Accents - Texas Rising (2015) Discussion

Who do you think had the best/worst accents? They all vary.

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[–] sixpaws67 9 years ago

That is an excellent question. I'll have to think on it.

Mostly I hear bad, and a lot of inflection as being identical. It is almost as if the coaches called everyone out one day and said "This is how you'll all sound today. All of you. Together."

You are right about some varying, though... good and bad. Mostly it's the overdone ones that sound awful. There are in real life, varying accents, some hard and some soft, of course, but most of these actors (not all, but most) are just butchering them.

It's not a new Hollywood thing, though, when it comes to Southern accents, so I shouldn't be surprised.

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[–] FilioScotia 9 years ago

Almost without exception, the best accents are coming from actors who aren't TRYING to do one. They sound real.

The worst are from those who ARE trying for one and are over-doing it. Crispin Glover, Chad Michael Murray, Rob Morrow, and Ray Liotta come to mind, but there are others among the supporting players. They all sound fake.

Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

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[–] sixpaws67 9 years ago

Well put; you are right about the ones trying too hard. It's not that hard at all, so I wonder if the bad ones recorded themselves and then didn't listen... or... scary thought... they really think Southerners sound that way. Also, Texas is huge, so the diversity of accents is beautiful and hard to butcher, but they are doing it. And where are all the Yankee accents that are bad? Many Yankees fought for Texas.

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[–] mlaiuppa 9 years ago

Well, one of the best coaches in the business died some years ago.

Robert Easton.

Among many roles he was Atwell in Paint Your Wagon. But he was more well known as a dialect coach.

Among the many actors he coached Meryl Streep was not among them. But he did plenty of others.

Look up his obit.

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[–] cowgoesmoo 9 years ago

Yup. I'm frequently having to hit the rewind button the DVR to figure out what they just said because the accent is so thick.

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[–] sixpaws67 9 years ago

And ridiculously incorrect - very stereotyped. I'm surprised they don't have the Native Americans saying "How."

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[–] sparker21 9 years ago

To be fair, the anglo Texans of 1836 were a polyglot group from all over the US. My own people were there and had come from Georgia, so they would not have sounded like a Texan does today.

For that matter, Texas has at least five or six distinct accents. I can often tell what area of the state a person is from just by listening to them speak. Those accents all had to develop after 1836 as settlers spread across the state.

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[–] sixpaws67 9 years ago

I agree totally. It's easy to tell an Odessa person from a Dallas person from a Galveston person from a Lufkin person. :)

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[–] Sandman-68 9 years ago

what area of the state a person is from

Most of the Texians were from the South, but not all by a long chalk.
The Alamo defenders included Scots, Englishmen, at least one Frenchman, Mexicans, Spaniards, and I don't know what-all else.

You're dead right about the variety of "Texas accents." Some cities have their own accent, e.g., Houston, Dallas, Corpus Christi, Midland/Odessa.
But not a damned one of them is a drawl.
And in 1836 they were ALL immigrants who brought their accents with them.

Sandman
**
ETAOIN SHRDLU

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[–] madmadrid 9 years ago

Dont forget there were many Scottish,English and Irish in Texas at that time and would have mostly had their own accents. Accents in 1836 would have been very different from today.

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[–] madmadrid 9 years ago

There were 100 Irish men who fought for Texas at San Jacinto,didnt hear any Irish accents in the dialogue.

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[–] FilioScotia 9 years ago

It's worth mentioning that very few if any of the Irish or Scottish who fought for Texas were fresh off the boat. Most were Scots-Irish who had migrated into Texas from southern and eastern states where they had lived for generations.

My Scots-Irish ancestors immigrated from Ireland with hundreds of thousands of others in the early 1700s. Look it up. The Scots-Irish immigration was massive.

They and thousands of others settled in English colonies up and down the eastern seaboard. After the Revolutionary War, high land costs and high taxes forced many to move west into Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.

In the early 1820s they joined other families who were moving to Mexican Texas because they could buy large parcels of land very cheaply. All they had to do was swear allegiance to Mexico and convert to Catholicism. No problemo, and by that time, few if any had what we would recognize as an Irish or Scottish accent.

Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

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[–] madmadrid 9 years ago

I dont agree, I still say that the Irish accents would have been largely intact for a long time. I have met Irish and English who have lived in the US for 50 years who's accents are pretty much the same as when they got off the boat. I bet Billy The Kid had an Irish accent!

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[–] cowgoesmoo 9 years ago

Maybe not entirely. You may step off the boat with one accent but over the years it can morph into something else.

Back in college, I had a professor who got out of Cuba as a teenager when Castro took over. By the time he was in his late 30-early 40s, he was doing volunteer teaching in Mexico. He said that the Mexican students there complimented him on how well he spoke Spanish. He was like "What? I'm Cuban, I grew up speaking Spanish." The students then said, "But... now you speak Spanish with an American accent."

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[–] kmmd511 9 years ago

That's what he said.

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[–] Screenerz 9 years ago

so many complainers

Screenerz 

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[–] BridgetB 9 years ago

OK, I'll say something nice! Not about accents in Texas Rising. Because I haven't managed to watch the whole thing. Other things to do: Wash dishes, sort socks, plan for that next root canal....

However, I've been listening to the commentary track for the recent Alamo movie. (Not the John Wayne version.) The two historian-advisers--include Stephen Hardin, whose Texian Illiad I've been recommending right & left.

They talk about their efforts to Get Things Right. And about how the movie makers sometimes changed things--most of which they understood. For example, we hear Juan Seguin speak English to his Texian friends, when he really only spoke Spanish; dramatically, his dialog worked better that way. The film really did get things pretty close--the Alamo interior was not quite right but stuff like costuming (not cowboy outfits!) was.

The accents of the Texians (mostly various accents from the South) sounded OK to me. The historians suggested many 19th century words & phrases to fit into the dialog. Going Full Early 19th Century might have sounded weird to a modern audience, buy they wanted to add a flavor of the past. And they avoided modern figures of speech.

When we eavesdrop on Santa Anna's camp, he & all his officers speak Spanish to each other--with English subtitles. A Spanish language prof from UT was on hand to ensure they spoke period-accurate Spanish.

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[–] FilioScotia 9 years ago

A Spanish language prof from UT was on hand to ensure they spoke period-accurate Spanish.

It would have been nice if they had a History Prof there to make sure they got the history right.

They were more concerned about correct language than correct history.

Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

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[–] Screenerz 9 years ago

Kit Acklin and Vern have the most believable accents

Screenerz 

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[–] sparker21 9 years ago

They did have history profs there. They are interviewed in the "making of" documentary and one of them says that he's enjoying being involved with it because he's not constantly getting told "hey, we aren't making a documentary."

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[–] FilioScotia 9 years ago

Those "profs" should be defrocked for helping to perpetrate a fraud on the historical facts.

Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

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[–] sparker21 9 years ago

Well, they did what they could. Actually that version of The Alamo is by far the most historically accurate version we've ever had in a theatrically released film. I also have to say that it was not near as entertaining as the heavily romanticized John Wayne version from the 60s.

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[–] FilioScotia 9 years ago

What version of "The Alamo" are you talking about? The Texas Rising I watched began AFTER Santa Anna had overrun the Alamo and was executing the survivors. Is there another version I missed?

Even so, that much of it was more or less accurate, depending on which historians you read. I'm talking about the complete fictions and fictitious characters the writers put into all the episodes of the story of the Texas Revolution that followed.

How could a historian with any respect for history allow himself or herself to be associated with a travesty of this magnitude?

Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

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[–] sparker21 9 years ago

You had replied to BridgetB's post about the most recent Alamo movie, where she said they had Spanish language coaches. So that's the one I was referring to.

As for Texas Rising, it's good and bad. I don't know what the point of the fictitious mad Alamo survivor is. The depiction of the run away scrape is the best, maybe the only, depiction I've seen. Deaf Smith finally gets his due.

My biggest complaint is that it's just seems emotionally flat for the most part.

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[–] Blubonnet_Spearman 8 years ago

U don't know what people sounded like back then

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