• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Is Scotty's accent actually bad?

This is the correct answer. Still, the thread has posts pointing out that having a Scottish character, even one with a dreadful accent, was a point of national pride for some.
The Original Series probably did the best job of actually featuring humans and accents from across he planet, and even there too many characters were from the U.S.A., and the accents were quite bad.

Does Voyager have any human not from the North America among it's cast? Perhaps Seven of Nine counts as human, who is implied to be assimilated from a Swede by his name and that of his parents.

TOnkVc1.png


Then of course there are the many characters who are in theory not from North America, such as LaForge, Crusher, and Sulu, but speak and act as though they are with their backstory never mentioned in the same way that O'Brien's and Bashir's being Irish and British respectively very much are part of their character.

Most ironically, it is the forgotten Mayweather who at least has some minor character development spent on the fact that he was born in space.

I cannot help but also be dismissive of the ridiculous nature of the Enterprise intro sequence, which included only Anglo-Saxon features of exploration and in a title about space travel somehow managed to omit the first man in space, for it was a Soviet achievement.
 
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.


No, laddie, it's long gone, but that's what the Universal Translator is for. :techman:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
You seem to be right. I always thought the character was Japanese.
He’s Japanese-American, like Takei. He’s supposed to represent that Asian people can be American too, which was inspired by Takei living in an internment camp when he was young. That’s why it didn’t matter that he was played by a Korean-American in the JJ movies. I’m sure Gene did mean him to be just Japanese originally but the character became Japanese-American quite early on and that’s why he doesn’t use a samurai sword in The Naked Time.
 
He’s Japanese-American, like Takei. He’s supposed to represent that Asian people can be American too, which was inspired by Takei living in an internment camp when he was young. That’s why it didn’t matter that he was played by a Korean-American in the JJ movies. I’m sure Gene did mean him to be just Japanese originally but the character became Japanese-American quite early on and that’s why he doesn’t use a samurai sword in The Naked Time.
Gene's original idea was that Sulu was pan-Asian. Never heard anything about Sulu being an American until the Voyage home.
 
Gene's original idea was that Sulu was pan-Asian. Never heard anything about Sulu being an American until the Voyage home.
It was on one of the DVD extras for one of the TOS releases. Takei talks about his childhood and explains why he said that Sulu shouldn’t have a katana.

There are a couple of references to Sulu being Japanese specifically (such as asking for hot sake to be beamed down) but I don’t recall any referring to any other Asian cultures, especially not to do with Sulu.
 
It was on one of the DVD extras for one of the TOS releases. Takei talks about his childhood and explains why he said that Sulu shouldn’t have a katana.

There are a couple of references to Sulu being Japanese specifically (such as asking for hot sake to be beamed down) but I don’t recall any referring to any other Asian cultures, especially not to do with Sulu.
I don't recall anything about Japanese culture being mentioned for Sulu. Maybe a samurai in Shore Leave?
I'm just going by what was said in The Making of Star Trek. Sulu isn't a Japanese name.
 
I don't recall anything about Japanese culture being mentioned for Sulu. Maybe a samurai in Shore Leave?
I'm just going by what was said in The Making of Star Trek. Sulu isn't a Japanese name.
Gene didn’t speak Japanese but loved Japanese culture (he even got married there). “Sulu” is the sort of thing someone who doesn’t speak Japanese might think sounds like a Japanese name. It is actually a word in Japanese - する.
 
Gene didn’t speak Japanese but loved Japanese culture (he even got married there). “Sulu” is the sort of thing someone who doesn’t speak Japanese might think sounds like a Japanese name. It is actually a word in Japanese - する.
Thought he got it from the Sulu Sea near the Philippines. Google tells me the word you quoted it "suru", meaning "to" in English.
 
He’s Japanese-American, like Takei. He’s supposed to represent that Asian people can be American too
A quaint idea te U.S.A. is known for, that men born and raised there stil consider themselves “Asian” or “Irish” because their ancestors were.
I do not humor these delusions. A man born and raised in North-America is North-American, regardless of what his parents were.

which was inspired by Takei living in an internment camp when he was young.
There were but two countries during W.W.I. that imprisoned their own citizens based on their parents out of some supposed “doubt of loyalty”. Greater Germany, and the U.S.A.. — What fine company to find oneself in.

That’s why it didn’t matter that he was played by a Korean-American in the JJ movies.
Why would it matter? He could be played by a dog whose face was altered by c.g.i. to make him resemble the original Sulu for al I care and I did not find any of the Kelvinverse actors to resemble the original cast to any great degree. — It was a clear case of casting entirely different persons so long as their U.S.A. conception of “race” and “gender” matched.

L4usdTa.jpg

They look oh-so-alike

I’m sure Gene did mean him to be just Japanese originally but the character became Japanese-American quite early on and that’s why he doesn’t use a samurai sword in The Naked Time.
“Japanese-American” is a word Americans used to feel special. — I'll use such a word perhaps for a man born and raised in Japan who later moved to the U.S.A. who still thinks in Japanese who can more easily express himself in Japanese in English and who stil finds Japanese culture less surprising than U.S.A. culture. I for instance, see some merit to, say, calling Arnold Schwarzenegger “Austrian-American” since I saw him speak German in an interview once and it's clear that after all this time, speaking German stil comes more naturally to him than speaking English.

