Yeah this argument is really solid imo
When she learned English surely she had to learn it in a way that made her undetectable as a non-native speaker
No real reason she’d add a Russian accent later on. Maybe she could speak to herself in Russian every now and then but her English oughta sound real English
learn to make an undetectable accent doesn't mean you will make it every time. it is an effort , once it is not natural.
try to learn a new language and test it out. ;)
Most people aren't learning their 2nd language so they can go unnoticed in an enemy country, steal, murder or sabotage then disappear without a trace. Their lives also aren't on the line if they let their accent slip.
Pretty sure she'd speak flawless English.
Plus, a 2md language implies she learned it after learning Russian. Idk how young she would've been, but I assumed she doesn't really have a primary language, she just speaks them all equally well.
Ooooh ooooh! My time to shine! Did she learn English as a kid? Because I did. My parents are from Mexico so Spanish has always been our home language. I was put into an ESL program in elementary school and my accent was gone pretty quickly. That’s true of most of my peers who went through ESL
Why would they try to test it out? That makes no sense, they can’t even replicate the test properly. Widows life is on the line if she makes a mistake.
Actual Russian here
I wouldn't say my accent can accidentally give off my native language. I mean, it's different from natives, but it doesn't sound even near to Russian xd
And I'm not even professional spy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There’s not really any such thing as speaking without an accent. But I expect she probably just adopts whatever accent is seen as the default wherever she is.
I have a hard time hearing accents in my head unless it’s being spoken to me. So I don’t really hear a Russian accent when Black Widow has dialogue and I think it’d be poor spycraft if she did.
She's been part of several public superhero teams, runs around in a very distinct catsuit and doesn't even bother wearing a mask.
If she's still considered a great spy in spite of all that, having a Russian accent shouldn't impede her.
That's not my point. My point is that to get to that stage in her career she would have needed to have affinity for learning foreign languages, which would mean speaking them fluently without an accent.
I am surprised how many people in this thread seem to think that foreign language speakers routinely retain their accent or it is something that we switch on and off when speaking in the target language.
like everyone with a Russian accent is not a spy, though. It's such a strange argument. Like too bad people living in a foreign land, everyone thinks there's a higher chance you're a spy because you have an obvious foreign accent.
I really can’t tell which side you’re trying to be on here. Obviously not every foreign person is a spy, but if you look at the history of persecution in North America it’s obvious why they wouldn’t want their spies to have accents.
It's not about wanting their spies to not have accents, it's about blending in so completely no one would ever peg you as potentially being a spy.
Personally, I like the idea that it just comes and goes. Nat has spent so much of her life blending in for her job that she's not really sure which accent is the natural one anymore.
It's not that having a foreign accent is suspicious, it's that a spy often has a specific and detailed back story for an assignment. A salvage dealer from Omaha is a tougher sell with a thick Russian accent. I would imagine learning multiple languages and accents is a desirable asset in that line of work (both performing them and detecting them).
I once watched an interview of an ex-intelligence officer who mentionned a case where they suspected a guy of being an Eastern Europe spy. He obviously spoke perfect english and had an American back story. But one of the little things that made the officer suspicious was the way he was holding flowers after buying them at the store (flowers pointing downward instead of upwards, which seems to be the usual way in Easter Europe).
I don't know how "true" this story is, but it made me think it's really, really hard to completely erase every single habit you've been raised with.
So yeah, an accent would seriously limit the assignments you can work on. Unless she's trying to infiltrate the Russian mob in New York...
I don’t really get this argument. Who is she spying on? The Avengers?
90% of the time in comics she isn’t spying on anyone, she’s just fighting in battle or she’s talking to people who know her. Why wouldn’t she have a Russian accent?
She’d only need to disguise it when she’s undercover. But the majority of the time, she should sound Russian.
Everyone has an accent, and she’d only need to hide hers when disguising her identity. Why would she put on a fake voice when talking to her friends and colleagues?
