Spike's way with words

[Keanoite]

Ok this has been bugging me for awhile, where did Spike get his way with words and his accent for that matter. When he was turned he was a prim and proper Victorian man and suddenly he is talking like someone straight out of Eastenders!! As far as we know the Fang Gang left England relatively soon after he was turned and there is no mention of Spike going back, so where did he learn as these words i.e. Shagging, Bollocks etc...

[Mr. Pointy]

Ok this has been bugging me for awhile, where did Spike get his way with words and his accent for that matter. When he was turned he was a prim and proper Victorian man and suddenly he is talking like someone straight out of Eastenders!! As far as we know the Fang Gang left England relatively soon after he was turned and there is no mention of Spike going back, so where did he learn as these words i.e. Shagging, Bollocks etc...
Good point. My take on this is that most of these words have been around in English since way before Victorian times and, like many well brought up boys, young William may well have fancied himself quite the hard nut, wrong side of the tracks dude - even though he was a bit of a wimp...I only have to go back to my youth to remember all the nice middle-class boys who suddenly became working-class, mockney-speaking, stage-gobbing punk-rockers when their parents weren't around :)

The other, easier answer is that he did visit old Blighty regularly and, being a vamp, most of the folks he encountered were of, shall we say, the lower orders and he picked up his mannerisms from them...

[white avenger]

The other, easier answer is that he did visit old Blighty regularly and, being a vamp, most of the folks he encountered were of, shall we say, the lower orders and he picked up his mannerisms from them...


Another, simpler explanation would be that if Spike went around spouting a bunch of hundred year old street talk, we wouldn't know what he was saying. It's the same sort of poetic license writers use when they have Robin Hood order his Merry Men to "fire" their bows when the proper command would be "release."

[ILLYRIAN]

In England the correct command is to 'fire' the bow. Release might be okay in US of A but not in old blighty. And as Robin Hood is English, and possibly a fictional character the correct way, would be the way he was said to have done, regardless of what country your from.

Now about Spike spouting English words, maybe [ and I realise this may be doubtful ] he looked at one of Giles books, one with pictures in it. Then again it may have been the Englishman in Joss having fun with words.

[Keanoite]

Personally I think its Joss getting a kick out having Spike cursing and American viewers sota being oblvious to it but it still bugged me.

[DarklyDreamingDrusilla]

I think that Joss was just trying to give him a bad boy look so he put in all of the British cursing etc. He just would not be the same character without the accent etc. I would also say that his accent probably evolved from hanging out with Dru and the gang which is why he stopped with the Victorian speak.

[Keanoite]

I think that Joss was just trying to give him a bad boy look so he put in all of the British cursing etc. He just would not be the same character without the accent etc. I would also say that his accent probably evolved from hanging out with Dru and the gang which is why he stopped with the Victorian speak.
I agree with what you said about Joss but Dru was a Victorian girl herself, Angelus was Irish and Darla American, doesn't exactly add up to a cockney accent!

[DarklyDreamingDrusilla]

Yeah it makes more sense that hanging with the gang is where he developed the words and the "mouth" I guess not so much the accent. Angelus was definatly not a good boy when Darla sired him so he would probably have been cussing all the time.

[Lyri]

Spike was trying to build up his vamp cred when he first started talking like he just stepped out of Albert Square. you see him and Angelus arguing in the mine shaft in Yorkshire, 1880, and Angelus asks him why he was talking like that, so it wasn't something to do with fitting in with that times, at least not back then.

Spike probably realized just who his relatives were. i mean, Darla, Angelus and Drusilla were some big names in the evil world, i figure Spike thought that an uptight Victorian boy wouldn't fit in, so he tried to make himself into what he thought a vampire should be and eventually the persona that he adopted bcame who Spike really was.

[Tranquillity]

Listen to the Fool For Love commentary and you'll get a really great explanation of how 'Spike' was really just William's 'costume' adopted to enable survival in the world of vampires.

[littlewilly]

It was just for his hard man vamp image, when he first got turned he didnt want to be the polite little wimp anymore, so he puts on an accent and starts swearing. Or maybe when he was human, it was the 'proper' English accent that was put on, and his 'proper' image was just to please his mother.

