Firstly, you forgot one of the Brits' most significant characteristics: self-deprecation.

- Free healthcare to all, at much cheaper rates than the US private healthcare system. I've tried both, and I'd take the NHS in a heart-beat.

The NHS has its ups and downs but we count ourselves very lucky for having it as well as private healthcare providers like Bupa.

- Significantly subsidized education. You don't come out of college desperate to find a job to pay off your immense loans.

Desperate to find a job, maybe, but our student loans aren't taken out privately - for the most part - so the repayments are actually quite reasonable. In fact, the first £15k (around the $23k mark) of your earnings are disregarded when it comes to calculating repayments.

- They're not currently at war with any chemicals, nouns, or indeed any nation-states as far as I'm aware.

Some chemicals are very much targeted, but punishments are nowhere near as harsh as those in the US. Words... well, so long as you aren't encouraging violence, intolerance, etc. you're pretty much free to say what you want, including insults directed towards the Royal Family (see point the First). As for nation-states that depends entirely on who the US is after at the moment :P, but suffice it to say we don't have it in for Cuba; it's 4,500 miles away.

- There's no gate-rape or sanctioned government-grope at the borders

Nope, free travel between EU nations in particular is a wonderful thing and we've learned to take the rough with the smooth. We have enough home-grown nutcases anyway.

- They don't have 1 in every 31 adults behind bars or on parole / being monitored. Think about that for a second. One in Thirty-one.

Amen to that. That statistic is quite saddening and I'm given to understand that many inmates are imprisoned for relatively minor drug offences.

- They live longer, and have less infant deaths

A double-edged sword, since we're careening towards the same pension crisis as many other nations. Infant mortality, however, is a bad thing however one looks at it.

- They have a genuine choice in politics - left, center, or right. As opposed to right and crazy-town here in the US.

LOL! Our choice is basically pro-business toffs (Tory - blue), pro-union spendaholics (Labour - red) and the Liberal Democrats, whose yellow ties should give some indication as to their character.
(I actually vote LD for their progressive social policies and attitude toward proportional representation... and partly because I'm curious to see how they would screw things up)

- Their police won't handcuff you, lie you on the floor, then shoot you dead on a subway train.

Generally, no they won't, and the fact that most of them don't carry firearms, but the ones that do have been known to shoot people before boarding a subway train. That was a dark day, but in our defence most of the nation was in uproar over it.

- No metal-detectors needed at schools. Schools, for $deity sake!

Not yet, thankfully, but we need to sort out the problem of knife crime, which is preferable to gun crime but still lethal.

- There's no software patents :)

Yes, but given that the blues are in charge and the reds seem keen on the idea too I think it's only a matter of time even without US pressure.

All told, the UK society seems to be functioning as well as any enlightened Western society should, unlike the USA. On th

Re:Because to Americans

[X0563511]

At the same time, characters with a Jersey accent sound arrogant and idiotic, a southern drawl makes them sound dumb, hick, and quite possibly inbred and crazy, and a Texan accent makes them sound all of the above.

FTFY :P

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[gbjbaanb]

whilst there is a good analogy between the little British people (hobbits) kicking the stuff out of the evil empire of Sauron (Hitler), the entire world is based around anglo-saxon myths, so technically it includes Britain, and the northern Germanic and Scandinavian countries.

Dwarves come from the north part of Middle Earth, so it's natural they got Scottish accents, but they could so easily have been Norwegian instead.

The shire, BTW, is Warwickshire (that's wa-rick-shire), there's still a 'tolkien trail' around Hall Green in what is now a very-built-up Birmingham, not the green fields of Tolkien's youth, but the dark satanic mills of Saruman's industrial progress.

