Why French?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' started by mythme, Jul 16, 2013.

  1. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2009
    Location:
    T'Girl
    ^ Hadrian For Emperor.


    :)
     
  2. flexus lucent

    flexus lucent Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2001
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7reNuHNoSNg
     
  3. Bry_Sinclair

    Bry_Sinclair Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2009
    Location:
    Scotland
    Maybe he can't actually speak English and his UT translates his French into an English accent, which confuses the replicator when he goes to order a suitable French beverage :lol:
     
  4. Mario de Monti

    Mario de Monti Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2013
    Location:
    Heidelberg, Germany
    That´s the best explantion by far and should satisfy everyone :D
     
  5. Bad Thoughts

    Bad Thoughts Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jun 19, 2013
    Location:
    Bad Thoughts
    I guess the replicator interprets "fée verte" as "Earl Grey".
     
  6. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 16, 2001
    Location:
    Trekker4747
    But that's just it. Picard shares NOTHING with being French. Okay, sure not all Frenchmen drink wine and eat croissants while wearing white face-makeup trying to breakout of an invisible box. But one thing French people do not do is sound British! Which Picard very much did. There's any number of things we could speculate about Riker's accent not being Alaskan, Beverly's not being Irish, Geordi's not being African and Worf's not being Russian. We could probably surmise any number of things about that to give them their more neutral accents. But then that's still leave us here:

    Why does Picard, a Frenchman, sound British? Did all of them just happen to go to a school and serve on ships and spend their entire lives in places with neutral/mid-wester accents that washed them away and Picard just happened to spend his entire life in places to give him a British one?

    Or could this just simply be a mistake and oversight by the creators? I go with the latter. We can try and to rationalize it all we want in-universe but it's hard to not come up with one that doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny. (Especially if, IIRC, Picard's family had British accents as well.)

    It's a big error, plain as that.
     
  7. Third Nacelle

    Third Nacelle Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Apr 4, 2013
    Location:
    The Denorios Belt
    The simplest explanation, given that Picard's family (even the little kid) and Louis all speak with British accents, is that British is the preferred accent in France in the 24th century. Either that's how it is taught, or - much to the dismay of modern French people - that's the language on the continent. A LOT changes in four centuries.

    Also, why is Beverly's or Geordi's accent more "neutral" than Picard's accent? What does neutral even mean in that context?
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    First off, you can never apply an absolute generalization to any entire population. There's always a bell curve. In high school, I knew a girl who was from somewhere in the northeast US, maybe Baltimore (or was it Delaware?), and she had a gorgeous English accent because she'd been raised by an English nanny.

    Second, I'm sure any French person who had learned to speak English well enough would speak it with a British accent (given that they probably would've learned British English, given the proximity). Sure, some people will speak a foreign language with their native accent, but those who have a good enough ear for accents, or have done it long enough, will be able to speak the foreign language without an accent.

    Third, it's four hundred years in the future. Even today, Europe is far more united than it was fifty or a hundred years ago. Britain and France still consider themselves very separate cultures, but I'm sure that a couple of centuries ago, New York State and Pennsylvania considered themselves separate cultures. Things change. Who's to say that 24th-century Europe isn't far more culturally and linguistically united than 21st-century Europe?

    Fourth, bottom line, it's a TV show. Picard has a British accent because Patrick Stewart has a fantastic British accent and nobody wanted to mess with perfection. He was portrayed as French anyway because it was a TV show and poetic license exists.
     
  9. iguana_tonante

    iguana_tonante Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 15, 2006
    Location:
    Italy, EU
    How many French people do you know?

    That's exactly it.

    As with most Europeans, I was taught British English by a teacher with a British accent. I still have a thick Italian accent, due to the fact that while I use English daily, I speak Italian much, much more than I speak English.

    But I am fairly confident that if I were to use English as my primary language, I will increasingly lose my foreign accent, and be left with, guess what? British English.
     
  10. mythme

    mythme Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Jan 18, 2001
    Location:
    Jim Thorpe, PA, USA
    Picard's mother Yvette has a distinct French accent in WNOHGB and her maiden name Gessard, while obviously French is widespread in the midlands of Great Britain. On the other hand, Jean-Luc's father Maurice has a British accent "Tapestry" is British and the Picard. Too bad its not the other way around. It would easier to explain Jean-Luc's accent.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    ^Four centuries have passed. People move around.
     
  12. LaBarre

    LaBarre Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Oct 9, 2008
    Location:
    Earth
    He swears in French.