What are some languages and accents you'd like to see in game?

[Adj]

For me at least an outpost and storm accent.

Allanak has two but the outpost does not get one because it's too close to Tuluk and storm can't get one because it's too close to allanak?


I've read a few really great ideas on the GDB but are there any other ARGHSOME ideas you'd like to see with accents or languages?



(this is an exciting conversation topic because it's a game changer fo sho)

[AdamBlue]

Whoops, mispost!

But yeah, I'd like to hear mixes of accents. Rinthi southy. Maybe a rinthi northie?

[Fathi]

Eastside and Westside totally need their own accents.

[John]

I'd like relative accents. As an Australian, I can't tell with the same reliability which American accent is which as an American can.

As such I'd like to see northern/southern accents be relative. A Red Stormer can probably tell a nakkie accent from a Tuluki accent. But maybe he struggles telling the difference between a 'rinthi and a nakkie.

Meanwhile a Luirs Outpostsmen would have no trouble telling a Tuluki accent from his own accent. But might struggle with Allanak and Red Storm accents.

[HavokBlue]

I feel like anyone that lives in Luirs would see enough Allanaki travelers to know what they sound like.

[Suhuy]

The Known World, IMO, is meant to represent a pretty small area overall. Even if you RP the journey as realistically as possible, taking into account difficult terrain, avoiding travel at midday due to excessive heat, fatigue, etc. you can still get from one end to the next in a relatively short period of time. And I don't think that's meant to represent OOC convenience, I think the world really is meant to be that small. Beyond these borders is simply uninhabitable or unreachable land. The Known World is a barely livable scrap of earth in an otherwise dying, withering world. With that many people crammed within what few resources are available, I don't think languages would be all that extensive.

Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

[Akaramu]

I wish gypos got a special accent, the 'tribal' label doesn't do them justice.

But yeah, I'm just a massive gypo fan.

[greasygemo]

I wish gypos got a special accent, the 'tribal' label doesn't do them justice.

But yeah, I'm just a massive gypo fan.

[Delirium]

A luirs accent, and a storm accent, would be nice. After all, we have a 'rinthi accent in the same city as Allanak...

tribal is fine for gypsies IMO, that to me says 'native bendune speaker'.

[spicemustflow]

Luirs accent could easily be lumped with other tribal accents, as it's probably a blend of them. I don't think we need an accent for every tribe and location out there. It's up to players to show their roots. It's easy to do it, every tribe out there has a lexicon, mix up some of those words with your bendune or allundean or whatever. A city dweller shouldn't be able to codedly recognize a 'Soh accent', for example.

[hyzhenhok]

waterslide-accented

[AmandaGreathouse]

I wish gypos got a special accent, the 'tribal' label doesn't do them justice.

But yeah, I'm just a massive gypo fan.

I wish this myself. Not because I'm a fangirl.

Because the gypsy way of life and dialect are different. One thing that's pretty much not hard to make a distinction with is: They're the only ones who have wagons like a GMH. There are a massive number of other differences as well. And where all human tribals 'but' gypsies share a forum, gypsies have their own clan forum. They are also sponsored roles. They are significantly different both IC and OOC.

[Mr.B]

If you look at how accents are done you'd notice they are categorised by the overall region or culture group they're in and it makes sense to keep it simple that way, leaving the little details out of the equation. If you absolutely wanted that, I think it would make the most sense to have sub-accents that are recognisable by characters skilled in the regional accents.

Therefore if you had southern accent you could tell the difference between farm-accent, nak-accent and storm-accent.
If you had tribal accent you could tell Tavan-accent, Seik-accent or Gypsy-accent and so on.

That might take alot of work to code though, and I'm not sure if the reward is worth it. Personally, I like a little mystery that causes me to ask "where are you from?"

[Synthesis]

dorf accent

[roughneck]

I wish gypos got a special accent, the 'tribal' label doesn't do them justice.

But yeah, I'm just a massive gypo fan.

I think they should, because they don't deserve to have the same accent as REAL tribals like the truly nomadic Arabet and Al Seik.

Posers.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I wish gypos got a special accent, the 'tribal' label doesn't do them justice.

But yeah, I'm just a massive gypo fan.

I think they should, because they don't deserve to have the same accent as REAL tribals like the truly nomadic Arabet and Al Seik.

Posers.

<3 Seik and Arabet, I've been a fangirl of for years. I could not agree with you more.

[boog]

I wish gypos got a special accent, the 'tribal' label doesn't do them justice.

But yeah, I'm just a massive gypo fan.

I think they should, because they don't deserve to have the same accent as REAL tribals like the truly nomadic Arabet and Al Seik.

Posers.

Agreed!

[evilcabbage]

want to see a mantis accent.

[TheBadSeed]

Warrens' accent.. The seedier side of Tuluk should have representation.

