Languages and Linguistics

[ArrylT]

So this isnt fantasy per say - but my thought was inspired by a post that was quite off-topic on a different thread.   It has to do with about accents.  Personally I would say that accents were the least of my concern in WOT adaptation since I know that when I was reading the books I probably subconsciously had them all speaking with my own "accent" / language.   

 

Also as one who is currently re-watching Star Trek TOS - pretty much every single alien species spoke flawless English.   That doesnt stop Star Trek from becoming a worldwide international success over the decades.   I have never heard a single debate about what accent Klingon sounds best as.  How to pronounce a word in Klingon sure - but never whether Klingon used an American/British/Australian accent.

 

And once you toss in subtitles & dubbing ...

 

In any case hear is an article that talks about how GOT & LOTR both have pretty much mainly British accents throughout 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17554816

 

I think the thing about accents in fantasy & sci-fi should be summed up in 3 quick points

 

1 - Apart from movies/shows that are meant to be about specific Person/event - ie say a movie about Winston Churchill where you have audio to compare to and need to have the actor sound like that person being portrayed - then expecting the actors to have a flawless accent that sounds like you yourself would speak it seems like a really odd thing to focus on.

2 - Apart from briefly speaking in their native tongue, the usual practice is for the actors to speak enough of that language to showcase it, then switch to the language that the show is based on.  Take ST DS9 for a moment - Quark spoke enough Ferengi to show he was Ferengi but otherwise spoke in the language that was prevalent on DS9 - aka Federation Standard or English.

3 - I dont care about the accuracy of accents since the languages, cultures & so forth based on sci/fi & fantasy shows are artificial   Having an artificial level of expectation on an artificial accent on an artificial language being the make or break of a sci/fi or fantasy show ....  

[Daenelia]

Ow, Star Trek. There is one species that does not speak 'perfect' English: the Packleds. Also, Marina Sirtis (Troy) did actually devise a specific accent for her character, which was then nullified by Majel Barrett not doing the accent as her mother.

 

Also: Universal Translator at work there.

 

Language can be a very good way of immersion into a fantasy or science fiction world. I think The Expanse did that very well. But that does not mean, for me, that it needs to be done in every series. Just because I have all the books on Klingon does not mean I want every fantasy series to have a myriad of accents and languages. It's a nice-to-have, not a 'can't be missed'.

 

Oh, and I would love an Empire Trilogy series ? That would be very nice. Kinda like Shogun, but different. (I happen to have read the books at the same time I read Shogun and I found many similarities at the time. I was only 16 or so, so I may have been wrong...)

[AdamA]

I don't think the accents thing has much to do with bad worldbuilding. It's more just a sacrifice of casting that happens in virtually every television show ever. The writing assumes things that may not be reflected in the actual casting. In this case, it's that Mat and Rand have similar accents that are distinct from other regional accents. In reality, due to limitations of the actors, time, voice coaches, whatever, they don't really. The most common variant of this I see in pretty much everything, including some of the best shows ever made, is some character saying "you look just like your <insert relative>" when that is almost never true because the actors aren't actually related and don't actually look like each other.

 

In fact, you see this type of thing much more often with shows that explicitly don't try to depict racially mixed groups. Darker-skinned, especially black, families will almost always have a much wider variety of skin color than any real family would have. I'm half-Mexican and notice the same type of thing in any shows depicting Mexicans. Like I loved Vida, it was a great show, but the two girls were way lighter-skinned than both their parents, which would never happen for real. Even just look at Madeleine Madden while we're talking about Wheel of Time! She keeps getting cast as 'generic dark girl.' Her mother in WoT is very obviously real-world Desi of some sort and she is not. She got cast as a Mexican girl in the live Dora the Explorer film, when she really doesn't look Mexican at all.