The bad guy is always English

[ozduo]

Hollywood always casts the bad guy to be ethnic of the country the currently hate. Or they default to a Pom (that's Aussie for a Brittish guy}

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[Scoth]

Game of Thrones is actually a better example of questioning why they have the accents. It's pretty clearly not based on any real or even pseudo-real Medieval history, and short of a general fantasy feel is about the only excuse. I suppose it could fall under the Alternate History umbrella but it's hard. I generally figure the accents are used to imply something along the lines of it at least being based on European/English medieval technology and such even if the specific setup is nowhere close. That is, swords, shields, chain/plate armor, classic English-style castles, etc etc rather than, say, Samurai and Katanas or machine guns and bullet proof vests.

Re:Because to Americans

[mevets]

"I'm allowed - I are one." - brilliant!

Quantum of Solace casted Ukranian for Haitian role

[leftie]

Quantum of Solice casting Ukranian woman for Haitian Bond Girl part is much of a screw-up an casting decision as Jar Jar Binks

Look at the poster.
http://www.klast.net/bond/quantum.html

Looks like they casted John Boehner's daughter.

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[Pfhorrest]

British is not just English.

Welsh and Scots are by no means English; but they are definitely British. Irish and Manx are also British in a broader sense; not from Great Britain, but still from the British Isles.

Of course, most of Ireland is at present distinctly not British in yet another sense, that of belonging to the United Kingdom of England and Whatever Else Is In Their Jurisdiction Is This Century.

When I were a lad...

[turgid]

...growing up in north-east Scotland, outside of Aberdeen, whenever we played with toys, we always put on American accents. I have no idea why, it just happened automatically.

Maybe it was because we watched so many American TV programmes like the Dukes of Hazard and the Fall Guy, and later the A Team and Knight Rider?

That's for accuracy!

[Roger W Moore]

Most often, they are portrayed with either English or Scottish accents

Actually, depending on the which English accent is used, it may well be accurate. The Yorkshire accent is actually very close to Danish which is not too surprising when you realize that this area of the UK was under Viking rule for a period before 1066 and many of the place names have Scandinavian in origin. Certainly as a Yorkshireman I've found some Danish accents to be so similar that I'm not even sure whether the speaker is British or Danish and I know that some Danes have less trouble than Londoners understanding strong Yorkshire accents up in the dales.

This one is easy.

[Millennium]

Why don't English-language fantasy filmmakers use accents from English-speaking regions other than the British Isles? That's easy.

Three words: Jar Jar Binks .

Because that is what Tolkien intended!

[es330td]

I had the great fortune to attend a talk + q&a session with Tom Shippey, friend of Tolkien and author of multiple pieces on Tolkien, who would have stated the subject of my response. Although plenty of fantasy has come since, LotR is the acknowledged beginning of fantasy writing. Tolkien himself envisioned his Middle Earth as filling in the missing history of the people of the British Isles. Given that in LotR, the future is projected as the time of Man and the Elves have sailed to the West, the accents of the UK would be the closest accents to those actually spoken in the fantasy times. As LotR was written, and not performed, Tolkien attempted to give his characters regional dialects through their speech. Shippey pointed out that were one well enough versed in the history of the English language it would be obvious to the reader that Smeagol was significantly older than Bilbo through the choices of riddles in the Riddle Game in the Hobbit.

Re:Because that is what Tolkien intended!

[the eric conspiracy]

The acknowledged beginning of 20th century popular fantasy. The roots of the popular genre go much further back. Tolkien himself was a well known academic in the field.

For example I have his 1925 middle English edition of Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight in my library.

Re:Because that is what Tolkien intended!

[dwye]

> LotR is the acknowledged beginning of fantasy writing.

If you ignore Lord Dunsany, maybe.

What about other movies?

[rnturn]

Maybe it's not "fantasy" enough for this discussion but I didn't find Bob Hoskins' accent in Gorki Park all that "exotic". Laugh-inducing was more like it since he was supposed to be a Russian thug and came off sounding like he was doing a bad Michael Caine impersonation. In fact, all the actors seemed to have been picked for their inability to speak in a passable Eastern European accent.

Re:What about other movies?

[oobayly]

Are you sure you don't mean Alexei Sayle?

Re:What about other movies?

