Author: Moyra J. Bligh
Email: moyra@interlog.com
Date: 1997/06/07
Forums: alt.fan.mira-furlan
Message-ID: <3399AE13.3D4E@interlog.com>
It's always bothered me on some level that the aliens on Star Trek
and a lot of other series sounded like they had gone to college at
some school in the Mid- west. After all, if English is not your first
language there will always be some pronunciation and tonal differences
in your speech, however slight. But there they were, strange looking
creatures with that perfect "mid-atlantic" television sound. Part
of that, I believe is a direct result of the "powers that be" in the
industry thinking (now there's an oxymoron) that the audience will
not like anything that is different or difficult to understand.
So, one of the things that I liked about Babylon 5, long before I
got totally hooked on the show and utterly hooked on Mira, was the
fact that all of the aliens didn't speak perfect unaccented English.
The Narn, Centauri and Minbari Ambassadors all had accents. I felt
it added depth to the show, I felt that someone had actually taken
into consideration that English was not these characters first language.
I felt that the people behind the show had a little more imagination
than the usual types who were doing television. Some of it was probably
more good luck than good management, to have an actress of the caliber
of Mira Furlan, arrive in the country when she did is something you
can't plan for. I also have no way of knowing if anybody said "Oh
hey! I've got an idea what if the aliens all have accents?", but at
least the people behind the show were open to that possibility. And
I think it works beautifully.
I love Mira's accent, it's soft, it's subtle and has some very interesting
tonal qualities in it. The two things I notice most often are the
"a" or "eh" (I believe it's called a nasalized a, as in the french
word blanc) in her soft I's (my apologies to any linguistic students
out there I have no idea how to render this stuff properly.). Listen
when she says "thing" or less noticably "this". The other one is the
way she says Z'ha'dum, there's a "ch" sound after the Z that I always
thought made the place sound that just little bit more scary.
From the research I've done I'd say that English was not her second
language either, but more likely her fourth. Mira's grandmother was
a linguist who spoke German to her as a baby and later taught her
the basics of French. She attended a high school that was language
oriented, where English was the primary language. And later enrolled
in the University for studies in English and French. The fact that's
she's has as much linguistic training as she's had and from such an
early age probably goes a long way to explaining why her accent is
so very slight.
I have clients who are also from Zagreb and came to Canada around
the same time as Mira and her husband came to the US. They did not
have the benefit of such extensive linguistic training, so I've had
the opportunity to hear the accent in a much rawer form. It gives
me a little insight as to where some of the qualities in Mira's speech
come from. Interestingly enough they have commented to me that they've
seen Babylon 5 and how amazed they were that Mira speaks English without
any accent at all!
Moyra J. Bligh
moyra@interlog.com
newsgroups - alt.fan.mira-furlan
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"......never forget who I was, what I am and what I can do."
Delenn (Lines of Communication)
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