The big change people are not discussing.

[Joe B]

I have reread the entire series 3 times and the earlier books many more times. I can't believe all the accents in the show are completely wrong. As I read the books, it is quite clear that all of the characters speak in various American accents. Why could they not get this basic fact right?

 

?

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by Joe B

[JenniferL]

Rosamund Pike is speaking with her natural accent. It’s not American. I don’t recall any American accents at all. But you aren’t wrong that the accents as described by Jordan aren’t being used. Accents are notoriously difficult for actors to achieve and if the production wants to get it right, you need to hire vocal coaches who specialize in helping actors create believable accents. It’s even harder when you aren’t copying an existing accent. I believe there’s a featurette from Marvel talking about how they created the accents for Wakanda in Black Panther. It’s very interesting. 

[ZenBudS]

Dude i love you. I was just saying this. The writer is from South Carolina why cant we have a hick accent from the 2 rivers, its not like they don't travel the whole world...

[Deadsy]

I did think it was kinda funny that Aram sounds like what UK Travellers tend to sound like in movies.

[Daenelia]

I am just happy I can hear something close to my own accent for a change ?

(Actually, I have been asked if I was Canadian, from Boston, Australian, French and Belgium. So my accent in English is all over the place, but I am told it is nice.)

 

It used to be that you could tell who the baddie in a film was if they had an English accent of any kind. Only the good guys seemed to speak the regular American English accent. And tbf, the American English accent isn't that old, is it? Up until the first spoken films there was a refined accent that tried to emulate English, as it had a posh connotation, I think? I should look that trivia up again, it's somewhere in the back of my mind.

[DaddyFinn]

I'm Finnish so obviously I never thought of any English accents. Makes it easy to adjust. Rally-English would be cool though. ?

[Reader]

4 hours ago, Deadsy said:

I did think it was kinda funny that Aram sounds like what UK Travellers tend to sound like in movies.

Like this? ? (warning, there's a bit of swearing)

 

 

 

[Scarloc99]

As someone from the UK the accents are exactly as I always imagined them, it would seem weird to me if they where American. Plus, we all know English accents are the defined Fantasy accent :). 

[Scarloc99]

Realistically as well shouldn't the Seanchan be American ? 

[JenniferL]

Canonically, the Seanchan have Texan accents. Y’all bow down to the Empress, ya hear? 

[notpropaganda73]

On 11/22/2021 at 5:21 AM, Deadsy said:

I did think it was kinda funny that Aram sounds like what UK Travellers tend to sound like in movies.

to be fair that's just the actors accent, he's from Ireland. He doesn't have quite the Snatch-Brad Pitt accent, just a slight lilt compared to what I'd recognise as Travellers accents

[Scarloc99]

On 11/23/2021 at 2:10 PM, notpropaganda73 said:

to be fair that's just the actors accent, he's from Ireland. He doesn't have quite the Snatch-Brad Pitt accent, just a slight lilt compared to what I'd recognise as Travellers accents

Coming from the UK and having gone to school with people from the travelling community Brad Pitt in Snatch actually got it pretty spot on when they want to turn the Traveller speak on, it was the weirdest thing, almost like having friends who where Bi Lingual, one moment I could understand them, the next had to learn how to translate it in my head. 

[Samwell Tarly]

I am not caring about such things when we live in a world in which there is almost surprising thing that in the show like Barbarians, the Romans are heard to speak Latin with the Italian accents.  

[Zarathustra]

The Seanchan spoke with a Southern accent.  I thought that was an interesting touch--especially since their ancestors conquered a strange version of North America and they had slaves.  Every country that Rand encountered was a derivative of a European country--Asian too since Cairhein was the remnant of a Rus-Sino enclave.

 

It would have been brilliant if Jordan had hidden a Kilgore Trout character somewhere.  

Edited November 27, 2021 by Zarathustra

[Harad the White]

Rosamund Pike said on Colbert that she couldn't say American R's without a pencil in her mouth. That would have detracted from the respect we owe Moiraine.

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

On 11/22/2021 at 9:06 AM, Daenelia said:

It used to be that you could tell who the baddie in a film was if they had an English accent of any kind. Only the good guys seemed to speak the regular American English accent. And tbf, the American English accent isn't that old, is it? Up until the first spoken films there was a refined accent that tried to emulate English, as it had a posh connotation, I think? I should look that trivia up again, it's somewhere in the back of my mind.

Not always posh - the sith accents in the star wars the old republic MMO are all kinds of british - the brummie sith trooper on Tatooine and ray winstone the sith lord on Voss both still crack me up (both in the republic trooper class story quests I think).

 

[Daenelia]

10 minutes ago, bringbackthomsmoustache said:

Not always posh - the sith accents in the star wars the old republic MMO are all kinds of british - the brummie sith trooper on Tatooine and ray winstone the sith lord on Voss both still crack me up (both in the republic trooper class story quests I think).

 

Yes, but I was refering to Americans thinking any kind of English accent was posh and that they tried to emulate that for a very long time. Just watch some films from before 1940 and listen to the way the actors spoke then.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Daenelia

[AdamA]

Do people generally take Randland to be far future Europe and Seanchan to be the Americas? I always pictured Randland as the Americas and Seanchan as somewhat analogous to the various Nesias (Micro, Poly, Indo, etc.).

 

Linguistically, Old Tongue probably should have been something similar to the Sino/English hybrid pidgin from Firefly and the nations of the third age should all have their own regional languages and not have a common tongue at all. Accents should be completely unrecognizable to anyone alive today.

[dwn]

The world was completely shattered during the breaking, so analogues to present geography are pretty futile.

 

That being said, many of the nations have loose correlations to Eurasian regions: Andor = Britain; Cairhien = France; Tear = Spain; Illian = Italy/Greece; Tarabon = middle east. The details of the people and accents are very much a mish-mash, though.

 

IIRC, the only accent specifically compared to present-day is when RJ once characterized the Seanchan drawl as "Texas".