It never occurred to me until today... he speaks with an American accent but was raised by Russians?
Why Doesn't Worf Speak With A Russian Accent?
- Thread starter Doctor Bombay
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Ok, then by that logic, Chekov should speak with an American accent.
Nikolai doesn't speak with an accent either. So I figured the boys just had a good English teacher.
Same goes for the Picard family. None of them speak with French accents, and neither does Jean-Luc's friend Louis. So it's likely that the local English teacher spoke with an English accent, and most natives of LaBarre picked that up.
Same goes for the Picard family. None of them speak with French accents, and neither does Jean-Luc's friend Louis. So it's likely that the local English teacher spoke with an English accent, and most natives of LaBarre picked that up.
Unless he lived with parents who spoke Russian(ish!) -accented English as their adopted language... We don't know anything about the poor boy even at this day and age, beyond him having been born in Russia. Perhaps there was a great putsch in the 2250s that sent the family fleeing to an English-speaking part of the globe?
Mind you, there are solid cases of a child adopting an accent neither of her parents has - Deanna Troi in particular. Chekov just need not be one of those.
But the Universal Translator is a great excuse here. Lazy people get their Russian translated perfectly and without accent into English; overachievers like Pavel actually learn to speak English, though, and suffer the consequences.
(Perhaps Worf never learned any English, unlike his foster parents?)
Timo Saloniemi
Because the creative team didn't want him to.
That's probably the best explanation we can possibly get.
I’m more bothered by Rivas’ use of late-20th century total communication. By the 24th century, ASL or any other signed languages should be unrecognizable. I’ve seen film reels of folks from over a hundred years ago and I didn’t understand the half of what the person was signing.
I absolutely hate Loud as a Whisper. I always skip it when I do a TNG rewatch.
I absolutely hate Loud as a Whisper. I always skip it when I do a TNG rewatch.
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True, for stage plays and such - even hard sci-fi - there still has to be a way to relate to the audience so they don't wander - but I certainly wouldn't necessarily call their dialogue "late-20th century total communication". It's a bit too formal (which was Roddenberry's idea of how humans would evolve since the 20th century) for even the parents of most of us (then or now), and even in the 1980s people of most ages tended to use slang or otherwise informal vernacular. To really reach to the more mainstream if not outlandish audiences of the time, they needed to use the slang terms the kids used and say to Worf "Hey bud, it's totally like rad that you went into teh service and did so swell." (Turns to Guinan: "Well that sucks rocks, gag me with a spoon.")
So Roddenberry got it fairly right in his bible. One cannot escape the reality of the current time and place the shows are made - that's inevitable for costumes, set design, hair design, and speech... but DSC and Orville have both been less than stellar in that regard. Quite lazy at times, in fact. And particularly so for the latter, believe it or not. It's not an unfair criticism to make. In the future, humans will evolve and change linguistic patterns. It's sci-fi. Set in the future. When x years pass by they probably won't be right but why not try? They can try, at least to a token extent. If they wanted. Makes more sense to try, no? And if audiences can't handle anything so minor than to have a to make the slightest effort to grasp another concept, since sci-fi typically is about concepts in an allegorical and/or metaphorical universe of its own (and all that nerdy geek intellectually brainysmurf shtuff), then what are they doing watching sci-fi and not Bert and Ernie and Tinkle Winkle instead? (Yes, my post is a tad OTT but only in the equal and opposite direction. Could be worse though, check out "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", particularly its first season, for a real example of their not bothering to try... *shudder*
"Loud as a Whisper" is actually pretty innovative, all things considered.
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An insightful commentator said this about the topic:
"Worf was raised among Klingons until he was six (when the Khitomer attack killed his family), and you start developing a distinctive accent in your infancy, so he would have already had an established Klingon accent.
Then his adopted parents, the Rozhenkos, took him to live on the farm world of Gault from the ages of 6-13. You often pick up the accents of your schoolmates and playmates, so that may have changed his to his American sounding accent. Paul Sorvino just used his American accent to play Worf's brother Nikolai, not the Belarusian/Russian accent of his parents, so we can assume Worf and Nikolai's accents are reflective of ones encountered on the Gault colony.
The family then moved to Russia or Belarus for two years when Worf was 13 after he accidentally killed a kid by headbutting him while playing soccer. Worf talks about hiking the Urals in Russia and visiting Minsk in Belarus, so it could be either country that they live in.
After Worf's Age of Ascension at 15, he went to Q'o'nos to stay with his cousins and go through the Rite of Ascension and pledge to become a warrior, so he probably caught some type of Kronos accent in there too or his own Khitomer accent came back.
But soon he returned to Earth until he joined Starfleet at 18.
So, all told, he only lived in Russia or Belarus for maybe four or five years, after he had already had at least two established Klingon and Human accents that weren't Russian."
