Accents in the Films

[starkat]

I had a thought the other day. In the Narnia movies, BBC and Walden, there are a multitude of accents. I know some accents have names and I was wondering if we could identify the various accents that they use in the various versions?

[Glumpuddle]

I don't have a good ear for accents, but the "Telmarine accent" in the Walden movie seems very inconsistent. Caspian and Miraz don't seem to have quite the same accent, and Sopespian seems different too.

[waggawerewolf27]

I expect that was because it was supposed to be a sort of 'Mediterranean' accent. Some of the actors, such as the bloke who played Grozelle or Miraz, himself, were genuinely from that region and sounded like it. The rest were just guessing, and fitting in as best they could.

There was a similar problem with VDT, though you might not have noticed. Gary Sweet is an Australian actor who, well, sounds like an Australian. There were two other Australian actors with similar problems. The idea to cover over that sort of difficulty was to portray these cast members with sort of 'West Country' UK accents. Sort of talking pirate talk. I'm not sure it worked.

[coracle]

The accent mostly spoken by the children and those of high status is what is known as "Received Pronunciation". It is known as BBC English or "Oxford Voice" - a sort of posh accent, something like the accent the Royal Family uses.

Animals and humanoid creatures seem to have been given generic West Country, East London, and Northern English.

[IloveFauns]

Caspian sounded different in both the films, was that intended as though her had lost his telmarine accent?

[Purpleotter]

Aren't the accents different depending on what part of England it's in?

[Meltintalle]

ILF, I seem to remember hearing that they did drop the accent in VotDT. What I don't remember is if there was a 'oh, now he's a Narnian king so he sounds more like the Narnians' explanation or if it just happened.

[coracle]

Ilovefauns:
The director made a decision to drop the Mediterranean accent for Caspian in VDT. So he had a nice posh RP accent instead.

Purpleotter:
Yes, each area of England (and of other parts of UK) has its own regional accent. Actors used to try to lose their local accent, to have just a RP voice, until about 50 years ago when they started using and celebrating regional accents in films, TV and on stage.
Even various areas of London used to have recognisable local accents (see comments in play "Pygmalion") but in the last 20 years it has become a lot more homogenous; you have heard Anna Popplewell speaking and hers is a good example of 'Estuary English'.

And in Prince Caspian, the Mediterranean style accents were inconsistent, because people came from different countries or different places in those countries, and had different experience using English professionally.

[ramagut]

Ilovefauns:
The director made a decision to drop the Mediterranean accent for Caspian in VDT. So he had a nice posh RP accent instead.

Auntie, if I may ask, what does 'RP' mean?

[waggawerewolf27]

I'm not Aunty, I'm afraid, and coracle is quite welcome to disagree with me, but as far as I know, RP would be 'received pronunciation'. In my younger days it was called a posh 'BBC' accent. Those were the days before BBC gained a reputation for being a bit anti-traditional, if anything. Those were the days also when Australian teachers tried to teach little kids to speak with the same sort of RP. Without success in my case.

[ramagut]

That is very interesting. So they tried to get y'all in Australia (or New Zealand, in auntie's case) to speak more like the English? Did they try to do the same in Scotland or Ireland? And is that why Indians sound very English?

[waggawerewolf27]

I can't speak for New Zealand, and you'll need to ask coracle. I have been there and yes, in 1968 New Zealand was more like UK than Australia was. In the school I attended, yes, the teacher did try to get us to speak properly, and I thought that was the same elsewhere in those times. Husband who grew up in Scotland was supposed to learn to speak properly but it didn't do him much good either.

Have you seen a movie called My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn in which Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins sings a song about how the English speak? That, plus the character's snobbish attitude, just about sums up social attitudes of the time. And yes, Indians might well be better English speakers if they perceive that it might them get jobs etc.

I expect that a king of 3 years can make himself speak better than he used to, especially if he gets a bit of help. But in itself, it was a turn off for one reporter who disliked VDT because he didn't like sermonizing lions or English toffs, he said.

[King_Erlian]

I had a British State school education, leaving school aged 18 in 1982, and there were no lessons in speaking "properly", i.e. like a namby-pamby Southerner. Still, in a moderately affluent middle-class area such as I grew up in, regional accents tend to be less pronounced. But I still say "bath" (short "a") and not "baath".

[ramagut]

This gives a new aspect to Caspian's accent(s) in the films.

Here in the US, we'uns just talk however (said with a southern slur).
There is no importance placed upon your accent or lack thereof. We all make fun of regional accents, but it's all in jest. As far as I know anyway. Heck, here we don't even make people learn English!

Wagga, I didn't put it together with My Fair Lady. Love that movie! I didn't realize that something like Henry Higgins would be realistic. Just thought he was an eccentric.

[waggawerewolf27]

Oh, no, Professor Henry Higgins wasn't at all eccentric. No more so, it seems than was the likes of Uncle Andrew or any of the characters invented by Jules Verne, H.G.Wells and others. Neither was Eliza Doolittle, who started off dropping her 'aitches' at 'Urstville' and picking them up again at 'Hashville'. My fair lady was based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, a play making just as valid a statement about the times he lived in as did Arthur Miller, who wrote the Crucible.

The real point is, whether or not changing the accents from a vaguely foreign Mediterranean accent to a more realistic and more bearable (for the actors) RP actually did VDT no favours? Were you, in USA, turned off by characters who sounded like they would be at home with the likes of Prince Harry?

Or would you think that having a leader who sounded 'posh' at least made him sound more like how you would imagine a king to sound?

[coracle]

That is very interesting. So they tried to get y'all in Australia (or New Zealand, in auntie's case) to speak more like the English? Did they try to do the same in Scotland or Ireland? And is that why Indians sound very English?

Yes, RP = Received pronunciation - "The Queen's English", "Oxford Voice" etc.

Children like my Manchester-born mother were taught "elocution" - speaking in nice round vowels, very much like Susan and Peter in LWW. It was the standard accent for BBC presenters, and also for actors, for a long time.

I can't speak for the development of the Australian accent, but in NZ for many years there was no local accent, as most white settlers were from England and other parts of Britain. People spoke as their parents did. The children from working class families spoke like their regional or east London parents, causing plenty of comments by school inspectors about the dreadful colonial children and their awful speech.
The NZ accent gradually developed from a number of sources, including parts of London and Ireland. Linguistics experts spoke of three NZ accents in 1970s-80s, a refined accent (closer to RP), a general middle accent that was recognisably NZ, and a broad one that tended to be heard in rural areas and was thought of as working class. In the last 10 years, even the better educated people seem to be speaking the general NZ accent, and only a minority speaking broad (children thought recordings sounded Australian) or refined (children thought it was English) NZ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_English
I'm from a background that likes to speak more like RP, especially in some of my theatre circles and my speech and drama training.

More upper class people in Scotland and Ireland are likely to have a polished accent due to their families, and the boarding schools they went to.

Indians have their own accent, which can vary quite a bit depending on where they live or were born. In big cities some immigrant groups keep together and the accent is maintained. There is a distinct NZ Maori "accent" of English, even though English has been part of Maori culture for at least 100 years.

EDIT: Sorry this is going off on a few tangents, and has very little to do with the topic!