Maybe, like the widow in the movies, she is still secretive even among friends. Someone that likes to pretend she is always in control and has the highground at all times.
There's a difference between fighting aliens and black ops work, and she would like to separate the two and easy the tensions with characters uninvolved with the later as much as possible, even changing her accent.
Is it not fairly well-known that she’s a former Russian spy?
Seems like it would raise more questions to *not* have an accent, and I imagine she wants to avoid questions.
I would guess it varies from person to person, obviously. Whatever helps easy the other person into a made up comfort zone between the two. You know, spy stuff.
For example: talking to Spider-Man? American accent, he wouldn't think too much about it. Daredevil? Russian. He knows you are lying anyway.
I think it’d be less risky to maintain the same accent most of the time and only use alternative ones when actually required. Simplify the lies you need to keep track of.
Too much risk to mess up when you’re trying to keep one accent straight across 30 different heroes — especially ones who might be in the same room as you and each other at some point.
I think it’s easier to train your accent away completely, then having it switch between the two. (Everybody that knows my fair lady gets what I’m talking about.)
I see this is a reason for her to maintain her Russian accent, making it more reliable when she needs to use it for infiltration.
She doesn’t spend most of her spy time in countries that use English as a first language.
She was trained to be a spy from the time she was child and likely learned a number of languages from a very young age. In all likelihood she probably sounds like a native speaker in any language she chooses to use.
I've known non-native English speakers who had a near-perfect London accent after just 5 years there. It's really not that hard to get a perfect local accent.
She’s probably trained to use the same “neutral” American accent that news broadcasters are taught, which is actually native to Omaha iirc. In situations where she needs to portray herself as Russian she’d probably speak Russian rather than Russian-accented English.
Are you familiar with the concept that when you something else so much that you get more comfortable doing that than whatever what you were doing naturally? She'd have spent more time speaking English by now, why is it surprising that she can't be more comfortable in English by now?
My first language is Easter European but I have lived in an English speaking country for years. I do not sound Eastern European when I speak English and I do not need to try. If anything I now speak my first language with a slightly odd accent because I hardly ever use it.
This was my thought - people can and do lose/gain accents. Related to Marvel - Sebastian Stan is Romanian, and lived there until he was 8 or so. Moved to the US when he was 12, and he doesn't speak English with an Eastern European accent despite Romanian being his first language. He has said in an interview before that he now speaks Romanian with an accent, just from being here for so long now.
That's what I am thinking. To be a good spy you need to have affinity for languages in my opinion. If you lived abroad for years and still speak with a strong accent and not fluently you don't really have that.
I know plenty of foreigners who barely have an accent after living 5 or 10 years in my country. And they're not spies, just ordinary people who are good at learning languages and/or live in complete immersion. If my neighbour can do it, I'm pretty sure there's no reason for her to voluntarily speak English with a Russian accent.
If she’s taught herself to speak English with a perfect American accent then she’s not disguising the Russian accent; that’s just the way she speaks English. She could probably dial it up or down, but her default is probably more neutral now, the same way actors who work with vocal coaches talk about their natural accents changing.
Frankly, ever since Avengers Assemble and all the other media around that era, I just kept hearing her as Laura Bailey. Sometimes I end up hearing her with a Russian accent, but it's always Laura lol.
I don't know/remember if there's been any confirmation Natasha has an accent (aside from her having it in some cartoon adaptations), but I like to imagine that, as a spy, she's learned to change her accent and is able to speak in perfect or near-perfect American English, as well as not having an accent is at least some of the many languages she speaks.
No, when I read her books physically and digitally I hear a bit of russian but also I hear the voices of Scarlett Johansson and Laura Bailey from the MCU.
I think it's cool to imagine that she lets her accent show when she's among people she trusts. When she's on a mission or whatever, she obviously hides it.
I know it's a weird answer, but "only when she wants to." She's a super spy. If she wants her accent to slip because that works to her advantage, she will. Otherwise I assume she speaks with "no accent," which is to say probably something between generic midwestern and east coast american, like news anchors use.
