I thought they were Americans: They had to be flown into London, and they had an accent Shakespeare had never heard, though he'd heard them all. Neither of those precludes them from being British, but that wasn't the feeling I got. Also, the slang they used sounded American--from the mid-twentieth century, but American just the same. Turtle Fan 22:20, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
- Yeah, I did change it after reviewing the story. You probably wouldn't fly someone from one part of England into London--it would be easier by train or even by automobile.
- Maybe from the far, far north, up Aberdeen/Glasgow way. But if they were from that far north their Scots accents would be very much apparent and Shakespeare would surely recognize them. Turtle Fan 16:43, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
- The accents could be evidence, or not. Linguists believe that present-day Eastern and Southern U.S. accents sound more like Elizabethan-Jacobian English than does the present-day British accent. TR 05:07, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
- Really? Now you tell me. A year ago I had a British friend who loved to make fun of Americans for bastardizing "her" language. What joy it would have given me to beat her over the head with the notion that Shakespeare and Marlowe and Raleigh and Johnson and all the rest would have sided with us! Turtle Fan 16:43, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
- That sounds more like a comment on slang, vocabulary and/or grammar rather than accent. ML4E 17:22, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
- She specifically mentioned pronunciation. Turtle Fan 22:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
- The reason most linguists think this way is that by and large, North American English has had very few external linguistic influences the way that British English has. We have French in Canada, and Spanish in the Southwest U.S. and Florida, but those are fairly localized. Native American languages named a few places but certainly didn't change English pronunciation. And while immigrants from Europe certainly added to the mix, their contacts with North America were nothing compared to sustained interaction between England and the Continent. Or so the theory goes. TR 21:38, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
- Interesting. But what accounts for the wide variety of accents along the Eastern Seaboard?
- Got any articles on the subject? How Leslie would love me for popping up out of left field, striking a blow for Anglophobia, and slinking away immediately thereafter! Turtle Fan 22:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
- I don't have anything off-hand. History of the English Language was a long time ago.TR 22:55, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
- I never took such a course. The closest I ever came was in 11th-grade British lit: We read some of the original Beowulf, which was incomprehensible; "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote/And bathed every veyne in swich licour" and some other Middle English poetry, which I enjoyed quite a lot; and a good primer on Shakespearean vocabulary.
- I'll keep my eyes open for something. The Elizabethans and Jacobeans really put the English language on the map--Not only was it a time of literary renaissance (despite the Tudors implementing the strictest censorship laws in British history, interestingly enough) and the era of the King James Bible, it was the first time more than a fistful of continental Europeans bothered learning the language. Propping up the Dutch rebellion against the Hapsburgs, the Battle of the Channel, the success of Raleigh and Drake in their piracy methods, and the establishing of American colonies made England a kingdom of which the Continental great powers had to take notice. English was a language in which significant diplomatic and economic transactions could take place at this point, not just some silly-sounding Franco-German pidgin which was only worth learning if some vagary of Fate had given you the rare and unfortunate destiny of living within its tiny sphere for years at a time. Turtle Fan 23:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Nationality[]
Adding to the 7-year-old discussion above, it's probably HT's intent for these characters to be Americans. And, given his default setting, from the Los Angeles area.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 09:18, September 24, 2016 (UTC)
- Again, you're extrapolating.
- Really, though, no reason they couldn't come from elsewhere in the Anglosphere. They could be Australian, for instance. Now that I think of it, I remember someone telling me last year that linguists believe Australian English is what you'd get if you started with 18th-century Cockney English and had everyone more or less constantly slurring their words drunkenly for years at a time. Turtle Fan (talk) 18:28, September 24, 2016 (UTC)