"Do re-enactors talk in the "correct" accent?" Topic

I've seen displays by Dark Age groups and Roman groups where orders were called in Old English and Latin respectively.

I was quite surprised to find there were ACW re-enactment groups in the UK and wondered if they talk in pretend American accents while they are doing their re-enactment or, more especially, when doing living history displays? Not to be entirely cynical but getting the uniform right is one thing but putting on a comically bad accent could ruin the whole thing. Does Kevin from Milton Keynes attempt to do a Southern drawl for instance?

Do you get ECW re-enactors in the US? Do they do the accent too?

Most interestingly I have wondered before if the now notorious "Salute" SS re-enactors can speak German and if they adopt Germanic stage names during their displays…

I'll bet modern American accents are different to those of the 1860s too, and would sound just as ridiculous to 19th Century American ears as Englishmen putting the voices on.

Certainly many re-enactors will "try" to get a (nearly) right accent, but most will miserably fail.

The SS guys I spoke with/overheard at Salute were not even trying to do German accents/speak German, although the odd command was correctly spoken (if not pronounced). I guess it's not so much a proper re-enactment (which would require mastering the language too) as a fancy-dress (witness the Salute SS guys, who appear to have chosen the SS because of the "cool factor" of the uniforms).

Most of our pop stars do fake American accents so why shouldn't re-enactors?

Hmmm…Probably not…I know that a couple of years ago, I was watching the San Jacinto Reenactment, and the Mexican Army Commander couldn't speak Spanish, so what he would do is tell his Sgt. what he order he wanted to say, and the Sgt would then tell him in Spanish how to say it, and then he would…

Unfortunately most of his troops just stood there as they A: Didn't know drill, and B: Didn't understand Spanish…

I have read that orders for Roman legions in the 4th century AD were given in Latin, although none of the soldiers spoke Latin.

This probably saved on misunderstandings, as "Gort, Klaatu verada nikto!" could only have one meaning.

When I hear Americans doing "English" accents, I shudder to think what a Brit would do to Yankee or Reb. Actors do it all the time, but that is their job.

I have read that orders for Roman legions in the 4th century AD were given in Latin, although none of the soldiers spoke Latin.

Not uncommon in multi-ethnic armies. You got the same thing in the Habsburg army, where German was the language of command, even in non-German regiments, though after 1849, Hungarian regiments got to use Magyar.

poly: I'll bet modern American accents are different to those of the 1860s too, and would sound just as ridiculous to 19th Century American ears as Englishmen putting the voices on.

Actually, we have a pretty good idea what 19th century American accents sounded like, because a number of semi-literate 19th century Americans wrote documents that were spelled phonetically. "D Boon kilt bar on this tree" sort of thing. The diary of Confederate private Bartlett Yancy Malone, published as Whipt Em Every Time is a classic example, if you want to look it up.

That's interesting. But a phonetic spelling doesn't tell you everything. It could still be pronounced any number of ways, depending on one's accent.

Were there wax cylinders or anything else like that by the 1860s? When did that stuff get invented? Would be very interesting to actually hear a recording from back then to hear how folks spoke.

That would be interesting. Col. Freemantle in his diary mentioned that Gen. Lee & other Confederate generals sounded like well-born Englishmen.I've always wondered about that.

We used to have this problem when I was going WWI German. How I solved it, since I don't speak German, was to study vocabulary lists and use various German words in my speech. I didn't attempt to have a German accent when I spoke English (a la Hogan's Heroes) but I did make an attempt to learn some of the language.

What also helped is that we had a few people in our unit who were native German-speakers and they were a great help in trying to put forth a good impression. When we really needed to impress, we'd trot out the native speakers. It worked out pretty well for us.

When my reenactment group, Plauche's Batallion drills we issue our commands in French. Yes its horribly accented French but it still helps us get into character and capture the zeitgeist or time spirit of the men we represent.
I willingly admit I speak very little French and what little French I do speak is atrocious. I try though but thats not the point. For me its fun. We get to march around in cool looking uniforms, fire muskets at each other, and sit around a campfire drink fake wine and sing Maurice Chevalier songs. That pretty much sums up my experience with reenacting.
Best regards

Bruce the Texas Grognard

Good point of Plynikes that modern national accents are probably quite different to period ones – wasn't that Daniel Day-Lewis' rationale for his his accent in Last of the Mohicans?

Probably better that re-enactors don't try and make too much of an effort I guess, a comedy accent is probably worse than a "wrong" one.

The very earliest recordings were made around 1900 I believe. Accents do seem to have changed a lot just in the space of the last 100 years. Both in Britain and America. Watch an early 'talkie' from either side of the pond and compare with modern speech!

This is the info I've found:

Cylinder phonograph: 1878.
Disk phonograph: 1889.

That's close enough to the Civil War for the accents to be the same. So theoretically there might be some recorded speech out there somewhere that could give us an idea.

What is all this talk about American accents? We don't have accents.

When I did a couple of events with a French American Rev unit the commands were in French, and a few of the unit founders spoke French.

Doc Ord,

I grew up in rural North Carolina; in those days, in the more isolated areas, there were still 'English' accents prevalent.

The problem with the almost period recordings is knowing where the accent you are hearing is exactly from. Regional dialects were far more common since people didn't travel as much from their community, yet the community could change drastically in a short time with a new group of European/Eastern US settlers.

That said, many of the civil war era dialects do seem survive, barely. TV being the biggest force destroying this past. My Grandmother is from the mountains of the southern part of the Shenandoah Valley. At times when she really gets talking (particularly about her childhood) she will break into a language that seems to be a cross between late Middle Ages English and German. It is clearly known that German immigrants settled in mass in her home region about a decade before the ACW.

In reenacting, our unit is considered fairly "authentic" however we do not speak in period dialect. We do use period words and phrases and are from the region our unit portrays. So, we do have a distinct regional dialect. Our rational being that we are not professional actors (and you see how well they do when you listen to Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain.) and it is best not to ruin something by doing it poorly. We do use French when appropriate as the real soldiers used it in certain drills. However, the semi-literate real soldiers probably weren't any better than us at it.

Greyaxe Here in Mississippi I still hear archaic irregular verbs such as "holpe" for "helped". Most Mississippi families have ancestors from N.C. or S.C.

When I used to work Renaisance Faire out here in California, we used to give a lot of attention to accent. I even went as far as to obtain cassette tapes of tapes used to train the interpreters at Plimoth Plantation (based on research, they were able to identify at least three major English acents, all very different from one another).

After some practice, I realized that if I strictly adhered to the proper accent (I portrayed a noble with ties to the north of England), I would be unintelligable. For performance purposes, we were forced to use what we termed "BBC English"- sort of a lightened up accent that would give the right flavor but not be barrier to the customers understanding what were saying.

Tricky thing accents- it took me a good eight months before it all started to become second nature. Of course that was some 20 years ago but I can still do it (a beer or two helps).

In my old ACW reenactment group we had trouble making sure we used the proper march command, and some of us in the marines would use our old caddence and drive the colonel mad. big difference from one, two, or left, right

I've heard – can't rightly say. That teh accents in Australia and some rural Parts of the USA are probably closer to historical English than what the locals speak now.

Mass migration from Britain to those places founded the accents.
In urban centres the accents have mingled and changed.
But a higher proportion of britain is Urmban than either Aus or USA, so it's more likely these places carry the historical accent of olde england.

Steve