Concerning Dwarvish Accents

Upon re-listening to the iTunes podcast from Session 3-09, I noticed Prof. Olsen's reminder that Khuzdul is a semitic language and his suggestion that dwarves should have a middle-eastern accent. I'm worried that doing this would risk running afoul of anti-Semitic stereotypes.

The dwarves are already sharp traders "with a keen idea of the value of money." If we add to this depiction an accent that sounds Israeli, whether it is specifically Israeli or not, we'd risk putting the viewers in mind of the medieval stereotypes about Jews. While I would never want to accuse Tolkien of anti-Semitism, I think our adaptation would definitely draw those critiques if we gave the dwarves a semitic accent.

I don't have a specific suggestion for the real-world accent we should import to designate the dwarves as non-native Sindarin speakers, but I think a middle-eastern accent is problematic.
 
The dwarves are already sharp traders "with a keen idea of the value of money." If we add to this depiction an accent that sounds Israeli, whether it is specifically Israeli or not, we'd risk putting the viewers in mind of the medieval stereotypes about Jews. While I would never want to accuse Tolkien of anti-Semitism, I think our adaptation would definitely draw those critiques if we gave the dwarves a semitic accent.
I agree. I think that the more negative depictions of dwarves in Tolkien owe much more to Norse legends about dwarfs than anti-Semitic stereotypes, but he did choose to give them a Semitic language... we have to tread very, very carefully about this.

One way to avoid the critiques might be to give different dwarf clans different accents. The Broadbeams, whom I suggested might have Mediterranean features, perhaps could have Turkish or Greek accents, while the Longbeards, whom might look more Scandinavian, might have more Norwegian accents. The only accent I would leave off the list is Scottish, as that's been done, and obviously any accent we use would have to be nuanced and authentic, not a "average American's idea of what the accent vaguely sounds like", especially if we go for any non-white people's accents.

The only critique I immediately see of different accents is that Khuzdul, being a language remarkably resilient to change, is likely pronounced practically the same in all dwarrow communities, and that therefore might make accents more universal... but depending on from whom and when they learn non-Khuzdul languages, I think we could argue that would affect their "Common Tongue" accents. My Latin and French accents (both terrible, I assure you), sound much less like my own American English accent than my rough imitations of my teachers' in the given language, after all.
 
I can see one solution.

In our breakdown of the 7 houses of dwarves, we did suggest having one house be Ethiopian. Granted, it wouldn't be the Broadbeams, the Firebeards, or the Longbeards, so we wouldn't see them very often.

But Amharic is also a Semitic language, and it's not from the Middle East and the people who speak it aren't Arab. So, we can give any travelling dwarves from that group an accent that sounds like this:



...and, okay, speaking English:


To be fair, there are Ethiopian Jews (the Falasha), and some of them do live in Israel as a minority. But I think this would help to sidestep some of the stereotypes, if we give the Semitic accent to this group in particular.
 
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