British and/or Non-american accent in voicelines used because ESO is staged in a medieval setting?

Warhawke_80

Varana wrote: »

So maybe you'll get somewhere by specifying "across the pond in Britain (and Ireland)". But I'd guess that a lot of people - maybe even the majority - play this game in English but aren't native speakers.

Why would you think that? NA server is well mostly Americans, and despite recent misinformation English is still the native tongue of the vast majority ...PC Euro has many localized languages and from my time in Europe sure a lot of folks speak English but they always revert to their native tongue because it's just easier.

NotaDaedraWorshipper

SilverBride wrote: »

Another thing to consider is that there are multiple American accents. There are East Coast accents and Southern accents. Also Boston accents, Chicago accents etc..

This has already been brought up in the thread and it's funny how Americans always do bring it up like it's something new. Every country and area in the world has this, even small ones, it's not something enlightening and exclusive to the US.

Kinda related to how OP called American accents "accentless" english.

Danikat

thorwyn wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

Sorry for the tangent, but as a non-native speaker I am curious:
Why is everyone using the word accent to describe regional differences? Wouldn't it be more precise to call it dialects?
Someone from Germany might have a german accent, but someone from, let's say Kentucky, would still speak US English, just with a dialect?!

Dialect is effectively a variant of the language itself, not just a change in how the language sounds. Eg Tuscan is a variant of "standard" Italian with some completely different words and some completely different grammar (Florentine Tuscan became the basis for standard Italian but Italy is a good example of a country where there are a number of true, pronounced regional dialects).

Yes, that's what I said basically and that's the definition I'm used to.
An American guy speaks French with an american accent, an American from the South speaks English with a southern dialect. But according to the google definition, that's not strictly true.

Also quite intersting, that using English accents (or dialects) works pretty well in Fantasy settings. Trying the same in German would create an epic fail.

Regardless, thanks for the input and sorry again for hijacking the thread.

A simple answer is a dialect is changing the words you use, whereas an accent is changing how you say them.

An accent is someone from the north of England having a 'bath' and someone from the south having a 'barth' (we spell it the same, but a lot of southerners say it like there's an R in the middle).

A dialect is the notherner having their bath after tea and the southerner having it after dinner. Same meal, different word used to describe it.

Varana wrote: »

Mascen wrote: »

Ok i understand the need for regional consistency to an extent but let me ask our fellow ESO players across the pond in Europe this: If you had to stick with an X flavored accent for each race/region, what would you choose?

An additional problem with that: Perception (and familiarity) with accents differ from place to place.
If you're a British native speaker and hear an NPC speaking with a German accent, your associations and perception of that would probably vary quite a lot from a German-speaker who hears that same NPC.
Non-native speakers might hear an NPC talk and sort that under "yeah, sounds Scottish", while someone familiar with actual Scottish accents would probably die of embarassment.
Or the other way around, a native speaker might hear an NPC and think "yeah, Eastern European", while someone from Eastern Europe gets confused because the accent is neither Polish nor Czech nor Russian but all over the place, or not close to how anyone would actually speak.

So maybe you'll get somewhere by specifying "across the pond in Britain (and Ireland)". But I'd guess that a lot of people - maybe even the majority - play this game in English but aren't native speakers.

That's a good point. I remember hearing that Arnold Schwartzenegger was disappointed he couldn't voice the Terminator in the German dub of the film, because he's from Austria and apparently to most German's that's a stereoytpical farmer's accent so it would make the Terminator sound considerably less threatening. But that wasn't a problem for the English version because most people watching it wouldn't make that association.

So even if they cast actors with the right accent or who can impersonate it well the effect might be differet for players from different places.

Maybe it could work when a location in Tamriel is based on a specific real-life place, like if everyone from the Imperial City was voiced by actors from Rome, but I'm not sure it would work for most of the cultures which are more loosely inspired by a mix of real-world people and places.

CameraBeardThePirate

angelwithashotgun wrote: »

I realized that when listening to the voicelines in quests, that there is either british or accentless english being spoken. Which got me thinking why an american company would seem to not hire any "american" speaking voice actor. I immediatly thought it must be because such thing as: "The Middle Age" did simply not exist in America and started googling a bit around. I tried to find an answer considering the voice actor choice but couldn't find any. No thread, no post, no Q&A. So I am just throwing this in here, because why not.

There are TONS of American VA's in ESO. Just because they're speaking with an English accent doesn't mean they aren't American - half the cast of Critical Role voices characters in ESO (with English accents) and they're all American.

Varana

Warhawke_80 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

So maybe you'll get somewhere by specifying "across the pond in Britain (and Ireland)". But I'd guess that a lot of people - maybe even the majority - play this game in English but aren't native speakers.

Why would you think that? NA server is well mostly Americans, and despite recent misinformation English is still the native tongue of the vast majority ...PC Euro has many localized languages and from my time in Europe sure a lot of folks speak English but they always revert to their native tongue because it's just easier.