[Karrde]

I don't know why you get so worked up about this stuff - no matter how well brought up (sometimes, especially when you're well brought up) you hear cuss words all the time. On the street, at the shops, in the schoolyards... it's been that way since the beginning of civilisation, and you have to know them and what they mean (well, unless you're raised in a monastery, but that's whole other set of issues right there).
Spike felt like cussing and he did. He liked English cusses better then American ones (national pride, whatever reason) and that's it. It's like saying why didn't he cuss in German or Czech because he spent some time there.
Anyways, you would cuss if you were with Dru for as long as he was as well. :D

[Fake Shemp]

everyone picks up cuss words... i mean who hasnt watched 'father ted' and ended up saying 'feck' or wtching 'bsg' and saying 'frak'?

whereas accent i alwasy thought that spike thought it made him tuffer and he wanted to look like the big bad in the family compared to angel

[SC7 Fan]

At home I don't swear at all only if I'm in a really bad mood. Then I'll say things like f**k off and I don't give a s**t. When I'm at school and my parents aren't around I swear quite a bit. All my mates do and so do I. Everyone swears whether it's only when they're in a bad mood or if their parents aren't around.

[Dlou444]

As a side note to Spike's language AND the Buffy vs Barbie thread.....

We did have a SMALL problem with our daughter "cussing" in bad British slang for a bit. I was a bit terrified she'd get either tossed out of Kindergarten or, at the very least, we'd get to chat with a teacher who was more up on what things meant.

She KNEW not to say *itch, but things like, "wanker", "stupid git", and random uses of "bugger" had us kind of on the fence. The biggest problem wasn't that she USED the terms, but just like with other words it was the VENOM and appropriateness that she used them with.

When the kids were younger, we REALLY tried to not curse. Which is hard for me, because my family is BAD about that now that we're all older. But, we tried. We used the word "Pickles" a LOT.
We soon stopped that as soon as we heard her SAY, "PICKLES" in a way that you ignored the actual word and could hear her saying it with the strentgh of if she was cussing a blue streak. At that point, the actual WORD seemed to make no difference what so ever.

We struggled with the "Spike Talk" for a while. Right up until my Dad heard her call her bike a "Stupid Bloody Git" and pulled me aside to talk to me about it. I told him that it concerned me a bit, but the chances of us taking her to England were slim to none and so I was trying to ignore it and see if she'd stop on her own. He was of the opinion that she'd end up with a teacher who knew a bit more than elementary education and we'd be sunk. So, we had to put a stop to it.


As for SPIKE using the words, it doesn't bother me one bit. I know all too well that if you hang out with people, even for a short time, you end up picking up their slang.
I find myself saying, "bloody" a LOT more than a little girl from East Tennessee EVER should.
I do question a bit how Angel LOST his accent and Spike didn't. But, I also think that losing an accent has more to do with WANT than just happening. Angel may have WANTED to lose his where Spike just, didn't.
I know if I hang out with certain people I get a southern twang that would give my father a stroke. On the other hand, if you turn on certain movies (like Newsies) I can end up talking with a HORRIBLE yankee drawl that's almost impossible to understand.

[LittleMissLikesToFight]

"yankees" have drawls? thats so funny to me. I always thought there were just southern drawls... i guess being a new yorker thats how i learned it. I would never think anyone here has a "drawl", we just have an accent.

[SC7 Fan]

If I'm not in a bad mood instead of saying s**t I say Sugar Honey Iced Tea. Nobody ever gets the connection.

[lollups]

havn't read the entire thread, so sorry if this has already been mentioned. I personally think that after the pain that spike went through with his (crazy psycho bitch!!) mother and, maybe to some extent, what happened with cecily(halfrek) and the ridicule he recieved from others, spike wanted to remove himself from his former life as much as possible and be taken seriously as a vampire. To do this he had to change his image and his entire attitude, creating the spike we all know and love

[littlewilly]

What self respecting vamp would wanna talk/act like William? Its not like Liam changed at all when he became Angelus.