Those Foreign Accents

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 371, 2 August 1946, Page 10

Those Foreign Accents

Y accident I tuned in to one of the most hectic plays it has ever been my misfortune to hear. It came from a Dunedin ‘station and was all about the Nazi occupation of France. All the people in it were either German or French, and among themselves we may imagine them speaking only French and German; this, in order that we may understand the story, must necessarily be written for us in English--but why must the performers in such cases choose to speak such abominably foreignaccented English in unspeakably gutteral or nasal tones? If it is presumed that two Frenchmen speak good average French to each other, cannot this be translated as good average English? If we must provide a foreign character with an accent to indicate his nationality, let it be slight enough not to obscure our quick appreciation of the dialogue. The play I heard was so thickly overburdened with accents in every case that it was a constant strain on the listening ear. It was all about a Nazi official known as the Mad Butcher of Paris, whom the characters referred to as "zee mahd bootcheurrr" and his unmasking at the hands of the Underground, who tricked him into selfrevelation in a manner which would scarcely have succeeded if tried on a real Nazi official, even a minor one of

non-bloodthirsty tendencies. Surely it is time we scrapped the Occupation as a theme for spy-stories, since the true stories of those times are so much more gripping than any manufactured drama.