I should've specified "on xx-EU", not including xx-NA, as the question was specifically for Europeans. Sorry.
And while there is a localisation for many languages, there are many - including very active videogaming communities like the Netherlands, Poland, or Scandinavia - where it's not, and even in countries with a localised version, there are those who just play in English anyway, for various reasons.

Northwold

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

angelwithashotgun wrote: »

I realized that when listening to the voicelines in quests, that there is either british or accentless english being spoken. Which got me thinking why an american company would seem to not hire any "american" speaking voice actor. I immediatly thought it must be because such thing as: "The Middle Age" did simply not exist in America and started googling a bit around. I tried to find an answer considering the voice actor choice but couldn't find any. No thread, no post, no Q&A. So I am just throwing this in here, because why not.

There are TONS of American VA's in ESO. Just because they're speaking with an English accent doesn't mean they aren't American - half the cast of Critical Role voices characters in ESO (with English accents) and they're all American.

Indeed. And it gets very noticeable because quite often their pronunciations of words are American, but rendered in an "English" accent. Drives me up the wall sometimes.

(If I could remember an example off the top of my head I'd throw it in, but I can't. A diet of Australian soaps and US TV has steadily moved British English towards scheduling with a hard c and REsearch rather than reSEARCH, PRYvacy rather than privvercy, but there remain a lot of words that are pronounced completely differently.)

LokiPagan

Northwold wrote: »

Indeed. And it gets very noticeable because quite often their pronunciations of words are American, but rendered in an "English" accent. Drives me up the wall sometimes.

I remember there was one instance of Jakarn, with his American accent, saying 'arse' in the British manner and it just sounded very wrong and forced, so the opposite happens as well.

I'm just thankful there aren't any deep south American accents. "Howdy y'all, I'mma need yer help wranglin' these guar back into that there pen!"

Haywire30

Yeah, I noticed arse as well. Not just with Jakarn; there's also an orc lady somewhere who also says it... and I'm sure there are other NPCs, too.

They always overpronounce the 'r'...

Every time.

This is why I personally feel that if you're after a certain 'vibe' and you have the resources to do so, then get the native speakers to do it!

kaushad

I’m not sure if arse/ass is a distinction of accent or dialect. I suspect that if the spelling were the same, we’d hear more about “ass”, just as we hear about ”’erbs”.

Drammanoth

Whenever I have classes where there are accents, I always show my students this video.

The English Language In 24 Accents

Marcus684

Haywire30 wrote: »

Yeah, I noticed arse as well. Not just with Jakarn; there's also an orc lady somewhere who also says it... and I'm sure there are other NPCs, too.

They always overpronounce the 'r'...

Every time.

This is why I personally feel that if you're after a certain 'vibe' and you have the resources to do so, then get the native speakers to do it!

Oh gods yes. I cringe every time I hear an American VA say "arse". I mean c'mon, who would really be offended by the word "ass" these days?

Flangdoodle

It's a convention. The Elves use British accents, whereas the rest use what is referred to as "Mid Atlantic" or "Transatlantic". Americans have a panoply of accents and dialects, some identifiable and others with more subtle differences. Transatlantic is a commonly referred to as "American" though it's more correctly a blend of British and American speech. An example is the "liquid U" sound, which is used more in British speech than American, but is used in Transatlantic. Think of the word "news". Most Americans would pronounce it "nooze" but in British and Transatlantic it sounds more like "nyooz".

The exceptions are where ESO drops the ball IMO. The Nords for example have attempts at every sort of European accent imaginable. It's a mess. And don't get me started on the stunningly bad attempts of Scottish for the reach folk.

I don't expect a perfect natural born accent like Peter Stormare's Jorunn the Skald King for every Nord, but I'd hope that the accents would at least be standardized to reflect a unified people and culture. It shouldn't be hard to do an accent somewhere in the middle on the scale between authentic Scandinavian and the Swedish Chef from the Muppets? Actor Michael Gough (the voice of Shalidor as well as many others in both ESO and TESV Skyrim) does a fantastic job of finding that balance, but sadly there are few others.

The Khajiit are more tolerable - perhaps because their speech contains not only a dialect but a grammatical convention ("This one", etc.) which masks the variety of accents they use, and the Argonians are generally in the aforementioned Mid Atlantic, but their lizardly rasp and exotic appearance smoothes over their inconsistencies.

I have to say that with Necrom the voice-acting has finally returned to the prestigious level it had enjoyed from launch up through the Elsweyr chapter. After that it took a real dive. Greymoor was bleh, Markarth's bad Scottish was laughable (whose idea was that anyway?) - and the acting and speech in Blackwood and Deadlands were awful.
Great casting choices in Necrom. The voice actors really shine. Let’s hope this trend continues.

LadyLethalla

What annoys me is when they have an American do an English accent but forget to instruct them to pronounce words such as "can't" as an American would - ie "cant" instead of "carnt". I find that really grating. If you're pretending to be English, then please pronounce everything in the way an English person would.