Does Trip have much of an accent?

[bluetiger]

I remember our dear Aikiweezie saying somewhere (maybe even on another board) that Trip's accent irritated her at first but she got used to it. This is not a joke. I can't hear any accent. I always thought that if he was doing southern, it was too subtle to pick up. Without being rude (because I'm very proud of my southern heritage) was it all that noticeable?

[WarpGirl]

No I'm with you. I live down South now, but I'm from NY and even if I was "home" I wouldn't have noticed this huge accent. Which is why I sometimes get annoyed when fics have Trip dropping every g and forgetting the u in you, and in general unable to speak coherently. As a transplanted Yankee I love my adopted region and can truthfully say there are much fewer people who talk like that than the stereotype portrays. Even Paula Deen (famous southern TV cook) doesn't talk like that.

Trip's accent really isn't that strong at all. Although people from different places might think so because they rarely hear an accent like that. Which is why some people might assume I speak like someone from Brooklyn which I most certainly do not.

[Aquarius]

It's more of what I'd consider a "light drawl," not heavy at all. It actually happens to a lot of transplanted Southerners in real life, as more "neutral" accents influence the speech. (Truly, there's no such thing as a neutral accent, there's only what convention agrees to be the "standard", which is arbitrary.) Given that a lot of Northerners migrate to Florida and that it's reasonable to assume Trip has spent a lot of time in California because of the whole Starfleet gig, his accent wouldn't be that heavy any more, and might only really come out prominently when drunk, agitated, etc.

Plus, the only Florida people I've known to have an "accent" were usually from the north, like the panhandle area.

[WarpGirl]

Well that's true enough. My sister talks like a PEI native now. However, I still think that usually people think any accent "is strong" when it's one they have very little contact with. And it's also something that people assume a lot about based on movies, TV and other media. When I first moved to where I am now a lot of people would tell me that they expected me to sound like the sterotypical NYer. You like a mobster on TV. Especially if they knew I was half Italian. So... I think it's a lot of things.

[bluetiger]

Well good. That's what I always thought, it just seems very subtle to me. It isn't that I have no ear for it. For instance, Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer seems to lay it on a little thick for me. However I have no idea where her character is suppose to be from. When people write Trip barely understandable and saying ain't I get upset. I do use the Darlin' thing because that is what I call my son and as we all know it has no g

[Aquarius]

Well, I'm used to Southern accents, as one side of my family is from West Virginia and the other is from Missouri. The members who live up here though speak like everyone else in Michigan; it's my grandparents on one side and my aunts and uncles on the other who speak like their particular regions. Plus my aunt Lori's husband is from Alabama, though his accent is softening a bit from being in Michigan for the last 15 years or so. So stacked up against all that, yeah, Trip's is lightweight to my ear.

Funny thing about your sister--to you, she sounds like a PEI native now, but I bet that to the PEI natives, she doesn't. Funny how it's all subjective like how you said, huh? This was one of my favorite parts of linguistics last semester.

[WarpGirl]

Brenda Lee Johnson is supposed to be from Atlanta. However, she does lay it on thick, but I think it's intentional. She likes to have people percieve her as a certain way. She never keeps it too thick when she nails the bad guy. But I know what you mean about when people write Trip like that. I honestly want to pull my hair out sometimes. I'm like, "OK I think you might need to watch with captions or something."

Oh no her married family has been there for 6 generations. They're proud how quick she adapted. She's only been there 3 years. But my sister and I both are mimics. We have almost perfect ears for sounds. We're singers and we can imitate just about anything at all.

[panyasan]

Well good. That's what I always thought, it just seems very subtle to me. It isn't that I have no ear for it. For instance, Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer seems to lay it on a little thick for me. However I have no idea where her character is suppose to be from. When people write Trip barely understandable and saying ain't I get upset. I do use the Darlin' thing because that is what I call my son and as we all know it has no g

O my husband hates her accent. I always have to change channels when she is on. (He learned his English on an American college, so he got asked a lot which state he is from. Not me. I have as my husband teases me "an Oxford" accent). I never noticed much of an accent with Trip and I don't like fics that make him talk non proper English. He speaks proper English - with an American accent. (Not that Americans don't speak proper English... )

[WarpGirl]

No we don't. But that's our charm!

