Why don't D-elves get an accent?

[A desert Elf]

I find it odd that they do not currently get an accent.
I know, technically it doesn't really matter, because they are easy to spot as a whole.

Personally I would be in favor of giving them an accent, Tribal or maybe a new kind of accent?

Any of you have an idea for which accent they could have?
Or a reason for not wanting to give them one?

[mansa]

You don't notice accents when you're speaking with people from the same area as you.

You don't notice accents if your language skills aren't up to par.

Perhaps these two things aren't being overcome?  You can't tell your own accent, anyways.  You'd only be able to see if you -do- have an accent, is if you have a buddy who is from a different area in the game than you, and if you two both have a 'very good' common language, and if you tell him to copy and paste the screen to you.

[the same Desert elf.]

Or you email the mud to ask which one you get, and then Sanvean says that D-elves don't currently get an Accent.

[Bestatte]

Desert elves don't have an accent exclusive to them, but they -do- have accents. A desert elf from the north will speak sirihish with a northern accent. A desert elf from the south will speak sirihish with a southern accent. None of my characters have ever spoken Allundean well enough to know, but I'm guessing since Allundean is THE only elf-specific language, they wouldn't have an accent when speaking in their own native tongue. I could be wrong on that, and I'm sure someone who has experience with a northern d'elf hanging out with a southern d'elf would be able to correct me.

[mansa]

If you put it that way...

What sort of Accent should the desert elves get?  I think a 'new' one would be cool.  Something like..  'tribal'   but more cool.  'savage', 'kinky', 'queer'.

Well.  I really have no idea.  Someone else will.

[Agent_137]

peculiar?

[Barzalene]

Allundean?

[mansa]

Should all 'elves' have an 'allundean' accent, then?  And all dwarves have a mirukkim accent?  I don't side with that thought...

[The same one.]

Wait, so an elf born in Red Storm, sounds exactly like one born in the Blackwing outpost.

[Malifaxis]

Who came up with Allundean?  The elves.

Do you say you speak American, or English?  Yet to the people who invented that language (for those of you who still lag behind, this means people in England... you know, Englanders) sound entirely different.  What do we say they have?  They have an English accent.  Except we Americans are wrong.  We have an American accent.  They speak 'true' English.  We speak Western-accented English.

Fuck, I'm way too wasted to explain this right.  It makes perfect sense to me, how d-elves don't have an accent.  They speak true allundean.  It's supposed to sound savage and crazed, or something.

[Angela Christine]

Last time I talked to a delf they all had the northern accent, which seemed stupid to me.  There is no reason why a celf should be able to imitate a delf if he is from Tuluk, but not if he is from Allanak.  The tablelands aren't precisely north or south, because it is so long.  The northern 2/3 could be considered north, but the southern 1/3 is definately in the south, just a hop, a skip and a jump off the shieldwall from Allanak.

Maybe a tablelands accent?


AC

[JollyGreenGiant]

I'd say give desert elves a tribal accent.

[Bestatte]

Tribal = Native Bendune Speaker
Elves != Native Bendune Speaker

therefore:

Elves != Tribal accent

Also the accents only show up to others, when someone is speaking a language that isn't their primary language. You won't hear an elf speaking Allundean in a northern accent - though another elf might.

I'd like to see elves get an accent when they try speaking something other than Allundean too. I just don't think "tribal accented" is the best answer.

[mansa]

And Desert Elves are -not- just from the tablelands...  You have some in the eastern planes, and some from the salt flats.

Perhaps an 'allundean' accent -should- be incorporated for the 'elves' of the game?   Unless someone can think up a 'cooler' sounding name for the elves.

[Bestatte]

Well, what does Allundean sound like? I mean - the docs say it shares traits with Bendune and Cavilish in the alphabet..but I didn't see any reference to the sound of the words and sentences or sentence structure.

Sirihish - we can assume sounds like english - a combination of most sounds common to the various european languages.

The mantis tongue is a lot of z's..Halflings chirp, Anyar chitters, Bendune is maybe a lot of glottal sounds...maybe Allundean is mostly (and yeah I know I can't spell this word - not even well enough to look it up) sybillant? Lots of hissing S sounds to the human ear - graceful tip-of-the-tongue kinda sound.

So if that is the case, and elf speaking sirihish might speak - instead of "blah blah accented sirihish" - something like "says, hissing"

or something.

edit - brainstorm - add "in a wildlands-accented hiss" as another possibility? Would only apply to desert elves - city elves would speak sirihish in whatever accent their city humans have.

[Twilight]

If you use the common starting location for Desert Elves, you will get a northern accent.  If you start in one of the coded Desert Elf clans, I imagine you will also get the appropriate accent.  Talking to a city elf who started in Allanak or Red Storm, you will see them speaking Allundean with a southern accent.

