Forums » RP Discussion » Speech Patterns

I know there's already a couple topics concerning character speech patterns, but I figured I'd post this more general one. Mostly because I feel the need to whine about it at the moment.

Different characters will, of course, speak differently depending on a variety of things, particularly their background (how they were raised, when and where they grew up, what they were taught, etc). Some of it is wording and sentence structure, some of it is accent, some of it is emphasis... And I like to make serious use of these things to add more character to my, uh... characters. I like listening to the sound of words (even though I can't identify most accents or differentiate most languages; kinda like how I love music, but can rarely identify any artists), and you may have noticed that bits of my "real" language tend to even end up in my OOC posts.

One of the first issues I had from trying to use accurate speech patterns was legibility in accents. Part of easing this involved still spelling words correctly (mostly) rather than phonetically, and relying more on apostrophes to get the point across. After complaints about too many apostrophes, I also had to reduce those, and my use of them still kinda fluctuates. So, consistency is still a bit faulty.

The problem I'm having more now is keeping track of the different speech patterns my different characters have. Different characters will use different phrasing of things and shorten different words in different ways. Some of it's fairly easy - most of my characters only have little variances in wording and most of the difference comes from disposition. Some stand out a little more, such as Green Mike's eloquence and Gregor being plain and to the point (when he bothers to speak at all) when he's not pretending to be someone else or otherwise goading someone into making a mistake. And then there's folks like Kyra, Willow, and Anna, with much more pronounced accents - each a little different, but each largely relying on lazy speech with incomplete or misspoken words.

And I'm trying to keep them all straight when I'm not even entirely consistent in using them. x.x I'm considering making myself a bloody reference sheet or something.

So! Setting aside my whining and inviting discussion... Do you bother with different speech patterns? Do you have trouble being consistent? Do you have any tricks for how you do certain ones or maintain consistency? Do you think the whole thing is dumb and you just want to be able to read the dialog, goshdurnit?

As someone who grew up with 3 different languages at once, learned English primarily with a British accent and later on got accustomed to American English, I'm very easily bothered by accents written fully out in roleplays.

Can it enhance a character in the story? Definitely. Can it become a huge pain in the ass for other people to make sense of? Definitely.

When it concerns foreign accents, they are almost always done wrong. There are several characters on RPR with an IC German background where the player uses a German accent in writing, but it's so very very wrong it makes me physically itch with the need to correct it. I generally don't because I believe it's intrusive to do so when someone doesn't specifically ask for it, but it drives me nuts and I absolutely refuse to roleplay with people that do this. I know it sounds terribly mean, but I can't stand it. I speak the language fluently and Hollywood German accents are not genuine German accents in the least.

Then there are the people who basically create a whole new written language by killing everything with apostrophes and changing vowels and adding letters or removing letters from words. I've seen some that are done well. I've also seen a lot that become entirely unreadable, forcing me to re-read a post 3-4 times before I even begin to understand what's being said. Accents should contribute to the RP, and when they reach a point where they become cumbersome (especially for non-native English speakers who are not overly familiar with all the accents) they just slow everything down and start being annoying.

So as far as accents go, I don't mind them, as long as they're done properly and enhance the game. My personal preference is usually just to denote the accent on the character page (and perhaps mention it a few times during posting) and let the user read it however they want. My priority is having my RP partners understand what's being said, and I don't feel confident enough in my abilities to do it right to tackle that and deal with the "Huh? What did s/he say?" questions. Generally none of my characters ever have a strong accent that makes it difficult for others to understand them, so it's just not really necessary to formulate it.

As for speech patterns, they're a bit easier. I think the most common ways to differentiate between characters is through formal and informal speech patterns. Something as simple as avoiding contractions in writing ("I am" vs. "I'm") can already greatly shape a character's image and give a good indication of their personality. Sometimes slang adds a consistent reminder of where a character is from. Pop versus soda anyone?