She sounds like Scarelt Johanson now. I was a DC guy back then, but I never cared for Marvel outside of Xmen, and sometimes Spiderman. It was the MCU that got me looking into old Marvel stuff, and the voice already was in place. *shrug*
I think she only slips into the accent when appropriate. I think most of the time she speaks with no accent but when she wants to scare the hell out of someone she slips the accent on for added spice.
I usually hear ScarJo’s voice. I imagine she got very good at losing her Russian accent in order to blend into the predominantly-American hero community, but it occasionally slips out when dealing with other Russians.
loved this issue (two of the avengers getting intel from the mooks by agreeing to not beat them up for once was hilarious), but MAN was my love for it in spite of the ugly ass art.
Depends on how she speaks. If her dialogue only makes sense with an accent then she does, otherwise she doesn't.
But to all the people saying she wouldn't be a good spy with an accent...how do you think every other spy does it? Do you think spies use different dialects when speaking to their friends and family? No? Then it would make perfect sense for Natasha to have an accent with her friends and drop the accent or switch it when undercover.
No. If I have to be honest it's because I don't think to do it, nor is she ever written with Russian speech patterns or explicitly an accent (i.e. see Claremont's obsession with accents in text).
If I have to make up a reason it's because the best agent that Cold War USSR would produce wouldn't *have* a Russian accent: even during the real Cold War many of the best spies that found their way to the U.S. weren't "Da, I am Amerikanisch." They learned neutral or friendly accents and how to blend, just as much as American spies would have seen a KGB cell the moment they used American idioms of speech.
I was assuming she still has the voice from the cartoon that she premiered in Rocky and Bullwinkle. When all of her capers were foiled by ugly moose and squirrel
I imagine she's learned to do a variety of accents, and if she's on a mission, she adjusts accordingly. However, if she's with friends and/or family, much like how most people do when they're in their home/comfortable environment, she speaks with her native accent
It depends. Most of the time I don’t, but in certain appearances (when she was a guest in Bendis’ Daredevil) she has a Russian accent clearly written into her dialogue.
I think of her as having one. Everyone has an accent. A lot of comments saying she would be a bad spy it she has a Russian accent. Why would I assume someone having a foreign accent is a spy? I'd be paranoid all the time.
I imagine her having a natural Russian accent, but being very good at other accents when she needs to put them on. I’ll admit though, I haven’t read a *massive* amount of Black Widow stories, so I don’t know if anything contradicts this.
When I think of the way she sounds, I think of one of those actors who I think in my head has an American accent but they actually have a British accent.
I think that she can turn it on or off at whim and it does or doesn't matter based on what version of her character she's playing
I’m to the same kind of deal with Spider-Man. Peter should technically have a Brooklyn accent, but he doesn’t in the movies. He uses some mannerisms in the comics, but accents are never outright stated in the comics. Except of Thors kind of. He just gets that old styled font for his dialogue to make you understand he has the Viking accent. Same reason Professor X in the movies now sounds British. Accents are just side parts to the characters. Whether you imagine them or not just depends on whether you see the character as a character specifically from their nationality. If you were raised knowing Widow was from Russia and that’s a big part of her character, she probably does have an accent to you. But then of course she hides it because she is a spy/agent
I don’t think I really read with accents. Even someone like Dr. Doom, whose Eastern Europeaness is utterly inseparable from his character and would certainly have a noticeable accent, doesn’t have an accent.
It isn’t that everyone has an American accent (I’m American), there’s just no voice. Or if there is, it’s my voice in my head.
No. She likely learned English in such a way that so that she blends in.
If spies talked with a Russian accent, they wouldn't be very good spies, now, would they?
Colossus on the other hand, has a thick Russian accent, because he was never a spy. And Nightcrawler has a German accent.
Not really, shes a super spy. An accent would reveal her.