It is possible to get a Desert Elf with a southern accent.  If you get into a tribe in the southlands, and some immortal notices it, they might a) change your accent b) put you in the tribe or c) eat your brainz.  You could always wish up to get your accent to match your background I suppose.  However, as these seem to be rarities, most people end up staying with the accent of their starting location.  Besides, it seems that at least from the tribes on the webpage, most are Tablelands or Northern anyways.

[Linguistic Lurker]

Who came up with Allundean? The elves.

Do you say you speak American, or English? Yet to the people who invented that language (for those of you who still lag behind, this means people in England... you know, Englanders) sound entirely different. What do we say they have? They have an English accent. Except we Americans are wrong. We have an American accent. They speak 'true' English. We speak Western-accented English.

WARNING: THREAD HIJACK AHEAD

I'm sorry, but you're incorrect in several ways, some of which I will proceed to explain.

1. There is no "true" version of ANY language.

2. There is a wider variety of English accents in England (and the UK as a whole) than in the entire rest of the English speaking world.  This is because English was formed there.  There are Welsh accents, London accents, "standard" British accent, Oxford accent, etc.  None of these can be identified as "true" English.

3. The American accent actually shares a great deal with the English accent from the 17th-18th centuries.  This is because that was when they were settling in the U.S.  By this measure, American English could be identified as the more "true" English, because it is more faithful to history.  English from England has changed more than U.S. English over the years.  The British have dropped pre-consonant R's, while we faithfully continue to pronounce them.

4. There is no "true" version of ANY language.

5. To give a glimpse of why the above is true, imagine: What defines a language.  You seem to accept that Americans and Brits speak the same language.  What about Jamaicans?  They have developed a different pronoun set as well as different tense markers.  Are Acadians who speak Acadian French, and people in France speaking the same language?  What about Bayou French?  African colonial French?  Haitian Creole?  Acadian and Bayou French maintain certain features of the language that are considered archaic in France.  Are they speaking "true" French, or are they speaking "untrue" French because they did not follow the same path of language evolution as the people in France?

6. English, furthermore is a special case all by itself as a language: some 30-40% of English, they say, is really mispronounced French.  This is due to the Norman Invasion in 1066.  Are you speaking "true English" when you pronounce "garage" with an English R?  You might say, well, 1066 was a long time ago, and now those words are a complete part of the language.  Well, the colonization of the new world and the establishment of the U.S. also happened centuries ago.

7. There is no "true" version of ANY language.

8. Languages are NOT "invented".  People in England did not "invent English".  Certainly not the Brits of today.  Things all started with people speaking, NOT INVENTING, Old English, which resembles Icelandic more than any English you or I would recognize.  Norman invasion came along, and injected a great deal of French into the language, through imposition by being the dominant class on the British Isles.  Note that the Normans didn't "invent" their speech either.  They picked it up in France.  Now we are speaking Middle English.  Over time, this becomes what we call Modern English.  This happened bit by bit, with people SPEAKING and LIVING.  The change cannot happen unless people are saying things that are not, at the time, "standard" for that language.  The trick is, there is NO one right way to speak a language.

Did you know that there was no such thing as prescriptive grammar until the Queen of Spain, while Columbus was out sailing on his journey, decided she needed to standardize the speech of her subjects in order to better monitor and control them?  Do you think French/Spanish/Italian evolved from High Latin or Vulgar Latin?  Do you think prescriptive grammar has been invented on Zalanthas? (my guess: not bloody likely)

Anyway, my opinion: the more flavor texts you put in for accents, the better.  Imagine if we made a MUD based on the real word.  It would certainly be okay for an American character to see "John Cleese says, in British-accented English: This parrot is dead."  Or would we make that same American character see every other American character as "Bob says in American-accented English: I like football.", just on the basis of a rather sloppy value judgment as to the relative status of each way of speaking?
[/quote]

[Vox]

Excellent post.

There are few times I look at this board and feel as though I come away smarter because of it.

Thank you, Linguistic Lurker.

-Vox

[JollyGreenGiant]

As an aside to the thread hijack - Esperanto is an invented language.  However, no one speaks Esperanto

[Linguistic Lurker]

Actually, there are some "native speakers" of Esperanto, that were raised speaking Esperanto primarily.  (Which I could only consider a particularly insidious form of child abuse.)  Interestingly, though, Esperanto was designed to have no irregular verbs whatsoever, but those native speakers started using contractions which created irregularities.  Seems there is no such thing as a "perfect" or "logical" language after all.  A good example a Spanish teacher gave when we were complaining about all the irregular verbs, and that they were furthermore the most common verbs, was this: Imagine your favorite shirt, the one you wear all the time.  That's the one that starts to get holes in it, get worn out, etc.

