Why are fantasy world accents British?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Tempting as that theory is, I think it would be easy to overstate the influence of the Bard in that way.

I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that in the English speaking world the cultural antecedents during the middle ages were largely in England.

Largely, but as Bethberry says, not wholly. And I think a lot of Americans (for example) still retain a very strong sense of their heritage which could have been from a number of places - Germany, Norway, Russia, Italy, Ireland...etc... Though with the main language used in the New World being English then if people from all kinds of places did look back to the origins of the English language, that goes to show how powerful an influence language was over a whole culture, even a new one.

Again, I wonder if things are different in say Montreal, New Orleans or Florida, which had other, stronger language influences than English. Would people with a long background in these places automatically think of English if they cast their minds back to the years before the Americas were colonised?

It's interesting though, that representations of 'medieval' culture from modern American (or made with the American market in mind) films, TV etc often have a more Germanic/European feel to them than an English one, despite the language. The knights are more elaborately fitted out, more colourful, and there is much more pageantry. This all came quite late, really, to English kings, as they were so busy killing one another for the throne or killing other kings and 'saracens' from 1066 onwards.