[palomar]

want to see a mantis accent.

Maybe they have one but you won't know unless you learn their language or find a bug who speaks a language you understand... Pure speculation, of course.

[Maso]

Deep.

[Morrolan]

I would like to see the last 5-10% of language comprehension be according to the accent.

so, at 100% language skill sirihish (or however it works), if someone is not speaking in an accent you know, you lose some of the letters (like you do when you do not have master language skill level).

Each accent could substitute a specific letter, perhaps, not random:

Northern: h
Southern: n
Tribal: a
etc.

[musashi]

That's a pretty interesting idea I think.

[spicemustflow]

I think that would be just annoying. We don't need code to take care of every little thing.

[Chettaman]

Agreed.
I want someone to speak with a more curved to the asian broken-english accent.
"Herrow dare."
"You get out my store now, or I caw da mawitia!"
"Oh, you tink I won'!? Gawds! Gawds!"

[Gilgamesh]

Agreed.
I want someone to speak with a more curved to the asian broken-english accent.
"Herrow dare."
"You get out my store now, or I caw da mawitia!"
"Oh, you tink I won'!? Gawds! Gawds!"

When a Northerner and a Southerner get into a fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omfO6ooInP4

[greasygemo]

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... That's.. awesome.

[Chettaman]

Bahahahahahaha!
God damn, Southerners! Knock down my shitty waw!

[Zoan]

say (sneering sarcastically) I don't understand what the fuck you are saying. 'A poople a purpur pehpeh!'

[Cind]

I kind of wish there was more than one tribal accent, one for each significanly environmentally different part of the world, and each would have its own type of tribal accent. Like the flats accent for the salt flats, and the sea accent for tribes dwelling close to the silt sea. And the silt sea tribals would have a noticeably better time in a storm than other kinds of tribals, guild notwithstanding.

What we have is pretty good, it just sort of irks me that the Gol Krathu purple and blue band inked tribal is unavoidably codedly identical to the silt sea tribal when speaking, if neither one has identifiable sirihish slip-ups. Sure, in your mind, in the game with its flexibility, they can and probably do sound different, but the code doesn't care, A male voice shouts from the west, "Something," in a tribal accent sounds the same with everybody.

I don't like the fact that this would cause tribals to lose their unique complete political neutrality, if done a certain way.

I wonder what accents halflings were privy too, or could gain without playing outside the norms.

[Bast]

I miss the lame ass supernatural accents  

They were officially removed? 

I think the things that used to have them just stopped talking altogether.

God I missed the accents. Those are the coolest ones in the game in my humble opinion

[Desertman]

Highborn accent.

Seriously. Why are nobles and merchant House family members speaking with the same accents as the common peons? For a lot of the nobles in game I actually have to look up some of the words they are using out of character just to know on an OOC level what they are talking about. People tend to roleplay that nobles and "highborn" people speak differently in general anyways. I don't see how putting in a coded "highborn-accented sirihish" would hurt anything.

In game I actually change my accents when I change my accents.

Southern Accent - How's about you an' me get on down ta' tha' bar and find us some ripe dames for draggin' inta' tha' dorms. (Southern US Redneck)

Northern Accent - Lets go to the bar and find some potential bed mates for the night eh? (More proper.)

Rinthi Accent - It'd be a right fine thing ta' get us'a pair'a gallies for kankin' tonight wouldn'cha know? (Stole it straight from Gang's of New York. Old world Irish influence.)

Tribal Accent - I don't play tribals, I havent come up with one yet. I refuse to just skip words like I'm mentally handicapped and pretend that's an accent though. Language barrier does not equal accent.

I would imagine my "Highborn" accent would sound something like the Queen's English and would of course use more intellectual words.

[Wug]

2. Do NOT post information that is IC-sensitive. While debates over definitions of this term have raged in the past on the discussion boards, one fact has emerged: some people really prefer to experience things in the game, rather than inadvertently have the experience spoiled for them from reading this board. Therefore, when asking yourself whether or not what you're posting is too IC-sensitive, err on the side of caution.

[Marauder Moe]

Since the other thread got locked under mysterious circumstances... 

The biggest systematic change I think would be that accents need to be language specific.

There also probably needs to be a way to keep track of a character's native language, though in non-special-application circumstances I believe that will be entirely a function of race + starting location.

Then accents need to be divided into two categories:
*Linguistic accents like elvish/allundean, dwarvish/mirukkim, or tribal/bendune.  These accents could apply to any language except the one they're named after.  They could be coded as completely separate accents, or just coded in terms of not-allundean, not-sirihish, etc.  These are the default accents you get when learning a new language, based on your native tongue.
*Regional accents, which apply to only one language.  Examples are 'rinthi, northern/southern, or tribe-specific accents.  I think these would always be separated by language. A native sirihish speaker's allundean accent is going to be far more influenced by the language gap than by the subtler regional gap between sirihish accents.  They should not be learnable until you've mastered the language skill for them, and they should probably be even slower to learn than that because losing an accent in a foreign language is pretty hard.

