Accent in GOT
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Peter Dinklage
catz_hatz — 11 years ago(June 18, 2014 11:34 AM)
Ok, this may shock you butI haven't seen Game of Thrones yet. I'd like to but not had the opportunity due to not having Sky.
I really like Peter Dinklage's acting but having seen some clips of his character I'm concerned that the 'English' accent would bug me. He seems great in the role from what I've seen but the accent just isn't quite convincing to me (I'm English)
Is it just me? -
chloe835 — 11 years ago(June 26, 2014 11:52 AM)
As another person from England , I can say that his accent isn't 100% but it isn't anywhere near bad or annoying. It's loads better than most American actors have attempted and given his character's personality it works. His attempt at an English accent is somewhere in the league of Robert Downey jr as Sherlock Holmes. Not perfect but good enough to not take you out of what you're watching.
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Naughty-God — 11 years ago(June 29, 2014 07:00 PM)
I'm American but I can tell that his accent for GoT is a bit off. He tries to give it a lot of color and poshness but I think if he toned it down with a bit more subtlety it wouldn't be as noticeable. The guy who plays his brother isn't British yet his accent isn't as noticeable.
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boudicea1967 — 10 years ago(April 18, 2015 03:24 PM)
That is a nice thing to say. I took two quarters (before they became semesters) and I have no idea why. This was when I was in Alabama and I came from Allentown, PA and had a heavy Yankee accident, not like New York or New Jersey so I as an oddity down South, but not always in a bad way. I think that different accents are easier for some actors than they are for others this is true of British, including Scotland and Ireland because in England, it seems that the "accent" depends on the part o England you are from. I have known and listened to people from all over and can more than not know what kind of accent and usually am correct as far as where they are from. There are plenty of UK actors that do great jobs with American accents.
I think Mr. Dinklage does not speak with a strong one but does try to do it well in that he does it as sophisticated as he can and I think he does a remarkable job with doing it more sophisticated and I believe it makes up for it, but that is just me.
I was a big Tolkien fan, Sci Fi fan etc and was about the only girl for miles who liked these kinds of stories. In the Lord of the Rings series I thought there were several who spoke with accents from all over. For instance, Orlando Bloom who is from London spoke very different that Sean Bean. Actually, Sean's accent is similar a little to Scottish and English. Scotsmen talk rather fast or quick and I have only come across it when I asked a sweet lady if she were from the Northern part of England and she was Scottish. Brad Duroff talked with an English accent all the time while filming and when his shooting was over talked like himself and Bernard Hill said it was the worse American accent he ever heard. It is all in the vowel sounds or groups.
A true and weird story was when I would go visit my family in the South, my cousin's friends asked them if I were from England not only because I had a different accent, but also because even when I was 12 years old, I had a great vocabulary and used big words. -
Naughty-God — 10 years ago(April 25, 2015 10:07 PM)
I enjoy LotR (books and films) as well and I like how Peter Jackson and his production crew mixed up the flavors of the regional accents. Of course it's somewhat modeled on an imagined Legendary ancient England (which was part of Tolkien's motivation to create the stories) so it was neat to hear Scottish, Northern England, and Midland accents in the Shire as represented by Pippin, Merry, and Sam with Frodo and Bilbo having a more upper society flare to their accents.
It was also kinda cool, yet ironic, that Sean Bean used his natural Yorkshire accent even though he's suppose to be a noble captain from Gondor. It was a given as well that PJ used Cockney for the Orcs and Uruk-hai but I would have loved to hear some Scouse used. LOL -
Naughty-God — 11 years ago(July 02, 2014 08:27 PM)
for me it's not really about him sounding authentically English, it's about sounding like the other people he's surrounded by (family, courtesans, servants, etc.). Apparently most of them are adopting a movie studio "English" accent. Even Charles Dance and Lena Headey are utilizing it.
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FlyingSaucersAreReal — 11 years ago(July 10, 2014 09:12 PM)
You see the same thing in productions where the characters have American accents. Usually they have that movie studio/newsreader accent. Of course that's not always the case.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen
I am the walrus, googoo goo joob goo goo goo goo joob-J Lennon -
Naughty-God — 10 years ago(April 25, 2015 10:01 PM)
He sounds fine to you, and I don't have a problem with it personally. I just think it sounds stagey at certain times, but it's subtle and not over the top like Kevin Costner or Kate Upton (game of war ads).
I think if he hired a dialect coach and taught him how to create a good mid-Atlantic accent it would come across more genuine as well, but that's just me and again it doesn't detract from the performance. -
Eyebrows — 10 years ago(June 16, 2015 09:50 PM)
Why would he sound like the servants? There's exactly three people he needs to sound like - Cersei, Tywin and Jaime (five if you include Kevan and Lancel, but that's less imortant), and with his accent it's more than conceivable that he would come from the same family. Outside of that, it doesn't matter at all if he doesn't sound like a Tyrell, a Tully, a Clegane, a servant or a member of the small council. He just needs to sound like other Lannisters.
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Empyre_of_Dyrt — 10 years ago(June 11, 2015 12:36 PM)
I don't know. To me they all sound fine.
They're in Westeros not England
so I don't really care. They all sound reasonably similar, which is all that matters.
Exactly! There are obvious correlations to England in the Middle Ages but GoT
is
a fictional world. Maybe Dinklage is doing a perfectly authentic Westeros accent and everyone else is off.
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catz_hatz — 11 years ago(July 09, 2014 11:11 AM)
Thanks for the replies guys. I'd worried I might get flamed there!
Yes fair point, it's not technically England so it shouldn't matter. They all sound like English-
ish
(Engl
ish
?) accents to me, Dinklage's just seemed a bit off in the clip I saw, compared to the others. Sometimes if they're not quite right, it does bug mebut good to know that it's not distractingly bad (I mean, it could be the 'English' accent from Ocean's Eleven, right?!) I haven't seen enough from the clips to know if it was just the odd waver, so thanks guys. I'm more encouraged to give the show a try when I get a chance to
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keith48322003 — 11 years ago(July 13, 2014 08:56 PM)
I've just recently started watching so count me as a newbie novice as well.
Not being familiar with the actor I was never aware until today that he is an American, so I wasn't judging or anticipating whether or not he would be able to carry off an English accent. Having seen a few episodes now I can I say for certain (from my perspective) that he is not having problems modifying any American sounds in his voice. He has gone for what sounds to me like a reasonably plumby accent that you might encounter among Oxbridge circles or traditionally "well-bred" English people. He has a good idea of how this character might approach things and how he has been influenced, how his attitude has been molded by his experiences. It's if the character could be the equivelant of Oscar Wilde in a fantasy medieval setting. So I think his accent is a great success. -
keith48322003 — 11 years ago(August 16, 2014 10:47 AM)
It's like an archetype - the accent is supposed to be modelled after something which represents the qualities that wished to be expressed in the Westeros reality, ie. English speaking aristocratic societal set with many of the analogous cultural meanings.
Much of the medievalist fantasy genre is modelled in some way after European archetypal models. -
AmbienWineDiet — 11 years ago(September 14, 2014 10:15 AM)
i love his acting, his accent is hit or miss and you can feel the forced "accentness at times". tht being said i think he is an excellent actor and does an excellent job
THAT BEING SAID. Roy Dotrice's accent is the true tyrion lannister
melodic, impish.. so perfect.. heres a sample
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAlMvhIebsU