Durkula > Durkon

[Kruploy]

At least he can speak properly.

[137beth]

High Priest of Hel>Vampire Durkon>any wonky names the forum came up with for him.
Anyways, Durkon can speak properly. It's those humans who have some weird accents.
(http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0305.html)

[Koo Rehtorb]

It's Nokrud.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

At least he can speak properly.

That's an interesting way to measure whether someone is greater than someone else. I would say that things like possessing a creature, forcefully taking their memories (and therefore campaigning him to eternal dormancy), and lying to people who (excluding Belkar) have taken him in and accepted him would put him below Durkon.

[SaintRidley]

At least he can speak properly.

Go on....

I want to see where this goes.

[Koo Rehtorb]

That's an interesting way to measure whether someone is greater than someone else. I would say that things like possessing a creature, forcefully taking their memories (and therefore campaigning him to eternal dormancy), and lying to people who (excluding Belkar) have taken him in and accepted him would put him below Durkon.

It's all someone with a terrible accent deserves really.

[Keltest]

It's all someone with a terrible accent deserves really.

The Over-exaggerated Scottish accent is the king of all poor American imitations of real accents. Kneel before its might.

[Vinyadan]

At least he can speak properly.

Actually, that's really weird. Why should the spirit world speak a standardized form of Common as a mother language?

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Actually, that's really weird. Why should the spirit world speak a standardized form of Common as a mother language?

Perhaps he was created that way so that he could communicate with things more easily? After all, just about everything speaks common.

[Nilehus]

Even Hel, nasty as she is, knows how to speak properly. :smallwink:

[zinycor]

I like Durkula more than Durkon too, but i do love Durkon's accent more than the way Durkula talks, even though in my mind he sounds very bored and cynical, which for me is amazing :smallbiggrin:

[Rodin]

Maybe Common isn't his mother language. The only times we've seen him speaking to Hel are him by himself. There's nothing to say that is Common, it could easily be some demon-tongue that is being translated for us.

The lack of a visible accent when speaking in the real world doesn't mean anything either - it could easily be like RP English (Recieved Pronunciation, which is not an acquired accent but rather one that is taught. Think BBC news anchor). It isn't his native language but it isn't a thick accent, either.

[Cuthalion]

I like Durkula more than Durkon too, but i do love Durkon's accent more than the way Durkula talks, even though in my mind he sounds very bored and cynical, which for me is amazing :smallbiggrin:

Yyyes. While Durkon's accent might annoy me a little at times, each is just right for its character. If the spirit had the same accent, what'd the point be?

[CaDzilla]

I like HPoH because he's going give Durkon some character development.

[Synesthesy]

:durkon: wait, what accent?

[FujinAkari]

Wow... racist much?

[Kruploy]

Wow... racist much?

Okay. I have to ask. How does this make me racist exactly?

English isn't even my mother language yet I can speak it with excellent grammar.

Durkon's repeated butchering of a simply beautiful language is a great affront to common etiquette and unabashedly rude. His refusal to overcome his accent is causing immense pain to those that hear him speak.

That's why HPoH > Durkon.

True HPoH is evil but until now he has only harmed a few people while Durkon harms all around him, including the viewer, whenever he opens his mouth.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Okay. I have to ask. How does this make me racist exactly?

English isn't even my mother language yet I can speak it with excellent grammar.

Durkon's repeated butchering of a simply beautiful language is a great affront to common etiquette and unabashedly rude. His refusal to overcome his accent is causing immense pain to those that hear him speak.

That's why HPoH > Durkon.

True HPoH is evil but until now he has only harmed a few people while Durkon harms all around him, including the viewer, whenever he opens his mouth.

English is a beautiful language? And there's a correct accent to it? Not to mention, the High Priest of Hel still speaks in the same accent, even if he can speak in others.

[zinycor]

Okay. I have to ask. How does this make me racist exactly?

English isn't even my mother language yet I can speak it with excellent grammar.