I honestly prefer no-nonsense, straight to the point roleplays overall. I've had too many encounters with people who didn't know what they were doing and got so completely caught up trying to be special snowflakes with creating accents that it's become a huge turn off for me. If I need to go back and read a post a second time because I got confused from the accent/speech pattern, I'm usually done.

I'll have to make sure I'm careful and tone things back if I ever get a chance to RP with you then, Sanne.

And, y'know, funny thing... I grew up saying pop, but now I always say soda. It was actually an intentional change after my family moved across the country, because "pop" suddenly sounded weird for some reason and I had concerns about people knowing what I was talking about.

I didn't mean to sound like I'm going to reject everyone who uses accents and the like in RP. As long as I can read it, it's fine. I've just run into a lot of unreadable dialogue in the past and it's very annoying when every post becomes a puzzle. I honestly doubt you'd fit into that category.

I've always used (and heard) the word soda. I didn't know some areas called it pop until I joined Furcadia and got to know more people from different parts of the US.

I do still get carried away sometimes. Examples of me possibly going a bit to far: recent posts with Kyra and Anna.

I stay away from accents for all the reasons Sanne brought up.

I'm not good at it, it interferes with communication, and rarely adds anything to the story. I feel like if I'm going to use an accent, I need to either be a native speaker, have a native speaker vet my posts, have some kind of relevant language major, or have taken lessons from a professional coach.

There will always be somebody who knows more about an accent than you do.

That said, I imagine my lizard people having Australian accents because Australian accents are pwnsauce.

What a fun discussion!

I don't bother with accents. I mutilate them in real life to the point that I don't even try to imitate them anymore. (Unless I'm quoting a movie and the line is spoken with an accent--Pirates of the Caribbean, anyone?)--that's as far as I get.

I suppose I could try to expand my characters to including different nationalities...but I'd more than likely fall into the pit of despair that Sanne mentioned about being unreadable. That, and I'm really lazy and like to get posts out quickly without wasting too much thought about how a character will respond, etc.

Not to say that my characters all speak formally in the same tone. Not at all. They each have their own way of speaking, and their own voice echoes in my head. When the RP is going really well and the character responds by him/herself without me needing to agonize over it, that's when I know I've got something good going on.

So...keep experimenting. Maybe look for novels or short stories where successful authors have employed accents here and there. Keep your eyes peeled and keep working on it. At any rate, I've always enjoyed the RPs I've ben involved in with you, Novalyyn.

B'aw.

I tend to hear Annani's accent in my head even for the narration. I only put a little of her accent into dialog though. Trying to really get it would probably make it unreadable. I'd probably mess it up too but it's only supposed to generally reflect a real accent, not perfectly match it.

I pretty consistently change dialect and accent for my different rp characters, and have a lot of fun doing it. Most of the time I stick within English dialects, however, and just change up emphasis and phrasing. I've done American Midwest, English Received Pronunciation (modified for two different characters), 1920's slang, Hawaiian pidgin, and since I generally roleplay in medieval settings, usually I don't use conjunctions when my characters are talking. Word choice is also very important for me. Some of my characters are illiterate farmers who wouldn't know a thesaurus if it bit them in the rear, and others have a better speaking vocabulary than I do.

I feel like changing speech patterns can very much influence characterization for me. From easy going and smiling to stiflingly correct and timid, the way my characters say things reflects their personality. When I do want to reflect a particular accent from a non-native English speaker, I usually do a lot of research, watching videos and looking up information on the differences you see, and then I put a little of that into my posts. If it becomes unreadable for me, though, I dial it back.

Generally I'll give a slight description, mainly of a slightly british accent ( i know some people that moved from there and Love the accent xD It's so...awesome xD) Now with many of my characters (especially real shy ones) they will have an occasion stutter. I myself have one when I'm annoyed, shy or anything like that. It gets even worse when I'm embarrassed, then it's a nightmare x.x this tends to transfer to my shy characters with l-like this. It mainly shows up in the beginning of a normally, but I switch it up at times.