Of course, such an overhaul would probably warrant a revisitation of the list of accents available, but let's consider that beyond the scope of this thread for now.

[Bast]

I have cheated on Arm recently to try another mud. They let you set your own accent on it so like you could always 'gruffly intones', or whatnot thought it was a cool feature.

[Dalmeth]

I always think of accents as how one, "sings," one's words, implying that most deviations from the norm are for reasons of rhythm.  So I have a special hate for people who use strict rules to make theirs.

[Lizzie]

I have cheated on Arm recently to try another mud. They let you set your own accent on it so like you could always 'gruffly intones', or whatnot thought it was a cool feature.

Oh my god no. I've seen this in games. You get people who set them to reflect an overall tone - such as someone whose usual manner of speech is sweet, or soft, or gentle...and then you see this:

The red-haired woman sweetly says, coldly, "I hate you because you murdered my mate."

It's the same problem with setting personal movement echoes. Someone who normally moves gracefully...but now they're bleeding profusely from a hole in their leg...is not going to walk gracefully anywhere. But because the player likes his custom personal echo, he doesn't think maybe he should change it every time his pace changes. And the sweet-spoken gal who is pissed off, or suffering from illness, or badly wounded, or really excited about good news -

Speech comes with emotes so that you can embellish it as needed, and as wanted. There's no reason or need to add a permanent or semi-permanent flag to individual speech. What's even worse, is if someone is northern - but sets their accent to southern, even though they don't -have- a southern accent. It's bypassing existing code, and the existing code isn't broken.

[benegesseritwitch]

Though I agree that setting any accent (like a free-form text box) is probably not a good idea, I see no reason why we can't pick our accent at character creation from the ones already in existence.

Code Select Expand

Pick your accent:

a) Northern
b)Southern
c)Tribal

etc. etc. so long as it fits in with the character background submitted.

[Wolfsong]

I have cheated on Arm recently to try another mud. They let you set your own accent on it so like you could always 'gruffly intones', or whatnot thought it was a cool feature.

A douche-bag says, in a subsonic rumbling bass-like tone, "Hi this was an actual voice string from an actual srs RPI mud that wolfsong saw and raged at lol."

[Bluefae]

Though I agree that setting any accent (like a free-form text box) is probably not a good idea, I see no reason why we can't pick our accent at character creation from the ones already in existence.

Code Select Expand

Pick your accent:

a) Northern
b)Southern
c)Tribal

etc. etc. so long as it fits in with the character background submitted.

     Hm, neat idea.  Would have helped with a few past concepts, in fact.

[LauraMars]

I have cheated on Arm recently to try another mud. They let you set your own accent on it so like you could always 'gruffly intones', or whatnot thought it was a cool feature.

A douche-bag says, in a subsonic rumbling bass-like tone, "Hi this was an actual voice string from an actual srs RPI mud that wolfsong saw and raged at lol."

OH GOD NO

[Wug]

I have unlocked this and merged the other accent discussion into it.

If you want to bring up something you think might at all spoil any in game secrets, send a request in first.

If you post something that in any way spoils in game secrets, I will summon Nyr and you will be unhappy.

[Desertman]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but wanted to say thanks to Desertman for posting that accent rundown. Extremely helpful. Still too chicken to try to approximate it yet IG, but helpful nonetheless.

Thanks.  

Just to be clear, those accents are in no way "official" (though if staff would like to add them to the helpfiles, I'm all for that, I bet Nyr can't wait to do that   ). That is just how I choose to potray them. I wish everyone else would do something similar. It bothers me to see people "change their accents" codedly, but keep speaking exactly the same way literally, especially when they speak with an "accent" already, which shows me they have the OOC ability to type out an accent, they are just choosing to not "change" it literally when they "change" it codedly.

The muscular man says in southern-accented sirihish, "Ya' pop off ta' me again, I'm gonna' slap tha' taste out yer' slack jawed yapper!"

The muscular man says in northern-accented sirihish, "Yup, I said I'll slap tha' taste out yer' yapper ya' pop off ta' me again."

Why even bother changing accents codedly?

I may be the only one that this bothers. I don't know. I'm not sure I have ever seen anyone else who changes the way they type when they codedly change their accents. Am I the only one?

[Marauder Moe]

I've done it.

But here's my take on it: when someone adds additional contractions and stuff like that to their speech, they're affecting a lower-class version of that accent.  So if you imagine northern as British and southern as American (personally it's reversed for me), then...