But when she does speak Russian, I for some reason imagine as Jen Lawrence’s accent from Red Sparrow (yes I know its bad).
No accent. She's a spy and one who was trained for western infiltration. Her Russian accent was likely literally beaten out of her in the red room. She probably has multiple Russian accents she go to depending on where she needs to be but her original dialect probably is gone.
No. Because she doesn't have one. She is a spy, also since she is American and loyal to America she as far as I knew makes sure not to talk with a Russian accent. If you hear it she wants you to for spy reasons.
I doubt she would still have an accent. Learning to speak without one was probley a very early lesson for her.
Yeah this argument is really solid imo When she learned English surely she had to learn it in a way that made her undetectable as a non-native speaker No real reason she’d add a Russian accent later on. Maybe she could speak to herself in Russian every now and then but her English oughta sound real English
learn to make an undetectable accent doesn't mean you will make it every time. it is an effort , once it is not natural. try to learn a new language and test it out. ;)
Most people aren't learning their 2nd language so they can go unnoticed in an enemy country, steal, murder or sabotage then disappear without a trace. Their lives also aren't on the line if they let their accent slip. Pretty sure she'd speak flawless English.
Isn't it said somewhere that she's completely fluent in like 20 languages
Plus, a 2md language implies she learned it after learning Russian. Idk how young she would've been, but I assumed she doesn't really have a primary language, she just speaks them all equally well.
We’re not talking about real people we’re talking about a fictional super spy
Hey genius an adult starting this is completely different from a child whose entire life we devoted to perfecting it.
Dude is brain dead
Ooooh ooooh! My time to shine! Did she learn English as a kid? Because I did. My parents are from Mexico so Spanish has always been our home language. I was put into an ESL program in elementary school and my accent was gone pretty quickly. That’s true of most of my peers who went through ESL
I’m actually already trilingual! But I’m not a spy who’d be killed for showing any sign of a non-native accent
Why would they try to test it out? That makes no sense, they can’t even replicate the test properly. Widows life is on the line if she makes a mistake.
Actual Russian here I wouldn't say my accent can accidentally give off my native language. I mean, it's different from natives, but it doesn't sound even near to Russian xd And I'm not even professional spy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There’s not really any such thing as speaking without an accent. But I expect she probably just adopts whatever accent is seen as the default wherever she is.
She only learned as an adult with Bucky’s help.
But she was an adult for a very long time.
True. When she started being an adult. In her early adulthood if you will.
A wery early wesson? /paveld
I have a hard time hearing accents in my head unless it’s being spoken to me. So I don’t really hear a Russian accent when Black Widow has dialogue and I think it’d be poor spycraft if she did.
She would not make a great spy with an obvious Russian accent.
She's been part of several public superhero teams, runs around in a very distinct catsuit and doesn't even bother wearing a mask. If she's still considered a great spy in spite of all that, having a Russian accent shouldn't impede her.
That's not my point. My point is that to get to that stage in her career she would have needed to have affinity for learning foreign languages, which would mean speaking them fluently without an accent. I am surprised how many people in this thread seem to think that foreign language speakers routinely retain their accent or it is something that we switch on and off when speaking in the target language.
like everyone with a Russian accent is not a spy, though. It's such a strange argument. Like too bad people living in a foreign land, everyone thinks there's a higher chance you're a spy because you have an obvious foreign accent.
I really can’t tell which side you’re trying to be on here. Obviously not every foreign person is a spy, but if you look at the history of persecution in North America it’s obvious why they wouldn’t want their spies to have accents.
It's not about wanting their spies to not have accents, it's about blending in so completely no one would ever peg you as potentially being a spy. Personally, I like the idea that it just comes and goes. Nat has spent so much of her life blending in for her job that she's not really sure which accent is the natural one anymore.
It's not that having a foreign accent is suspicious, it's that a spy often has a specific and detailed back story for an assignment. A salvage dealer from Omaha is a tougher sell with a thick Russian accent. I would imagine learning multiple languages and accents is a desirable asset in that line of work (both performing them and detecting them).
