Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
Just an interesting fact:
Assuming Kryptonians are basically like Earthlings in such matters (and that's a *big* assumption), Kara Zor-El would have been a few years passed the age at which one can learn to speak a foreign tongue without an accent when she learned to speak English. This means she would have spoken with a noticeable Kryptonian accent. I'm sure there's some excuse why she didn't, but I think it kind of adds something interesting to the character.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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Of course, it's possible that Kryptonian was so different linguistically from English that she just "templated" her English speech on the first English-speaker she heard.
In other words, she would have sounded exactly like Clark [or like Linda Danvers, depending on how you count Many Happy Returns ]
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
She actually learned English (and various basic facts about Earth culture) from one of those fancy space-monitors that Kryptonians used to spy on other planets.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Eryk Davis Ester: She actually learned English (and various basic facts about Earth culture) from one of those fancy space-monitors that Kryptonians used to spy on other planets.
So she talks like a BBC newscaster?
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From: Boston | Registered: Aug 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
No, she still learns it after the "still talks with an accent" point. I think super-ventriloquism or some such power can probably be used to perfectly duplicate an American accent. However, I think it would be cool if that were actually part of her disguise, and she slipped into speaking English with a Kryptonian accent as Supergirl.
[ August 01, 2005, 09:37 AM: Message edited by: Eryk Davis Ester ]
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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Super-ventriloquism? Why, I have to ask? Actors do such duplication of accents every day. A highly imitative brain is, to me, enough of an explanation.
From: Starhaven Consulate, City of Angels | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
If I'm remembering my linguistics correctly, there are limits on one's ability to do so. While it's certainly possible for an English person to duplicate an American accent, or vice versa, that's only because they really aren't that far apart. If you take Swedish, for example, there are sounds that occur in English that simply don't occur in Swedish (I believe the hard "ch" is an example). If those sounds aren't learned by a certain age, one simply can never learn to reproduce them accurately. This is yet another reason the standard American practice of not educating our youth in foreign languages before high schools is horribly flawed.
Assuming the Kryptonian language is farther away from English than Swedish is (which probably isn't that questionable), and assuming you can expect people that can fly and are impervious to bullets to obey human biological limitations in regard to such matters (which is highly questionable), then Kara's ability to speak English without an accent has to be explained by her superhuman abilities.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Eryk Davis Ester: Kara's ability to speak English without an accent has to be explained by her superhuman abilities.
Or people being to busy looking at her gams to notice the accent.
I mean please consider. Superbabe flying overhead in short skirt? I'd be looking for presence of underwear and typically not listening to what she had to say.
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From: East Toledo | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote: I mean please consider. Superbabe flying overhead in short skirt? I'd be looking for presence of underwear and typically not listening to what she had to say.
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