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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."
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 never get used to these constant resurrections
Lots of places have a north.
Mark Anthony Collins
Do we even need to be asking such an obvious question? British is the foreign language that Americans are most likely to understand...
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)
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).
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).
"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.
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.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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...