Birth of the Federation

Has anyone, anywhere ever come up with an explanation as to why Jean Luc Picard, a man born and raised in France, whose family owns and runs a traditional French winery, speaks with an outrageous English accent??????

Patrick Stewart is a fine actor, so I don't think it's a case of him not being able to do a FRench accent!

I think they should have adjusted "picards"' background when they hired an actor from england, with an english accent, who had done shakespeare theatre and so was unlikely to be able to pull off a french accent.

Yeah but then he would have been Captain John Luke Burnham or something.... sooooo not as catchy as Jean Luc Picard

Well geography probably has little to do with anything in the Trek future. After all you can walk to the nearest public transporter pad and pop anywhere on Earth for lunch. Basically the entire planet is the equivalent of right around the block. Plus we really don't know how school works for those kids, maybe he went to school in England k-12. Again the transporters would make any school local.

Another thing, as it's shown on Trek, English appears to be the default human language in the future. Could be that other accents are dying out along with the other languages.

AlexMcpherson79 wrote:I think they should have adjusted "picards"' background when they hired an actor from england, with an english accent, who had done shakespeare theatre and so was unlikely to be able to pull off a french accent.

The bad thing about that would have been that all canon captains of starships named Enterprise would have had a "British" sounding name.
Archer
April
Pike
Kirk
Harriman
Garrett
Picard

That, with the exception of one, every lead in every Star Trek show has come from one certain country in uncreative enough.

Archer (San Francisco/New York)
Pike (Mojave)
Kirk(Iowa)
Picard (La Barre)
Sisko (San Francisco)
Janeway (Indiana)

Additionally I certainly hope noone expects everyone with a French name to have some ridicilous accent that sounds like drunken-English or something like that.
A very good example that not everyone from France sounds like some cliché character from a bad movie is the actress Clémence Poésy.
When you look at some interviews with her in English you'll notice that very quickly.
And I mean interviews because the accent she made in "In Bruges" was fake

oh you mean Fleur Delacour? :p

yeah she's got no accent.

maybe someone should remember that for the next harry potter fanfic with fleur: A french girl, but without such an accent. zen ve get noo ridiculus accented writing, ze buggas.

The bad thing about that would have been that all canon captains of starships named Enterprise would have had a "British" sounding name.
Archer
April
Pike
Kirk
Harriman
Garrett
Picard

you have forgotten Spock (ST2:TWoK) in this list and Riker (TNG:tBoBW) both captianed Enterprises as did Lt. Castillo (TNG:YE) on the Enterprise-C

I like watching the R2 DVD in french as captain picard make sence but then Troi's accent is also smudgged over!

eber3 wrote:Another thing, as it's shown on Trek, English appears to be the default human language in the future.

for me they speak german all the time so the common future language is definitely german!

just kidding. guess you have heard about communicators which translate things for ya?

eber3 wrote:Could be that other accents are dying out along with the other languages.

there is an interesting quote in the beginning of Blade Runner but can't remember it. It was about a future language mixture of many actually spoken languages like english, french and even german afair.

but to come back to english as default language... I thought it almost already is today? Or did I miss something?

To Picards accent: priceless

to funny accents in general. I'am watching Stargate Atlantis atm and man I laughed my ass off because of Carson Beckett's scottish accent. Totally funny and it reminds me a bit of my saxon accent. Half germany laughs about our great accent - but they're just jealous because they have nothing to be proud of

And because they've already laughed too many years about the Bavarians so now its us.

KrazeeXXL wrote: there is an interesting quote in the beginning of Blade Runner but can't remember it. It was about a future language mixture of many actually spoken languages like english, french and even german afair.

Or Firefly, they had a mix of English and Chinese.

KrazeeXXL wrote: but to come back to english as default language... I thought it almost already is today? Or did I miss something?

It is wide spread, but I think more countries speak Spanish.

EDIT: I went and tried to look up the stats. It appears number wise most people in the world speak Chinese, of course 90 some percent of them are Chinese.

Looks like English and Spanish are fairly close for both number of people and number of countries that speak them. But it looks like most of those numbers are based on official languages of the countries, so they won't be very accurate when you figure people who speak English as a second language. I know that most Europeans speak English even if it isn't their native language. Likewise the Japanese and other Asians learn it as a second language as well.

SECOND EDIT: Found this on WikiAnswers. Who knows if it is accurate, but it looks good and seems to fit with the general idea I got from other sites.

" Native Speakers

1. Chinese (1.1 billion)
2. Hindi (360 million)
3. Spanish (340 million)
4. English (322 million)
5. Arabic (206 million)
6. Bengali (180 million)
7. Portuguese (180 million)
8. Russian (167 million)
9. Japanese (127 million)
10. German (95 million)

Total Speakers

1. Chinese (1.5 billion)
2. English (1+ billion)
3. Spanish (500 million)

4. Hindustani (460 million)
5. Arabic (452 million)

6. Russian (278 million)

6. French (265 million)
8. Portuguese (215 million)

9. Bengali (211 million)

9. German (150 million)
10. Japanese (130 million)

Languages spoken in the most countries

1. English
2. French
3. Arabic
4. Spanish
5. Russian
6. German
7. Portuguese
8. Chinese
"

Peter1981 wrote:

The bad thing about that would have been that all canon captains of starships named Enterprise would have had a "British" sounding name.
Archer
April
Pike
Kirk
Harriman
Garrett
Picard

you have forgotten Spock (ST2:TWoK) in this list and Riker (TNG:tBoBW) both captianed Enterprises as did Lt. Castillo (TNG:YE) on the Enterprise-C

I was thinking of those who were rather regularly commanding the ship, not of special circumstances like captain dead/assimilated or an occasional training cruise, but you are absolutely right, thanks.
Oh and in that case: Riker comes from Alaska, Spock's mom has a "British" sounding name (Amanda Grayson).
Castillo's first name was pronounced in a rather "English" way, not in a way that would reflect a Spanish or Latin background.

However remembering an intersting detail from the "Conversational Klingon" CD with Michael Dorn:
He never says "Engish", he always uses the term "Federation Standard", so perhaps phrases like "In English", which the Doctor uses in "Message in a Bottle", are actually phrases translated for the viewer's convenience.
Maybe they are not meant to reflect that it is actually the English language, but we can never be sure about that.

thought you'd like the anality of my comment Mr_D

Hhmm. perhaps the French version goes something like this......


Riker - Mon Deiu Capitan, it iz ze Klingons

Picard - Sacre Bleu, cannot I hav a croissant in peaze....Put zem on ze screen

Klingon - Identify yourself Federation scum!!!

Picard - It iz I, Capitan Jean Luc Picard, of the Gallic Starship Enterprize, at your servize!!!

Klingon - Are you French?????

Picard - ‘Ov courze I am French, why do you think I talk in thiz outrageous accent. Now go away you Cornish pasty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction.....your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries...., now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!

(apologies to Monty Python!!!!!!)

meh... the whole universal translater thing is iffy... because i believe every race speaks it own language... i find it hard to believe how it sometimes doesn't translate words instantly... like in ds9 the word pag.h wouldn't the translator translate it to soul? or half of the klingon words that are used.

on the side note... i am all for the captain name:LiL' Latoiya Shanequay or something african american

I'm *cough*not*cough* for using titles as names. Like Prince. the singer dude really is named that. apparently.