[rnturn]

You're right. I'd fallen asleep watching the movie and missed the credits. I remember rather looking forward to the movie after having the read the book and liked it (and me not being much of a murder mystery fan was surprised by that) but I found the movie to be bo-r-ring. And those accents. Jeez.

Practical Reason

[Roger W Moore]

...because they're living where the language was spoken during medieval times

I think that's probably the main reason - not just because of the modern association that a US accent brings but because if you want outdoor scenery with real medieval buildings and castles you need to be in Europe and so it is cheaper to hire English actors than American ones. In fact that was one of the problems I had with the Lord of the Rings films. While the scenery was certainly spectacular it was far too pristine and untouched for a land which had supposedly been lived on for thousands of years, Europe would have been a far better a choice but probably a lot harder due to the need to avoid anything modern.

Re:Practical Reason

[thejynxed]

New Zealand was actually a perfect choice: You must consider, that during the story all the way from The Hobbit until Return of the King, most of Arda was sparsely populated, in fact, there were few cities of any size remaining - most of what was left were small villages at best.

The earlier wars between the races, etc had wiped out entire empires and left nothing but mouldering ruins that are in the time of The Hobbit, what is leftover from wars centuries after their destruction (our Stone Henge, etc are what you compare them to for reference).

Heck, entire landscapes had changed over the Ages in that world, so much so that Mirkwood came to be in a place that before it was fertile farmland and part of an earlier empire.

We see very little of the Southrons, etc, but must assume they are like the Persians, Africans, and Indians of our world - at least from the few descriptions that Tolkein did leave us.

Re:Because to Americans

[Mindcontrolled]

To be honest, as European, I wouldn't immediately associate a Southern Drawl with dumb, hick, inbred and crazy. It still can carry that antebellum aristocratic vibe, too. If refined enough, that is...

Past: England, Future: American (all Hollywood)

[neurocutie]

Kinda of a silly question really. Fantasies for US consumption that tied with the past, medievel, sword/sorcery, etc are of course going to have an English/British bent to them --- it is our country's past and yet is a language we still can understand. The Tolkien stuff is all too obvious as is Harry Potter, written by English authors. Obviously fantasies for Chinese or Spanish audiences will not have English accents.

Future fantasies apparently belong to Americans, at least for now, having the lead in space travel, technology, etc (FOR NOW), particularly as targeted for American audiences (Hollywood). Still, there are Spanish future fantasies, Japanese, etc, etc.

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[Gordonjcp]

Well, I don't see it on the news in any part of your country, because I live in Scotland. About the only time I've heard someone with an "American" accent recently is when Donald Trump has been flapping his gums about how building an offshore windfarm is going to destroy Scotland's economy and ecology, and ruin the view from his eco-disaster golf course - but of course he has quite clearly got a New York accent. Oddly enough I thought there was something else to it, and it turns out (looking on Wikipedia) that his mother was from Lewis - he has a distinct Lewis tone to some of his vowels.

Not Hobbits, Orcs!

[Roger W Moore]

Of course, the Hobbits should technically all be Brummie

Why? Tolkien based the shire on Yorkshire so Hobbits ought to have Yorkshire accents. In fact, not to burst your bubble but, according to Wikipedia he apparently based Mordor on the Black Country so really the orcs should be speaking with a Brummie accent!

Re:Not Hobbits, Orcs!

[gbjbaanb]

nonsense. The hobbits were from his childhood, where the local fields (around Hall Green) were being slowly built upon. These became Sarumans' mills, and I understand the nasty industrial areas in the black country could easily be Mordor.

There's a reason why its called the Black country... once upon a time, it was described as hell on earth. - Thomas Carlyle described it in 1824 as "A frightful scene ..... a dense cloud of pestilential smoke hangs over it forever ....... and at night the whole region burns like a volcano spitting fire from a thousand tubes of brick. But oh the wretched thousands of mortals who grind out their destiny there!"

Tolkien was born into the (then) leafy area in Warwickshire, you can take the Tolkien Trail though today there is very little left that he'd recognise.