Durkon's repeated butchering of a simply beautiful language is a great affront to common etiquette and unabashedly rude. His refusal to overcome his accent is causing immense pain to those that hear him speak.

That's why HPoH > Durkon.

True HPoH is evil but until now he has only harmed a few people while Durkon harms all around him, including the viewer, whenever he opens his mouth.

not being able to overcome an accent isn't rude at all. in fact HPoH is the rude here, because we know that durkon talks this way because that's how he sees the world, but HPoH is in fact doing a mockery of everything by imitating this accent, while he is able to talk normally.

As a side note, talking bad about accents is kinda racist, even if you don't speak in "proper" english that isn't really a big problem as long as people understand you, language evolves that way.

Accents are important to society, we should be able to tolerate and be open to understand that even things like language changes over time

[brian 333]

Okay, I just have to point out that all English speakers speak with an accent, even those in England. (The current 'English' spoken in England evolved between 1300 and modern times, and it is because it was during this time that English Spelling was being standardized that we are left with so many words that violate the rules of phonics. The spelling stayed the same, and the pronunciation changed.)

There are probably more accents of English than there are other languages in the world. It's easy to see the difference between Australian English and American English, but within my own home town of New Orleans I can speak to people with at least three different accents, all of whom were raised with English as a primary language.

Anyone who has traveled the world has run into English spoken by people who did not grow up with the language, (who incidentally often have a better grasp of grammar than native English speakers,) and the various accents lend a quality to the language found in no other. English is adaptable and evolving as we speak, and has reached every part of the globe because of this.

I once witnessed a crew of Texans teasing an Englishman for his pronunciation of the word Wednesday, and I had to point out that they too spoke with an accent. So never apologize for your accent when speaking English. It's what makes the language a great one.

As far as I'm concerned, Durkon can speak however he likes. If it effectively communicates his meaning, then it is GOOD ENGLISH!

[Math_Mage]

This overwhelming distaste for accents, besides being frankly bizarre and linguistically simplistic, must also contend with the fact that HPoH now speaks with an accent most of the time.

[Nilehus]

I thought it was a joke thread, honestly.

Durkon's accent never bothered me, really. Had to reread a few sentences to figure out what he meant, but nothing too major.

[Math_Mage]

I thought it was a joke thread, honestly.
While I agree, applying that idea to this thread in any more detail verges on forum rules violation. So I decided to take it seriously.

[Bird]

Anyone who has traveled the world has run into English spoken by people who did not grow up with the language, (who incidentally often have a better grasp of grammar than native English speakers,) and the various accents lend a quality to the language found in no other. English is adaptable and evolving as we speak, and has reached every part of the globe because of this.
As long as we're on the subject, a claim that one group of fluent English speakers has better grammar than another is roughly analogous to the claim that one accent is better than another. It's true that some folks hew closer to prescriptivist, textbook English, but the rules of textbook English are "superior" only by convention, not by any intrinsic worth.

For example, many Americans will employ double negatives ("I don't know nothing"), which is "wrong" in English, but completely fine in French. So, there's nothing inherently bad about double negatives. The fact that a native speaker uses double negatives where a non-native speaker doesn't is simply a sign of how the language changes, not of whose grammar is better.

To your point, though, I agree with you that many non-native speakers come across as more educated & eloquent than many native speakers, which may be a function of formal training, or of trying to be crisp.

[brian 333]

I agree with the above post completely.

And my apologies for my part in the derailment of this thread: back on topic from now on!

[Ceaon]

Okay. I have to ask. How does this make me racist exactly?

English isn't even my mother language yet I can speak it with excellent grammar.

Durkon's repeated butchering of a simply beautiful language is a great affront to common etiquette and unabashedly rude. His refusal to overcome his accent is causing immense pain to those that hear him speak.

That's why HPoH > Durkon.

True HPoH is evil but until now he has only harmed a few people while Durkon harms all around him, including the viewer, whenever he opens his mouth.

Yeah. It's not racist.
It's extremist language purism. And maybe a dash of skewed priorities.

