Re: Trip Speaking Vulcan
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 4:44 pm
Sorry for bringing that thread back up, but I realized lately that I appear to be a freak of nature (longwinded intro alarm)
The general consensus seems to be that Trip would speak Vulcan with a southern accent and I dare to contradict that theory. I present exhibit A - Kotik:
I have a very pronounced Berlin dialect and I'm practically unable to suppress it. I think the longest I ever could was in the region of 3 to 5 minutes, before I inevitably fall back. Now comes the catch - I'm fluent in both Russian and English and I speak both languages completely free of accent. It was one of my favourite self-entertainments during my time in Russia to speak with people, who didn't know where I come from and wait how long it took them to realize that I'm German - or at least to realize that I wasn't born in the USSR. Most failed at it. There were some, who thought I was ukranian or from one of the baltic soviet republics and even that almost took up to 2 hours for them to notice. Sounds like self glorification and I'm loving every second of it
Anyways, it gets even weirder. Both English and Russian have a bootload of loan words from German, like the word Schlagbaum, which is pronounced exactly the same in both Russian and German and means barrier (as for instance in level-crossing) in both languages. When I'm speaking in German, I'm pronouncing it Berlin style, while in Russian I'm pronouncing it correctly.
So here is my theory. If one is learning a new language, especially if it is very different from your native one (which Vulcan is), one starts with a clean sheet and speaks without dialect. That's why I submit, given the right motivation (which a life with T'Pol is) and the right effort (which T'Pol will make sure he puts in), Trip would speak accent free.
The general consensus seems to be that Trip would speak Vulcan with a southern accent and I dare to contradict that theory. I present exhibit A - Kotik:
I have a very pronounced Berlin dialect and I'm practically unable to suppress it. I think the longest I ever could was in the region of 3 to 5 minutes, before I inevitably fall back. Now comes the catch - I'm fluent in both Russian and English and I speak both languages completely free of accent. It was one of my favourite self-entertainments during my time in Russia to speak with people, who didn't know where I come from and wait how long it took them to realize that I'm German - or at least to realize that I wasn't born in the USSR. Most failed at it. There were some, who thought I was ukranian or from one of the baltic soviet republics and even that almost took up to 2 hours for them to notice. Sounds like self glorification and I'm loving every second of it
Anyways, it gets even weirder. Both English and Russian have a bootload of loan words from German, like the word Schlagbaum, which is pronounced exactly the same in both Russian and German and means barrier (as for instance in level-crossing) in both languages. When I'm speaking in German, I'm pronouncing it Berlin style, while in Russian I'm pronouncing it correctly.
So here is my theory. If one is learning a new language, especially if it is very different from your native one (which Vulcan is), one starts with a clean sheet and speaks without dialect. That's why I submit, given the right motivation (which a life with T'Pol is) and the right effort (which T'Pol will make sure he puts in), Trip would speak accent free.