posted
Quote: Wait... at the time of the Roman Civil War, Italy was unified under Rome. In fact, this is directly after the conquering of Gaul, and long after the conquering of Greece. Not to mention a good deal after the Punic Wars that gave them North Africa and Iberia. Unquote.
All of this is beside the point. The original post said that Romans had Italian accents. They couldn't have, as there was no such language as Italian (modern), the sounds would have been different, as others have pointed out. A modern Italian accent evokes other things far better than it would ancient Rome. Ey, Julius, you wanna some pizza? The other aspect of this is that people have accents only when they're heard by people who are foreign to the region. Romans wouldn't have been strongly aware of an accent in themselves, only in those who were non-Roman. So if we are meant to be immersed in the Roman milieu by this miniseries we shouldn't be waiting to hear a specific accent, and an attempt at a "Roman accent" would be a distraction.
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quote:Originally posted by ArCHeR: Wait... at the time of the Roman Civil War, Italy was unified under Rome. In fact, this is directly after the conquering of Gaul, and long after the conquering of Greece. Not to mention a good deal after the Punic Wars that gave them North Africa and Iberia.
That is correct. But it was not in any way shape or form Italy as we know it today. It would not have been known as Italy and as Cashew said the modern Italian language didn't exist then.
I'm arguing the concept of Italy with you, as someone who has studied ancient Roman history and modern Italy. The country of Italy did not exist until 1870. Just because the region was unified under the Roman Empire doesn't mean it's the same thing. It was also the Roman Empire, not the Italian one.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
What the hell are you talking about? Do you think I don't know the history of Italy? I've already explained that when I said Italian accent, I meant Itallic, the word another forumer offered. You keep badgering a point that I'm not arguing. The Romans were Roman, not British and to portray them as such destroys what Romans really were, and only serves to promote British culture over Latin culture.
The day we stop giving bad guys English accents is the day the English stop giving Romans English accents. That's my offer as a future American filmmaker to British filmmakers. Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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>>And they've consolidated their language considerably under Communism.
The scariest passage in Orwell's 1984 is when Winston's coworker talks about shrinking the language.
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Ummm. So Shakespeare should have rowed a boat over to Italy and get Italian actors? He worked with what he had.
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I do wonder what accent you would have them speak with, then, ArCHeR. We have no access to people who can do authentic accents, because we don't know what the authentic accent was. Why is British more wrong than the other options?
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posted
I do believe another forumer pointed out that the Romans had primers that specifically detail how to pronounce words. We know, at least, what the "official" accent would have been...
And even a bad or inaccurate Roman accent would be better than a British one if for nothing more than the fact that a British accent has connotations to it that do not apply to the Romans, culturally speaking.
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Even if we did know what Latin sounded like at various times in Rome's history, that doesn't mean that we'd know what kind of accent a native speaker of Latin would bring to English.
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Yes we would... You apply the pronunciation of Latin vowels, etc. on English words. It's how anyone who does any accent does an accent.
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I find ArCHeR's idea intriguing and something I would love to see attempted, and his name a pain in the ass to type out. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Does anyone complain about Hamlet not speaking Danish? Don't get down on Shakespeare.
As for what's actually being debated, the target audience has to be taken into account. I know that English wasn't spoken in ancient Rome, but if I see a play or show in Latin there will be one big wtf thought bubble coming out of my head. Since a "Latin" accent will not be recognized at all, there's really no point in using one.
Sacrificing accuracy in the name of art/entertainment is done constantly, everywhere. Relax about Rome.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Dec 2003
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If they wear Roman costumes and play Romans, and are in Roman storylines, and talk about Rome, I think people will catch on that their funny accents are Roman
And Hamlet was a work of fiction by Shakespeare, not a dramatic account of an actual event. That said, Danish accents would be great too, as would a Moorish accent for Othello. But the fact is, if you did that it wouldn't be Shakespeare.
HBO isn't giving us Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar. In fact, the events of Julius Ceasar are one episode of Rome. Tonight's episode, in fact. Which reminds me that I have the last episode of Rome on my DVR, and despite the fact that its accents are one of my major theatrical pet pieves, I'm a big fan of the series. Time to go watch Rome.