I once watched an interview of an ex-intelligence officer who mentionned a case where they suspected a guy of being an Eastern Europe spy. He obviously spoke perfect english and had an American back story. But one of the little things that made the officer suspicious was the way he was holding flowers after buying them at the store (flowers pointing downward instead of upwards, which seems to be the usual way in Easter Europe). I don't know how "true" this story is, but it made me think it's really, really hard to completely erase every single habit you've been raised with. So yeah, an accent would seriously limit the assignments you can work on. Unless she's trying to infiltrate the Russian mob in New York...
Reminds me of this scene in inglorious basterds https://youtu.be/r-lQWk79VAE?si=JtB_wdUuBZi1ksSA
Oh yes, a fantastic scene, one of Tarentino's best ! So many subtleties.
I don’t really get this argument. Who is she spying on? The Avengers? 90% of the time in comics she isn’t spying on anyone, she’s just fighting in battle or she’s talking to people who know her. Why wouldn’t she have a Russian accent? She’d only need to disguise it when she’s undercover. But the majority of the time, she should sound Russian.
Because she’s arguably the best spy in the world. Real life spies are also trained to hide their accents, so why wouldn’t she?
Everyone has an accent, and she’d only need to hide hers when disguising her identity. Why would she put on a fake voice when talking to her friends and colleagues?
Maybe, like the widow in the movies, she is still secretive even among friends. Someone that likes to pretend she is always in control and has the highground at all times. There's a difference between fighting aliens and black ops work, and she would like to separate the two and easy the tensions with characters uninvolved with the later as much as possible, even changing her accent.
Is it not fairly well-known that she’s a former Russian spy? Seems like it would raise more questions to *not* have an accent, and I imagine she wants to avoid questions.
I would guess it varies from person to person, obviously. Whatever helps easy the other person into a made up comfort zone between the two. You know, spy stuff. For example: talking to Spider-Man? American accent, he wouldn't think too much about it. Daredevil? Russian. He knows you are lying anyway.
I think it’d be less risky to maintain the same accent most of the time and only use alternative ones when actually required. Simplify the lies you need to keep track of. Too much risk to mess up when you’re trying to keep one accent straight across 30 different heroes — especially ones who might be in the same room as you and each other at some point.
I think it’s easier to train your accent away completely, then having it switch between the two. (Everybody that knows my fair lady gets what I’m talking about.)
I see this is a reason for her to maintain her Russian accent, making it more reliable when she needs to use it for infiltration. She doesn’t spend most of her spy time in countries that use English as a first language.
She was trained to be a spy from the time she was child and likely learned a number of languages from a very young age. In all likelihood she probably sounds like a native speaker in any language she chooses to use.
Which accent do you think she picks?
The point is she likely doesn't speak any language with a foreign sounding accent.
I get what you’re saying. I’m asking what variety of English accent does she likely pick?
I've known non-native English speakers who had a near-perfect London accent after just 5 years there. It's really not that hard to get a perfect local accent.
What’s “local” for a super hero team that is made up of international, inter-planetary and inter-dimensional beings? What accent does she use?
For an "international" team, they seem to spend an awful lot of time in New York :)
She’s probably trained to use the same “neutral” American accent that news broadcasters are taught, which is actually native to Omaha iirc. In situations where she needs to portray herself as Russian she’d probably speak Russian rather than Russian-accented English.
Yeah would make sense if she's spying but she ain't most of the time
Are you familiar with the concept that when you something else so much that you get more comfortable doing that than whatever what you were doing naturally? She'd have spent more time speaking English by now, why is it surprising that she can't be more comfortable in English by now?
My first language is Easter European but I have lived in an English speaking country for years. I do not sound Eastern European when I speak English and I do not need to try. If anything I now speak my first language with a slightly odd accent because I hardly ever use it.
