The White Council

Re: LOR Film - Accents

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: If we are going to do accents it would be interesting to see them done on a different basis. Tolkien said in an interview I read somewhere online that the hobbits were symbolic of englishmen- therefore they should have English accents. Dwarves would have Hebrew because Tolkien said that they were modeled after Jewish people. As for the rest- Gondor was located in the south where Greece and Itally are today so I would give them either a Greek or Italian accent and the Rohirrim woul;d get whichever one the Gondorians didn't. Elves are creatures out oif Scandinavian Mythology and so I would give them a Scandinavian accent picking one country for Each family of Elves such as Noldor and Teleri. I would also add Celtic for the wood elves becauser they are like the fairies of Celtic littertature-quick tempered and vengefull. Mordor speech is Uncouth- that is, Harsh sounding, like the German language, and so Orcs of Mordoer and any spoeaking servants of Sauron should have a German accent. Sauruman's people should make use of a related language to German-Russian or Japaneese perhaps? Finally, Aragorn, who is of the northern Line of Dunedain should make use of a centeral European accent like Polish or Romanian or even Latin. This seems a more logical way to go.

Following all this about accents makes me think of why the Spanish dubbed version makes no difference at all between the speech of the different communities. Anyway, some comments on what's been written so far: 1. Someone suggested that the dwarves are modelled on the Jews. I don't agree. Their language is modelled on Old Norse, and as such should have a Scandinavian accent if we are to abscribe a different accent to each race. 2. I am sorry for Americans, but Middle Earth is definitively European and medieval. That means that to assigning American accents to characters in LOTR would be an anachronism. Any one wondered why 'pipe-weed' is preferred to 'tobacco' in the text? There are some more anachronisms which T. Sheppey analises in his Road to Middle Earth. 3. I agree with rural British accent for the hobbits. Now... that's a very broad thing. What kind of rural accent? I'd have some Midlands accent, but just because of the coincidence Midlands and Middle-earth. There is no other reason for that preference. 4. Cockney for the Orcs? That'd sound hilarious and not terrifying, as I'm afraid is meant to be.

As a general comment: it's very difficult to give the characters accents. The connotations that go together with them are so strong that they'd imply a whole reinterpretation of the book. Eg. German for the Orcs (Tolkien explicitly said, which may be true or not, that LOTR is not an allegory of the 2 World War). Someone said that it was funny to read the LOTR using the different accents. My conclusion is that we don't tend to put accents to the characters when we read it. Therefore, why should we put accents in the film?