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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But what would be the point? Why should the filmmakers spend a huge amount of time, effort and money, on accents which will at best not turn anyone off the show, and at worse alienate those viewers who are looking for a good show, preferably one with accents they can understand.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote: Yes we would... You apply the pronunciation of Latin vowels, etc. on English words. It's how anyone who does any accent does an accent.
No, there's a lot more to accent than that. The language of the native speaker colors the cadence of the second language in all sorts of surprising ways, as do the presence in the second language of sounds that don't exist in the speakers first language, the tonal qualities of the first language, and so forth. There are many, many elements that come into play. Ever hear someone speak Swedish, and then switch into English? The first time I heard that, I was shocked that their first language produced the accent with which they spoke English. I wouldn't have guessed it.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Then you're not very accentually acute (does that even make linguistic since?). I'm a big accent person. Name an accent and I'll probably be able to do it. Let me hear a minute or two of it, and I'll definitely be able to do it. If I hear someone speaking Latin in the ancient Roman accent/dialect, I'd be able to do the accent in English easy.
And I put Shakespeare in the title, because it was Shakespeare's histories that gave Romans English accents in the entertainment industry. I'm not saying you should use Roman accents in Shakespeare, because the plays are written for English and would lose their lyrical or poetic qualities done any other way (after all, it's written in iambic pentameter).
But Rome is not Shakespeare. Caesar said nothing from the first stab to his last breath. Marc Anthony did not rabble-rouse, because the episode ended before he rabble-rouses. And Pullo and Vorenus don't exist in any other written document outside of the Rome scripts and Caesar's accounts of the Gallic Wars.
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Archer, I would *love* to sit down with you and hear you do accents. If you're as good as you claim, it would be an enormous amount of fun. Don't suppose you live anywhere near SW Ohio, do you?
To really do this right, we'd need to find a language that you'd never heard a native speaker of speaking in English (how's that for a convoluted sentence?), of course.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:because it was Shakespeare's histories that gave Romans English accents in the entertainment industry.
I hate to keep flogging the poor old horse, but
Since Shakespeare was English and his plays were intended to be performed in original Shakespearean language the most correct way of performing Shakespeare's plays would be in the accent that they were original performed in- the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century London performers.
I hear there's a company trying to do that right now.
Of course people in Rome wouldn't have English accents- they wouldn't have been speaking English and if they did it would be Old English anyway. But if you're an American you have the idea that Rome is closest to Britain rather than America, is European and therefore, they should have a European English accent, which happens to be English English.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: >>And they've consolidated their language considerably under Communism.
The scariest passage in Orwell's 1984 is when Winston's coworker talks about shrinking the language.
It is a bit scary, yes. The same thing happened in Spain under Franco; the "Spanish" in Spain was incredibly diverse before he came to power (and still is in places), to the point where in many places the dialects severely strained the limits of dialecthood.
I don't have a problem with government gently encouraging everyone to learn a common language and dialect so that everyone can communicate, but totalitarian governments like the PRC and Franco's Spain don't understand the meaning of "gently", and don't just encourage a common language, but actively try to stamp out everything else.
Posts: 1631 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
ArCHer: please, admit defeat. The only way this show would be authentic from your standpoint would be if they all spoke Latin, and then nobody would watch it, unless they used subtitiles, but then it wouldn't be authentic because the subtitles would have to use modern idioms to express what the actors were saying in Latin and anyway Romans didn't have little phrases in a non-existent language trailing around under them as they lived their daily lives. It's a dramatisation for a modern audience who all have that wonderful thing called "suspension of disbelief". Leave it alone already.
(Edit to type ArCHeR's name right)
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by ArCHeR: Then you're not very accentually acute (does that even make linguistic since?).
*cringe* I bet I could make a decent guess at what sort of accent you have.
quote: I'm a big accent person. Name an accent and I'll probably be able to do it. Let me hear a minute or two of it, and I'll definitely be able to do it. If I hear someone speaking Latin in the ancient Roman accent/dialect, I'd be able to do the accent in English easy.