So yes, ok, Brummie orcs. I didn't think the Americans would know the difference :)

Re:Not Hobbits, Orcs!

[Roger W Moore]

nonsense. The hobbits were from his childhood, where the local fields (around Hall Green) were being slowly built upon.

I'm not convinced. Tolkien spent some time up in Yorkshire at Leeds University. Given that Leeds in the 1920s had more than a few mills and that the Shire has the three farthings like Yorkshire has three ridings it seems likely that the shire has at least some basis in Yorkshire. Certainly when I read the books for the first time growing up in Yorkshire my first thought was the the farthings were just like the ridings.

Thanks for the link but I'm not sure I want to do the Tolkien Trail though - the last thing I want to start coming to mind is the "Two Towers of Edgbaston" next time I read the books! ;-)

Re:Not Hobbits, Orcs!

[TheRaven64]

The map of Middle Earth looks a lot like someone took Wales and squeezed it slightly. The Shire is near Pembrokeshire, and they have to cross the border into England to destroy the ring in Birmingham.

Re:Not Hobbits, Orcs!

[gbjbaanb]

lol, yes, that link has a nice picture of the Mill.

I can imagine the film could be better.. ...and Gandalf spake unto the assembled Followship, "these are times of the gravest import", upon which Bilbo, hearing these words jumped up and said "An' I soy unto yaouw this is a dale that metters to all of oos"

I can only guess they dropped this for 'Ameriglish' because Elijah Woods couldn't handle any other accent :)

Because the British invented this kind of fantasy

[tgibbs]

Medievalist fantasy was basically invented by the British. Tolkien, who pretty much invented the genre, was British. So was C.S Lewis. If you're really pedantic, perhaps you might prefer to trace it back to Spenser or Malory. But they were British, too. I think it's kind of charming that a video of a modern fantasy by an American author retains this nod to the origins of the genre.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

For Game of Thrones, it's also convenient

[Hazelfield]

In the case of Game of Thrones, there's another reason: money and convenience.

Game of Thrones is mostly being filmed in Belfast due to good facilities, tax breaks and partial funding from Northern Ireland Screen. During casting they specifically looked for local actors. There are a few exceptions such as Sean Bean and Peter Dinklage, but most of the other actors (especially the children) are British. One of the most important reasons is availability: when you're planning a multiple-year series you don't want to engage actors that are likely to drop out due to other jobs. Actors already living in Britain will be far more likely to be available for subsequent seasons than actors based in Hollywood.

Re:For Game of Thrones, it's also convenient

[Dr_Barnowl]

Sean Bean is British ; TFA even notes that he's from Yorkshire, even though he now lives in London. Mark Addy and Lena Headey are also from Yorkshire.

Although his RP accent (as showcased in Goldeneye) is bloody atrocious, which may be why you think he's not from Britain.

Re:For Game of Thrones, it's also convenient

[Hazelfield]

I stand corrected. Thanks.

Re:Because to Americans

[CAIMLAS]

Ironically, the Texas and Southeast US accents are closer to the British English of 200 years ago than today's modern British accents are, supposedly (ie closer to Irish). I heard that the modern Brit accents are more derived from the "royal" accents put on by the betters.

Re:Because to Americans

[painandgreed]

Well, there are lots of Southern Drawls. Southern Belle style accent is probably what you are thinking about. There is quite a bit of difference between that and an Arkansas drawl. Some Kentuckians I have met not only had an accent but also a cadence and way of speaking in normal conversation that made them sound like they should be an actor in Deadwood. Texas can be stereotypical Texan invoking big hats, cowboy boots and guns but listen to King of the Hill if you get it non-dubbed for real Texas speech, and there are people who speak just like Boomhauer. I can't understand what they are saying even through I'm from OK, but others can. I'm sure there are plenty of accents in the eastern side of the South which I'm no familiar with also.

Re:Simple, really

[serviscope_minor]

I think the family of Jean Charles de Menezes may disagree with you on that point...

