Why Do the Nordic Children have American accents...

Post » Wed May 16, 2012 1:52 pm

Where do you expect them to find English speaking children with a Scandinavian accent? lol.

They speak Imperial Common (English). Just like anyone else native to that language they do not speak with an accent.

Erm, in Scandinavia? You do realise that their kids end up speaking English better than a lot of native speakers; a huge amount of them have English as a second language, certainly to the degree necessary to rattle off a few ambiance lines for a videogame. You do also realise that if Imperial Common is being represented by English, then the proper way to represent them speaking "just common with no accent" would be to give them an English accent, not an American one, yes?

On second thoughts, don't do that, I shudder at the very thought of the way 99% of yank actors butcher English, Scottish, Irish, and indeed any other accent or dialect.

I'd have liked Bethesda to put some effort into it, to be honest, and do actual regional variations. Have the Ahnold Impersonator Brigade do the southern region, slavic for the southeast, Danish for the centre, Swedish/Norwegian for the north through northeast, and Icelandic for the northwest; running into a traveling merchant and thinking "oh cool, he must have come all the way down from Winterhold" because of his accent would have added so much to the game. Instead we just got assorted and variously successful attempts at vaguely northern European accents, with a few proper Scandinavian and Slavic actors in the big roles.
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Assumptah George
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 5:00 pm

Personally, I just wish I could kill them like every other NPC.
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Kayleigh Williams
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 7:29 am

They probably couldn't find voice actors for it. Is it me or do the children sound a lot like the children from Fallout? I have a feeling that whoever does the children is the only child-sounding actor they can find...
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Kevin Jay
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 5:39 am

Erm, in Scandinavia? You do realise that their kids end up speaking English better than a lot of native speakers; a huge amount of them have English as a second language, certainly to the degree necessary to rattle off a few ambiance lines for a videogame. You do also realise that if Imperial Common is being represented by English, then the proper way to represent them speaking "just common with no accent" would be to give them an English accent, not an American one, yes?

On second thoughts, don't do that, I shudder at the very thought of the way 99% of yank actors butcher English, Scottish, Irish, and indeed any other accent or dialect.

I'd have liked Bethesda to put some effort into it, to be honest, and do actual regional variations. Have the Ahnold Impersonator Brigade do the southern region, slavic for the southeast, Danish for the centre, Swedish/Norwegian for the north through northeast, and Icelandic for the northwest; running into a traveling merchant and thinking "oh cool, he must have come all the way down from Winterhold" because of his accent would have added so much to the game. Instead we just got assorted and variously successful attempts at vaguely northern European accents, with a few proper Scandinavian and Slavic actors in the big roles.
If the Scandinavian children speak English better than everyone else, then why would they have an accent? It's one or the other. My point is that since the Nords do not speak Scandinavian or Austrian, there is no reason for them to have either accent.

Imperials speak American English. So, it doesn't make any sense for them to speak European English.
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naome duncan
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 10:13 am

Pretty sure its the same kids from Fallout, I think a lot of the voice actors are the same actually. Good old Three-Dog in the sanctuary =P
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Ray
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 1:54 pm

but they sound so cute!!! :C
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ijohnnny
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 7:01 am

Can we just clarify that Arnold Schwarzeneggar is from Austria, a country quite far from Scandinavia?

Certainly, but the Germanic and Scandinavian language families are related. I thought Danish in particular was a Scandinavian language heavily influenced by German because of its location?

Anyway, we're discussing what accents would be believable and plausible and give the right effect for a fictional nationality (Nords) based on the popular image of a real-world nationality, specifically medieval Scandinavians.
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Jynx Anthropic
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 10:07 am

It doesn't matter because Skyrim is nowhere near either of those places and the Nords don't speak Austrian or Scandinavian. THey're make-pretend people speaking with make-pretend accents.

That's granted, but the Nords aren't invented out of nothing. They're obviously based on the popular image of medieval Scandinavians, and so should have Scandinavian accents. If anybody quibbled "OMG, VIKINGS WERE MOSTLY FROM SWEDEN BUT THESE VOICE ACTORS ARE CLEARLY NORWEGIAN WHY IS BETHESDA DETERMINED TO [censored] MY CHILDHOOD WTF?" then they'd be splitting hairs, but some accents are appropriate to give the right flavor, and others are not. I'm from the South, and I love Southern accents and others, including Brooklynese and New England accents. I dislike the fact that most people on television and movies that aren't caricatures have that sort of flat Midwestern accent that a century of radio and television news anchors have convinced us is not really an accent at all but proper American English, and that regional accents like Southern or New England or Brooklynese or Black American English are not proper English and only fit for caricatures in movies and television shows. As far as I'm concerned, as long as your accent is still intelligible to others, don't lose the accent.

Anyway, that's getting far afield. Point is, as much as I like accents, some will fit with a fictional ethnicity based on real-world medieval Scandinavians. A Scandinavian (or decent pseudo-Scandinavian) accent or a German accent will fit the Nords; a Japanese or Cockney or Southern or Brooklynese or French or Mexican accent would definitely not.
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Danii Brown
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 2:52 pm

An even better question than this is why are there only Nordic children all over Skyrim? Or am I missing something and havent really 'ran' into the other children.
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Nicole Coucopoulos
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 7:18 am

If the Scandinavian children speak English better than everyone else, then why would they have an accent? It's one or the other. My point is that since the Nords do not speak Scandinavian or Austrian, there is no reason for them to have either accent.

Imperials speak American English. So, it doesn't make any sense for them to speak European English.

Erm, you do know that accent and actual ability to speak a language have absolutely no relation to one another, yes? A person can speak in a perfectly grammatically correct fashion, with an extensive vocabulary, but still have a distinctive accent. It's only when -dialects- get involved that you can dispute whether or not a person is speaking a language "properly", and while the various Scandinavian tongues may have picked up a few English loan-words due to the prevalence of English media globally, what their kids learn in school is just English.

And no, the "Nords", the race within the Elder Scrolls universe who come from Skyrim, do not speak Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian(there's no such language as "Scandinavian", they have very similar rules and vocabularies, but are still distinct languages rather than dialects), however their culture is very evidently and deliberately based on Norse myth in every aspect; religion, art, cultural attitudes, the very geography. Arbitrarily stating that using a similar accent as well to increase the immersion into the theme is beyond the pale, simply because it would have been a bit difficult compared to the lazy option of using American voice actors who can barely tell one European accent from another(or in the case of the children, don't even try a European accent), is laziness.

As to Imperial being American English, you might want to travel back in time and tell Patrick Stewart that, as well as the godawful "oI'd loike a point o' bittah please ghuvnah"-level VA's who worked on Oblivion.
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Marine Arrègle
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 11:25 am

Americans don't have accents. The rest of the people in the world are the people who have accents.
XD That is how most of us think isn't it.
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Ella Loapaga
 
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Post » Wed May 16, 2012 2:52 pm

Another thing about children... do they actually serve a purpose in this game? I have seen like 3 in the game... and they don't really DO anything. They don't even add ambiance, because there are so few.
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Brιonα Renae
 
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