How boring would that be?
Do people with southern accents seem weird in oldTrek?
- Thread starter Wadjda
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With the voice of Rod Serling.
In most (if not all) European countries, where English is a mandatory foreign language class in school, the students are taught British English, so I can see that as a possible explanation as to why he speaks with an English accent. I myself was taught in B.E. at first, and it was not until I was an adult, I changed to an American accent. Sure, by the time Picard goes to school, thing may change, but due to the proximity of France to the UK, I think it will still make sense for European students to be taught in British English.
Generally speaking, Southern US English accents are as valid as any other accent in Star Trek. A real world comparison would be the US Navy: you have enlistees from all over the US, some cases other countries, serving together on one ship. You are bound to run across a Southerner or two. So, from that standpoint, no, Southern accents don't take me out of the story.
McCoy's accent never bothered me, either. To me, he sounded exactly like what his character was intended to be: a "country doctor." That was part of the charm of his character for me. It also helped that the accent came naturally to Kelley, since he seemed to be from the same region as the McCoy character.
However, I think when it comes to Trip, I am forced to agree with the OP a little bit. His accent always did bother me. To me, at least, while McCoy's accent recalled a Southern gentleman's accent natural for the character, Trip sounded to me like George W Bush at times. For me, between Trip's accent reminding me of GWB, and the fact I think he resembles a younger George W Bush in the face, I found the Trip character distracting. I couldn't see Trip as Chief Engineer and second officer of the Enterprise. All I saw was some guy that looked a bit like GW Bush, and sounded like him, and that took me out of the story a bit because I was thinking of that, not Star Trek. I kind of felt that if Trip had a different accent (maybe an actual Floridian accent or none at all), it wouldn't have distracted me so much.
McCoy's accent never bothered me, either. To me, he sounded exactly like what his character was intended to be: a "country doctor." That was part of the charm of his character for me. It also helped that the accent came naturally to Kelley, since he seemed to be from the same region as the McCoy character.
However, I think when it comes to Trip, I am forced to agree with the OP a little bit. His accent always did bother me. To me, at least, while McCoy's accent recalled a Southern gentleman's accent natural for the character, Trip sounded to me like George W Bush at times. For me, between Trip's accent reminding me of GWB, and the fact I think he resembles a younger George W Bush in the face, I found the Trip character distracting. I couldn't see Trip as Chief Engineer and second officer of the Enterprise. All I saw was some guy that looked a bit like GW Bush, and sounded like him, and that took me out of the story a bit because I was thinking of that, not Star Trek. I kind of felt that if Trip had a different accent (maybe an actual Floridian accent or none at all), it wouldn't have distracted me so much.
The latter. In school, I was brought up with words like "petrol" and "torches", but now as an adult, I speak and write American English only. I am attending night school at the moment, where we once again have an English class, and I had to talk to my teacher first about my AE, if it would be okay if I used it. Turns out, she's fine with it, as long as I don't switch, but she teaches the class in British English, and she even has an (albeit horrible) English accent.
The only real issue between different variants of the same language is words can have different meanings (or perhaps more accuratly their primary meaning).
"A lot" doesn't mean "all." You can't generalize like that. Some people who learn a foreign language won't be able to speak it without their native accent, like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jackie Chan speaking English. But others have a better ear for the pronunciation and can speak the language like a native.
Heck, when I took Spanish in high school, the pronunciation was the easiest thing for me, because I have a good memory for sound patterns, but I still remember one or two classmates who, frustratingly to me, never even tried to pronounce the sounds of Spanish in anything other than the American English way. I was amazed that their approach to processing the components of language was so totally different from mine. I'm sure I was nowhere near speaking Spanish like a native, but I was certainly a damn sight closer than they were. So you can't generalize like that about accents.
Besides, as I point out every time this comes up: they have transporters. Commuting from Paris to London would be as effortless as getting from the Louvre to Notre Dame. Heck, you could go to school every morning in Shanghai and then come home to Labarre for dinner every evening. The whole concept of "regional" would cease to exist in a transporter-based society. People would probably learn one accent at home with their family and a different, more universal one at school and other public places.
Not necessarily. I don't know where this myth is coming from that you never lose your accent after learning a new language. I have had people from America telling me that I have no accent at all, which is just proof for me that I speak American English fluently. A woman from Ireland further confirmed this when I jokingly told her that I sound Texan, and she insisted, I sound Californian instead.
Of course, the majority of people who speak English as a foreign language have an accent, but not all. Plus, it's the 24th century we're talking about, where humans are evolved and have stuff like quantum mechanics in elementary school, so I daresay that 24th century children pick up languages better than us measly 20th century people, and that France is still closer to the UK, so that British English would be on the curriculum and not American English.
English is pretty clearly the universal language of the Federation, so everyone on Earth would learn it as at least their second language, the one they'd speak in public even if they spoke a different language at home. And they'd learn it from childhood, so they'd probably pick up the accent pretty naturally.
I know accents aren't immuable, but as I said teaching British English doesn't mean teaching the accent. And Picard didn't serve on a ship full of British people.