You know, there's a number of British accents.

As there are different accents among the Dutch speaking English, Canadian and American and even New York and Californian accents. Unless the region and accent is really important to the character's design, generalizing an accent as American or British or even European is usually sufficient I think!

While I stay away from accents as a rule of thumb and for most of the same logical reasons above I will from time to time try using different types of speech patterns. My favorite is tied between old western style and Australian, mostly because I have several friends from Australia to get input on/from as well as having relatives that still speak in that old timey western drawl.

Weighing in as a former Linguist student! Accents also very from person to person regardless of where they were raised/what language/dialects. Two people in the same house can sound identical, but sometimes you will sound a completely different. There are many factors to how people will sound such as the languages and accents of the parents, regional accents and of course the function of their vocal cords, mouth and nose. Someone who has had a stroke won't sound like their brother they were raised with.

As for writing out accents, I generally find it in bad taste because what someone reads as /ah/ might be [a] to someone and [æ].

For myself if an accent is key to what they're saying I will either put it in non-dialogue text (when she said the word "milk" she pronounced the "i" as "a" making it "malk" - very badly written on the spot) or, if it's meant to be confusing as disorientating for the reader, for example an old sea Captain with a thick accent that is meant to be nearly impossible to understand, I put a translation beside it.

Just my two-cents.

Even if region is not really important, class almost always is, and a LOT of countries have some very strongly class-typed accents that would be wildly incorrect to use "generally." British accents are especially in this camp!

Oh man tell me about it. You know the crazy-posh accents of the characters Dr. Frasier Crane(Frasier) & Dr. Charles Winchester(M*A*S*H*)? For the longest time a very young me thought those accents British because of how fancy they were. Imagine my surprise to be told one day that they were actually very posh American accents (Winchester's stems from Boston I believe, Frasier's I don't actually remember).

Yes, that is a great example. If Winchester used the "regular" Boston accent, or a character meant to be a street thug used Winchester's Boston accent, we'd view them EXTREMELY differently.

Fortunately for writers, there are plenty of ways to tell a reader that a character is speaking a certain way without butchering their dialogue. Plenty of places have specific forms of slang or certain commonly-used words or phrases, which are very helpful to employ if you've done a bit of research. Characters that did not grow up speaking the language they're using in a story might occasionally hum over words they forget the translation of, or use short terms from their own language that are common or similar enough that others might understand what they mean.

I think my favorite way to communicate an accent, though, is to introduce it with adjectives that render a character's voice more clearly in a reader's head without getting too specific. Lilting and guttural are a couple of common terms that I use to describe the prosody of a soft-spoken Irishman and a droning, deep-voiced German, respectively. Depending on the accent and voice you're working with, you may consider terms like smooth, harsh, rapid, twangy, heavy, rolling, warm, clipped--the list goes on! Adjectives are a wonderful tool in this regard, especially if you do introduce the accent by name and want to gently remind the reader of it later on.

I agree with this full heartedly! However, I'll admit that I've been dabbling with a Scottish accent in my most recent group RP. I generally keep several tabs of Scottish slang open, have watched a few videos explaining the basic pronunciations of English words with the accent, and have read a couple of articles concerning writing out the accent. I lay it on thick, but in a comedic way. Some of what she says comes across as unintelligible to the others IC, but I generally do that when what she's saying is actually unintelligent and unimportant. She's the "muscle" of the group and doesn't often have much to contribute word-wise.

As Bakir helpfully proposed a couple of tactics, however, Desecra's expression slowly fell into a teeth-baring scowl. "Dinnae be talkin' oot yer fanny flaps as if I dinnae me job," she grumbled dangerously, spitefully adding "dunderheid" under her breath.

Creating language barriers can be fun, too! But outside of my half-witted half-giant, I usually just imply that there's an accent and leave the rest to my RP partner's imagination.