 

Real-world regionally-specific accents are almost always ignored or just done very poorly. The recent casting of a Brazilian non-native Spanish speaker as Pablo Escobar in Narcos was a prominent example. Europeans trying to do regional American accents and vice versa. David Bowie in Twin Peaks probably does the worst Tennessee accent you'll ever see. Even praising Game of Thrones on this score doesn't make any sense. Richard Madden sounded quite a bit more obviously Scottish than any of the other Starks. Peter Dinklage and Nikolai Coster-Waldau sounded a lot different from Charles Dance and Lena Headey, who are actually English. And, of course, they don't look anything remotely like a real family. For whatever reason, Iain Glen and James Cosmo didn't even sound much alike even though they're actually both Scottish! Iain Glen sounded like he was trying to sound like a southerner. It isn't that the showrunners aren't trying, but casting and acting aren't magic. There are hard limits to how realistically these things can be depicted that don't exist in your own imagination but do exist when they have to be instantiated by actual people.

[AdamA]

I was trying to think of a show that even really bothered trying to do this and The Expanse was all I could come up with (great for it because it is consistently the only example I can think of that tries to be realistic about pretty much everything). Even in The Expanse it breaks down a bit, though, like with Bobbie Draper having a Kiwi accent when the rest of her family does not, and Naomi being the only Belter with an English accent, pretty much only because Dominique Tipper grew up in London and not for any in-universe reason I can see. But they do at least try, giving Belter creole a distinct sound and having Alex sound like a Texan thanks to the history of the Mariner Valley.

 

Even as a book series, Wheel of Time does not try to be realistic about language. There is absolutely no reason that, 3,000 years after most of the world was speaking the old tongue, they would have reverted to speaking English. Robert Jordan did that because it's the language he spoke, not for any other in-world reason. You accept that fiction takes liberties for practical reasons. Most aliens are very unlikely to be humanoid in form, but they are in television because we can only cast human actors and put them in costumes and you can't really hide that they have four limbs and are roughly human-sized. They speak in human language using the phonemes that human mouths can make because those are the sounds the actors themselves can actually make.

[Daenelia]

Belter creole sounds like it has South-African and Afrikaans influences. Which is why to me (here I go again) it sounds like a variant of a Dutch accent... 

I think Naomi does do a fair try in some scenes, but it also feels as if she is copying other characters to fit in more. Much like how people kinda code-switch? I am not sure yet if that fits her character and background. But that's the explanation I'd give.

 

Maybe we need a topic on languages in WoT, in general. I will hun for one in the book section if needed. Because I am not aware how much of an actual language was created for the Old Tongue for instance.

[Jaysen Gore]

yay - I finally get to make my language point about language in WoT, which occurred to me about 2 months ago after 30 years of reading it. The biggest thing for lingual drift is social isolation for generations of people causing languages to evolve from accent to dialect to foreign language. But in the case of the Westlands, these are very effectively reduced by the White Tower. How so, you ask?

 

1. - The Aes Sedai are the ultimate power in the westlands, so their language would be the language of power. Anyone with education or influence would want to speak the "Aes Sedai tongue" it no matter what country they were in (Latin during Rome) And it was that way from the breaking forward.

2 - The AS regularly pull in channelers from every country, and while we don't see it in books, no socio-cultural political program would ignore language.  So they have an education system that educates the AS / warder structure to the lingual norm, which would also pull in the Guard, and the city, and spread.

3 - The AS have great motivation to ensure a common language is maintained, since lingual / cultural conflicts would be a major hindrance to the Final Battle, which they all knew was coming (book-lore)

4 - Most importantly, the increased age of the AS means that the number of lifetimes - and thus the severity of drift - would be greatly reduced.  For normal humans, it's been roughly 50 lifetimes since the breaking (3000 years at 60 per). But at an average of 240 years, it's only been 12.5 Aes Sedai lifetimes.  In our terms, that would basically equate to Chaucer.  And while I grant you, the average person can't read all of Chaucer in the original, we can get the gist of it. And anything more recent that that (Trolloc Wars era) is basically Victorian English for a culture with long lived AS.

 

There would also be some of that from the long-lived Ogier in the bigger cities, but not as much.

And the Sharans and Aiel speak different languages so it does exist where the Aes Sedai do not.

[Daenelia]

We need a language thread.

I loved your post before I read it, @Jaysen Gore

 

Also keep in mind that some languages drift quicker than others. While it is still possible for English speakers to kinda read Shakespeare and understand the gist of it, I can't understand anything written in Dutch around the same time (... I am Dutch, so ... it's weird that I can read Shakespeare in his time but not Vondel so easily).

