"[Aycharaych] spoke perfect Anglic, save for a touch of accent that added a kind of harsh music to it."
-Poul Anderson, "Honorable Enemies" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 277-302 AT p. 278.
"[Aycharaych's] voice was low, sheer beauty to hear."
-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 149-301 AT II, p. 160.
"[Aycharaych's] voice sang and purred onward, soft as the cognac they shared, in Anglic whose accent sounded less foreign than archaic."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Sir Dominic Flandry..., pp. 339-606 AT IX, p. 459.
Merau Varagan
"'A lovely vista,' [Varagan] said in American English, which his voice turned into music."
-The Shield Of Time, 976 B. C., p. 43.
Villains are either menacing or charming...
Musical adaptations of the Technic History and the Time Patrol? (No.) When I visited the Albert Dock tourist attraction in Liverpool, a shop assistant almost sang to me in her Liverpool accent. If I had been Andrew Lloyd Webber, that would have been the inspiration for a musical.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
As Andersonians know, we have two versions of "Honorable Enemies." I was interested enough to check whether the bit you quoted from that story matched. The original text has this: "He spoke faultless Anglic, only the faintest hint of his race's harsh accent in the syllables." So you quoted from the revised text.
Anderson shows us coarse, crude villains as well, such as Tosti the Wicked, whom King Hadding slew in WAR OF THE GODS.
Ad astra! Sean
My maternal grandfather was once addressed in Liverpool by an ancient local lady who told him, after she watched him drilling troops in 1918, "Aye, thou'rt a bad booger, thou art."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A nice example of an archaic, rustic dialect!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: working-class Lancastrian urban, in her case -- Liverpool was a major city and one of the most important seaports in the Atlantic basin at that time, and closely linked to the giant industrial complex centered on Manchester just inland of there. One of the crucibles of the Industrial Revolution.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sit corrected! I thought the bit you quoted seemed rustic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it's certainly very old-fashioned by the standards of London (or even American) English -- northern dialects retained thee-thou into the 19th and even early 20th centuries, while they'd been dropping out of London speech as early as the 17th.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And there might have been similar rusticisms in the dialects spoken in some parts of the Appalachian regions in some states of the US. Here I thought just now of the Silver John stories of Manly Wade Wellman, set in Appalachia.
Ad astra! Sean
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