Re: Hawkeye's Accent

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Comments:
: : : : : Exactly what type of accent did Hawkeye have? It sounded like a combo of different languages. 
: : : : : Has anyone else noticed this or am I reaching here?
: : : : : myte

: : :  I keep hearing about ddl's horrible american accent in the movie...but what they were going for was an authentic american accent from that time....of course they can only guess....
: : : : I think they took a normal american accent and threw in some english and some irish overtones.
: : : gus

: : : Gus and Myte,
: : : Mann was stuck between trying to portray Hawkeye as the Indian-raised frontier woodsman Cooper had created so authentically and upgrading him to the educational and class level which would allow the upgraded  officer's daughter Cora to be attracted to him.  It was difficult for Mann to present the 1700s to a 1900s audience and remain faithful to either.  What he came up with was a remarkable compromise which sort of did what we do with our fun scenarios on this Board - he combined whatever worked from both eras and trusted to the generosity of his audience to love the story without getting too analytical.  He probably never anticipated a crew like ours that would be counting the hairs on Hawkeye's chin before we were done with him.
: : : Gayle

: : Interesting. Often, I still miss some of the differences between accents in the English language (still struggling to get rid of my own accent) and can't tell unless it's a major difference, and I assumed that Hawkeye's accent was supposed to be the accent of someone whose first language had been one of the Eastern Indian languages (Lenape, right?). So, do Magua, Ching. and Uncas have accents? To me, it sounds like they speak slower than Hawkeye, but I'm not real sure.
: : Petra 

: Petra,

: Hawkeye's accent sounded very "american" to me.  Possibly a person's reaction to the accent depends on where they live in U.S.  The only time my ear caught an unnatural sound(to me) was when he used "ain't". Didn't expect to hear that word from the mouth of american in the 1700s. It could be authentic....will have to do some research.....I did hear what I thought was a slight irish accent at times from DDL.

: Ann


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