Is Scotty's accent actually bad?

They weren't playing Terrance Howard or Edward Norton, so there is no need for them to look like those actors.

 

Back in Caption Contest days I took the screencap for a contest and replaced all the French items with things from Yorkshire.

 

Scots is a dialect of English, or several dialects of English.

Several episodes demonstrate that the language usually spoken on the Enterprise in TOS is called English. But it might actually be translated from 23rd century Stafleet English into 20th century USA English for the benefit of the audience. POosibly the 23rd Century Aberdeen Scots dialect is also different. and and they had uncertainty with how to depict it for a 20th century audience.

 

Then they might as well have changed their gender or gave them completely different skin tones.

My problem is that they were completely different looking persons, but they kept the two things the U.S.A. is most fond of chaining people to the same, gender and “race” and with “race” I mean the U.S.A.'s noticeably idiosyncractic categorization thereof. Terrence Howard on a genetic level is probably more indigenously European than he is indigenously Subsaharan African, but they would have never replaced him with an indigenously European actor, for the one drop makes the difference. And I find that a tad but offensive, I must say.



Had they actually replaced Terrance Howard with a female actor that more so, say, looked ingenuously middle-eastern, truly a man randomly selected from the planet, I would rather find it interesting and a bold move.

 

One's heritage doesn't get washed away by the circumstances of one's birth. I'm a Jew. I'm half-Ukrainian. I'm half-Israeli. I'm also an American.

(and a proud Jewish Californian. )

 

These videos are awesome! Thanks for sharing.

When I was in holiday in Scotland, the further we travelled away from Edinburg, the less my comprehension of the locals got. And I’ve got Scottish friends whom I can understand (well, before they have a few pints mind you. After that their accent gets super thick and I need sub titles )

 

"I dinna ken, cap'n. Dinna you?"

Where's that damned universal translator when you need it?

Shatner's mangling of "sabotage" and "telekinesis" don't count?

 

That makes me wonder, what did Bill sound like before he became an actor? And how hard did he have to work on squeezing the Canadian out of his inflections?

 

"Let's get the hell ote of heer."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_English

 

Well, I haven't seen this on here yet, so ...

 

OMG that's hilarious. Robin was so funny. What a shame and what a loss for us.

 

This is an issue I've had with various Star Trek shows. Some character in an episode of one of the shows will bust out talking in some Earth language other than English, and it will be like other characters can't understand them. Shouldn't the Universal Translator make it all understandable anyway? The UT only works for alien languages, not other Earth languages?

 

Sometimes it's just a TV show playing with TV show tropes.

 

We know from Metamorphosis that the translator has a telepathic component. I imagine it works the same as the TARDIS telepathic circuits in Doctor Who. When Donna tried to speak Latin to some one in Pompei, he didn't understand her.

 

Just wanted to point out that not all Scottish people sound like Craig Ferguson. If anyone has seen the (excellent) show Shetland, several of the characters there (all played by Scots actors) sound quite a bit like Doohan as Scotty. So, for that matter, does Ewan McGregor, who has been giving plenty of interviews lately for obvious reasons. I seem to remember that no one wanted Doohan to lay it on too thick.

 

Even Ferguson admits he no longer sounds Scottish. Cf:

 

I'm sure there are Cockneys who sound like Dick Van Dyke, too.