Why are fantasy world accents British?

[Dilettante]

I'm not entirely accent-deaf. While I may notice the odd difference, I can't really tell you where someone is from (region-wise that is, although I can usually get the country right).

I've lived so many different place I don't really have an accent, although I say certain words in ways that I have picked up here and there.

Canadians do have an accent, even compared to Americans, but it's very subtle, you have to know what you are listening for.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Dilettante

Canadians do have an accent, even compared to Americans, but it's very subtle, you have to know what you are listening for.

Eh?

In what is probably my favorite "fantasy" film, this one, the main actors have British accents because that happens to be where most appear to have come from.

Is there really a conscious effort to "Anglicize" the fantasy genre, or is that just a perception? Do filmmakers actively seek out British actors for certain types of movies? Somehow, it doesn't seem like a worthwhile pursuit for such a nebulous goal as adding "loftiness" to a production. Maybe it's more luck of the draw.

[Formendacil]

As a Canadian, I've become slightly more attuned to my own accent since moving to New England, though as a general rule I think western Canadians have accents a bit less distinctive within the family of "broad American" than central Canadians. Nienna watches a lot of home improvement shows (a guilty pleasure I liken unto eating junk food) and there is a GLUT of them made in Ontario--and the Ontario accent stands out: not just against the American accents, but also my own as a western Canadian--which might explain, in part, why you and Bêthberry have different accents, Galadriel66, since I believe she's also a western Canadian in origin.

On the subject of Fantasy and Tolkien, however, I think this is one point where you can see how North America is the major market for the LotR movies, since most of us aren't as attuned to the nuances of accent outside our own ken. Not that I believe everyone in England is a Lalwendë, but there is a much greater blurring of "Englishy" exotic accents in our ears, to the point that we pretty much NEED Gimli to speak Scots just to differentiate him... though I think I'd have preferred him undifferentiated, myself, instead of causing all Dwarves henceforth to be Scottish.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

...and the Ontario accent stands out: not just against the American accents, but also my own as a western Canadian--which might explain, in part, why you and Bêthberry have different accents, Galadriel66, since I believe she's also a western Canadian in origin.

Yes, that's so. And that also proves the earlier point that you can't have an all-Canadian or all-American accent, since they're too big. But I thought Ontario accents are the same as New England accents. Well, guess not.

Gimli is Scottish? Nice to know. When/if I watch TH (or watch LOTR again) I'll pay attention to how the dwarves talk.

[Bêthberry]

I probably don't have the same accent that Formy has, because I was born on the West Coast and when I moved to New Brunswick my grade five teacher was horrified at my language and desperately tried to 'improve' me!

And Gal55 comes from a different language background, so that filters into her language (not that she has an accent).

But of course there are regional variations in Canada. Just listen to an Ottawa Valley burry/berry contrast. Or the Newfie squid-jigging accent. Or Cape Breton's, which is full of archaic scots twists. And Quebec has its joual.

Once we were told by Americans that Canadians have less an accent than a lilt. She actually compared it to an Irish accent, which is interesting because when my Western Canadian cousin went to Yorkshire to learn midwifery, she was constantly being asked if she was Irish, even though her surname is decidedly not Irish (but Slavic).

What's interesting about the accents in Canada (and I wonder if this is also true in the US) is that they tend to be regional rather than class-based, as are Brit accents (although joual was initially a working class accent).

The interesting thing about the accents in the movies is, of course, the fact that Kiwi didn't slip in.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

On the subject of Fantasy and Tolkien, however, I think this is one point where you can see how North America is the major market for the LotR movies, since most of us aren't as attuned to the nuances of accent outside our own ken. Not that I believe everyone in England is a Lalwendë, but there is a much greater blurring of "Englishy" exotic accents in our ears, to the point that we pretty much NEED Gimli to speak Scots just to differentiate him... though I think I'd have preferred him undifferentiated, myself, instead of causing all Dwarves henceforth to be Scottish.

