What kind of accent do people in Acre speak with?

90% of the people in the Holy Land speaking English during the Crusades is sort of historically inaccurate as well.

Hell, English as we know it didn't even exist at that point - Richard and his knights would have been speaking Norman French, commoners in England would have been speaking Anglo-Saxon, and the priests would use Latin.

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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family

bobbyrk posted...

They're not actually speaking English, of course - the Animus translates languages for the user.

I know. My point was more that it was kind of funny that we instinctively understand that and aren't bothered by the idea that the Animus is translating everything, but we apparently draw the line at the idea that the Animus is also interpreting accents (also, I just find the subject of language fascinating in general and like to talk about it).

In some ways, it's the same premise as Les Misérables, especially the London cast version. Poorer characters (especially the Thénardiers) are basically presented with a heavy Cockney accent, to imply their low-class origins... in spite of the fact that they would originally have been speaking low-class French, not low-class English.

The Broadway version, on the other hand, has completely different accents for the Thénardiers, because Cockney means less to American audiences than it does British ones.

Anime dubs tend to do something similar - there are regional accents in Japan that have implied meanings (for example, the Osaka accent tends to get used for characters who are supposed to be dumb, weird, or comic relief idiots). So when a character with one of those accents in anime is translated into English, a good dub tends to try and reproduce the implications of the accent as well as translate the literal meaning (for example, US dubs tend to replace those accents with Southern or Brooklyn accents).

So the impression is, when you're watching something where "translation convention" is in play (ie, the characters are speaking something other than English, but we're hearing English because the alternative is everyone speaking their native language and us reading subtitles), the accents are meant to represent either the cultural background of the character, or hint at the original language being spoken (ie, a French accent means they're speaking French, a German accent means they're speaking German, etc).



The British comedy 'Allo 'Allo was built almost entirely around the premise that accents imply the actual language the person is supposed to be speaking, to the point where characters actually changed their accents when they were supposedly speaking a different language (and English-speaking people couldn't understand other English-speaking people if their accents were different).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ8cZKG7nZo&t=3m00s

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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family