[Synesthesy]

Well, you are lucky you aren't talking about italian :biggrin:

back in my country, we don't speak with "accent", we speak "dialects". A person coming from Turin speaking his own language has no chance at all to understand one coming from Naples speaking is own. Actually, dialects change much from one valley to another in Alps, not only from one region to another.

Here I studied english in school, I never went to England or USA, and I have no problem in understanding Durkon. If I wanted to make a oots translation in Italian and I make Durkon speak like in Piedmont, a lot of people from south Italy won't understand a word.

And yes, we have internal racism from North to South. And this is bad, really bad, because Italy is a beautyfull country but yet not really unite.

[Rodin]

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

-- James Nicoll

[Vinyadan]

Well, you are lucky you aren't talking about italian :biggrin:

back in my country, we don't speak with "accent", we speak "dialects". A person coming from Turin speaking his own language has no chance at all to understand one coming from Naples speaking is own. Actually, dialects change much from one valley to another in Alps, not only from one region to another.

Here I studied english in school, I never went to England or USA, and I have no problem in understanding Durkon. If I wanted to make a oots translation in Italian and I make Durkon speak like in Piedmont, a lot of people from south Italy won't understand a world.


Curiously, living abroad, I came back to my country to find that my accent actually got stronger and that I have developed a tendency towards speaking less Italian and more dialect, even though I had not come in contact with it for a year. Which may be an answer to the lack of effort on Durkon's side towards overcoming his own accent.

[Domino Quartz]

Well, you are lucky you aren't talking about italian :biggrin:

back in my country, we don't speak with "accent", we speak "dialects". A person coming from Turin speaking his own language has no chance at all to understand one coming from Naples speaking is own. Actually, dialects change much from one valley to another in Alps, not only from one region to another.

Here I studied english in school, I never went to England or USA, and I have no problem in understanding Durkon. If I wanted to make a oots translation in Italian and I make Durkon speak like in Piedmont, a lot of people from south Italy won't understand a word.

And yes, we have internal racism from North to South. And this is bad, really bad, because Italy is a beautyfull country but yet not really unite.

Written English is extremely standardised, but spoken English is not necessarily (though there are definitely standard forms*). English is my mother tongue, but when I was living in the USA (which I did for 4 years, visiting various places) I came across dialects of American English that were nearly impossible for me to understand.

*Standard British English (what I speak, with a NZ accent) and Standard American are the ones I know of, and I can understand both perfectly.

[Keltest]

Written English is extremely standardised, but spoken English is not necessarily (though there are definitely standard forms*). English is my mother tongue, but when I was living in the USA (which I did for 4 years, visiting various places) I came across dialects of American English that were nearly impossible for me to understand.

*Standard British English (what I speak, with a NZ accent) and Standard American are the ones I know of, and I can understand both perfectly.

Spoken English has an entire book full of rules which it promptly ignores. I live in Pennsylvania (on the east coast of the US for people who don't know) and we have like a million and four different accents or dialects. There are actually translation guides out there for PA mountain slang.

[137beth]

English is a beautiful language? And there's a correct accent to it? Not to mention, the High Priest of Hel still speaks in the same accent, even if he can speak in others.


As long as we're on the subject, a claim that one group of fluent English speakers has better grammar than another is roughly analogous to the claim that one accent is better than another. It's true that some folks hew closer to prescriptivist, textbook English, but the rules of textbook English are "superior" only by convention, not by any intrinsic worth.

For example, many Americans will employ double negatives ("I don't know nothing"), which is "wrong" in English, but completely fine in French. So, there's nothing inherently bad about double negatives. The fact that a native speaker uses double negatives where a non-native speaker doesn't is simply a sign of how the language changes, not of whose grammar is better.

To your point, though, I agree with you that many non-native speakers come across as more educated & eloquent than many native speakers, which may be a function of formal training, or of trying to be crisp.
Both of these. Wait, did I just agree with a post suggesting English is not beautiful, and then a post saying English is 'great'? Oh well.