I'm pretty sure all dwarves were inexplicably Scottish long before that. I don't think you can blame the LotR movies for that particular stereotype. (Laziness in going along with it is another matter, of course.)

[Tuor in Gondolin]

To quote the MC at the end of Galaxy Quest:

"Alexander Dain, Dr. lazarus. Give him a big hand.
He's British!"

[narfforc]

The BBC RADIO PLAY Gimli was English. The Ralph Baksi Animated Lord of the Rings Gimli was English. The BBC RADIO PLAY of The Hobbit dwarves were English and Nicol Williamson's Dwarves were English. If you ask me the Gimli accent in Jackson's film was as stupid and fake as the characterisation. The language of Tolkien's Dwarves (Khuzdul) was based on Semitic Languages, which sound nothing like Goidelic (Scottish Gaelic). Most Scottish people speak English accentuated by their mother tongue, so if Gimli had spoken Common Speech/English it should have in fact sounded maybe a little Jewish.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by narfforc

The language of Tolkien's Dwarves (Khuzdul) was based on Semitic Languages, which sound nothing like Goidelic (Scottish Gaelic). Most Scottish people speak English accentuated by their mother tongue, so if Gimli had spoken Common Speech/English it should have in fact sounded maybe a little Jewish.

Adûnaic, the language from which the Common Speech derived, was also derived from triliteral roots like the historical Semitic languages. So perhaps Aragorn should have also sounded a little Jewish. Or perhaps he should have sounded a little Arabic, or a little Maltese. So presumably should Frodo and almost everyone. Probably not.

Nor is there one Jewish accent only. What is commonly thought of as “the Jewish accent” by Britons and North Americans is the English accent of German Jews, Ashkenazic Jews. But even when these Jews speak Hebrew (rather than Yiddish), the phonemic structure of their language is much influenced by German. But in Europe, the Sephardic Jews, the Jews of Spain and Portugal, are very common, and their own language is not Yiddish but Ladino, derived mainly from Old Castilian (Spanish) and Old Portuguese, with many borrowings from Turkish, and to a lesser extent from Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and French. The modern Hebrew most in accord with Classical Hebrew is that of the Yemenite Jews which is most like Arabic. The English accents of all three groups of Jews and the English accents of various other sorts of Jews are very different.

Tolkien does not give enough information on any of his languages to allow a reader to more than vaguely guess what accent would be used by a speaker of the language in modern English.

Goidelic languages (and Welsh and Breton) do share with Hebrew, against English, the feature of consonant modification, so it is not true that Hebrew sounds “nothing like Goidelic (Scottish Gaelic)”. And as to accents, English with an Irish accent is as Goidelic as Scots, but the English accents of speakers who natively speak an extreme form of Irish English and Scots English are not much alike.

Accents are too subtle to allow for much guessing.

Tolkien pretends to translate the Common Speech, as spoken by the upper classes of the Shire, into Standard English. He represents the speech of the lower classes of the Shire by including features mostly common to the so-called “lower classes” of Oxford and of Birmingham where he grew up and has the Elves and Gondorian nobility speak a more archaic form of English, but otherwise does not represent accents.

That the Dwarvish names, as purportedly translated, are mostly Old Norse, might suggest that Gimli’s accent should be Norwegian or Icelandic. But, although I don’t much like the films, Scottish seems to me to be good enough in at least suggesting a difference from the more standard English of the other characters.

[Kath]

In the film Gimli was pretty clearly a red-head. Irish or Scots wasn't much of a stretch! It doesn't really differentiate the race particularly though because you've also got a Scottish Pippin. The decision to give Gimli such an accent might be related to the fact that John Rhys Davies also played Treebeard and they needed the voices to sound different enough to clearly be two different characters.

There is a very broad range of actors playing the Dwarves in The Hobbit though, so it will be interesting to see what they do accent-wise given they've got a northerner, two Irish chaps, two Scots, a New Zealander ... From the trailer it appears they're just going with however the actor speaks rather than trying to box them all into generic Scottish.