The muscular man says in southern-accented sirihish, "Ya' pop off ta' me again, I'm gonna' slap tha' taste out yer' slack jawed yapper!"

Larry the Cable Guy

The muscular man says in northern-accented sirihish, "Yup, I said I'll slap tha' taste out yer' yapper ya' pop off ta' me again."

Jason Statham

[SpyGuy]

Well, I really like the concept of changing your speaking pattern when changing accents, or for that matter languages.  It makes sense for a native Bendune or Allundean speaker to change the way they speak when speaking in Sirihish or another foreign tongue.  But word choice =/= accent.  Accent is your pronunciation and stress of words.  So I read "southern-accented sirihish" as just being how they pronounce the vowels and consonants which is fairly difficult to accurately portray in text without mangling a lot of the spelling.  And even then people will read vowel sounds differently in their heads anyways because English spelling rules are absolutely terrible at reflecting the sound of actual words.

[ponycorns]

Each PC I make I have to grow into and one of the distinct things I work on is their speech patterns, inside their coded accent. I try to base certain approaches on their location, history, and WISDOM [big factor for me]. I do alter my wording upon changing the coded accents and even language too sometimes. You are not alone D-man!

[Case]

aid luv tuh see thuh en zud aksunt un gaem

nuthun karaktuhraizus betuh thun ledjubal aksuntz

[boog]

I use speech patterns ... but um. Never accents. Maybe weird ways of saying certain words, but ... never ... accents. Huh. Maybe I should start.

[MeTekillot]

Please don't.

[musashi]

For the reason spyguy stated, I don't use accents in the text I type save for very modest generally accepted terms like ... gonna instead of going to if my PC is a little more rough around the edges.

I prefer to let accents be represented via the code, rather than via the typist taking spelling liberties with their words and a devil may care attitude towards apostrophe placement.

[ghostymudy]

aid luv tuh see thuh en zud aksunt un gaem

nuthun karaktuhraizus betuh thun ledjubal aksuntz

Yis, I virry gid iccint.

[Marauder Moe]

What if someone wanted to play a character that was actually unintelligible?

[Patuk]

What if someone wanted to play a character that was actually unintelligible?

>em produces a series of unintelligible sounds.

Profit.

[Marauder Moe]

Well not absolutely unintelligible, but like less-than-optimally-intelligible?  Like, say, Boomhower from King of the Hill, Ozzy Osborne, or anyone from Glasgow.

[Patuk]

Well not absolutely unintelligible, but like less-than-optimally-intelligible?  Like, say, Boomhower from King of the Hill, Ozzy Osborne, or anyone from Glasgow.

Daintily holding his long clay mug by the handle and taking a sip from it while spewing forth words in a nigh-unintelligible northen drawl, the northie in the Gaj says, in northern-accented sirihish,
       "I thought I'd asked directions to find the local tavern, not the rathole."

[Morrolan]

What if someone wanted to play a character that was actually unintelligible?

My previous post (suggesting that part of language comprehension be coded for accent) Plus the ability to >change accentthickness 1-10.

[FantasyWriter]

What if someone wanted to play a character that was actually unintelligible?

I spec apped a PC once that had some physical mutations that made speech very hard for him.
Nessalin (I think he was the one who set me up) couldn't make him not have a coded accent even when he lowered my accent skill to zero. I just threw in some random letters to try and make it look like someone speaking a language you barely understand.... with a northern accent.

[Tuannon]

I have cheated on Arm recently to try another mud. They let you set your own accent on it so like you could always 'gruffly intones', or whatnot thought it was a cool feature.

A douche-bag says, in a subsonic rumbling bass-like tone, "Hi this was an actual voice string from an actual srs RPI mud that wolfsong saw and raged at lol."

Oh well, there goes my idea for apping a templar that talks like Soundwave.

[Lizzie]

How to Present Unintelligible Speech, by Teh Lizzeh:

1. Spend some time going over logs of you listening to other characters speaking in their native languages, which your characters didn't understand yet.
1a. If you don't have logs, or if you've never encountered this phenomenon, start doing so. Each language has certain attributes that are recognizeable to those who don't understand. A *hypothetical* example: Mirrukim uses lots of g's and k's. Allundean uses a lot of t's and s's (I do NOT know which letters are most commonly used, I have it in a log somewhere and I don't feel like looking it up. But certain attributes do exist).

2. Start thinking of examples of the sounds you want to make, based on 1 and 1a.

3. Make sure those examples are pronounceable, even if unintelligible. For instance:

"Mgkhftch" is not a pronounceable jumble of letters. However...

"Migakhefitch" is.

4. Come up with letter combinations that you can use consistently. Such as "m'lechi" to represent your version of "this guy," "that person," or any variety thereof.

5. Make sure that -your- character knows what he's saying, even if no one else does. You can use thinks to express that knowledge.