Accents

[HardCarbon]

Folks..    dropping  letters  for  '  or other characters  only makes your speech unreadable..  let the code handle it. and the rest of us.. (and keep in mind English is not all of our primary language)  just work with it.

[Dynas]

In a way, accents IRL covers a lot more avenues than simply how one sounds. Like a person could come from Britain, be of upper-class and speak like an aristocrat with nice fancy words while another from Britain of low-class social status could speak lazily, cutting off letters from words in order to save time.

Code-wise though, Arm doesn't distinguish between the 'high and mighty' and the 'lowly, lazy sort'. As a result you only have the regional accents rather than the regional + social class accents which the replacement of letters with ' symbolizes (the laziness) along with the sophistocation of the language itself.

[Xygax]

I think I disagree with you, HardCarbon...  I do like seeing people infuse their characters with accents; it gives them style.  There are a few caveats:

a) Dropping your accent when it's convenient is lame.  You either have it or you don't, playing out the loss of an accent should be a very subtle process.  Even if you're attempting to disguise your voice, your accent should (I think) creep in from time to time, unless you've been studying a new accent for a while.

b) Along the lines of what HardCarbon said, dropping a character here and there (indicated with an apostrophe), or a creative misspelling from time to time can be a great way to really add texture to your character, but please don't go overboard with this.  If you've read any Mark Twain, you might be familiar with the thick accents with which he defined some of his characters...  for my taste, that should be about as far as anyone should go with an accent, and no further.  Even Twain can be challenging to read from time to time because his accents are so thick and cumbersome.

My thoughts,
 X

[Spoon]

I think there should be a difference between 'mercenary' and 'noble' sirihish.

And Dynas is right. I don't speak like the Queen, just like some BrawlyMcdrinkalot the mercenary doesn't speak like Lord Fancypants Borsail. This contrast is needed if people want to potray certain aspects of their PC's lifestyle. I don't live in a palace, ride horses, or open parliament.

Besides, those NPC's in the 'rinth drop letters all the time.

On a U-turn, though, some players do have a tendancy to attempt to type everything phonetically. This is bad enough for me, so I can't even begin to think how hard it must be to people who don't speak English as a first language.

[Bestatte]

'ell 'et 'e 'ell ya 'bou' t'is one 'ime 'ack in ban' cam'....

Basically, if reading it out loud allows you the opportunity to actually pronounce and comprehend the word it's substituting for, I think it's fine.

But if you try and read the words out loud, and either can't pronounce it, or it makes absolutely no sense at all, then it's gone overboard.

Even people with accents don't drop off a B in the front of a word, for instance (unless they're missing their lips). Arbitrarily adding apostrophes to every other letter of every word isn't creating an accent. It's creating a mess that everyone else has to either take time to decipher, or make a point of ignoring.

[bloodfromstone]

I personally love seeing people type out their speech patterns. Like a few people have said, 'southern' or 'northern' accented is pretty vague. It gives someone's speech a lot more flavor if they add onto it. If someone's speech patterns are actually supposed to be really bad, it's actually fun to roleplay around not being able to understand someone 100% of the time. I understand that it can be excessive at times, but that goes for pretty much anything....

[Dracul]

If you can't read it, maybe your character can't dechpiher it.

Afterall...sometimes people can't tell what the hell you're saying irl because of your accent, even knowing the language.

It's not nessecariliy going to far, just give them an ic "The fekk you just say?"

[Sandstorm Phoenix]

I think that I could stomach an  apostrophe accent better if there was some pattern behind it.  

Here are a few guidelines from watching some accents that just perplexed me.

1.  Maybe your character tends to clip certain letters or sound combonations (-ing, -ed, -t).   If you want to add a little color to your speech that way, fine.  Just be consistent.

2.  If you are mistyping something to represent a different way of saying it, like "tha" for "the" you don't need to add an apostrophe.  Just type it out phonetically.   "I went to tha stoe ta buy some teef powdah."  

3.  Don't slap an apostrophe where there is no missing letters/sounds.  That just gets confusing and usually there's so many apostrophes flying around that using context to determine the meaning of that word is just too much work.

4.  Expect folks to make fun of you.  I accompanied a friend from the deep South to Boston.  Hilarity ensued.  Mix booze into it and nobody understood each other.

[Cuusardo]

Hey, if people want to go overboard, that's just fine.  If you can't understand what the heck they're trying to type, RP it as your character not understand what the person is saying.

[Sandstorm Phoenix]

Well, no.  If a player intends to be a mushmouthed semi-mute, then it is fine.  We can all pretend not to understand them and they can go on their merry apostrophe-flinging way.  

I don't think that is the case.  I'm willing to bet that the majority of them are simply trying to add color to their characters - not make them completely unintelligible.  I'm glad to see this thread.  They need to know there is a  better way to do it.

