On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 18:03:20 -0700, Luis M. Gonzalez wrote: > Continuing with this off-topic thread about british accent and > movies... > I've always asked myself why do Hollywood movies about the Roman Empire > show the Emperors and all the nobles speaking with british accent? > They were italians for God's sake!
You would rather they speak in an Italian accent? > Anyway, I can't imagine Julius Caesar speaking like Vito Corleone... :-) The BBC adaptation of "I, Claudius" had all the upper-class Romans speaking in posh English accents (think of Queen Victoria), and the servants, soldiers, slaves etc speaking in Cockney and other working-class accents. This, by the way, is closer to the historical truth than many people imagine. The Latin we learnt in school was so-called "Classical Latin". Your average Roman centurion spoke something that was to Classical Latin as your boyz in the hood speaks to standard American English. In the recent movie "Alexander the Great", which was nowhere near as bad as the reputation it got (okay, it wasn't that good, but neither was it bad), they did a similar thing. The Greeks spoke in very polished English accents, while the Macedonians (who by their own admission had been goat herders only to generations before) spoke in broad Irish/Scottish accents, and the lower class they were, the thicker the accent. -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
