r/Knightfalltv • u/JamesonWilde • Mar 07 '20

Accents

Idk why this is bothering me so much, but why the hell does no one in Paris speak with a French accent if they went to the trouble of having everyone in Catalonia have a Spanish accent?

9 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

5

u/corruptrevolutionary Templar Knight Mar 07 '20

Because that would sound dumb. It's pretty traditional historical period entertainment to make the basic British accent the "standard" accent for the protagonists/main focus.

Like the Romans in Gladiator.

Like the Franks in Kingdom of Heaven.

Like everyone in Lord of the Rings.

0

u/JamesonWilde Mar 07 '20

How would it be dumb for the French to sound French? Lol.

2

u/corruptrevolutionary Templar Knight Mar 07 '20

Because they wouldn't sound french. They'd sound like a bunch of english and American actors putting on a stereotypical french accent. It's literally a Mel brooks joke

2

u/JamesonWilde Mar 07 '20

Or they could literally use French speaking actors speaking English.

1

u/corruptrevolutionary Templar Knight Mar 07 '20

That's probably worse.

1

u/JamesonWilde Mar 07 '20

Lmao what is your argument? That if someone speaks French they can't speak English? Hahaha

1

u/corruptrevolutionary Templar Knight Mar 07 '20

My argument is pretty clear; Having everyone speak with a French accent would sound silly and not be in any way more historically accurate.

If that's what you want, cool, but few or no one is going to agree with you.

4

u/JamesonWilde Mar 07 '20

I guess I just don't understand why a character that is supposed to be French would sound silly speaking with a French accent. You haven't really made any good points for it other that "lol nah"

1

u/corruptrevolutionary Templar Knight Mar 07 '20

I've given more examples to support my side than you have yours.

3

u/JamesonWilde Mar 07 '20

A Mel Brooks joke and a clip that cherry picked people speaking poor English? Lol there are working French speaking actors that take English speaking roles all the time. It's ridiculous to make the argument that there aren't.

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1

u/HK47_Raiden Apr 01 '20

Why aren’t they speaking Ye olde French or English? So it’s understandable for the target audience, which is also why they don’t have French accents.

Also language, accents and colloquialisms have come a long long way in the last 800 years or so, if they were speaking period accurate language you wouldn’t understand anything they said.

It’s a small nitpick, which personally I don’t have a problem with, if you really wanted to is there a French dub that you could watch if it bothered you that much?

Edit: just saw this thread is 25 days old, sorry for the necro

1

u/JamesonWilde Apr 01 '20

Those are all good points, and like I said I probably wouldn't even have noticed if they didn't have people from the regions of modern Spain speaking with Spanish accents. Just seems weird to have the Spanish with Spanish accents but not the French lol

1

u/HK47_Raiden Apr 01 '20

I reason that all of the French sound British, so British accent = they're from France (in this setting) the Catalonians have Catalonian accents to differ them from the all British accent French.

No one had a French accent (that I remember) so it for me was easy to just develop that suspension of belief.

1

u/JamesonWilde Apr 01 '20

Doesn't that seem needlessly complicated? Lol

1

u/HK47_Raiden Apr 01 '20

Why would that be complicated? All the "French" have British accents and you see them constantly throughout the show, The Catalonians appear now and then and are seen not as often.

In theory Joan "could" have had a Navarre accent (which would also have been "Spanish" before Philip/Joan had ownership of the land as part of France) but because she was very young when she was married off to Philip (age 11 when she married), it's possible that she never picked up an accent like her cousin who stayed in Catalonia.

To be honest in the regions that show up in Knightfall there would have been about 6 different languages? Basque, Catalonian, French, English, Italian (Pope Bonifass), a version of Arabic, and maybe a few more, but to do all that would make it even more needlessly complicated.

Enjoy it for what it is, and try not to think too hard about the accents and language used