[Aquarius]

Well good. That's what I always thought, it just seems very subtle to me. It isn't that I have no ear for it. For instance, Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer seems to lay it on a little thick for me. However I have no idea where her character is suppose to be from. When people write Trip barely understandable and saying ain't I get upset. I do use the Darlin' thing because that is what I call my son and as we all know it has no g

O my husband hates her accent. I always have to change channels when she is on. (He learned his English on an American college, so he got asked a lot which state he is from. Not me. I have as my husband teases me "an Oxford" accent). I never noticed much of an accent with Trip and I don't like fics that make him talk non proper English. He speaks proper English - with an American accent. (Not that Americans don't speak proper English... )

Well, most Americans don't speak "proper" English; just some come closer than others. There's a big difference between how we're "supposed" to speak and how people actually do. Trip still carries some linguistic features that may be unique to him rather than his particular region (we all have our own personal "mini-dialect"), like "cap'n" instead of "captain" when he's addressing Archer, etc. So I don't mind seeing that kind of stuff pop up in a fic here and there, it's when everything he says gets spelled out in a Southern accent that bugs me. Again, it's one thing if an author wants to exaggerate it because he's mad, drunk, whatever, because then it's showing the contrast to when he's "normal."

[justTripn]

I loved the accent because I thought it sounded like an "astronaut's" accent. After watching the Ron Howard "From Earth to the Moon" docudrama miniseries, I thought Trip sounded like a typical astronaut. I even ran this theory by Connor Trinneer at one of the earliest conventions. I said, "Did they give you that accent so you would sound like an astronaut? I thought you sounded like an astronaut." He said, "Did they give me that accent so I would sound like an astronaut? Not that I know of. I never thought of it that way, but thanks. I might use that answer in the future."

So it is not a strong accent, but it is a definite accent. (Whatever it is.)

[justTripn]

Also, Connor said he picked the accent before he learned Trip was supposed to be from Florida. He was supposed to be doing a Southern accent so he tried to imitate the accent of some of his relatives who lived in . . . . Alabama???? maybe. Anyway that's what he was going for.

[WarpGirl]

I will swear in court it was Arkansas. And yeah I can't spell that state.

[Alelou]

I definitely hear the southern-ish drawl in Trip most of the time, though it waxes and wanes a bit, as it probably would in most educated people from anywhere. You switch unconsciously depending on how relaxed you are and who you're with. I have no trace of Southern accent except with certain words (like "pen," which I pronounce "pin"). But put me on the phone to my mother and I start drawling.

Most (white) people on the Florida coasts below the panhandle and maybe Jacksonville are not really from Florida, which is why those people don't have accents and the Florida natives who grow up around them also tend to have mild accents, if any. For example, of 25 kids in my high school biology class in Clearwater, only two were native Floridians (plus the teacher, who had the thickest accent). Older natives tend to have stronger accents -- my grandmother's and my mother's are very thick, even though they're from the Gulf coast (Tampa area).

[panyasan]

Well good. That's what I always thought, it just seems very subtle to me. It isn't that I have no ear for it. For instance, Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer seems to lay it on a little thick for me. However I have no idea where her character is suppose to be from. When people write Trip barely understandable and saying ain't I get upset. I do use the Darlin' thing because that is what I call my son and as we all know it has no g

O my husband hates her accent. I always have to change channels when she is on. (He learned his English on an American college, so he got asked a lot which state he is from. Not me. I have as my husband teases me "an Oxford" accent). I never noticed much of an accent with Trip and I don't like fics that make him talk non proper English. He speaks proper English - with an American accent. (Not that Americans don't speak proper English... )

Well, most Americans don't speak "proper" English; just some come closer than others. There's a big difference between how we're "supposed" to speak and how people actually do. Trip still carries some linguistic features that may be unique to him rather than his particular region (we all have our own personal "mini-dialect"), like "cap'n" instead of "captain" when he's addressing Archer, etc. So I don't mind seeing that kind of stuff pop up in a fic here and there, it's when everything he says gets spelled out in a Southern accent that bugs me. Again, it's one thing if an author wants to exaggerate it because he's mad, drunk, whatever, because then it's showing the contrast to when he's "normal."

I agree. I meant that people can speak with a regional accent, but still speak "grammatical" correct.