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Explanation for French Picard speaking British English?

Lee T said:
The real puzzling thing is that they never bothered to check out how "Picard" sounds when said by a french (in french the "d" at the end isn't pronounced).

"Jian-Louc Picarde"... :lol:

I don't really want to answer all this french bashing, I've already told that I really don't care about it, I'm happy with my country and my culture and I don't feel the need to "spread the word".
 
euges116 said:
I have an idea to explain how Jean-Luc Picard, supposedly French, speaks British English.

He doesn't necessarily speak British English. There are several examples of when he pronounces words the American rather than British way, or indeed uses the American rather than British version. The one which springs to mind being acclimate. Picard comments in one episode that he has to "acclimate" himself. If he were speaking British English he would "acclimatise" himself.
 
WillsBabe said:
euges116 said:
I have an idea to explain how Jean-Luc Picard, supposedly French, speaks British English.

He doesn't necessarily speak British English. There are several examples of when he pronounces words the American rather than British way, or indeed uses the American rather than British version. The one which springs to mind being acclimate. Picard comments in one episode that he has to "acclimate" himself. If he were speaking British English he would "acclimatise" himself.
Well it depends on who wrote the script that day, whether they would know the correct word.
 
Patrick Stewart couldn't do a convincing French accent?

Why would Picard speak English with a French accent? Gul Dukat doesn't speak English with a Cardassian accent, either!

Perhaps Picard simply speaks French, meaning that everything he says goes through the Universal Translator. And his happens to be set on British English. Just like Scotty has set his on Heavy Scottish to hide the fact that he is actually native to Gothenburg.

Timo Saloniemi
 
United Kingdom of Great Britan & France. Britan recoverd the territories lost by King John and the rest of France asked to come along.
 
Once you explain why Picard speaks English with a British accent, please explain why Dr. Bashir (an Indian last name) speaks English with a British accent. And then explain why we've seen Klingons and Cardassians speak with English accents. And then explain all the Imperial officers working for Darth Vader who spoke with English accents. Do you really want to go down that road?
 
Hmm. I for one would stereotypically expect a medical doctor looking like Julian Bashir / Siddig El-Fadil to speak with a British accent. In our day and age, he'd probably have been schooled in Britain or at least under the British system.

In Trek terms, though, Bashir could be speaking Arabic, Farsi or Sindhi all the time, just through a Universal Translator. Kira most certainly would be speaking Bajoran, probably not knowing the first word of English. Worf might never have bothered to learn other Earth languages besides his supposed native Russian. Sisko could speak French, even if he were under Starfleet pressure to learn English. And Odo no doubt speaks both Bajoran or Cardassian, although he might have taken pains to learn the lingua franca of his newest masters as well.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Level 2 Diagnostic said:
Once you explain why Picard speaks English with a British accent, please explain why Dr. Bashir (an Indian last name) speaks English with a British accent.
The difference between those two is that we have never been told where Bashir grew up, while we know for a fact Picard is from France.
 
Bashier is pretty easy since there are a number of Brits who can trace their ancestry to India. (Something about an Empire. I forget the details)

Gorkon must have picked up the accent when he studied English. Or the UT gave him one.

As for the Vader minions. They didn't speak English in Galaxies far away and a long time ago. So what ever accent you're hearing isnt English or American in the cases of Anakin, Luke, Leia and Han. ;) Graduates ofthe Imperial Military Academy must have some sort of "Coruscant" accent. Country bumkins like Luke and Anakin speak with a different accent.
 
Touche.

What this really stems from is the American notion that British=Europe. Are they from Germany? Well stick a British actor in there because an actual German accent wouldn't sell?

Are they from France?

Are they from The Empire?

BRITISH!
 
To Americans a certain type of British accent can imply power, sophistication and wealth.(along with a sense of otherness) Part of an odd inferiority complex we have with our British cousins ;)
 
Hi everyone, i'm french and discovered star trek with enterprise 3 month ago, loved it.
Since that day, i watched enterprise, tos, tas, 6 tos movies and am now watching tng.
I'm in early season two and just found this forum while i was searching on google why did dr crusher leave.

About this topic, i have to say that, since high school, ALL of my english teacher came from UK and whenever there's a difference between the uk/us version ( like color colour), they tell us to go with the UK version. Most of them seems to consider america speaks "bad english" while theirs is perfect. There has even been one who said that he hates speaking with an american because of his accent.
So i'm not surprise that Picard speak british english.
 
Within the world of the TV show, I like to think WWIII and the post atomic horror gave the British the opportunity in some way to finally thump the French, their real enemy. So much for the European Hegemony! US cultural imperialism helped kill the language. The people are still proud of their culture and traditions, but from the 22nd century Earth's offical language is English.

not everybody's happy with it, though

read my story

:)
 
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