The problem is that it's impossible to accurately reconstruct a Roman accent. Historical linguistics can give us a good idea of what it roughly sounded like, but there's a lot that's lost forever. Most of the distinction between different accents comes from subtle differences in vowel quality that cannot be reconstructed with much certainty.
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Anyway, I don't think I've made my point entirely clear. I don't care if the accent is exact. If it's close that's fine. As long as people experience Rome as a Roman culture, and not a British one.
Teshi- I made that point myself. I'm fine with using British accents in a performance of Julius Caesar. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. The problem is when Shakespeare suddenly becomes the author of all stories Roman (figuratively speaking).
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:The problem is when Shakespeare suddenly becomes the author of all stories Roman (figuratively speaking).
ArCHeR, I think that more of a perception from your personal POV rather than the general public. I would never consider Shakespeare "the" Roman writer, because I was brought up on Asterix and Carry On Cleo, both of which are, like Shakespeare, not supposed to be real historical studies but only useful fictional settings. One is from another British perspective (heh), the other is Belgian. The Bible's New Testament, for example, is also a source of Roman-era description written by outsiders.
Is it possible that your belief that the Roman Culture has been Anglicized comes from the fact that much of the Roman-set literature you read was written in English and therefore is seen through the eyes of the English who would imprint their own culture on what they write about. In France, I daresay that the Roman Culture would be percieved from a French perspective.
If I, now, write something fictional set in the past, it is going to be representative of my own era and country, not of the era I am describing.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Interesting bit on that conflation -- there were two prominent groups of settlers in southern Louisiana (actually, more than two, but I'm only talking about two groups). The fairly populous Acadian Catholics (Cajuns) and a much smaller group of German protestants.
At one point my Dad (Cajun, from Louisiana) was doing work that involved him visiting towns down there, before he realized about the small group of German settlers. In his work he came upon a small town that didn't seem quite right, though he couldn't place why at first. Even though everyone in town spoke Cajun-accented English and Cajun French, the town was laid out differently, the architecture all seemed odd, and he soon realized there was only one small Catholic church but a couple good sized Lutheran ones.
The Lutherans originally from Germany had adopted the language of the neighboring towns many generations back, and much of the culture, while maintaining their separate religion and own cultural institutions, including architecture.
Just an anecdote perhaps of interest because two very different cultural groups with hugely different cultural histories shared a language/accent.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Teshi, I'm speaking of film, TV, and theatre. You can't really do a Roman accent in text
If you look at a lot of Biblical films, Jesus and the deciples will have American accents, while the Romans will have English accents. Jesus and his deciples were Jewish. The Romans were Latin. Why on Earth do the accents fall where they do? Because Jesus was a hippy, and Shakespeare turned Romans English.
And I'm not conflating language as an aspect of culture. How do you tell a Mexican from a Spaniard? The Mexican has a Mexican accent and the Spaniard has a Castilian one (don't talk about the variaties of Spanish. It's an example ). Yes, can see that the Mexican has Mayan/aztec features and the Spaniard has European ones. But that's as subtle as the religious subtext in Star Wars compared to the language.
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
The reason why the Romans have English accents and the Jews American is to distinguish the accents from each other. It's a convention that we all understand and, because of the above mentioned "suspension of disbelief" muscle, accept with not a lot of fuss. In most cases...
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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But the problem comes when people, however subconsciously, suddenly aren't suspending their disbelief, they just stop disbelieving. Heck, many people never had that disbelief to begin with. How many groundlings didn't have the education to realize that Caesar wasn't English and that he spoke Latin all the time, not just when using names or dieing?
I'm not saying people in general are idiots (although... there was that last election...). But this whole language thing makes people equate Rome with England.
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
In my experience, American movies seem to use British accents to indicate "foreign." French, Russian, Roman, all sorts of not-American nationalities are often indicated by British accents (or an uneven mix of actors faking British accents and actors whose fake British accent would apparently crack the camera if attempted). It always seemed a little funny to me, too (why, in The Man in the Iron Mask, is the French king the only one with an American accent? etc). I think that in cases where a British accent is used to portray a non-British character, it is indicating that this is not your next door neighbor (for Americans...) but is in fact a foreigner of some sort.
