Posted by SusanH on August 05, 1998 at 17:15:35:
In Reply to: Re: Hawkeye's Accent posted by gus on August 05, 1998 at 11:10:49:
:
:
: 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.
Pardon me? Who says it is horrible? They don't live around here, for sure! The natives in the filming area detected some local pronunciations, much to our amusement. (Most noticible in vowel sounds) So I think that it *was* a conglomeration of accents/dialects. Actually, I have relatives who still use some of the old speech ways, including "beholden to", the use of "ye" for you, "ain't" or "t'aint", "real sudden like" ("He died real sudden like, as I recall.")
As an aside, I find it interesting that Wes Studi, from the western band of Cherokee, has traces of the accent of many in the eastern band. It may be that many of us are not as far from our pioneer "roots" as we think.
-Susan, beholden to