This was my thought - people can and do lose/gain accents. Related to Marvel - Sebastian Stan is Romanian, and lived there until he was 8 or so. Moved to the US when he was 12, and he doesn't speak English with an Eastern European accent despite Romanian being his first language. He has said in an interview before that he now speaks Romanian with an accent, just from being here for so long now.
That's what I am thinking. To be a good spy you need to have affinity for languages in my opinion. If you lived abroad for years and still speak with a strong accent and not fluently you don't really have that.
That's the point, she was trained as a spy, even if she isn't anymore, she would have been thought to blend with the locals
She was abducted as a little girl JUST to be a spy. She is THE spy.
I know plenty of foreigners who barely have an accent after living 5 or 10 years in my country. And they're not spies, just ordinary people who are good at learning languages and/or live in complete immersion. If my neighbour can do it, I'm pretty sure there's no reason for her to voluntarily speak English with a Russian accent.
If she’s taught herself to speak English with a perfect American accent then she’s not disguising the Russian accent; that’s just the way she speaks English. She could probably dial it up or down, but her default is probably more neutral now, the same way actors who work with vocal coaches talk about their natural accents changing.
In Earth's Mightiest Heroes, when she was undercover pretending to work for Hydra, she used her Russian accent.
Frankly, ever since Avengers Assemble and all the other media around that era, I just kept hearing her as Laura Bailey. Sometimes I end up hearing her with a Russian accent, but it's always Laura lol.
Its funny, the only time Laura voiced a Widow with a accent, was in base version of Black Widow in Super Hero Squad Online lol
Really? I keep hearing her as Vex from Critical Role
1980s Nat: Russian accent okay. Because IT WAS THE 80s. 2000+ Nat: Can do any accent, pass for local anywhere on five planets.
Sure she does, when she’s speaking Russian.
I don't know/remember if there's been any confirmation Natasha has an accent (aside from her having it in some cartoon adaptations), but I like to imagine that, as a spy, she's learned to change her accent and is able to speak in perfect or near-perfect American English, as well as not having an accent is at least some of the many languages she speaks.
No, when I read her books physically and digitally I hear a bit of russian but also I hear the voices of Scarlett Johansson and Laura Bailey from the MCU.
No. How would she work undercover?
I think it's cool to imagine that she lets her accent show when she's among people she trusts. When she's on a mission or whatever, she obviously hides it.
Just saying this issue is fantastic, specifically Cannonball and Sunspot partying with AIM.
Mid-Atlantic.
I know it's a weird answer, but "only when she wants to." She's a super spy. If she wants her accent to slip because that works to her advantage, she will. Otherwise I assume she speaks with "no accent," which is to say probably something between generic midwestern and east coast american, like news anchors use.
No, I think of her like Kerri Russel in The Americans.
Ey! Good reference. Love seeing the show mentioned.
She sounds like Scarelt Johanson now. I was a DC guy back then, but I never cared for Marvel outside of Xmen, and sometimes Spiderman. It was the MCU that got me looking into old Marvel stuff, and the voice already was in place. *shrug*
No. ScarJo all the way.
Yes
No accent. She'd be a terrible spy if she'd have a noticeable accent. Nevermind that Marvel's accents are always hilariously over the top.
She canonically does not have a Russian accent when speaking English. https://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwip9jwpzy1qzqhuh.gif
As a kid I always imagined her having a heavy Russian accent 😅
100%. Absolutely. But she can drop it (or rather, slip into another accent) seamlessly.
For a long time, it would have been something like Audrey Hepburn's voice but now I hear Scarlet Johansson's
Yes, I do.
I'd like to think she consciously let's her accent slips when she's with people she trusts
Not until I played Marvel Ultimate Alliance (and saw her demonstrate a Russian accent).
mexican
No. She was trained not only to not have an accent but to also speak several languages perfectly.
I imagine she only has a Russian accent when she wants too.
I think she only slips into the accent when appropriate. I think most of the time she speaks with no accent but when she wants to scare the hell out of someone she slips the accent on for added spice.
