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Worst attempts at accents

Here's what I don't get: why anybody is arguing Picard's accent at all when the point of this thread is to talk about bad accents.

Whatever reason Picard speaks with an English accent, it doesn't matter here because the accent doesn't suck. It's Patrick Stewart's native accent. The few times Picard actually used French on the show it didn't suck, because Patrick Stewart is a good actor. Why are we having this discussion?
 
At any rate,who knows what accents will sound like in the 24th century.
I have made the point before that my late father had a very strong Irish accent,my own is somewhat less strong or pronounced but myteenage daughters sound as if they are visiting from California(fuck you very much "Friends" et al).


And if there is a rare example of an Irish accent being done right ,it would be Cate Blanchette in "Veronica Guerin".
 
Some people will say that it was a bit "Oirish" but if you listen to newsreels from that time or later the accent of the day was just like that.
 
The bottom line is, I'm quite content with my theory and haven't found anything you've said sufficiently convincing to dissuade me from it.

Which is why it's so unfortunate that too few people learn to base their beliefs on the evidence rather than picking and choosing the evidence that fits their beliefs.


You've named several actors, all Australian who speak English as their first language, which is totally different from someone who'd speak it as their second language.

That's a lie. I also mentioned people who are bilingual in English and Spanish but who speak American English with little or no notable accent. I didn't mention any by name, but writer-producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach is one; aside from the way he pronounces the letter "S" in certain words, you couldn't tell he's Puerto Rican.


You haven't named a single Frenchman. I'd say that a Frenchman who sounds like Picard is extraordinary.

In this century, perhaps, when (as you say) the French are quite insular and protective where their language is concerned. I'm postulating a future in which European society is more unified and Anglophone and most people would learn English alongside their local language from childhood onward, just as Puerto Ricans would learn both English and Spanish.


Like it or not TUC, is up onscreen, it's canon.

Which means nothing. "Canon" does not mean "inviolable truth." Any long-running canon contains multiple errors and contradictions, and it's foolish to treat every last bit of it as literal gospel. It's a bunch of stories a bunch of different people make up, and sometimes they make up stupid bits that later creators wisely ignore. Like all the stuff about antimatter in "The Alternative Factor" that every subsequent and prior Trek episode has contradicted. Or like the entire episode "Threshold," which even its writers count as apocryphal.


Again, I've stressed - I agree that Picard can speak English. Basically, I think he will speak French because he wants to.

Which is beside the point. Of course he'll speak French when the occasion suits it, but of course he's going to speak English to an English-speaking crew because it would be insane and stupid to rely on a fallible mechanical translator in that context; and when he speaks English, it's not unreasonable that he could speak it with an English accent. With transporters, it would've been easy for Jean-Luc and Robert to commute to school in Yorkshire or wherever and learn English there from childhood onward, then go home to La Barre and speak French in their household. It's perfectly reasonable that he could speak English with a British accent, and it's gratuitous and silly to pretend that he's so irrationally fanatical about Francophone purity as to refuse to speak the common language of his planet even at the risk of endangering his ship and crew if the machinery breaks down or mistranslates his meaning.
 
I'm kinda disappointed I rarely get the fun with accents in English-speaking movies, as in Italy most films are dubbed (usually, pretty well: we have a long tradition of dubbing, and lost of voice actors specializing in that). If we want to watch movies in the original language, we have to find then: I often do (to improve my English or simply for fun), but it's still a treat, not the ordinary thing.

Thus, I can only distinguish some basic British Isles accents (RP, Southern, Northern, Scottish, Irish), and I have only the faintest idea about American accents (mostly Texan, the general difference between Northern and Southern accents).

Dialects in Italy are wild, so much that most are classified not as "accents" but as separate languages from standard Italians, and in fact are not mutually intelligible with it. In fact, I am often disappointed that in most foreign movies Italian accents are usually some kind of Neapolitan or Sicilian, independent of the alleged city of origin of the character. Someone from Genoa, Milan, Venice, or Florence would sound wildly different from someone from Naples or Palermo.
 
Interesting that you should mention T'Pau. Probably a lot of people wonder why (in her younger days on ENT) she spoke with no accent, but in TOS, she did.
Maybe the same reason young John F. Kennedy, as portrayed by Cliff Robertson in PT-109, had no trace of a Massachusetts accent. Apparently Kennedy acquired his distinctive accent sometime after serving in World War II!