 

And then there is influence from other languages and does that take place in WoT? Because I am not sure it really plays a part. It's interesting to dive deeper into this...

[Daenelia]

... do I turn every thread unto a debate about languages? I apologise. You all make excellent points.

 

Madeleine Madden is indeed not Mexican, read about her background in this article. They have a langauge coach and I think they do their best. I know personally how hard it is to do an accent correctly. I don't even know how to do a Dutch one!

[Harad the White]

3 hours ago, ArrylT said:

In any case hear is an article that talks about how GOT & LOTR both have pretty much mainly British accents throughout 

UK accents inhabit all of spoken art because they contributed so much early. Shakespeare rings a bell. But by now, it's ridiculous. It's like James Bond's antics really meaning anything for the World. The British Empire is 100 years gone but Elves and Dwarves still speak with UK accents ?

[AdamA]

22 minutes ago, Daenelia said:

... do I turn every thread unto a debate about languages? I apologise. You all make excellent points.

 

Madeleine Madden is indeed not Mexican, read about her background in this article. They have a langauge coach and I think they do their best. I know personally how hard it is to do an accent correctly. I don't even know how to do a Dutch one!

I like the "dentally sound peasants" line in that article. By far the least realistic thing in all of film and television is the people are way too good looking. It was funny the way "The Leftovers" made fun of this, in that there was clearly no reason for a small town drunk middle-aged divorced police chief to look like a former model/olympic sprinter, and they would constantly make jokes about Justin Theroux being way too pretty and ripped. Teeth, skin, and hair health is wildly unrealistic in period dramas and fantasy supposed to be taking place in medieval-esque worlds.

 

Once again I praise The Expanse, as the books at least explain that characters like Amos are so jacked, even though they've lived for years if not decades with little to no gravity, because of future advances in steroids and artificial muscle building technologies (even though the actual answer is they're actors and aren't going to lose the sweet bodies for a role when they still have to worry about future roles).

[Jaysen Gore]

The biggest thing for me around language in adaptations is that no sane science fiction / fantasy author would create an internally consistent foreign language just for the purposes of a story.  It may be the biggest thing about Tolkien that people forget - he didn't create the languages to tell the story, he created the stories to understand the evolution of the languages at a vocabulary and grammatical level.  As a Doctor of language, Middle Earth pre- LOTR was in large part a thought exercise to aid him in understanding his day job better.

 

By comparison, 1,000 words of made up language and even some grammar rules (Klingon) pale in comparison.  But everyone uses Tolkien as the benchmark, which just isn't fair. And I don't think WoT's Old Tongue even comes close to being Klingon or even Dothraki in terms of depth.

 

As long as everyone remembers that the Common Tongue of a setting isn't in fact English (or the language of the translation), then they can get on with enjoying the story without dwelling on it. And no, Randland isn't speaking English.

[Jaysen Gore]

11 minutes ago, Harad the White said:

UK accents inhabit all of spoken art because they contributed so much early. Shakespeare rings a bell. But by now, it's ridiculous. It's like James Bond's antics really meaning anything for the World. The British Empire is 100 years gone but Elves and Dwarves still speak with UK accents ?

I think that's to make it sound exotic when compared to American English, which does dominate pop culture today.  It's why I'm looking forward to the Seanchan's redneck drawl so much...

[Harad the White]

Just now, Jaysen Gore said:

I think that's to make it sound exotic when compared to American English, which does dominate pop culture today.  It's why I'm looking forward to the Seanchan's redneck drawl so much...

And yet every UK singer, sings with an American accent. Go figure. Is "Seanchan's drawl" a dream of yours or is there a prophecy about it?

[Jaysen Gore]

6 minutes ago, Harad the White said:

And yet every UK singer, sings with an American accent. Go figure. Is "Seanchan's drawl" a dream of yours or is there a prophecy about it?

I think it was a joke post from someone, that the Seanchan would all be black, but otherwise sound like slave owners from the antebellum south.

