The White Council

Re: LOR Film - Accents

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: 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?

One or two points:

The Dwarves used Northern Mannish for day to day purposes but their native tongue, Khuzdul, was created by Tolkien to resemble Hebrew. So an Israeli accent, or Arab for that matter (another Semitic language), would be appropriate.

Tolkien was a Midlander (he went to school in Birmingham) so that accent might be appropriate for Hobbits.

By Cockney, I meant real Cockney not the Hollywood (eg My Fair Lady- Mary Poppins) version of it. If you want to judge how well it can convey anger and menace listen to any of the Paul Weller vocals on "The Jam" songs such as "In the City" or "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" or any "Sex Pistols'" track.

No we don't accent our inner voices when reading, and personally I don't think a film of LOR is a good idea anyway. However, if you are adapting any work for film then the written word becomes the spoken word and when people speak they unavoidably have some sort of accent. The likelyhood is that in a Hollywood film just about everyone will have a vaguely Mid-Western American accent, which would certainly grate on my ears (I haven't quite recovered from "Prince of Thieves" yet). I think any variation from this would be a good thing!