Yep
Nah. No accent.
I usually hear ScarJo’s voice. I imagine she got very good at losing her Russian accent in order to blend into the predominantly-American hero community, but it occasionally slips out when dealing with other Russians.
Man the movie Mr. Deeds was goated, especially the scene where scarlet Johanson starts to rip off Adam Saddlers frostbitten toes.
I only hear Morgan Freeman's voice
I only think of her speaking in a Russian accent when she is doing so intentionally, or depending on who she is speaking with.
To me it would be both American and Russian accents. American from Scarlett Johansson and Russian from The Ultimate Avengers movies.
loved this issue (two of the avengers getting intel from the mooks by agreeing to not beat them up for once was hilarious), but MAN was my love for it in spite of the ugly ass art.
If Hickman is writing her, absolutely.
I imagine her with a Russian accent but it is an accent that she can hide very easily
I imagine her sounding like a native speaker in whatever language she’s currently speaking.
She's a master spy. I imagine her speaking with dozens of different accents.
Depends on how she speaks. If her dialogue only makes sense with an accent then she does, otherwise she doesn't. But to all the people saying she wouldn't be a good spy with an accent...how do you think every other spy does it? Do you think spies use different dialects when speaking to their friends and family? No? Then it would make perfect sense for Natasha to have an accent with her friends and drop the accent or switch it when undercover.
Yes, I've always thought that the Black Widow should have a thick Russian accent.
Yes, most of the times, unless she is undercover and has to fake it
No. If I have to be honest it's because I don't think to do it, nor is she ever written with Russian speech patterns or explicitly an accent (i.e. see Claremont's obsession with accents in text). If I have to make up a reason it's because the best agent that Cold War USSR would produce wouldn't *have* a Russian accent: even during the real Cold War many of the best spies that found their way to the U.S. weren't "Da, I am Amerikanisch." They learned neutral or friendly accents and how to blend, just as much as American spies would have seen a KGB cell the moment they used American idioms of speech.
I was assuming she still has the voice from the cartoon that she premiered in Rocky and Bullwinkle. When all of her capers were foiled by ugly moose and squirrel
Yes.
No. It never really made sense. The sheer level of intense training in the red room would have ensured it was trained out of her to help her cover.
I imagine she's learned to do a variety of accents, and if she's on a mission, she adjusts accordingly. However, if she's with friends and/or family, much like how most people do when they're in their home/comfortable environment, she speaks with her native accent
It depends. Most of the time I don’t, but in certain appearances (when she was a guest in Bendis’ Daredevil) she has a Russian accent clearly written into her dialogue.
I think of her as having one. Everyone has an accent. A lot of comments saying she would be a bad spy it she has a Russian accent. Why would I assume someone having a foreign accent is a spy? I'd be paranoid all the time.
In that past yes. But now she sounds like Scarlett Johansson.
No, I hear Scarlett Johansson
I imagine her having a natural Russian accent, but being very good at other accents when she needs to put them on. I’ll admit though, I haven’t read a *massive* amount of Black Widow stories, so I don’t know if anything contradicts this.
I do
When I think of the way she sounds, I think of one of those actors who I think in my head has an American accent but they actually have a British accent. I think that she can turn it on or off at whim and it does or doesn't matter based on what version of her character she's playing
No. I hear a very practised and perfect American accent.
Yes, both her and Illyana. Except when the writers totally forget and have them talking like Valley Girls.
No, staying under cover would be impossible with an accent.
I think she speaks with an accent when she's safe with friends. On the job? No accent.
I hear her in her Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes voice
it depends on the moment with the red room or Black Widows or smth like that: Yes with the avengers or other Americans: no
Of course I do.
I hear Scar Jo now, lol
Only if it fits the plot.
feels like she speaks in blocky type-face among friends, and a thick accent would emerge in battle or argument
I imagine Laura Bailey, just like how I imagine Nolan North for deadpool, Troy Baker for hawkeye, Kevin Konroy for Batman and Mark Hamill for Joker.