I also think it's worth noting that, if I understand correctly, this is a British-made series (meaning the actors would need to suppress their natural speech to NOT speak with a British accent) for a British audience (meaning they will hear it as only natural that the characters speak what is for them normally).
It seems to me that movies not about English-speakers should use accents indicating "different" when the characters themselves hear it. In movies where only one ethnic or language group is dealt with - a movie in English about a group of Russians with no non-Russian characters - no distinctive accent should be used, because these characters are speaking their own language in their own way, and would hear themselves with no noticeable accent. Therefore, for a solely American audience, the actors should use American English. In movies where the characters have to be moving between cultures and languages - speaking Russian among themselves, but French with a visitor - it would be most natural for them to adopt an accent only in a conversation ostensibly in the other language, if the character is not supposed to speak good French. I saw a movie or play whose identity momentarily escapes me that did this to good effect.
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Not that anyone asked me Posts: 28 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:In my experience, American movies seem to use British accents to indicate "foreign." French, Russian, Roman, all sorts of not-American nationalities are often indicated by British accents (or an uneven mix of actors faking British accents and actors whose fake British accent would apparently crack the camera if attempted). It always seemed a little funny to me, too (why, in The Man in the Iron Mask, is the French king the only one with an American accent? etc). I think that in cases where a British accent is used to portray a non-British character, it is indicating that this is not your next door neighbor (for Americans...) but is in fact a foreigner of some sort.
It's much rarer than the other way round, but I've heard a few British actors attempting what was-I think-supposed to be a "middle America" accent and failing so badly I laughed out loud. A few of the lower-budget Britcoms and the occasional British video game will do this.
Posts: 1631 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
I'd say Americans are better at British accents than the British are at American ones. Ever watch Roger Rabbit? What the hell is that?
The only good American accent I've heard from a British actor is the guy who plays House. (Btw, Auzzies don't count )
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
British people attempting deep south American accents should be fined. My deep, abiding love for Jude Law was almost destroyed by Cold Mountain. *shudder*
Posts: 28 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Okay, I don't have time to read through this thread right now because I have somewhere to be in a very short time. I may regret posting before I've read through it all, but I couldn't let the fallacy-ridden first post stand.
quote:ROMANS HAD ITALIAN ACCENTS!!!
No. No, they didn't. They had Latin accents. And that doesn't mean "Spanish" accents, either. The Romans spoke Latin, not Italian or Spanish or any other modern language. So even if you could go back in time, kidnap a Roman, and teach him English, he still would not speak it with anything that would resemble an Italian accent. He would speak it with a Latin accent.
quote:The Romans were NOT British.
No, but the actors playing Romans in the series "ROME" are British.
quote:But ever since Shakespeare started writing historical plays about Rome every English representation of Rome has been with British accents for the Romans.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Shakespeare had nothing to do with this. Shakespeare and the producers of "ROME" both used actors whose native language is English, but so what? They were both writing for a primarily English-speaking audience. Why wouldn't they have their actors speak English?
quote:you spend all that money on making an accurate Rome and all you would need to make it perfect is to tell your actors to use Italian accents.
Again, Romans did not speak Italian.
And one thing you seem to have missed is that these are English-speaking actors performing for an English-speaking audience. Making them all use fake Latin accents would be bogus.
Now, if the show had been made in Latin, and they used an English-flavored pronunciation ("Sissero" instead of "Kikero", for example), then you'd have a case. But the actors aren't speaking Latin.
Let me put it another way. The characters, being Roman, we can assume are speaking Latin, or even Greek in some parts. The actual dialogue has been "translated" into English for the benefit of the audience. So the actors will all be using one or another dialect of English, because that's the language in which they are delivering their lines. The actors used in the show are British, since the BBC had a major hand in producing this series. Naturally, the dialects of English used by British actors will be British dialects.
The actors' lines were delivered with British accents because the actors are British. No one has ever said that the characters were doing the same. The characters aren't even speaking English. So if we accept that their dialogue has been "translated" into English for us, then why should we insist that they use fake foreign accents? Either they should speak Latin with a full Latin accent, or they should use English to represent Latin. The producers, not surprisngly, chose to use English to represent Latin, and different registers of English to represent the different registers of Latin.
