Accent

[Old Cook]

I seem to remember at one time there was speculation that the different races would have different accents, Hobbits British, Elves American, Men Australian and Dwarves goodness knows.

In the end everyone has excellent British accents (with the exception of Gimli ;-).

Would it have made a difference if the Hobbits had spoken with their own accents? Hobbiton would have had a distinctly US twang. Would that have meant even better business in the US? Or would it all have just sounded wrong?

[ImDaMom]

As JRR meant for this to be a British mythology, I would expect all to speak with some sort of UK accent (and Pippin is more Irish than Brit, at least to my untrained American ear) :Pippin:

[Illuvatar]

lol...

Well...I guess Billy pulls it off fairly well as an actor then Mom, cause that boy be a Scot! And from Glasgow no less!!

Fatty is from there as well, and I'll tell you....I understand him pretty well now....but I've never heard an accent more difficult to understand than them darn Glasweigens! :p

[Tirithel]

You can hear the Scottish in TTT when Merry and Pippin first meet Treebeard, and Pippin says, "Don't encourage it." It's the flipped r- it sounds like a d. But then, as you say, untrained American ears...:duh: lol

[Lady Melanie]

I think that the British, Irish accents actually suit the hobbits. Could you imagine them with a twangy accent? It just would sound weird to me!

[ImDaMom]

Look- I can tell the difference between a Cleveland accent and a Pittsburgh one, but I couldn't tell you Irish vs Scot at all.....but then I knew that going in lol

[Catz]

lol......Billy Boyd is definitely a Scot........tho his accent is pretty mild for a Glaswegian as Illu so delicately put it ;)
and Hobbits with american accents????:elfeek:.....please god NO!!! lol
the Hobbits were quintessentially english.....meant to evoke english village life..........kind of hard to do it theyre wandering about saying "y'all" and "dang" roflmao
and John RD s accent was "kind of" scottish.....tho not authentic by any means...........i loved the accents.......it was lovely to see a movie where everyone didnt talk like americans........i guess this seems strange to americans lol.........but it can get to feeling that theres no one in the world BUT americans, since so much movie, music and tv is from the states lol
:catz:

[Lady Ashley]

lol Yeah, sometimes we forget there's others out there...(shame on us!)

Personally, I always heard (in my own imaginings while reading the books) the characters having individual accents, not their culture. I still "hear" the voices I first imagined them as having.

Merry had an American accent, because I always "see" him as the guy who played Bernard from "The Santa Clause"---cute little hat and all! Eomer has an American accent too, as did King Theoden for a long time.

Pippin was plain English, Sam was rather cockney, Frodo was always the Frodo from the film (in fact, when I first "met" Bilbo in The Hobbit, HE was Frodo).

Gimli was always Irish-sounding to me (imagine my delight when he shouts "Bless you, laddie!" in TT!), and Eowyn sounded Irish too. along with most of the Rohirrim. Same thing for Denethor with an Irish voice. (Irish, Scottish, something from around there! lol)

I 'heard' Boromir with a Russian or Italian accent. Ary, Gandalf, and Legolas and the rest of the characters have varying degrees of English accents.

And the oddest thing...I can never see Beregond as Anglo. He "looks" like Morgan Freeman in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" with that African accent. (I saw that at the time I was first reading ROTK, I think.) Hah I still can't get over how startled I was to see a picture by someone of Pippin and Beregond in the stables and thought it was Pippin and Faramir...lol

My Middle-Earth seems to be a melting pot!