# Accents, HOW?!



## Codey Amprim (Dec 2, 2011)

Alright so this bit about world building has me absoultely stumped. I want to add some more authenticity to my world with the peoples of different regions, cultures, and societies having different accents and dialect. 

How in the hell does one describe an accent of voice in text? For example, if I want a band of barbarian-like mountain men to sound Irish, how does one depict that accent in a world where "Irish" simply doesn't exist?


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## Steerpike (Dec 2, 2011)

You can use dialect in the dialogue itself, or even use speech patterns, word choice, slang, and the like to attempt to reflect the accent. If you go the route of trying to show dialect directly, use it sparingly. A little goes a long way toward establishing the right 'voice' in the mind of the reader, and if you overdo it you can turn off some readers and make the dialogue more of a chore to read.


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## Sparkie (Dec 2, 2011)

Steerpike said:


> if you overdo it you can turn off some readers and make the dialogue more of a chore to read.



For example, the Redwall series by Brian Jacques.  While I love the series as a whole (it was one of my favorites growing up), a lot of the dialouge is overdone.  The 'mole dialect' in particular can feel like such a burden.  If you want a good exanple of what _not_ to do, pick up one of those books.

I wish I had more to offer, but i'm not quite that good of a writer


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## Devor (Dec 2, 2011)

Codey Amprim said:


> Alright so this bit about world building has me absoultely stumped. I want to add some more authenticity to my world with the peoples of different regions, cultures, and societies having different accents and dialect.
> 
> How in the hell does one describe an accent of voice in text? For example, if I want a band of barbarian-like mountain men to sound Irish, how does one depict that accent in a world where "Irish" simply doesn't exist?



There are traits to an accent which linguists can pick up on and which might add that distinctive layer of detail you're looking for.  If you have a specific accent in mind, you can try googling for an essay on it.

I had to read about how to write in the Irish accent for a monologue back in High School, and there's little differences you'd never pick up on by yourself.  I remember reading that they tend to emphasize things through word choice, rearranging a sentence to give the word more prominence, rather than using inflection.

One thing to bear in mind, a lot of times readers associate colloquial words which appear in dialogue with poor simpletons, to say the least.  Someone can have an Irish accent and still use all the right words, and while absolutely you can use colloquialisms in your dialogue, I think that the subtler voice patterns tend to go farther toward's your character's development.


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## Ravana (Dec 3, 2011)

Speaking as a linguist, my recommendation is simply not to try. Few people have the "ear" to get it right, in terms of accurately representing dialects/accents directly. Besides, if none of your characters speak English in the first place, any attempt at portraying what would happen to English if it were spoken by someone with such an accent descends into logical farce. (Sort of like those complaints about Kevin Costner not speaking with an English accent in _Robin Hood_… since Robin Hood wouldn't have had an English accent, either. He wouldn't even have been speaking English–not that anyone other than a scholar would be able to recognize: he would have been speaking Anglo-Saxon with the common folk, Norman French with the important ones–including his king: Richard I never learned anything other than French.)

For more general purposes, you can describe the way the accent sounds: purpose-specific words such as "brogue, drawl, lisp, lilt," etc., or "growled, slurred, nasal(ized)," etc., or phrases such as "clipped endings," "staccato consonants," "long vowels," and so forth. (There are more technical possibilities, but somewhere between "strangled glottals" and "trilled apicals" you're going to start losing your readers.) Just be consistent in your choices–which probably means only mentioning them once or twice to establish a sense of what the accent is like, to avoid endlessly repeating the same descriptors. Or simply mention that Bob O'Bobgrimsson speaks with a Ponderanian accent and leave it at that. Throw in a few personal and place names from Ponderania to establish sound patterns, and let the reader do the rest of the work.


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## Kelise (Dec 3, 2011)

Everything I was thinking has already been said perfectly by Ravana.


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## Erica (Dec 5, 2011)

The accent thing puts us in a bit of a dilemma as writers, since we are usually instructed to 'show not tell' but then we're advised to avoid trying to write accents phonetically and simply to 'tell' the reader that the character has a drawl or a stutter something. To make things more confusing, some successful fantasy writers do put accents in their books (Mercedes Lackey comes to mind), but if it's not done well, it can be irritating and distracting to the reader. 

Sometimes you can slip the notion that someone is from a different social class or background by having them use different words for things, different forms of profanity, swearing by different gods or whatever. Unless you are a linguist, or have access to one who will 'vet' your writing for you, it's probably best to keep phonetic accents to a minimum.

Ravena is right, of course. If your story is set somewhere other than reasonably recent history on Earth, they're not speaking "English' as we know it anyways. 

Still, movies, computer games and TV shows do seem to have stereotyped accents they give historical and fantasy people. Dwarves are often portrayed with Scottish accents in video games. In TV shows and computer games, beggars and servants always sound like Victorian Cockneys no matter what time period or country they come from. And why do Roman officers always speak with a proper "BBC" British accent in movies, games and TV shows (even American ones), while the common soldiers speak like working class British blokes? We've come to expect it, I guess.


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## Lapis Nebula (Dec 11, 2011)

I've seen accents pulled off well by describing the difference between the accented character's voice in contrast to other "non-accented" characters, generally by establishing one or two key characteristics of the accents. Some acting-pointers websites may be a good resource to try and ID the main components that make, for example, an Irish accent an Irish accent. If you search "how to do a convincing Irish accent," you get lots of websites designed for actors with tips of how to create one - softening vowels, harden your "r"s. This can work its way into your dialogue descriptions when you first introduce the character. To make a really terrible off the cuff example:

"What's brought you all the way up here? We don't get many of your kind this far north." Her voice had a musical lilt, with rounded middles and rolling r's. 

I've also found strategic (and minimalistic) end-of-word clipping can be really effective. 

I'm wracking my brain to come up with a book that does this well, but I can't! I know they're out there. Anyone have any suggestions?


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