That's what drama is. It's representation. The man named Ciarán Hinds is not really that famous Roman general, statesman, and Dictator named Gaius Julius Caesar. He's an actor playing a role. He's representing Caesar for our entertainment. He's using a high-class English accent to represent the educated Latin Caesar spoke. It's a perfectly legitimate technique.
Next you'll be telling us they shouldn't allow video cameras on the set, because they didn't have video cameras back then.
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posted
Yeah, you shouldn't have posted without reading the thread.
And no, I'm not biased because of more experience with one accent over another. I can just spot a fake American faster than a fake Brit...
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Yeah, you shouldn't have posted without reading the thread.
Considering you had only addressed one of the points I made, I don't see that it made all that much difference. Fine, so you meant "Italic" rather than "Italian". I acknowledge that you'd already clarified that one. None of my other points were redundancies, based on any actual arguments you made, so what do you care if I made them before or after I had the time to read the rest of the thread?
posted
Rome was mostly unified as a Peninsula before any of the Punic Wars, they just added Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, and other territories on top.
Part of what annoyed Carthage so much when Hannibal was ravaging the Campagnian countryside, the towns there didn't rebel against him as expected, rather they clung even closer to Rome.
There were a few Greek poleis there that weren't under the control of Rome, but most of the major cities were either Roman, or very closely allied to Rome at the time, and under Roman control.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I thought Verily did an amazingly good job of presenting all of the arguements against your assertation very clearly and cohesively. The fact that you can't come up with a decent rebuttal to any of them is not his fault.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Having British accents makes Romans British in the eyes of the audience. It's really just furthering the idea that British = smart, at the core of it. It's not fair to the Romans if we continue to associate them with the British.
And that point I did make.
And saying Shakespeare isn't the cause of us using British accents now is just wrong. If you say the accents they use in Rome are because they are British actors relating to British culture then American movies about Rome should have American accents. J... Mr. Phoenix isn't British. He was born in PR and raised in the US. Yet he uses a British accent when he plays the Roman Emporer Comedous. Shouldn't he be using an upper-class New England accent?
Posts: 238 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Bitching about this is about as useful as complaining about qwerty keyboards and their inefficiency. Yes, archer, I recognize the probable accuracy of your historical analysis of why British accents are used for Romans. There isn't anything wrong with it, however, so I don't give a damn. It works, and that is that.
I mean, what are the alternatives? We could switch and have only American actors play Romans. We could hire whomever and have a mix of people, all using their own accents. We could hire Italians, Spaniards, French and so forth to act and pronounce English words in their romance-language accents. We could make up new accents and teach actors to use them.
None of those alternatives is as elegant as what we presently do, so I think you're wasting your time and getting irritated about nothing.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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quote:Having British accents makes Romans British in the eyes of the audience.
Correction: It makes them British in your eyes. Clearly the rest of us don't have this problem. We accept their use of English as a representation of Latin. So far, you are the only one who has reported the slightest feeling of wrongness about it.
quote:And saying Shakespeare isn't the cause of us using British accents now is just wrong.
You keep blaming Shakespeare for this, but you have yet to present any evidence that he is the cause of anything. Shakespeare's actors had British accents because they were British. The actors in "ROME" have British accents because they are British. The only connection here is that British actors are being used. I daresay Shakespeare played no part in casting this series.
quote:If you say the accents they use in Rome are because they are British actors relating to British culture then American movies about Rome should have American accents. J... Mr. Phoenix isn't British. He was born in PR and raised in the US. Yet he uses a British accent when he plays the Roman Emporer Comedous. Shouldn't he be using an upper-class New England accent?
That depends; what movie was this? If all the other actors were British, then it makes sense for him to use the same accent just so he's not setting himself apart from everyone else. Using an accent different from everyone else's would give the impression of foreignness that wouldn't be appropriate for a character who is meant to be as Roman as everyone else.
However, if the majority of actors were American, but were using British accents because somebody thought that was more sophisticated, then that I would strongly disagree with. A film about Rome using a primarily American cast should use American accents; whether sophistication or lowness is what is called for in the character, we have our share of appropriate accents no less than the United Kingdom has.
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