My mother is Greek and despite she learns French from French School and studied in France and have been living in Quebec for nearl 35 years now, she still has an accent that's neither French or French Canadian.
In Quebec, we're all watching the same medias essentially produced in Montreal and despite that, they're still have strong regional accents. Acadians in Maritime Provinces are exposed to Quebec medias and still speaking French as Acadians. Franco-Ontarians tend to have a closer accent to what we have in Quebec, but we can notice somme differences. So geographical proximity and mainstream culture aren't the only parameters.
I'm neither a linguist neither an ethnologist, but as Francophone, I can say the proximity between France and England isn't a plausible explanation.
My mother is Greek and despite she learns French from French School and studied in France and have been living in Quebec for nearl 35 years now, she still has an accent that's neither French or French Canadian.
In Quebec, we're all watching the same medias essentially produced in Montreal and despite that, they're still have strong regional accents. Acadians in Maritime Provinces are exposed to Quebec medias and still speaking French as Acadians. Franco-Ontarians tend to have a closer accent to what we have in Quebec, but we can notice somme differences. So geographical proximity and mainstream culture aren't the only parameters.
I'm neither a linguist neither an ethnologist, but as Francophone, I can say the proximity between France and England isn't a plausible explanation.
It does have a lot to do with it, actually. If you teach British English, you also teach the accent. Students here listen to cassettes and CDs, and they are all spoken in British English by native speakers. If you're constantly exposed to one accent, you will pick it up for sure.
The geographical location is a very important factor, by the way. The UK is literally on the doorstep of Europe, so that is why students are taught BE here.
The geographical location is a very important factor, by the way. The UK is literally on the doorstep of Europe, so that is why students are taught BE here.
But he grew up in a Europe that was unified by transporters. For all we know, as a boy he went to boarding school in England. There are surely French kids who do that today -- it makes no sense to assume it's impossible 400 years from now. It's just oversimplistic to assume that anyone who has a given nationality must have the stereotypical accent we associate with that nation. There are many reasons why they might have a different accent, especially in a multicultural society with advanced rapid transportation.
You can't make universal statements based on a single example. Some people pick up accents better than others.
Heck, if you want plausibility, the English and French accents 400 years from now won't sound anything like they do today. I think we already covered that in this thread. Even the language might not be recognizable. If anything, the lingua franca of the 24th-century Federation would be more likely to be a creole of several Earth languages, Vulcan, and maybe some Andorian and Tellarite and Rigelian mixed in. Heck, even if we accept that Federation humans are predominantly American in their cultural influence, American English 400 years from now is probably going to sound a lot more like Spanish than it does today, given demographic shifts. Having them speak 20th/21st-century American English in the first place is a dramatic conceit. So one has to be flexible when it comes to questions of plausibility.
That's basically what I was saying.
No you said the UK is on the doorstep of Europe, it isn't on the doorstep it's inside the door. It's part of Europe, It's not seperate from it when you talk of Europe it automatically includes the UK unless you are talking about continental Europe, Which covers just the mainland and excludes the various Islands such as Great Britain, Ireland, Malta etc..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
Back on topic, hearing a southern accent only bothers me when it's obviously fake, an affectation by someone who isn't good at accents and dialects. Which is a lot. Most of the time, actually. Stupid damn actors. 
But seriously, Trip's accent didn't bother me at all. It was to me the most natural generic southern accent I'd heard on tv in a long time. Still, even.
But even a "southern" accent can vary a lot, depending on what part of the south or southwest a person is from. It varies even by urban and rural locales, separated by only a few miles.
That's where most actors get it wrong. Go back and watch the "North and South" miniseries. That had some of the worst accents I've ever heard.
Connor Trineer, in my opinion, did a very good job with his accent. Subtle, not forced.
But seriously, Trip's accent didn't bother me at all. It was to me the most natural generic southern accent I'd heard on tv in a long time. Still, even.
But even a "southern" accent can vary a lot, depending on what part of the south or southwest a person is from. It varies even by urban and rural locales, separated by only a few miles.
That's where most actors get it wrong. Go back and watch the "North and South" miniseries. That had some of the worst accents I've ever heard.
Connor Trineer, in my opinion, did a very good job with his accent. Subtle, not forced.
I'm not sure I follow your line of reasoning here. Are you saying that the intellectual methodology of learning languages three or four centuries hence will be different because there will have been a tradition of children studying much more complex, technically oriented material sprinkled liberally throughout the generally accepted educational curriculum?
Or are you positing that there will actually be some organic evolution of how humans process language that somehow will allow the learning and integration of various tongues, non-native to the student, materially easier than it is today?
I don't think that we have seen any corroborative evidence for either argument in the visions of contemporary life that Trek in its various iterations has illustrated over the years.
I guess if an imagined construct for the future incorporates a widespread Augment-type manipulation of the basic structure of our makeup amongst the general population, well perhaps then it might seem reasonable for there to be such enhanced capabilities, but I don't think so otherwise.
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