I doubt that. They simply shot him, they didn't bother with any of the rest.

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[belg4mit]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[demonlapin]

Well, Westeros looks remarkably like the eastern part of the island of Britain, and that it was once made up of a bunch of different kingdoms that were all united by one conqueror, and that there's a wall that defines the border between civilization and the wild tribes beyond. Yeah, aside from that, it could be anywhere.

Re:Quantum of Solace casted Ukranian for Haitian r

[dbIII]

One of the biggest screwups I've seen was "Seven Years in Tibet" where all the Tibetans were played by Mexicans, presumably because all those foreigners are the same. Hollywood pulled the copy trick yet again - one studio did "Kundun" so another threw a quick and nasty movie about the same person together to compete. Of course the casting wasn't the only thing wrong with it.

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[FooAtWFU]

Imagine if the North Sea was actually landmass... and if you have trouble imagining, use this map.

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[Monkey-Man2000]

One does not merely walk into Parliament.

However, one can try to merely tunnel under Parliament with a good bit of gunpowder...

Wait, are you saying I accidentally signed on to 4chan? I didn't think that was possible!

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[Monkey-Man2000]

Well Star Wars is easy; except for Obi-Wan, all the British are the bad guys while the Americans are the American-speakers. Star Wars can obviously be described as an allegory of the American Revolution. After all, this was made by an American with an American-mentality (Americans vs. British or as Rebels vs. The Empire). Alec Guinness slides just because he's a royal bad-ass and can do what he wants and George was lucky to get that kind of A-list star-power at the time... Best, An American

Re:Simple, really

[Noren]

If Chevron employs more than 50 employees within 75 miles of your wife's workplace, and if your wife has worked for them for at least 12 months, including at least 1250 hours in the previous 12 months, then she should be covered under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

She would be entitled to take up to 12 weeks off. It's unpaid, though they would be required to continue to pay for her medical insurance. Afterwards, she would have the right to her job back, or an equivalent position in certain cases if her former position was no longer available. IANAL, but apparently she is :) However, it's possible that this may not have been brought to her attention.

uhhh..

[Altrag]

I'd just always assumed that it was because pretty much all knights-and-wizards type shows are essentially based in Arthurian-style Britain.

Just like it would be silly to have a Western done up with a British accent ("Westerns" are essentially defined as the American West circa mid-to-late 1800s.)

As for the comparison to the traditional "stereotype" of upper class Europeans.. that can pretty much be discarded as an argument due to the fact that Britain has changed over time. The high fashion upper class people you see in these shows are usually based around the Elizabethian era, give or take a monarch or two. But definitely an entirely different period of history compared to the time of Arthur and the onset of the dark ages.

Now of course there's some language bias involved. The French, Germans, Spanish, etc all had their own upper class during the Elizabethian era, and they all inter-mingled rather frequently at balls and in court and whatnot, and they would have generally spoken the local language of whatever palace they were visiting.

The language barriers do present a problem for something like Spartacus -- even if the producer does the research and knows what languages would have been common in the time and place of setting, none of said languages would have any modern counterparts to even take an accent from. We don't really associate modern Italy with ancient Rome (for whatever reason), and you've got few other choices so may as well just pick an accent that sounds good and go with that. (The Spartacus show in particular did an interesting thing, though its been done before of course -- they used odd turns of phrases and curses that sound suitably grandiose and non-modern rather than a particular accent. How well it worked is up for debate, but not too many people would be confusing it with modern speech.)

Monty Python...duh

[tomhath]

Because a British accent is what we expect.

Re:Monty Python...duh

[kodiaktau]

And now for something completely different...

Bon Temps

[Ken Broadfoot]

Bon Temps is a fantasy world set in Louisiana. Shape shifters, faeries, and vampires...
Accent is certainly NOT english...

Well...