As an aside, of all languages in the world, English has the MOST irregulars of all.  This is because it has been such an ever-changing language.  In many cases, the rules for verb conjugation changed, but the old verbs which were conjugated in the old ways, stayed the way they were.

I'm glad people found my post somewhat interesting.  I was worried it would be too nitpicky.  I'm quite eager to play Armageddon once again, but I am low on time.

[jstorrie]

It is possible that elves do not speak Allundean with an accent because elven tribal society is so close-knit; thus any elf anywhere in Zalanthas might sound pretty similar, Allundean-wise.

Sirihish-wise, city elves would likely have the same accent as the humans in their area.  I do agree that desert elves should have one or more different accents when they speak Sirihish, though, since they would not be native Sirihish-speakers.

[Maybe42or54]

From my POV, Since they are a close knit group, each tribe would probably have a varying accent.

Much like the Germanic tribes, way back when.

[ShaLeah]

I'm not keen on the melodiously accented sirihish shit. Why? Because -I- may not think something melodious and I think it implies I -have- to hear it as music to my ears which is kankshit. At least when people do it I can make up my own mind. Not many people use a leading adjective for their voices but when they do, I tend to believe it much better.[/rant]

That said

I like the southern and northern accents, I like the tribal accents. I even like the rinthi-accent.  What I'd like to see is also the following:

mirukkim/allundean/bendune/cavilish/indiscernably/mildly-accented sirihish so that pcs just learning the language can be distinguished by their races or languages of origin. Each language realistically has it's own twang and that twang should be detected, at least for a certain amount of time. Dwarves, for example, start with very little common, I think it would rock to see:

The stocky, bulge-muscled dwarf says to you, in mirukkim-accented sirihish:
    "Ahhh feck off, ya fecking longneck!"

And what if they are visiting the land of the dreaded Sun King? Tek knows why he'd wanna but maybe he's a Bynner....

The stocky, bulge-muscled dwarf says to you, in mirukkim-accented southern-sirihish:
    "Ahhh feck off, ya fecking longneck!"

What if the Bynner stays in Tuluk for 20 years, would be lose his accent completely?  I don't think so, people still tell me I speak like a New Yorker and I never lived there a day in my life... I -did- learn english from my mother and father though, who -have- lived there and grew up there.

The stocky, bulge-muscled dwarf says to you, in mildly-accented sirihish:
    "Ahhh feck off, ya fecking longneck!"

Why mildly-accented? Cause he's fluent in common by now, he's lived somewhere for 20-30 years and he'd naturally pick up whatever flow of speak he's around. You shouldn't be able to tell where he's from without asking but you'd be able to tell he's a foreigner of some kind.

Why indiscernably? Because the listener may not know enough mirukkim/allundean/bendune/cavilish/anyar etc to pick up on the language yet but REGIONAL twangs would still be pretty noticeable...  and so they would see the following:

The stocky, bulge-muscled dwarf says to you, in indiscernably-accented sirihish:
    "Ahhh feck off, ya fecking longneck!"

OR

The stocky, bulge-muscled dwarf says to you, in indiscernably-accented, southern-sirihish:
    "Ahhh feck off, ya fecking longneck!"

The stocky, bulge-muscled dwarf says to you, in indiscernably-accented, northern-sirihish:
    "Ahhh feck off, ya fecking longneck!"

Ideally I would also like "linguists" to show a mildly accented or not accented at all since they are supposed to be completely fluent in their languages. They -should- be able to blend in... plus it'd make spying even more deadly.  Mmmmmm ... Assassin Linguist ... <purrrr>


Yes, yes, I know... a pain in the ass to code but *lesigh* I can dream, can't I?

[ShaLeah]

As an aside to the thread hijack - Esperanto is an invented language.  However, no one speaks Esperanto

All languages are "invented". They were invented out of necessity and region. Where you live dictates the language you speak or hear. Also, elven wasn't a language until some hobbit-geeks decided to roll with it... Klingon is a language too...

[Bestatte]

I like the general idea of what ShaLeah suggests, but think it could run into some pretty ridiculous settings:

The tall and obese figure wearing a dusty, bulging hooded desert-camouflaged greatcloak and a bloodied, mottled purple sandcloth veil says to you, in indiscernably-accented, northern-sirihish:
"No."

I think the "lead lines" are already long enough, don't you? They might be able to add two more words before they run out of their 4-line allotment at that point.

I can sort of understand what you mean by the melodic accent. However, melodies aren't always things people like. Melodic merely means it's a sing-song voice. Kinda like uh - swedish. Lots of ups and downs to the sentences when spoken out loud. I do agree though that "accents" wouldn't be the things that get the melody. That would fall more appropriately into the tone of voice. An accent is the pronunciation of the words themselves, afterall - not the voice used to deliver them.