 

There is psychological and physiological reasons for why people's accents disappear when they sing. Can't remember them, but it is an interesting topic.

 

And not everyone's accent disappears; spoiled for NSFW

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Harad the White]

1 minute ago, Jaysen Gore said:

I think it was a joke post from someone, that the Seanchan would all be black, but otherwise sound like slave owners from the antebellum south.

 

There is psychological and physiological reasons for why people's accents disappear when they sing. Can't remember them, but it is an interesting topic.

 

And not everyone's accent disappears; spoiled for NSFW

 

  Hide contents

 

 

I love the Pogues. They're the exception that proves I don't know what I'm talking about.

[Harad the White]

And speaking of language, the Pogues, and fantasy adaptations:

 

THE FIRST openly gay member of the Northern Ireland Assembly has criticised the BBC’s decision to play different versions of The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York across its stations.

It was announced last month that BBC Radio 1 would play a censored version of the festive favourite amid concerns the original version’s lyrics might offend listeners.

"We know the song is considered a Christmas classic and we will continue to play it this year, with our radio stations choosing the version of the song most relevant for their audience,” the BBC said.

The decision drew criticism from the song’s co-writer Shane MacGowan, who branded the decision “ridiculous”. Fellow musician Nick Cave, meanwhile, accused the BBC of “mutilating an artefact of immense cultural value”.

Now figures from the world of politics have waded into the debate. (Irish Post, 12/2/20)

[Elder_Haman]

2 hours ago, Daenelia said:

We need a language thread.

Your wish is granted.

[Agitel]

4 hours ago, AdamA said:

Even as a book series, Wheel of Time does not try to be realistic about language. There is absolutely no reason that, 3,000 years after most of the world was speaking the old tongue, they would have reverted to speaking English. Robert Jordan did that because it's the language he spoke, not for any other in-world reason. 

 

I never took the language they're speaking in the series as actually being English. That's not a judgment I'd have ever considered making. 

[Harad the White]

From ArryIT source above:

 

"It's not just fantasy that has developed a British accent default setting, even for American audiences. For ancient Greece and Rome - as seen in everything from Spartacus to HBO/BBC's Rome series - audiences again expect UK accents. One has only to cast one's mind back to Joaquin Phoenix's accent in Gladiator for a classic example."

 

Butt, and this is a very big butt, the two main characters in LoTR were American with American accents (if there is such a thing). 

[Theseus78]

5 hours ago, Daenelia said:

Also: Universal Translator at work there.

I prefer Translator Microbes myself.

[Harad the White]

18 minutes ago, Theseus78 said:

I prefer Translator Microbes myself.

Babblefish?

[Daenelia]

Oww, a whole thread! I am so happy, I will have to think extra hard on good content for it.

 

I did like the comment on the assumption that the books being written in English does not mean ... in any way ... that the language of the fictional world is indeed English as well! I should realise this more often, but imagine if a book about, say, Klingons, was written with all the dialogue in Klingon.

 

Also, language and accents are then different for people who read translations of the books. This is where translators can make or break a story, with their choices. That is why the first translation of EotW sucked in Dutch. I am pretty sure they had it re-translated ... I hope they did. The original translation was abominable!!

 

But specifically in WoT, we all kinda assume as readers it is a version of Earth, right? Or should we question that as well?

[DojoToad]

It would have to be extremely jarring break for me to even notice the accent - much less judge if it is consistent with a specific town, city, region.  Don't have an ear for it at all.

 

So, no problems with accents through 4 episodes for me.

[themann1086]

4 hours ago, Daenelia said:

But specifically in WoT, we all kinda assume as readers it is a version of Earth, right? Or should we question that as well?

Yeah at least in the book series it is heavily implied that "we" the readers live in the First Age while the story proper takes place at the end of the Third Age. What happened to bring about the Age of Legends is, as far as I'm aware, a complete unknown

[WhiteVeils]

I think I heard in an interview that they picked the major characters who were from a region, let them choose the accent that was most comfortable for them, and then had more minor characters adjust their accents to match the accent of the major character.  This is a bit more complicated in Two Rivers, with so many major characters.

Not really the focus of this thread, but thought it worth noting.