Accents in the audio book

[rmc28]

I am (fairly slowly) working my way through the audible.co.uk version of Ancillary Justice which is read by the actor Adjoa Anjoh.  I am impressed both with her delivery of different accents for different characters, but also the selection of accents.  To this British reader listener, those accents are very well chosen to bring out the colonial and class themes of the book.

• Breq-as-narrator and Breq/Justice of Toren One Esk as speaker, are RP English. Polite, formal, establishment, but not aristocratic.
• Awn has a mild Yorkshire accent, not as strong as Sean Bean as Sharpe, but reminiscent. 
• Skaaiat has a very upper-class slightly nasal English accent.
• The Orsian characters, especially the high priest, have an African accent.  (and here I am, ignorant child of a colonising nation, unable to tell by ear if it is Kenyan, Nigerian, Ghanaian or other country; just "African")
• The Tanmind characters have Afrikaans accents, which is fairly pointed given the Orsian accents.
• The Nilters have USian accents, that go well with the "Frontier Western" feeling of Nilt.
• Strigan has a German accent, playing into the fussy-German-doctor stereotype. edit but also lends some uncomfortable historical resonance to her discussion with Breq about genocide and refusing to follow orders.

The interesting choice is Anaander Mianaai, whose accent to my ears is rather closer to Breq's than Skaaiat's, at least in the body that visits Ors, though rather flatter, less pitch-variable.  Which given the other similarities between the two characters is, well, interesting.

(I haven't got enough through the book to meet any other Mianaai bodies and their voices, so maybe I'll come back with more thoughts then.)

So yes, I don't know who chose those accents, whether it was Anjoh or an editor, but I'm impressed by the understanding it shows.

Comments

[yhlee]

I can't listen to audiobooks [1], but I wish I could, and that I could tell accents apart [2]--that's really amazing. Thank you for telling us about this!

[1] My attention wanders every three seconds with the format. I've tried. :]

[2] I can't even tell American English accents apart except "that's probably a drawl" and I'm an American. I just have a terrible ear.

[rmc28]

I'm listening to it in chunks at bedtime (or any time I want to sleep or at least rest), as less likely to keep me awake than reading my phone screen. I set the timer to max 1 chapter at a time, and so far I either stay awake for the whole chapter, or fall asleep 3 minutes in, so I've been repeating a fair bit.

Also I've read the book repeatedly now, so I don't get too lost even if I do miss bits.

[kaberett]

Oooh, this is fascinating. Thank you for writing it up!

[rmc28]

You're welcome ;-)

[teaotter]

Ooh! Now I need to go listen to those. (Not that I'd be able to identify accents at all, but they'd still add a layer of meaning.)

[rmc28]

I think the US audiobook has a different narrator, which may of course have different cultural connotations.

[vass]

The interesting choice is Anaander Mianaai, whose accent to my ears is rather closer to Breq's than Skaaiat's, at least in the body that visits Ors, though rather flatter, less pitch-variable. Which given the other similarities between the two characters is, well, interesting.

Very interesting!

If you hadn't mentioned that Skaaiat's accent is notably more aristocratic than Anaander Mianaai's, I would have guessed that Anaander Mianaai's accent had drifted and gotten more 'common' over the centuries, like Queen Elizabeth II's has. (Well, except that I do know what RP and an upper-class English accent sound like and that you couldn't get from the latter to the former just by drifting.)

If you've heard Strigan by now then you'll also have heard Seivarden talk. Is her accent like Skaaiat's? I'm assuming it is... except much stronger, because it's described in the books as old-fashioned to the point where her Radchaai and an ordinary modern person's are almost mutually unintelligible.

[skygiants]

To be fair, I think it's only the person who speaks Radchaai with a mild Orsian accent that Seivarden finds really unintelligible (iirc.) But yes, this all is fascinating!

[rmc28]

So I've only just got to the point where Seivarden is talking much at all (on the glass bridge - I think I managed to nap through some of the bits at Strigan's), but her accent is more like Mianaai - slower and less inflected then Breq/One Esk, with more drawn-out vowels.

Skaaiat and Isaaia are alike, and for me at least, those accents are pinging "upper class" much harder than Mianaai and Seivarden, which are much more like RP.

[vass]

Thank you! That is fascinating. In that case, maybe Skaaiat's accent is a more modern upper-class Radchaai accent, and Seivarden and Anaander Mianaai (and Breq) have an older form.