Editing Accent

{{cleanup|April 2011|This is in serious need of formatting, condensing and general fixing up.}}

[[Image:MMP2 Cosmos at controls.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Wheeere eeess the Malteeese Faalcon?]]
In virtually all versions of ''Transformers'' fiction that involves audible voice work, the voices of those Cybertronian characters feature identifiable '''accents'''. While the vast majority speak with what could be described as a generic American accent, there are a plethora of examples across different continuities of characters who speak with strong accents that are similar or identical to other human accents. 

The "behind-the-scenes" reason for this is reasonably simple — in a show where thirty different robot characters have speaking lines, a memorable accent or [[Soundwave (G1)|vocal quirk]] helps distinguish between "[[Starscream (G1)|the red jet guy]]", "[[Thundercracker (G1)|the blue jet guy]]", and "[[Ramjet (G1)|the grey jet guy]]". Furthermore, for better or worse, these stereotypical presentations help give audiences a "mental image" of the character — [[Beachcomber (G1)|the guy who talks like a beatnik]] is probably laid-back, relaxed, and totally cool.  The [[Ironhide (G1)|guy with the slow drawl]] is a rough and tumble cowboy who doesn't particularly cotton to all that fancy business, pardner.  Accents, in this context, provide a sort of "cultural shorthand," which is not even limited to Western audiences — Japanese audiences have their own cliched stereotypes as well.

There's also the voice actor angle to consider — some actors play multiple characters within the same series, and adding various accents helps distinguish between them. Having two characters who sound essentially similar, save that one is "[[Outback (G1)|Australian]]" and one is "American" allows a VA to play multiple roles discreetly.

The in-story explanation for all of this is usually... lacking. Most continuities do not explicitly point out how or when the Transformers learned to speak the dominant native language upon coming to [[Earth]], and indeed will often have scenes — particularly flashbacks - which depict them speaking Earthly languages with their individual accents while still on [[Cybertron (planet)|Cybertron]], before encountering humans. If one takes these scenes somewhat literally, it would indicate that these accents or some kind of approximations (although probably not the language itself) are ''somehow'' native to Cybertron — after all, [[wikipedia:Doctor Who|lots of planets have a "north"]]. Although it could be speculated that different Cybertronian social groups, class structures, geographical regionalisation or even [[Humanization|ethnicities]] may be the origin of these differences in accent, it is an issue which remains unaddressed in official fiction. The one exception would be [[Jetfire (Armada)|Cybertron Jetfire]], whose change from "regular" accent to Australian accent between ''[[Transformers: Energon (cartoon)|Energon]]'' and ''[[Transformers: Cybertron (cartoon)|Cybertron]]'' is explained by his having picked up the local accent after spending time on the planet [[Nebulos|Nebulon]]. 

In the movie universe, Optimus Prime claims that he and his troops learned to speak English from the [[Internet]]. It is possible that they also got their accents this way. Especially if they visited YouTube. Also, if they learned to speak English from the internet, there is nothing stopping them from learning other languages. This is supported by Optimus claiming that they learnt Earth's Languages (plural), although the scope of this is not seen in the film, in the novelization Optimus Prime tries to communicate with Sam through Mandarin Chinese before switching to English.

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[[Category:Transformer culture]]