At the end of the day, the UT is simply another narrative sci-fi device to get around the whole language issue and one which probably doesn't bear a lot of scrutiny . . .
And which, canonically speaking, didn’t exist in the original series, except for the implausible handheld device in “Metamorphosis” and computer translation being mentioned in a couple of other TOS episodes.
 
At any rate,who knows what accents will sound like in the 24th century.
I have made the point before that my late father had a very strong Irish accent,my own is somewhat less strong or pronounced but myteenage daughters sound as if they are visiting from California(fuck you very much "Friends" et al).


And if there is a rare example of an Irish accent being done right ,it would be Cate Blanchette in "Veronica Guerin".

There are actually quite a lot of Dublin teens and twenty somethings who sound either like they're from California or Australia! The influence of US comedies and dramas and Aussie soaps has had some influence in middle-class parts of Dublin.

How was Julia Robert's Irish accent in Michael Collins?

It gets a bad rap but I didn't think it was all that bad. Funny you mention that movie, it's about the one time that Liam Neeson did a good accent, the Cork one. A Cork accent is very difficult to master and it's totally different from Neeson's own Ballymena accent (the two places are as far away from each other as it's possible to be on the island of Ireland). Despite the fact that most people in Ballymena sound a bit Scottish, Neeson did a crap Scottish accent in Rob Roy but he totally got the Cork accent down for Collins. Go figure.

@ Christopher, I'm saddened that you fail to understand the concept of agreeing to disagree (and I agree with Aspo Zabrudder that the discussion has gone on too long). You seem to be totally incapable of having an amicable discussion without accusing people of thinking bizarrely, irrationally, insanely or telling lies. It's somewhat odd that a talented writer can't find a more diplomatic way to express himself.

Then, when people turn round and respond to the way you post, you affect great hurt and surprise and wonder why they've personalised the discussion. I've noticed quite a few people respond to you in this way and I've always felt some understanding of where they're coming from but not particularly cared for the way they've expressed themselves. I've also had to metaphorically bite my own tongue on a few occasions. I don't care for the responses you've posted here, dealing with a totally trivial subject and a theory I've stated several times that I don't take too seriously.

You may want to examine the way you interactg with people on the board. It's not a case of everyone else being wrong and you right all the time. You can't just continually bombard people and insult them until they agree with you. People are entitled to have different views without you accusing them of being silly o irrational. You espouse diversity in Star Trek but seem to be incapable of accepting it on the BBS.

Can I point out finally, that I, unlike you, am coming from the perspective of someone who speaks a minority language that has nearly been wiped out by the dominance and preponderance of English. In Ireland, everyone speaks English but the consitutition of the country requires that laws are translated and published into Irish. Native Irish speakers in the North of Ireland, part of the UK, have brought cases in the courts to compel translation services, even though they all understand English. It's not a case of not understanding English, it's a case of trying to preserve a minority language and do one's own small part for one's own culture. So forgive me if I try to impose a little of that sort of cultural identity on one of my screen heroes, so I can empathise with him a little more.
 
Yeah, I could accept that with Qupla, but the UT also fails to translate the Romulan insults in The Defector, and given the inflection Riker uses when he says Veruul (sp!) implies he's being a smart arse in even knowing the word.

Unless the UT just never translates swear words...

In other accent news, Karen Gillian's American accent from the trailer is comedy gold.
 
The ship commander in the Troughton era Doctor Who episode Tomb Of The Cybermen has a laughingly bad American accent.

You mean Captain Hopper played by George Roubicek? Might have partially been a fault of the script writer having a poor grasp of American idioms. George Lucas also had an american actor dub over George Roubicek's voice when he played Commander Nahdonnis Praji in Star Wars.
That was him. If I remember correctly Claws Of Axos from the Pertwee years also had an example of a bad American accent.
 
Speaking of DW, David Tennant seems to use his own accent so infrequently on tv or movies that it's often a shock to hear him being interviewed and a Scottish accent coming out of him!
 
A Robin Hood who speaks modern English with a British accent makes as much sense as a Robin Hood who speaks modern English with an American accent.
But popular culture has always imagined Robin Hood with an English accent (however inaccurate that may be), so Costner should have at least tried.
Of course, a period-accurate Robin Hood would speak Middle English (with subtitles, naturally). Mel Gibson, are you listening?
 
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