Same Language?

[Gary D.]

A month or so ago I picked up two videos. One, supposedly in English, sounded particularly interesting. A young man, unlucky in love, tries to commit suicide so often that his elder brother moves in with him—hides knives, poisons, etc., and tries to locate a woman for his depressed sibling.



Most of this I learned from the video box, because I certainly couldn’t understand the dialogue, which was in a very heavy burr of some sort. I don’t recall the title of the movie (one name, the would-be suicide’s first name), It might have been Scottish. Anyway, I understood about one in five words, about the same as I do in a Spanish picture. This might be the equivalent to a Brit’s trying to figure our Harlem street talk, or someone from the Deep South in this country. Not all inhabitants of the U.K. speak with the clarity of Anthony Hopkins.



Rewinding this tape, after 15 minutes or so, and setting it aside for the animal-rescue thrift store, I started Monsieur Ibrahim with Omar Sharif, who plays an elderly Muslim shopkeeper in Paris who befriends a young French Jewish boy. Now, this is a delightful film, even though it’s in French, but the subtitles were easy to read and I had no difficulty following the story.

[Steve Crook]

What was the first one?



There are a huge variety of accents in the UK considering its small size



Steve

[CaptainWaggett]

The suicide film is the very excellent Wilbur wants to kill himself. It is indeed Scottish (set in Glasgow in fact) though at least one major character is Danish (it's from the Dogme studios). I didn't find the accents problematic myself but Glaswegian usually considered one of the more inpenetrable British dialects.



Of course, if you get the dvd, rather than the video, it probably has optional subtitles.

[Nick Dando]

This has just cropped up on the Stanley Baxter thread and gives an idea of how to pronounce Glaswegian terms.



http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/br...-baxter-2.html



Nick

[Gypsy]

name='Nick Dando']This has just cropped up on the Stanley Baxter thread and gives an idea of how to pronounce Glaswegian terms.

Yes, I found it really useful

[MB]

Anthony Hopkins, by the way, comes from Port Talbot (same as Richard Burton) where he would more than likely have started out with a noticable south walian accent.

He obviously trained at a time when recieved pronounciation was necessary.



But, I think I've heard him attempt the odd dodgy accent in his time.



I much prefer it when you get to hear a full on accent from someone who really speaks that way.



It is worth working with listening to an accent and regional dialect and getting in to the flow of it - like languages, the nature of it reveals part of the world the characters are living in, I think it adds to the flavour and gives genuine context.



If you miss the odd word, you can always look it up.



Clear diction is another thing. Sometimes, if an untrained actor is used, they won't be aware of this and that can be a problem whether there is a strong regional accent or not. But sometimes, pure clarity and careful enunciation is just not realistic and so choices have to be made, I suppose.





But, regional accents are an important part of our heritage, particularly in the UK where there might be a new one every few miles... and I hope they remain.

[Gary D.]

name='CaptainWaggett']The suicide film is the very excellent Wilbur wants to kill himself. It is indeed Scottish (set in Glasgow in fact) though at least one major character is Danish (it's from the Dogme studios). I didn't find the accents problematic myself but Glaswegian usually considered one of the more inpenetrable British dialects.



Of course, if you get the dvd, rather than the video, it probably has optional subtitles.

Wilbur's the title. I have to remember to do a search on it. It seemed to be a good picture, but I didn't have the patience to sit through it to try to decipher the 'lingo.'



When I see a Shakespeare presentation, and I don't like them to modernize any of his plays, it takes me about fifteen minutes before I can pick up on it. Of course, in this instance, the language is always clearly enunciated; I just don't understand the archaic expressions. I hope it remains the same, 500 years hence, however.



One of my parents' best friends of many years was from Glasgow, and my mother said she couldn't understand Harry for the longest time. He liked to perform Donald, Where's Your Trousers whenever he had a chance.