Ellen : 'TmBildur'

thanks for your response, but I have to say: the actress doesn't even sound like she's trying to do an English accent.

the director must have heard her speak at some point before filming, and he must have realized she had a german (?) accent.... it doesn't seem like they are trying to pass her off as an English person, with the same dialect as the multiple English sounding actors she's surrounded by.

What makes you think Ukrainians are strange and weird? One of my best friends is from the Ukraine and she is completely normal, I assure you.

and: its tough for me to grasp the idea that a supposedly English woman would speak with a thick accent simply because she spoke French.
I speak Spanish, but my American accent is quite intact!
Not being snotty, just mystified by the casting and still, by the accent.

then why do the other actors have modern English accents ? its an inconsistency!

it just seems like sloppy casting to me. I'd rather see a different actress in that role anyway. someone like Catherine McCormack or Julia Ormond in that role...

the accent is distracting to me. I guess to me alone.

Better yet, in the 12th c., the nobles, who were mostly Norman French, spoke a form of French (there were different varieties of "French," Norman differed from Picard and Ile-de-France, which made life difficult) while the peasants spoke Anglo-Saxon, which was changing due to the influence of French in the court and the legal system. For instance, some words for meat that is eaten are different from the words for the animal, e.g., the nobles ate beef (French "boeuf") and veal (Fr. "veau") but the Anglo-Saxon menials took care of the cows, oxen, calves, the nobles ate pork (Fr. "porc") while the Anglo-Saxon peasants herded pigs or swine. The English of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (10th c) was quite different from the English of the 12th. So how did the common folk and the nobles communicate in this series? Of course, they are all speaking modern English, so the problem is thus solved by the filmmakers. Very puzzling.

Whoa, hold up there! There's nothing in those other posts to indicate they are written by Brits - they could just as well be Americans! Nobody is suggesting this was a British production - I think most people who have followed the progress of this series know that it's a German-Canadian co-production. It's the accents they are referring to. No need to have a go at another country.

Thumbs up! :)

I know the actress is German - I just assumed the way she spoke (versus her "accent") was just to emphasize that Ellen looks at the world differently than others. Similarly, Phillip is Welsh and the actor keeps his vowels soft - subtle, but important to the character and his outlook. These small details in characterization makes me forgive the plot changes they made in this miniseries because the characterization is so good.

In the book I don't think they ever specify exactly where Ellen's childhood home was. In the miniseries, Ellen says her father was a Saxon.

The way she says Tom Builder's name doesn't bother me, it's the way most of us ended up with our surnames, based on parentage, occupation, or place of origin. Later in the book, Jack specifies his surname as Jack Jackson once he finds out he was named after his father. His father's name was given by Ellen as Jack Shareburg, which we later find out refers to his origins. Similarly, Alfred is referred to as Alfred Tomson.

My husband's great-grandmother was a MacEachan, which originated as "son of Ian", and thus basically is the equivalent of "Johnson" in English. MacEachan has been spelled variously as MacEachan, McEachen, MacIoghan, MacIghan, and about 10 more different ways. This makes doing genealogy research fun!