New interview with Christopher Tolkien

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

is lecturer really not understood the other side of the pond?

Not here in North North America!

As for the accent... the original is "Un Anglais distingué, doté d'un accent très upper class" I don't know that is making much of it, Doté is a bit stronger than with. It literally has the sense of endowed with. From the Silmarillion recordings, Christopher does have a very upper class accent.... though not suprising for someone of his age and schooling, especially an expat. If you use a different language for a lot of day to day life it can keep your native language in a time warp.

Given that there's no class lines in any of our few regional accents here, accents are not a significant issue here. I had to wonder what was so very relevant about CT's accent--just a bit of character expose or was the interviewer trying to suggest some kind of elitism or snobbishness on CT's part? Not quite the same as "upper class twit" but a bit of shading of the man.

It seems a pretty good translation really though I have been using French more recently it isn't back to what it was by a long chalk.

Thanks! I'm sure your French is still much better than mine, which gets some of the rust rubbed off on the ocasional (and rare) trips to Montreal.