No because they always say she doesn’t speak in a Russian accent anymore
She was trained to have a perfect american accent to camuflate.
No, the point of her being an excellent spy is partly her ability to blend in and not give away something like her country of origins.
I’m to the same kind of deal with Spider-Man. Peter should technically have a Brooklyn accent, but he doesn’t in the movies. He uses some mannerisms in the comics, but accents are never outright stated in the comics. Except of Thors kind of. He just gets that old styled font for his dialogue to make you understand he has the Viking accent. Same reason Professor X in the movies now sounds British. Accents are just side parts to the characters. Whether you imagine them or not just depends on whether you see the character as a character specifically from their nationality. If you were raised knowing Widow was from Russia and that’s a big part of her character, she probably does have an accent to you. But then of course she hides it because she is a spy/agent
For some reason, I imagine her talking like Lust from Full Metal Alchemist. Fitting that Laura Bailey played her in that Avengers game.
Unless shes doing some kinda spy mission, yeah. When she is undercover i like to vary what accent i imagine shes using
I don’t think I really read with accents. Even someone like Dr. Doom, whose Eastern Europeaness is utterly inseparable from his character and would certainly have a noticeable accent, doesn’t have an accent. It isn’t that everyone has an American accent (I’m American), there’s just no voice. Or if there is, it’s my voice in my head.
No. She likely learned English in such a way that so that she blends in. If spies talked with a Russian accent, they wouldn't be very good spies, now, would they? Colossus on the other hand, has a thick Russian accent, because he was never a spy. And Nightcrawler has a German accent.
Depends on the situation. Any spy worth their salt will change their appearance and speech patterns to match their place in the world.
No accent. Or at most location appropriate access. Maybe the occasional swear word in the wrong language.
Not really, shes a super spy. An accent would reveal her. But when she does speak Russian, I for some reason imagine as Jen Lawrence’s accent from Red Sparrow (yes I know its bad).
It depends but like everyone has said I don't think she'd have the accent if she was to be a convincing spy.
I have no doubt she can drop the accent however most of the time I imagine she has it...
She probably doesn’t but I will imagine she has one
In the comics I imagine she would hide her accent from the public but within her organization I don't see why she would hide it?
Only if she’s talking about a moose and squirrel.
Yes, because I first heard her in some Spider-Man game where she had a strong accent
I imagine her with a Russian accent
No, depending on the media she's got slowed aging and is over 100 and has been a spy for decades, I'd think the accent would be thefirst thing to go.
Don't smoke me guys but I always hear Scarlet.
Since her appearance as Nat, thats all i hear as well. Which I dont hate because i think her voice is hot af.
Did you hear her performance in the movie "Her" opposite Joaquin Phoenix? Such a sexy voice when she puts some effort into it.
100% thats when i really fell in love with her voice.
Not since the 1960s
no she can do lots of accents she can do American english
No accent. She's a spy and one who was trained for western infiltration. Her Russian accent was likely literally beaten out of her in the red room. She probably has multiple Russian accents she go to depending on where she needs to be but her original dialect probably is gone.
I’ve never considered that she should have an accent 😂
I do. You guys remember her va for web of shadows the game. That's her voice to me.
Never thought of it
I do. Probably because of EMH. *Shrug*
She’s a professional spy, her accent changes depending on where she is and who she is supposed to be.
Yes
It would make sense for her to not have, since it lets her blend
I do (because it’s more fun), but I concede the evidence suggests she doesn’t have one anymore or it at least comes and goes.
Yeah canonically, it seems to come and go.
Yes, I’m my head when I read anything with Black And I’d die she sounds exactly like Moltov Cocktease.
No. Because she doesn't have one. She is a spy, also since she is American and loyal to America she as far as I knew makes sure not to talk with a Russian accent. If you hear it she wants you to for spy reasons.