With regards to Picard's accent, the thing is, he speaks French with a British accent.
Speak up on the voices of Trek
- Thread starter JiNX-01
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I forgot about Bruce Greenwood! Definitely one of my favorite voices in Trek, right next to Leonard Nimoy, Marc Alaimo and Patrick Stewart.
Why? It's impossible for people to learn a second language perfectly?You've never met someone who learned English as a second language and speaks with a perfect British accent?
NOOOOO! Not again. There's a whole thread on this that I think I may have even started, to my eternal regret. YES, a Frenchman could learn British English. But it's extremely rare to hear a non-native speak without an accent from his or her native consonants and vowels. So he shoulda spoke British English with a French accent, ha ha.
It's just weird they make the character an "ethnic" in the grand Star Trek tradition and cast it with a guy with a different accent, for an American TV show in which 24th c. Standard is almost always rendered in the "Northeast US Bland" dialect (see Riker, Data, Worf, Geordi, most other crew and even planetary natives supposedly speaking some TOtally different language).
Just goofy, not impossible. That's why it strikes some of us as odd.
To American ears he has an Scots accent. According Craig, the Scottish press say he's lost his accent. I think its probably changed and softened after living in America for many years. Craig often jokes than Doohan sounds like a Pakistani when doing Scotty.
I dont hate any of the voices I hear on Trek, though many are ripe for mockey and humor. I love the way Rom says "brother". And a running joke of mine is Janeway bellowing "Chakotay, get me pack of cigarettes!" A few are bland though. Terry Farrells voice for example isn't very disinctive.
People who learned it as the second language in school are probably more likely to speak it with the 'RP' British accent than many British people, since this has traditionally been the accent they teach you in schoolWhy? It's impossible for people to learn a second language perfectly?
That's such a perfect (and in retrospect, obvious) explanation for Picard's accent despite him supposedly being French, yet I would have never thought of it, even though it's very obvious.
This especially rings true to me right now after being in England where everyone I met seemed to speak English with the same kind of British accent, no matter where they were from (and many of them were clearly speaking it as a second language).
It's a tossup between Marc Alaimo and Leonard Nimoy.
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