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Dialect contact in TV production
Jun. 8th, 2012 10:22 amOn Game of Thrones this season, a recurring character was Xaro Xhoan Daxos. Ignoring his somewhat more interesting-seeming first and middle names, I'd like to focus on his last name, "Daxos".
The cast consistently pronounced this name as if it were pronounced "Doxos", with the LOT vowel. That's a really unmotivated pronunciation for a name spelled "Daxos", of course. So presumably what happened is the following: the showrunners meant for the cast to pronounce "Daxos" with the FATHER vowel, a perfectly reasonable pronunciation given that spelling. But the showrunners themselves have the father-bother merger, so for them, telling the cast something like "pronounce the name as if it were spelled 'Doxos'" made perfect sense. But the actors don't have the father-bother merger, so following these instructions left them with a pronunciation that doesn't make sense given the spelling.
[EDIT: Although the variety of pronunciations among the cast for names like "Tyrell" argues against the 'showrunners tell the cast how to pronounce names' hypothesis.]
The cast consistently pronounced this name as if it were pronounced "Doxos", with the LOT vowel. That's a really unmotivated pronunciation for a name spelled "Daxos", of course. So presumably what happened is the following: the showrunners meant for the cast to pronounce "Daxos" with the FATHER vowel, a perfectly reasonable pronunciation given that spelling. But the showrunners themselves have the father-bother merger, so for them, telling the cast something like "pronounce the name as if it were spelled 'Doxos'" made perfect sense. But the actors don't have the father-bother merger, so following these instructions left them with a pronunciation that doesn't make sense given the spelling.
[EDIT: Although the variety of pronunciations among the cast for names like "Tyrell" argues against the 'showrunners tell the cast how to pronounce names' hypothesis.]