"Worf was raised among Klingons until he was six (when the Khitomer attack killed his family), and you start developing a distinctive accent in your infancy, so he would have already had an established Klingon accent.
Then his adopted parents, the Rozhenkos, took him to live on the farm world of Gault from the ages of 6-13. You often pick up the accents of your schoolmates and playmates, so that may have changed his to his American sounding accent. Paul Sorvino just used his American accent to play Worf's brother Nikolai, not the Belarusian/Russian accent of his parents, so we can assume Worf and Nikolai's accents are reflective of ones encountered on the Gault colony.
The family then moved to Russia or Belarus for two years when Worf was 13 after he accidentally killed a kid by headbutting him while playing soccer. Worf talks about hiking the Urals in Russia and visiting Minsk in Belarus, so it could be either country that they live in.
After Worf's Age of Ascension at 15, he went to Q'o'nos to stay with his cousins and go through the Rite of Ascension and pledge to become a warrior, so he probably caught some type of Kronos accent in there too or his own Khitomer accent came back.
But soon he returned to Earth until he joined Starfleet at 18.
So, all told, he only lived in Russia or Belarus for maybe four or five years, after he had already had at least two established Klingon and Human accents that weren't Russian."
Worf would be expected to have the accent of all the people he was around growing up.
Latino children who grow up in the US and who have parents with thick accents don’t have thick accents, they have small traces of their parents accents.
Latino children who grow up in the US and who have parents with thick accents don’t have thick accents, they have small traces of their parents accents.
Do you know what Total Communication is? Rivas certainly wasn’t using ASL without TC influence.
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I like to use my own family as an example of that. My mother's mother was from Scotland, but grew up in NYC. While great-grandpa's accent was so thick I could barely understand him, Gram's was softened by growing up here. Mom's father was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Da Bronx. He had a heavy Archie Bunker accent. Mom was born in the Bronx, but grew up in NJ, where she lost any NY accent. My sister and I were born in NJ. I stayed here while she moved to South Carolina 30 years ago. She now has a 50% southern twang with some Jerseyisms. Her oldest son was born in NJ, but grew up in SC since his tweens, so he sounds like he's right out of Deliverance.
And the only one we actually need.
It depends on who else he grew up around on that colony world. Many of us here are kids of immigrants with accents, but we do not speak with our parents' accent.
Kor
Heck, I don't have my parents' let alone my grandparents' specific accent for German, as we learned and used this foreign language wholly independently of each other. We might have a "generic Finnish accent" for English (it's not pretty), but we had different ways of learning German at different times in world history, and the results differ, too.
Worf might really have had very little use for English at any of his childhood places of residence.
Timo Saloniemi
Worf might really have had very little use for English at any of his childhood places of residence.
Timo Saloniemi
I always imagined they're speaking some other language, although the show is filmed in English. They never say they're speaking English. When data text through a translator he says he's putting it in "our language". I imagine people speaking regional languages in the home and sometimes in primary education. I imagine Worf speaking Belarusian, Russian, or Ukranian in the home and Picard speaking French. But after a few years of schooling they switch to the language most commonly used in literature and science in the Alpha Quadrant. I imagine that being some constructed language that's designed to be easy to use, especially for people who native language is in the largest Vulcan language family. There's an Earth accent of that constructed language, just as there's an Indian accent of English that's similar regardless of which Indian language one speaks in the home.
This is all glossed over in the production of the show. In Star Trek VI, Checkov says it's easy to detect someone speaking through a UT. Im DS9 we're shown that Quark, Rom, and Nog cannot communicate with English speakers without the UT, but the distinctiveness of UT translation is never shown.
So in my head-canon they're speaking some interstellar language developed by Vulcan and using UT assist where needed, say when two Mandarin speakers revert to their native language and a non-Mandarin-speaker wants to be a part of their conversation. But they almost never talk about it except in rare cases where the UT doesn't work.
This is all glossed over in the production of the show. In Star Trek VI, Checkov says it's easy to detect someone speaking through a UT. Im DS9 we're shown that Quark, Rom, and Nog cannot communicate with English speakers without the UT, but the distinctiveness of UT translation is never shown.
So in my head-canon they're speaking some interstellar language developed by Vulcan and using UT assist where needed, say when two Mandarin speakers revert to their native language and a non-Mandarin-speaker wants to be a part of their conversation. But they almost never talk about it except in rare cases where the UT doesn't work.
Who knows what language people actually speak in the 24th century when there's no universal translator. Did all the current regional languages survive or did more and more of them die off as people became more mobile?
At the very least I think all Academy students use some sort of common language so they're basically functional in the case where the translators go offline. Not necessarily human English.
What do babies hear if everybody around them is using a universal translator?
At the very least I think all Academy students use some sort of common language so they're basically functional in the case where the translators go offline. Not necessarily human English.
What do babies hear if everybody around them is using a universal translator?
Picard's MOTHER (or at least his vision of her) had a French accent I believe.
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