[veti]

Oh goody, a language thread. And about English, no less. It's not as if there were already countless (http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/) entire (http://forum.thefreedictionary.com/forum1_English.aspx) forums (http://www.myenglishpages.com/forum/forum_files/forum_index.php) and (http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/) blogs (http://grammarist.com/) devoted to nothing else out there.


The lack of a visible accent when speaking in the real world doesn't mean anything either - it could easily be like RP English (Recieved Pronunciation, which is not an acquired accent but rather one that is taught. Think BBC news anchor). It isn't his native language but it isn't a thick accent, either.

What is this distinction between "acquired" versus "taught"? I grew up speaking something very close to RP English, and yes it was taught, but it was also what the people around me spoke, so it was natural to me. Do speakers of other accents never correct their children's pronunciation? - if they do, then they're "teaching" their accent just as much as RP does.


I once witnessed a crew of Texans teasing an Englishman for his pronunciation of the word Wednesday, and I had to point out that they too spoke with an accent. So never apologize for your accent when speaking English. It's what makes the language a great one.

As far as I'm concerned, Durkon can speak however he likes. If it effectively communicates his meaning, then it is GOOD ENGLISH!

Thank you for that. I'm always glad to see someone standing up for inclusiveness. But I've sometimes failed that test: there have been times when I've been speaking English to a native-English-speaking American, in America, and they've completely failed to understand the words coming out of my mouth. (I can understand them clearly enough.) I can only guess, because those particular people just don't meet enough foreigners - it takes some practice to tune the ear to an unfamiliar accent.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Both of these. Wait, did I just agree with a post suggesting English is not beautiful, and then a post saying English is 'great'? Oh well.

Actually, I don't think Bird says great any or any similar word while referring to English.

[137beth]

Actually, I don't think Bird says great any or any similar word while referring to English.

Huh, I quoted the wrong post:smallredface:
Here's what I meant to quote:

Okay, I just have to point out that all English speakers speak with an accent, even those in England. (The current 'English' spoken in England evolved between 1300 and modern times, and it is because it was during this time that English Spelling was being standardized that we are left with so many words that violate the rules of phonics. The spelling stayed the same, and the pronunciation changed.)

There are probably more accents of English than there are other languages in the world. It's easy to see the difference between Australian English and American English, but within my own home town of New Orleans I can speak to people with at least three different accents, all of whom were raised with English as a primary language.

Anyone who has traveled the world has run into English spoken by people who did not grow up with the language, (who incidentally often have a better grasp of grammar than native English speakers,) and the various accents lend a quality to the language found in no other. English is adaptable and evolving as we speak, and has reached every part of the globe because of this.

I once witnessed a crew of Texans teasing an Englishman for his pronunciation of the word Wednesday, and I had to point out that they too spoke with an accent. So never apologize for your accent when speaking English. It's what makes the language a great one.

As far as I'm concerned, Durkon can speak however he likes. If it effectively communicates his meaning, then it is GOOD ENGLISH!

[Psyren]

I like "Darkon" personally.

[NihhusHuotAliro]

English is a beautiful language enhanced/corrupted over years by latinate (latin and its daughter languages, especially french) vocabulary and influence (when you put such a large portion of Latinate words/influence in a Germanic language, it causes problem with pronunciation and spelling; but also diversifies the language, leading to more beauty and variety.) as well as vocabulary and influence from many other language trees.

English-speakers are the worst/not-actually-worst-or-best/best. I mean, look at Shakespeare, making up stupid/brilliant words all over the place.

[Hacktor]

Ye De Nee Get Yer Point Lad. :smallwink:

[Porthos]

As always, when talking about the English language, I like to defer to James Nicoll who had this brilliant observation:


The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Or, as it has been put by others (and if one felt like personifying the English language)...

We are the English Language. We will assimilate your vocabulary to better service our own. Resistance is futile. :smallamused:

[137beth]

What is this 'English' you speak of:smallconfused:
Durkon (and High Priest of Hel) are speaking Common.