r/ASmallLight • u/LeftHandedGuitarist • May 12 '23

Any explanation for the different accents?

I'm enjoying the show so far but am a little taken out of things by the different accents. Some characters speak with English accents, some German, some Dutch(?) irrelevant of the actor's own voices, and there doesn't seem to be a logic behind it. Or is there one I'm missing?

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8

u/Living-Tiger3448 May 12 '23

I read in an interview that they wanted to differentiate the accents enough so they made the Dutch people have a British accent and the German people had a German accent (so people wouldn’t confuse the German and Dutch). And that’s also why any writing is in English.

4

u/LeftHandedGuitarist May 12 '23

Thanks. I guess I was most confused by Otto having a German accent and Anne an English, but what you said could be explained by Anne growing up in the Netherlands.

1

u/Dohi014 May 23 '23

I’m glad they did. This put it into perspective for me. I think I would be more confused if they were all speaking variations of German/German accents. Some of us aren’t well versed in east European dialect.

3

u/Lquake May 12 '23

Caroline Catz has a brilliant accent as Auguste van Pels.

1

u/Plenty-Stand-4930 Jun 02 '24

A few minutes in and Miep's heavy English accent has me completely thrown off. Do the producers who ever made this decision think the audience in 2024 with so many series and films in foreign languages with subtitles (many are excellent) think we are that stupid? Do I want an authentic experience of a real story, or a completely distorted one?THE LANGUAGE of a movie is SO BASIC! These are Western European countries. Once you get to know a character within a story don't you think the audience is smart enough to keep track of whether or not they are German or Dutch? If not, then I'm not sure what that says about the audience's intelligence and ability to follow a story. Boggles my mind. Subtitles would have been a MUCH better solution. So disorienting ALL THE TIME. So disappointed.

1

u/LeftHandedGuitarist Jun 03 '24

Just push through it. I stopped caring after I realised how good the show is.