[Revelations]

It's also good to be consistent with your accent if you do decide to have one. Going from 'deh' and 'yeh' for the and you to 'thee' and 'yah' or something of the like gets to be tedious for the readers figure out.

[sarahjc]

I like accents, my current character uses one.  Sometimes I find the really choppy ones hard, but I don't think that's bad.

However consistency as Xygax said is really important, especially for the difficult ones. I remember one PC in the north that worked in a house with me that I could –not- understand. So I would ask What? Or hrm? Or what language you speaking? And eventually I just got used to the speech pattern because he was consistent and I could understand him perfectly fine without even trying.

I tend to get into a mindset when I play a PC. How they think, what they say and how they say it. I think I may even make facial expressions as I type. (I'm weird, I know) To me, accents fit right in.. Since as others have said.. the tag on accents doesn't really give much local distinction, it seems fine to me that people would add that flavor themselves.

[cyberpatrol_735]

I'm offend that you would say such a thing!!

<not>

I use these all the time, but not 'choppy'

For example:

Eh? Yah want'n ta go up north mm?

Yeh, 'em krath suckin' templar's need ta get outta there momma's butts.

An' th' other day, some magicker came in an' was shoutin' 'bout big booms an' shet, I jes left.

[Manhattan]

What's the deal with "Aye"? Wow are they Scottish or having a personality disorder.
Tuluki should have an Eastern US accent:
"A'right ma boys and I are headin' down to Hah-vud soon, you comin'?"
And Nakki sirihish should be East Side London:
"Eh mang whuh'duh fuck eh? Y'know whuh I'fink? I fink you 'bout to get hogswallop whuh I fink."

[Hexxaex]

It's all a matter of opinion of how people perceive accents in this MUD, just like everything else.  When you play without graphics and sounds, you have to think of it yourself, whatever you think to be right.  In this case, the accents deal is just there to show where that person is from.  That's the only thing I use it for.  If someone speaks in a southern-accented Sirihish, I just use that to tell myself that they're from the south.  I don't try and imagine what a southern accent actually sounds like.

[Unicorn]

Just as the key to doing good emotes is having a visual image for yourself, the key to doing good accents is hearing in your head how your speech sounds.

I think accents (or let's call them dialects as that would include vocabulary, slang and grammar) add a great deal to the game. As well as giving a "sound" to the speech, they also show social class, upbringing, experiences, etc.

A fair while back I played a character whose speech became a central focus of the characterization, although this was not by my design but just by happenstance.  She believed that she could never be an aide or the like because of how badly she spoke. Eventually she did however become a student at the Atrium where she had four or five people correcting her constantly on her grammar and pronunciations.

It was a lot of fun going from the heavy dialect to almost neutral speech. Every week I'd decide which problem or problems she'd correct that week (real time). The transformation went fairly quickly in real time, but not by Zalanthas time especially considering that it was something she was really working hard on mastering.  I like to think that it was done realistically (although only the people I played with could be the judge of that).  

Anyway, my point was mainly that dialect can bring another dimension to a characterization.

[Cindrak]

I agree with Unicorn. My last character had a pretty thick accent that evolved over time, and speaking through his brogue was one of the highlights of playing him. I got to the point where I could hear his voice in my head, and it was only a matter of transcribing it into text. It was kind of an amalgamation of scottish and southern American. I don't know if anybody else appreciated it much, but it was fun for -me-, and it seemed like most people could at least understand. And it's true, if you don't understand what someone's saying because their accent is so thick, just play it out. That happens, and it's perfectly natural and realistic. (uh oh, I invoked the dreaded 'R' word)

-Cindrak

[path]

My last character had a wonderfully thick accent. I found myself slipping into it IRL, which was sort of uncomfortable, but I'm really glad someone spoke up, since I was wondering about our turkish players and others for whom english is not the first language.

Clearly many of us love accents, and should they be done realistically they add a lot to the game, but is there some way to work around those for whom just playing and writing in a second language is a drain?

I'd been meaning to post about this myself, but the character died anyway so, in terms of actual ways to keep our accents in place while addressing the problem of non-native speakers - any ideas? I'm not sure but it seems like a quick ooc 'this isn't my mother tongue, please tone it down when we play together' could really be in order. It's not something I'd mind. It's primarily, for me, a game and I want those around me to be enjoying it as much as I am, if my accent is making it impossible for them when we speak the same language from the same area well.. even in london the upper class can -understand- the lower class.

It's awesome that we can get more players from ANYWHERE. I want to support them. I wonder if the original poster has any other workable solutions besides dropping accents completely. Maybe working with mindspeak more and rping our disgust at the impossibility of their accent? I don't think accents should carry over into sent thoughts, but that's my opinion.

This really is an issue I'd like to hear discussed. Not just 'do we like accents to be written out' but 'how can we make this playable for people from other countries?'.

-path