Why are fantasy world accents British?

[narfforc]

I think it's something to do with how the rest of the English speaking world see's England as an old realm, somewhere almost ancient compared to where they find themselves in the modern world. The strange thing is, why don't those who used to be The Colonies speak with accents like ours, after all most of them came from here (England). I think the truth is, their accents are probably closer to how we used to speak back then than ours are today....therein lies the irony.

The other possibility is to look at all the accents from the British Isles and put them in a blender and you'll get New World accents. I don't think it should really matter, I enjoyed the American Radio Hobbit without any problem at all, if anything I dislike the visual imagery of the Hildebrandt Musketeer Fellowship more. One only has to look at the brilliant voice characterisation of Nicol Williamson's The Hobbit to know that Dwarves are from the North of England and not Scotland, Gollum is Welsh and the hobbits come from the West Country, so a pat on the back for Sean Astin's marvellous attempt.

[Lalwendë]

I have to admit, I think it was the right thing to do when Peter Jackson chose to have his actors use 'broadly' British accents in the LotR films, given that Tolkien himself was British and wrote so much about the development of the English language within this country. It would have been very peculiar to use other accents. I say 'broadly' as not all of them were delivered perfectly and some did sound a tad strangled. And I still find it strange that Pippin, Sam and Frodo all had different accents.

The article mentions A Game Of Thrones (and incorrectly states that the TV series was made for Americans - I suspect not that many have HBO as it's expensive and it was watched just as widely elsewhere) which is slightly different. There was no real reason for that series to feature British accents for the people of Westeros and they could have chosen anything, yet they managed to go even further than Peter Jackson did and have regional accents (one or two examples like Samwell and Sansa aside...).

I wonder if it is like narfforc says, and British accents still have some cachet of being 'old' and more fitting to a faux historic setting?

As for American accents being closer to older British accents, I think there's a Bill Bryson book which has a section about this and I'll have to dig it out. He once wrote about some areas around Chesapeake (islands off the coast...I think) where the locals had accents very similar to Shakesperean English, and about areas in Michigan which had lots of Cornish immigrants and retained some of the culture.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

historic setting?

...and about areas in Michigan which had lots of Cornish immigrants and retained some of the culture.

In Michigan, The Cornish stock mixed with immigrants from Norway in the state's Upper Peninsula (huge copper mining area), and became what is commonly known here as "Yoopers" (a bastardization of "Upper"). The nearest thing to "dah Yooper" accent is in dat dere movie Fargo, except even more pronounced, yah?

[Lalwendë]

Now you've just reminded me of a film I've not seen in a long, long time, and I'm going to have to dig the DVD out from somewhere and watch Fargo again! Cheers!

[Galadriel55]

becahz Britttish ahxents ah cuoohl.