Discussion on Javier and Francisco accent

[SteveS]

Well, in truth, this episode was truly stupid and if I were the writer, I would be embarrassed to have this on my resume'. It appears to be written on roughly the 5th to 6th grade level of comprehension.

This is how shows get cancelled. Worthless even for filler.

[MidgardDragon]

[Edited]

[s_q]

[Edited]

[Nerial]

I'm just hope my friend and his family in Guadalajara don't get the CW! He was an illegal for six years, everyone around him knew he was an illegal, and nobody gave a rat's a$$. I'm talking about his friends, his customers, his employers, and his employees. Oh, and he didn't get deported--he left to be with his family last spring.

During the whole scene with the kid running like he was a fugititve, I was debating on laughing my butt off, or rolling my eyes. Yeah, we have rapes, robberies, and murders on a daily basis in our country, but the whole world stops to hunt down one little Mexican kid.

Uh, there are 12 million illegals in our country. They didn't just pop in yesterday.

[dave73085]

If Javier were a real Spanish speaker who grew up with his friend in Mexico, he would call him (at least to his face) Frahn-see-sco, with a Spanish accent, not Fran-sis-co.

[Ketchup]

Originally posted by bookworm1999
4. And last but not least, hoping against hope that they actually did some research on the matter there are states and cities outlawing even speaking another language besides english in public places, not to mention some bosses at work, they feel we might be telling them off without them knowing, so it would be realistic if that applied to the rancher as well.

Umm sorry, that's just... not true? The United States have no official language, NONE. If someone wanted to register their business and turn in all documents in Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, whatever other language they feel like, they could. It is just deemed appropriate to use English since it's the most common language. Outlawing other languages in public places is a ridiculous notion that violates waaay too many federal laws (in other words, states and cities can't do jack). If you still don't believe me, answer this... a tourist comes from Germany to one of these so called "English only" states and says Auf Wiedersehen on the way out of a convenience store... do u really think the FBI is gonna bother arresting him? Deporting him? Gimme a break.

Now what could be true is that some employers hire/make sure their workers speak English at the work place. That's more or less understandable if it's a job involving a lot of customer interaction. But then again at the rate of current immigration from Mexico, many companies try to hire biliguals who could best explain/understand more customers.

[Honey45]

It was pretty obvious that most, if not all of the other slaves couldn't speak English.

It makes sense that the two were talking about their escape in English - the slave owners weren't around to hear, and if the other slaves heard them talking about the escape in Spanish, they might spill the beans to the boss.

[boogiebear]

Originally posted by bookworm1999


4. And last but not least, hoping against hope that they actually did some research on the matter there are states and cities outlawing even speaking another language besides english in public places, not to mention some bosses at work, they feel we might be telling them off without them knowing, so it would be realistic if that applied to the rancher as well.

I am from NC, and we have a healthy growing population of legal immigrants. Tobbacco and apples are major crops, and many of the workers that used to move around to where the next field which had to be picked, have decided to stay here in NC. We have many other working now for other companies. I personally love it.
For every place that has hotheads that want to blame other people for their problems, there are more that know that the US constitution gives us the freedom of speech. If a company wants to perform their business in English, it is there right, especially when who they deal with also speaks English. If you don't want to work there, you don't have to work there. A city can propose a law to arrest anyone speaking any other language but English, but I promise you that a very happy lawyer will make sure they have enough money to buy and sell that city. No one has the right to stop someone from saying what they like (Except fire in a theater but that is another subject) on an American street corner. If a town actually did enact that within their charter, I will be there as soon as I can be so I can sue the crap out of them.

[98chase]

Weird. My roommate is on the phone as I type this with one of his Indian friends. They are speaking English. When he calls his mom or dad, I only hear Indian every now and then. He speaks English 99% of the time, regardless of who he is talking to.
By the way, he was born and raised in India.

I see nothing wrong with the two of them speaking English.

Did y'all notice that there were some inconsistencies with the lines in the cornfields? That pissed me off.


Also, LOL at losing IQ points. Edit: I removed the remainder of that comment. I'm not really trying to get a warning and/or banned.

[Ballawjordan23]

I think we are making too much out of this episode. if you did not like that they mixed politics in an episode then do not watch. Simple right? They right the script however they want, if you want a better episode then right one your self. You can't down Smallville because you didn't like one episode which was not even bad.

[InLove_with_Chloe]

As the one who started this thread I just wanted to point out that this thread is not about politics. It is about lazy writers and lazy TV producers who think their audience is also too lazy to read 3, or 4 lines of subtitles. I simply didn't think that's an impossible task, even for a regular couch potato like me...

[Ballawjordan23]

How do you know the TV producers are lazy? Do you actually know them? They do all these special effects which take much more time than subtitles and they are lazy? If they did not want to subtitles for some reason then they did not want to? It's there decision. Some people like it some may not? O'well.

[maryjanewatson]

no. nononononono. no. no. don't even think about it. no. stop it. no.

I don't care how much a mexican watches american tv, there is no way they could learn english so well as to not have a mexican accent and speak with a perfect american accent and sound like a total gringo when speaking spanish. as a mexican myself, i have grown up around half my family being from mexico, and even after 26 years of living in the US, my dad (who ironically is also named Javier. crazy world, huh) still has an accent. he learned most of his english from watching american tv also. but he still has an accent. all my aunts and uncles from mexico still have accents. my cousins. family friends. all still have accents.

so ya. that was the most unbelievable episode of smallville. if someone who had only been in the united states for 3 weeks and spoke english that well, they would not need to hide from immigration/police. people would just assume that they were born and raised in america, because that is the only way they could speak accent-fre english and not be able to pronounce their spanish correctly. the only other possible way for this to be would be if the parents were from america, and moved to mexico, and didn't know or learn spanish, and had their child in mexico and he lived there until he was 15, then illegally went into the united states. that would be the only other way.

I think i have made my point. smallville is such crap this season. i don't know why i keep watching, but i do. i mean COME ON!! at least get a mexican who can SPEAK SPANISH. geez.

[TampaVille]

Originally posted by bookworm1999
Yes in the US, LOL, I guess there's a reason these news are only available through spanish channels, maybe to warn us!

What states are these? Where did you learn this? If this is true, I'm very surprised I have not heard about it. Please direct me to a source of this information.

Originally posted by InLove_with_Chloe
As the one who started this thread I just wanted to point out that this thread is not about politics. It is about lazy writers and lazy TV producers who think their audience is also too lazy to read 3, or 4 lines of subtitles. I simply didn't think that's an impossible task, even for a regular couch potato like me...

Everybody's quick to jump to the subtitle issue. There is another very good consideration the producers may have had in their decision to have the boys speaking English. Casting for a role like that can sometimes be tricky for a show, seeing as it is aired on a week to week basis. Add to their other criteria for the Javier and Francisco characters the ability to speak Spanish. For all we know, that would have ruled their choices down to virtually nobody.

Do I know the producers thought of this, or that this would be a legitimate problem? No, of course not. But it seems very plausible and could have been a factor in their decision. They may have sat down and discussed extensively whether or not to have the boys speaking in English, and we would not know.

So I just ask that everybody please give the producers the benefit of the doubt on this and other issues. Though it may look like they were "lazy," all we really know are the results (in this case, the two boys were speaking English). That could have been because the producers were lazy and didn't want to think about the Spanish option, it could be because they didn't think the audience would want to read the subtitles, it could have been due to my theory that it would have made casting unnecessarily difficult, or it could have been some other reason entirely that nobody has thought of on this thread yet. The simple truth is that the only thing we know for sure is that NONE of us knows what the real reason is. So discuss it here if you want, but don't act as if you know something that you simply cannot know, and then cast accusations accordingly.

[TerraMan]

now. let's not forget, the general demographics that SV is being marketed to are the below 20 years old, (that's why the show is not on NBC, ABC or CBS stations) so there could be an assumption that THAT particular age group are too lazy to read subtitles, unfortunately, if this was the case, TPTB maybe also underestimating the real demographics that watches their show. In a way, if this underestimation by TPTB is true, they may as well also assume that everyone that watches SV are not as intelligent as we would hope we are.

The characters Javier and Francisco would have more believability if TPTB had them speaking in spanish, with subtitles, IMHO.