[Zamphatta]

I've always figured that since America's only had English speakers for about 400-500 years, that a British accent adds some authenticity to the antiquated placement in time of the story -- be it Lord of the Rings or Rome or Game of Thrones. It would kill the historic atmosphere to use an accent that probably didn't exist in the medieval period like any American ones. I'm no language expert, but I highly doubt that Brooklyn accents (which are heavily influenced by immigrants from non-English speaking countries) would've been spoken pre-1600. It just wouldn't be as believable as an accent from the British Isles.

Anglo-Saxon folk tales

[lawpoop]

Remember that the creatures that populate the English-language fantasy world are all from Britain (which in turn I guess derive from the Norse mixed in with some local supernatural creatures, with a few Greek ones thrown in). The creators of the modern fantasy genre, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were British. It's really not surprising that fantasy-genre people speak with British accents. All the people who believed in elves and fairies and wizards a few hundred years ago were British.

These are all essentially Anglo-Saxon folk tales; why shouldn't the people that inhabit these worlds have an Anglo-Saxon manner of speaking?

What I find more strange are Roman emperors of Greek kings speaking with British accents.

Duh

[superdude72]

The most significant portions of the fantasy worlds cited (Middle Earth, Westeros) clearly take inspiration from the British Isles. That is why the characters speak with British accents.

When the characters in A Song of Ice and Fire leave Westeros, the indigenous populations speak with other accents. I don't think anyone would confuse Kal Drogo with an English schoolboy.

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[nine-times]

Well also, before the prequels, Obi-Wan's history was a bit mysterious. His English accent could be taken as a hint that he used to be part of the Empire.

God hates cigarettes

[tepples]

I think I'll go smoke a fag

But God hates fags. Exposing other people to smoke doesn't show the love for one's neighbor that Jesus was always talking about.

Are they?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Odd, I thought the fantasy worlds of Final Fantasy had a distinct Japanese accent. It would be odd to hear cat girls speak with an American accent. British might work, in a maid uniform... French maid... ooooooooh.

Oh wait, the article mentions British fantasy worlds and then wonders why the accents are British... the Shire is rather obviously British, it would be hard to read Lotr and think it was set in Australia. The Mad Max fantasy world however would be hard to imagine without thinking Australia, the complete and utter desolation of a post nuclear world where humanity is but a dying memory. Australia! Right?

There are lots of fantasy worlds set with the distinct flavor of all parts of the world. That you never heard of any but Lotr, that says more about you then the state of fantasy.

BECAUSE...

[MrKaos]

When you hear a sexy woman with a posh British accent saying...

"You have been a very. naughty. boy."

Then, then you understand why.

Remember Kevin Costner as Robin Hood?

[master_p]

Most of the cast in that movie spoke with an British accent, except Costner. It was rather awful. His acting was ok, but a single American accent between British accents did a lot to ruin the suspension of disbelief.

It was so strange that the hero spoke with an American accent that in the movie "Men In Tights", Robin Hood says: "unlike other Robin Hoods, I can speak with a British accent".

The British accent brings an aristocratic aura to the speaker. I think that is why it is chosen.

Re:Want an Elf Queen that talks like Fran Drescher

[ghmh]

Actually, fans of Peter Jacksons early works such as Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles would probably find that nauseatingly erotic.

Re:Because to Americans

[Patch86]

I'm not convinced that Irish (which is heavily influenced by Gaelic routes) is the best guide to English accents of the past (German with French pretentions). I've heard convincing arguments that Geordie accents are a good guide to "the English of yesteryear"- but Britain is a big place, so it probably wouldn't have been universal.

My heritage is West Country- certainly some of the broader versions of that dialect still spoken by some of my older relatives could have some fairly ancient pedigree. It's a rhotic accent, too, which is in its favour.

... or originality?

[MxMatrix]

JJR Tolkien and his fellow writers were of English or former English colonies (eg. South Africa), and they founded the genre. So all original fantasy literature is written in British English. Most actors in starring in fantasy movies are in fact British. So its hardly a surprise to me. (I'm from the Netherlands myself)

UK actors are cheap

[rve]

Foreign actors simply don't cost as much as American ones with a similar talent and experience level, and UK ones have the added advantage that they're able to speak English.

