Why Doesn't Worf Speak With A Russian Accent?

^ Maybe she didn't grow up in LaBarre?

 

I believe that he went to the same school as Susan Ivanova.

 

By the time Worf was adopted wasn't he around 5 to 6 years old?
By that time his accent must have already been what it is during TNG and it never changed.

 

now that I think of it, wasn't worf raised in the ukraine, by ukrainians?

 

OK, Ukrainians, then.

 

I think the setting was a colony planet, not Earth.

Kor

 

Perhaps it's just a simple UT setting?

Picard wants to show he knows Shakespeare and stuff, the whole package, so he has adjusted his UT to "British" English (and some form of RP at that, I suppose). Those who want their heritage to shine through in that way, put it on "English with an accent of country x" .

 

After 2 centuries of instant global communication, by the 22nd century, American English has become common all over the world.

Edit: Or, The combination of a Klingon/Russian accented person learning English sounds very close to American English

 

It's one of the most boring episodes of the whole series.

 

picking nits for the sake of picking nits

 

And Riker calls himself a player. Sheesh!

Agreed (but nitpicking is the backbone of this forum)

 

C'mon, what other episode has so many people being disintegrated? It's awesome for that reason alone

 

This is the wrong question. Worf's parents speak with Yiddish accents. At the time the episode aired, there was still a significant presence of Yiddish speakers throughout the Western Soviet Union. It was a language recognized by the state, and it had significant spurts of official support.

 

going thru this series again and had that episode in the marathon just before thought about this too..--- then saw the question here.--

I have to agree with the group saying he learned to speak in school from classmates.. --- I have a personal example -- My gf in the early 90's was Jamaican both her parents spoke with a Jamaican accent my girlfriend, their daughter did not, but spoke clear and solid english --- she learned that from her friends and such that she grew up with.. --- this is what I had thought about as a counter example of why he did not have the same accent. -- as I watched this just before.. ---

 

Perhaps an even better explanation (and a less flippant one I might add) is that Worf's character was not fleshed out when TNG began. The whole Russian upbringing was not introduced until they were well into the series. Had his Russian background been planned from the beginning then they could have given him the appropriate accent. As it is, they were stuck with his established American accent. What would have made more sense was to simply have his adopted parents be from North America, problem solved.

The question then becomes why did they choose to make them Russians?

 

*shrug*
The same reason the french Jean-Luc Picard speak with a british accent? The same reason that Betazoid Deanna Troi speaks with an accent we do not hear from either of her parents or any other betazoid we ever see on-screen? The same reason that Chancellor Gorkon of the Klingon Empire speaks with a british accent?

 

Most likely because Theodore Bikel and Georgia Brown were available and TPTB were eager to have them on the show.

 

I checked this on Memory Alpha and this is what I found: "Theodore Bikel and Georgia Brown were both well known in Yiddish theater, initially causing some studio concern that Worf's parents might appear comically "Jewish"." So I'm not sure that an eagerness to get these two actors was the reason for making Worf's adopted parents Russian/Ukrainian. Either way, a fine idea, thank you for suggesting it!

I have a "wackadoddle" theory for Worf's Russian/Ukrainian background: it has to do with Worf becoming the Enterprise's security chief, where he replaced Tasha Yar following her untimely death. The original series bible write-up on Tasha states that she is of "Ukrainian decent," which also explains her decidedly Russian name. As you may know, a lot of what ended up in TNG originated in the unproduced Phase II series (I recently started a thread regarding a video I found on the subject), and it was in that series that the security chief would have first been filled by an ongoing character, no other that the Russian-born Pavel Chekov (which did survive into the Motion Picture). So there was a definite pattern of giving security chiefs what would have been at the time a "Soviet" background. That they were following this pattern makes the most sense to me. Weather or not it was a conscious choice on the part of the show writers to do so I don't know, but there definitely is a pattern here. Of course that pattern was broken in DS9 with Odo.

 

All the years I have been watching, and over analyzing Trek this never occurred to me. Good job thinking of this!

 

Simplest answer, Worf is not Russian.

 

That's the beauty of fan forums, you get to hear from others who also over-analyze Trek (if there is such a thing).