Coal black and the seben dwarves

I wonder how offensive the use of "Atua" really would have been. It's one of those things that you can't really know without knowing the culture. The Maori might be shake their heads at WOTC's political correctness right now, or maybe it Kiora Atua is their equivalent of a character named Adolf Jewender.
I guess it's better safe than sorry though.

Better safe than sorry? The motto of quitters!

Okay, that's about far enou...actually, no. It's way, way too far. Let's kill this little digression with fire, shall we? I'll be deleting several posts from this thread to clean it up.

The topic is Kiora and Cultural Sensitivity. Stick to that please. Bowel-based anecdotes are not welcome.

Also, filter evasion is against the Code of Conduct. Stop it.

Bowel anecdotes bad enough to draw a mod that is one our ours? I want to know what I missed.

Just me.

I don't mind, but the translation did seem thematic for the set, isn't it basically translating to something like 'greeting the gods'?

Does it really matter what it translates to? Imagine Belgium was really religious (it isn't, really) and they used a phrase that's used to worship our local deity (for example: Onze Vader - Our Father) in a planeswalker's name, I don't think many people would care how thematically fitting it was. It's still using a phrase of worship for a fictional character (and one that opposes a god, no less). And even if someone isn't religious, a real-world phrasing of that kind heavily breaks my suspension of disbelief. Ghosts being called Geists on Innistrad bothers me for the same reason. Maybe it sounds cool and exotic to people who only speak English, but I recognize it as a German word on a world where Germany isn't a thing.

English wording doesn't bother me, because it's a convention that we use English in place of the actual language people speak, like how in movies about the Three Musketiers, no-one is actually speaking French (and then they ruin the illusion with French accents...).

The version which always kills me is the one where the Three Musketeers are played by John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, and Gerard Depardieu - three musketeers, three accents!

Rome (the TV-series) handled that really well. They deliberately used existing accents to show the social standing of the characters. In a medium with sound, accents are just another tool. But if everyone in France is speaking English, don't use a bloody French accent, French accents don't exist in this hypothetical world where the French speak perfect English.

Or have the British speak with a French accent. At least that way it would make sense. Kinda.

My favorite way of dealing with languages (let's stay with the example of French people speaking English) is to have them speak perfectly when they are supposed to speak their own language, and then have the accent when they are supposed to really speak English (as in, for example, they are speaking to an Englishman who doesn't know French).

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!


Sometimes accents are used peculiarly because of production history... I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you, but you have to admit it's somewhat bizarre that the French used a British accent... even down to the cockney child.

This seems silly.

Do you mean my opinion, English actors portraying non-English speakers, playing around with existing accents or having the British characters speak with a French accent?

Your opinion and the fact that they do English actors in non English roles. So I both agree and disagree with you. Don't ask me how.

I've always found it interesting that Romans are always given British accents. Like, forever. Since at least the B.S. 1960's. (There may be examples where this is not the case I guess.)

Especially since studies show and as my Latin teacher always taught us when speaking, Romans had no accent, you just speak it straight.

You mean phonetically? Funny, I thought that was the Phoenicians.

Romans were pretty straight shooters. It's the Greek who were the hippies. (not facts)

Greeks were a loooot more brutal than the Romans.