Time to learn languages vs. accents comparatively?

[Gimfalisette]

Just wondering if these are based on the same code, or different code, and therefore does it take different amounts of time or the same for a character to pick up a language versus an accent?

[Sephiroto]

[Edited cause I wasn't thinking straight]

[Cale_Knight]

Yes, but learning accents isn't about picking it up and normalizing - it's about learning to imitate them. Big, big, big difference.

[MorganChaos]

Yes, but learning accents isn't about picking it up and normalizing - it's about learning to imitate them. Big, big, big difference.

Very good point.

Idea: Pretty soon after hearing an accent, you can change accent, but after you say one thing it goes back to your default. After a long time, with factors of both practice and hearing it, when you change accent it stays.

[Anonymous]

In real life some people never pick up other accents.  Or rather, their accent doesn't change much even if they go to another location where people speak differently.

Not true. In areas where the accent is VERY distinctive, people tend to adopt it often. It's not always a conscious choice.

I know folks who go home from here to their northern parents and are told they're talking with southern accents during holidays.  And when they come back after extended stays with their families, they have their northern accents again.

I've also been known to lapse into Long Island... when on the phone with certain NYers.

-shrugs-

[Lavalamps]

I was hanging out with some English friends of mine..
Within a week I had the accent, and had to actually TRY to talk without it.
So it's not that tough to pick up accents, IMO.

[Aldiel]

The reason accents take so much longer to learn pro'ly doesn't have so much to do with real life as to do with IG cheapness factor.

[Cale_Knight]

Oh, yeah. I agree 100%. I don't really advocate making them easier to learn. It's already pretty easy to idle in a busy tavern and pick it up in a week or so.

[Gimfalisette]

Yeah, I found out the answer to this question soon after I posted it. It takes a lot less time to pick up the basics of a language (i.e. get it on your skills list) than it does an accent. Kinda funny. In RL I can do accents much more easily than I can do foreign languages. But I guess the potential for twinkage with accents is greater, or something.

[Delirium]

When you have a language pop up on your skill list, you can recognize it being spoken but you still don't necessarily know a single word of it.  Consider it as being able to recognize the sound & structure.

Just like I can tell those kids down the block are speaking spanish, but I barely understand a word of it.

Accents are picked up about the same, but by the time they show up on your skill list, that means you're good enough to use it and be understandable.  So, I can tell a spanish accent from a british accent, (just like you can tell a north/south accent), but I can't necessarily imitate one or the other until I've gotten familiar enough with them to even try.

If languages worked the same way, they would take a lot longer than they currently do - they wouldn't show up until, say, 50% (totally ballpark number, don't shoot me), and you'd be able to understand most of what was said as soon as it showed up on your list.

Hope that made sense.

Edits; for clarification and spelling.

[Twilight]

I don't know too much about either code, but I think you'll find the time it takes to be proficient different.

[Gimfalisette]

All very interesting. Are understanding the language and speaking it different skill buckets, or are they the same bucket?

[Delirium]

Same.

You'll notice less and less garble and more clarity the better you get at a language.

This is to represent increasing familiarity with the words and sentence structure.

[Gimfalisette]

Yeah, I've seen that in dwarves working on speaking sirihish before, the garbledness getting better.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to RP speaking the language with really simple structure and words, which is hard to remember to do. But it would be odd to me to try whipping out a really complex sentence when I'm just starting to learn the language. (Like using some of the advanced tenses when I learned Spanish--I definitely didn't start with those.)

[Angela Christine]

I was hanging out with some English friends of mine..
Within a week I had the accent, and had to actually TRY to talk without it.
So it's not that tough to pick up accents, IMO.

You get enough of an accent so people go, "hey, you're talking with a funny English accent!"  To non-English people it is obvious.  But is it good enough to fool people in England?  


Imitating an accent to sound like a foreigner is fairly easy, imitating an accent well enough to pass for a native among other natives is hard.  Most people I know can do a British accent, a southern accent, an Australian accent, and so on, but if they were to actually go to those places and do their impression of the local accent the resident would probably still think that they sounded like Canadians.  Like in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, where an American man pretends to be a British woman, but runs into trouble when he encounters a British man who says something like, "Your accent is a little muddled, what part of Britain are you from?"


Usually when people use the accent code, they aren't doing it in their hometown trying to pass for foreigners.  You don't even get people from Allanak going down to Red Storm and trying to pass for people from Tuluk very often, or people from Luirs going up to Tuluk and trying to pass for Allanakis.  Usually when you try to fake an accent it is because you are trying to blend in with the locals when you aren't a local.  That should be, and is, pretty difficult.


Angela Christine

[Cegar]

Actually, trying to go to say... Tuluk as an Allanaki with a Luir's accent would be pretty helpful. Better than a Allanak accent, anyway. And Luir's should NOT have the accent it currently does.

[Aldiel]

You know what would be sweet.  If you could, at will, switch from southern to northern accent, but if you weren't skilled at it you would get a tag of "In false-sounding sirihish,' instead of "in sirihish"  Would be cool because as your skill at mockery improved, you would get this tag less and less.

[Malken]

And Luir's should NOT have the accent it currently does.

Someone once convinced me that there was actually a Kuraci accent, heh. Someone says, in a stoned-slurred accent?

[Pantoufle]

I think it's too easy to learn accents currently.  A longer time gap between mastering a different accent would make this a more highly prized skill, in my opinion.

As for Luir's accents, I think Northern is just fine.  If you're from Red Storm you speak the same as if you are from Allanak.  So to is it with Luir's and Tuluk.  Tribal wouldn't make sense as a starting location accent since most people there are not tribesmen, they're just 'peasants'/'villagers'.  I believe, as an outpost, it's far too small to have its own regional dialect.