Not in games

[thetoadwarrior]

Fantasy titles are usually set in medieval times so a British accent at least makes more sense than an American one which wouldn't even make sense.

If you really want American accents for everything then play video games and experience the world as it would be if there were zero variety. US gamers appear to be the most intolerant towards other cultures. Not surprising given how much hate gets spewed over XBL.

Possibly Explenation

[Catmeat]

One time a fantasy film-make used non-British English accents.

The accents were one of the reasons he wound fending off accusations of racism and anti-semitism. So I can imagine other film makers remembering this, and just preferring to avoid the risk of the same thing happening again.

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[jecblackpepper]

The author has said that he was inspired by the English War of the Roses though.

Trunk vs. boot

[tepples]

one where cars wear boots

As opposed to American English, where the back of a car has a proboscis like an elephant's?

Re:Simple, really

[ch0ad]

I'm from Taunton, Somerset but i don't think you can have been referring to me in your last sentence. Even just in this one county accents can vary from barely noticeable soft-southern english to almost incomprehensible west-country gibberish. I wouldn't count on it being to everyone's tastes. Bill Bailey and Russel Howard are both somerset boys and both occasionally slip in to very west-country accents. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4PTQCN8Juo

Firefly got it right.

[Rambo Tribble]

Just add a touch of Mandarin.

Ponies what are British

[Zobeid]

I'm sorry, but I just couldn't help thinking of this bit...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOi3StWmG7A

My sources inform me that there are still some individuals in England, in certain circles, who actually talk like this.

Not in Skyrim at least

[HalAtWork]

Skyrim seems to have all kinds of accents, many of them American, and they don't use "old english" tropes like "thee" and "thou". It seems to draw influence from norse mythology as well, although there is still plenty of LotR (I guess you can't escape it). It's refreshing compared to the rest.

King Julian...Madagascar

[adumonit]

King Julian... My sackweefice goes in d volcano. Den, d friendly Gods eat up my sackweefice... "Mmm, very nice, thank you for d sackweefice..." "Please have another sackweefice!" "No, I've had enough for today..." Eternally hilarious! Always wondered what his accent is. I imagine it's some stereotype, which would be at well-tried fail considering WE dont really speak like that. Hilarious non the same. Self, that was vague. (shaking perfectly good head)

Re:There's no such thing as a "British" accent.

[H0p313ss]

From an American ear, Kiwi and Aussi (and oddly South African) is a million times closer to "British" than American.

Re:Simple, really

[arkane1234]

If you're serious, I'd recommend reading the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

The union of the UK was in 1707, according to it.

Re:Because American accents did not exist then

[arkane1234]

Like it would be silly to have British accents for a movie about a US president.

hoaaah boy, that'd raise quite a few hackles, I know that much...

Stone the crows!

[Dabido]

'Stone the bleeding crows, Frodo mate,' cried Samwise. 'These orcs are comin' at us thicker and faster than blue arsed flies in summer!'

'Strewth!' exclaimed Frodo. 'That ones bigger than me Aunt Nelly's britches.'

'Fair dinkum,' replied Samwise. 'Let's nick off down the pub before someone realises we've seen 'em. Some other mug can handle this mess!'

Re:Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are ABOUT Engl

[Zumbs]

It also looks remarkably like a randomly generated Civilization I map ...

Re:Simple, really

[KevReedUK]

From the article I linked to above:

Just after Menezes entered a train, several officers wrestled him to the ground and fired seven bullets into his head at point blank range.

So, granted, they didn't handcuff him, but aside from that, I stand by my opinion that the views of his family may well differ...

Space Australia

[DarthVain]

I am sure Crocodile Dundee wreaked my TV watching ability of the Australian accent, as it always seems comedic to me now (he was that good of an actor perhaps).

So I can only see Fantasy/Science Fiction and Australian accent if the plot somehow involves barbequing shrimp or saving babies from wild dogs...

Also that red guy on Dragonball Z from Space Australia, Awesome.