Forums » RP Discussion » Accents in Roleplay

Accents in roleplay have always been a bit of a pet peeve with me. As a native Dutch/German speaker, a lot of people don't manage to get the transcription of the accent right. Because Hollywood doesn't always utilize native German speakers for instance, the accents in movies are often wrong or too heavily forced, making things sound off. I've seen a lot of roleplayers apply this to their RPs and effectively getting it wrong.

This drives me up the wall, but I can't really blame anyone for doing it. Characters without accents would be boring. In my personal preference, I'd prefer that someone didn't try to write the accent, but simply makes note of 'Suzie speaks with a Dutch accent' or make mention of it in the roleplay from a writer's perspective, e.g. 'Suzie said "Thank you," with her usual Dutch accent'.

I'm not saying everyone should write like this, I'm just saying this is my personal preference. But! That does limit one to thinking "How DOES this accent sound?!" Well, I stumbled upon a very interesting site a while ago.

People from different backgrounds record themselves reading out loud. It's the same piece of text every time, read by people with varying degrees of skills in English. They also hail from different areas in a country, where their native accent might be of influence in how they pronounce English words.

The speech accent archive.

It's a fascinating site, and it can help you both ways. You can either use this to learn how to transcribe your character's accent properly, or you can pick one and tell people "This is my character's accent, imagine it when you read their speech!". Or it can just be tons of fun to listen.

Neat! This is an awesome resource that I totally bookmarked. Thanks Sanne. However don't forget the strange sounding characters like my Draeval who have no discernible accents but something more...vague.

His spoken text comes out like this: "'ey diz iz 'ow I talk, ya underztandz me?" Because of various injuries he's suffered as a character, so it's more of an accent/speech impediment. I love this though and will definitely use it!

You're welcome!!

Fantasy languages and impediments don't count for this in my book. I speak in a particular way in English because I'm bound to the rules of my own language, more or less. (Some vowels and letter combinations don't exist in Dutch, but they exist in English for example, so it can become difficult to pronounce them right and I end up pronouncing it like I would in Dutch instead.) When an American learns Dutch, they speak the language with a very distinct accent for the same reason until they improve and advance. It's these forms of accents that are usually written wrong and bug me a bit.

I can't say the same for made-up languages and accents that exist because of physical reasons, so that doesn't bother me! I do enjoy reading those and trying to hear them in my head.

I get stomach ache when I see people trying to write out a german accent ...

Thank you! this is a fantastic resource, which I'll definitely be utilizing with my characters.

Awesome! I have been looking everywhere for something like this. I was always worried that my characters' Scottish/Ukranian/Cockney/etc accents were off. I usually play it by my rp partner's wishes, like if they don't want me to write the accent out, I don't. I know a few people that refuse to read Mark Twain simply because of the written accents. :p

Nah Ah cain't speak fer e'rybody, but Ah find that if Ah say whut Ah'm tryin' tah say out loud, in the ac'cent that Ah'm tryin tah say it in, then jes' type the sounds that are comin' out of mah mouth, it generally works out al' right fer meh. (Thick Southern)
That li'l tidbit o' information siad, som'times ye ha' ta put a limit on 'ow much ye be changin' from mouth to fainger, less nary a soul be understandin' ye. (Scottish)
Of course, it also helps if the person reading it is willing to make the sounds themselves. That allows for even thicker accents to be used. Really, it's all just a matter of understanding and phonetics, as far as I'm concerned.

My English is good, but this stuff makes reading very, very difficult and I often don't manage to get it right even if it's written 'properly'. It just adds a level of difficulty I find hard to enjoy, but that's personal.

I you Sanne, I generally ask new rp partners what they prefer. That's hard with Draeval, because well he really can't help it lol it's an issue in his rps most of the time that the other characters he happens to interact with are like "...what is he even saying?!" So he reacts to it.

But, for my creole characters I definitely ask it isn't fair to the players you're interacting with especially on a forum such as this to expect them to "just read it". There are several here who speak and are of different language origin. So some level of consideration by the player of a character with an accent should be taken into account when they interact with players they may not be used to.

I totally agree with you both. Which is why I almost never do thick accents. The only time I ever really even consider typing with an accent, truly, is when I'm playing a character from the American South, and even then, it's usually only 'Ah' instead of 'I'.
My initial response was poorly worded in the end, when I was only trying to provide an example of how I go about the task. Truth be told, it was inconsiderate of me and I am humbled. I apologize.

Meh, maybe this just flys right over my head but I dislike accents when people change the spellling of there speech because not only my char not understand it but not even myself making it hard to respond to as if its really bad and strong about 70% of what they said is lost on me, however if i could understand most of it I would be fine with it

99% of my accents are just dropping letters. Of course, I actually speak like that "runnin'" "jumpin'" or in the rare case of my cockney character I dropped the H's too. Given the vocabulary of the character, it wasn't necessary I sound out every word in my terrible cockney accent.

I don't mind the occasional accent flare in roleplay or writing, but when it comes down to (heavily) editing every word, or even more than say three a sentence - then you've probably gone too far. As I said, dropping letters in favour of aposterphies I don't find terrible. You can still read the word. You generally know what's being dropped.

does that make sense?

Though most of my characters are discreet, I have a few with accents, most tending to either be of Asian (more Japanese than Chinese/Korean) or they have a Brooklyn accent. I most times just drop letters, and replace some with a letter to help influence the pronunciation. Either way, I honestly find it fun just to read what my character just said and explain that to the other people in the RP. I do have one with a Scottish accent (She came about after I watched Brave for the first time) and she's meant to be a spitfire of a girl.

It's too much of a pain to transcribe my words into another language, so sometimes I explain what they said and give the heads up that they spoke in the accent very, very heavily so that maybe not everyone would understand.

Ashi, the third oldest (age-wise, not by date created), has managed to keep his accent but I don't try to type it, just note it's there.