I'll not humor whatever delusions George Takei may or may not have about being “Japanese-American”; his parents were “Japanese-American”; he has lived in the U.S.A. his entire life.

Thought he got it from the Sulu Sea near the Philippines. Google tells me the word you quoted it "suru", meaning "to" in English.

It means “to do”, roughly, since Japanese verbs are slightly different, and it's an issue of romanization since Japanese has different sounds from English. One can, for instance, encounter the word “将軍” romanized as <syougun>, <shōgun>, <syooguṃ>, <shougun>, <syôgun> and many more, these are of course al pronounced the same in Japanese and this is the result of Japanese having different sounds from English, not really having either an /r/ nor an /l/, but something in between both. It's more often romanized as an <r>, but I find it to sound closer to an /l/, to be honest.
 
Last edited:
A quaint idea te U.S.A. is known for. That men born and raised there stil consider themselves “Asian” or “Irish” because their ancestors were.
I do not humor these delusions. A man born and raised in North-America is North-American, regardless of what his parents were.

There were but two countries during W.W.I. that imprisoned their own citizens based on their parents out of some supposed “doubt of loyalty”. Greater Germany, and the U.S.A.. — What fine company to find oneself in.

Why would it matter? He could be played by a dog whose face was altered by c.g.i. to make him resemble the original Sulu for al I care and I did not find any of the Kelvinverse actors to resemble the original cast to any great degree. — It was a clear case of casting entirely different persons so long as their U.S.A. conception of “race” and “gender” matched.

L4usdTa.jpg

They look oh-so-alike

“Japanese-American” is a word Americans used to feel special. — I'll use such a word perhaps for a man born and raised in Japan who later moved to the U.S.A. who still thinks in Japanese who can more easily express himself in Japanese in English and who stil finds Japanese culture less surprising than U.S.A. culture. I for instance, see some merit to, say, calling Arnold Schwarzenegger “Austrian-American” since I saw him speak German in an interview once and it's clear that after all this time, speaking German stil comes more naturally to him than speaking English.

I'll not humor whatever delusions George Takei may or may not have about being “Japanese-American”; his parents were “Japanese-American”; he has lived in the U.S.A. his entire life.



It means “to do”, roughly, since Japanese verbs are slightly different, and it's an issue of romanization since Japanese has different sounds from English. One can, for instance, encounter the word “将軍” romanized as <syougun>, <shōgun>, <syooguṃ>, <shougun>, <syôgun> and many more, these are of course al pronounced the same in Japanese and this is the result of Japanese having different sounds from English, not really having either an /r/ nor an /l/, but something in between both. It's more often romanized as an <r>, but I find it to sound closer to an /l/, to be honest.
What's your beef with the casting of James Rhodes? You're saying they should have matched the actors' skin colors better?
 
What's your beef with the casting of James Rhodes? You're saying they should have matched the actors' skin colors better?
As a matter of fact, yes.
Notwithstanding that they look nothing alike, I remembered that recasting because it so well encapsulates the quaint “one drop rule” racial lines of the U.S.A..
Not only do their simple facial features not resemble one another, but one of them could pass as an actual indigenous Subsaharan African, and the other is what I would call “light creole”. Their skin colors look nothing alike and the left is probably half European in origin if not more but al it takes to be what they call “black” there is but one drop.
I would not be surprised if Terrence Howard had one parent who looked indigenously North-European, I'd be verry surprised if Don Cheadle had one such parent.

That aside of course, their faces ook nothing alike, and neither does Mark Ruffalo look anything like Edward Norton.
 
Last edited:
All due respect, North America is a continent, not a state. Nothing against the Canadians and their easy social graces, but I’m not Canadian despite being born about a hundred miles from there.
Indeed. I should probably have said “Anglo-Saxon America”, since Mexico is also part of North-America.
The sharing of a common language of course brings forth a certain cultural symbiosis, and though I'm sure that actual persons from that region might be able to tell, when I hear a man from the U.S.A. or from Canada speak, I cannot really with accuracy say which is which. Very often, their accents and renunciations can be quite similar.

Could you have heard from his accent that Eddington is Canadian opposed to from the U.S.A.? I, for whatever reason, thought for a while that Kirk was Canadian, perhaps I mistook him with the actor but in the end, I cannot tell the difference.

That, say, O'Brien is not from North-America is noticeable in his character and accent.
 
As a matter of fact, yes.
Notwithstanding that they look nothing alike, I remembered that recasting because it so well encapsulates the quaint “one drop rule” racial lines of the U.S.A..
Not only do their simple facial features not resemble one another, but one of them could pass as an actual indigenous Subsaharan African, and the other is what I would call “light creole”. Their skin colors look nothing alike and the left is probably half European in origin if not more but al it takes to be what they call “black” there is but one drop.
I would not be surprised if Terrence Howard had one parent who looked indigenously North-European, I'd be verry surprised if Don Cheadle had one such parent.

That aside of course, their faces ook nothing alike, and neither does Mark Ruffalo look anything like Edward Norton.
So they should have looked at the skin tone that Rhodey was commonly drawn with in the comics and strictly cast actors with that skin tone? How could it possibly matter how much Ruffalo and Norton look alike?
 
Apropos of nothing, the one time Doohan inadvertently dropped the Scottish accent was in the Doomsday Machine. At about 43 1/2 minutes in, Scotty has the line "30 seconds later.... Poof", and the accent is nowhere to be heard.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top