Locality, Social Class, and Accents

[Morrolan]

Here is a question:

How do people feel about implementing more accents?  High-class Allanaki, Commoner Allanaki, etc. etc.

And another coffee fueled idea:
The ability to learn accents by listening to them, as if they were separate languages.  So, after hanging out with your northerner friend for too long, you get a new skill
Language: Sirihish (Northern)

Now, I know that I am already not taking into account certain complexities of the code, but I do not want to go too IC, either.

Change language Sirihish_Northern

In other words, code the dialects and allow them to be learnable but mutually intelligible--or mostly mutually intellegible.

Morrolan

[Gilvar]

Nobles would not nescessarily 'sound' different. Just as a rich Texan would not nescessarily sound different then a poor texan. They may SPEAK differently, with the richer man more knowledgeable of grammar and such, while the poor one might not know a darn.

And as for the learning accents, its been talked about in the past... and is still being talked about.

[Kalden]

If learning accents ever does become available, I think it should be highly limited, or you lose the point of accents. Make it so the con-man subclass and maybe the bard subclass are able to do it easily, and make it very difficult for other classes.

[creeper386]

If more accents are added in, I'd like it to be locational not anything else. I also think it'd require some general revamping of the accent system... Although over all I'd rather just the accents be taking out completely or more of a city vs non-city accents.

It'd just work alot easier, and over all, considering I think most of the world has had similar ancestral backings, and the known world isn't massive huge, and there is a fair amount of intermingling... It would be perfectly reasonable.


Creeper

[Bogre]

If learning accents ever does become available, I think it should be highly limited, or you lose the point of accents. Make it so the con-man subclass and maybe the bard subclass are able to do it easily, and make it very difficult for other classes.

Er, theres a linguist subclass too.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I like accents. It's stupid to believe that the two different City-States do not have their own seperate accents. Remember, just because you and I can travel between the two cities in under an IC day, doesn't mean that they are really the close together. If I remember right, there are some 300 miles between the two places.

Accents are all-inclusive. They are lingo, slang, mannerisms, and a whole multitude of other things. So I believe we need more accents, not less.

[crymerci]

Create your own accents.

I'm not saying we couldn't do with a few more, just for the various starting locales and all.

But when it comes to class, lingo, slang, understandability...it's sometimes easier to do it yourself.  Ever hear a thief called a 'nicker'?  Ever see so many apostrophes in a sentence you can barely make out the words they're shortening?  Create your own accents, dialects, high speech, low speech.

"That man stole my coinpurse."
"Hey, that drov-sent bastid nicked my 'sids."
"Guards, that odious man is discommoding me.  Remove him."
"Oi, mates, ge' th' filthy scum!  'E'll lear' no' t' mess wi' our gan' "

[EvilRoeSlade]

"Oi, mates, ge' th' filthy scum!  'E'll lear' no' t' mess wi' our gan' "

Please never let me hear an accent like that in game.

Thank you.

[crymerci]

"Oi, mates, ge' th' filthy scum!  'E'll lear' no' t' mess wi' our gan' "

Please never let me hear an accent like that in game.

Thank you.

Well, you can always choose to have your character not understand it, which is part of the point of having accents, at least as far as what the original poster was saying.

[EvilRoeSlade]

No, I can't choose not to understand something like that.  I just plain can't understand it.  Even if my character comes from the same region and has every right to.  Which sort of defeats the purpose.

[crymerci]

Are you being a drama queen, or can you seriously not understand?

[creeper386]

I find it a horribly poor accent but can read it... Normally accents are common all the way through... But in that example you cut out one thing here, left it in someplace else, cut out abit of it in another place. Cut out something completely different then aginst left it in another place... It has no continual flow, or anything in common from word to word.


BOO!


Creeper

[Bestatte]

I used to try to decipher people who'd use accents like that. It caused me nothing but frustration. I left my frustrations behind when I finally came to the conclusion that my character(s) never has to understand a damned thing if I, as a player, have to take more than a few seconds to figure out what's being said.

People who intentionally make their accents so chock-full of apostrophes and missing consonents should just switch their language to Tatlum when trying to speak with any of my characters. The end result will be the same. My characters won't understand a word of it.

I have lots of patience about a lot of things. But illegible writing is not one of them.

[EvilRoeSlade]

I did get the meaning eventually, but I am certain that it's only because I saw the three above examples before it, and thus could deduce that it meant the same thing.  If I saw somebody say that in game, I'd choose to ignore them rather than try to figure out what they're saying, and in the process spend more time than is generally considered acceptable to type a response.

The fact of the matter is, heavy accents translate poorly to text, and always have.  At least when you use too much '.  When you use bad grammer to portray an accent, then I can understand it perfectly.  If you use good grammer and big words to portray an accent then I can understand it perfectly.  If you drop a constanant or vowell in moderation, I can likewise understand what you are saying.  But what I saw there is an example of excessive and apparently arbitrary speech impediment, which doesn't really do much for me.

[crymerci]

Obviously it's an extreme example.  I personally wouldn't go quite that far.  Obviously different people will draw the line in different places, and there will always be someone who thinks someone else has gone too far.  But frankly, I'd rather have an imaginative accent that I can actually see the flavor of, than try to imagine a different accent for everyone.  For me, it means a deeper immersion into the gameworld.

The point was would you rather see the variety in the previous list, or would you rather see:
The hoity-toity noble says, in upper-class southern sirihish:
"That man stole from me."
The tall figure in a filthy, dark, hooded cloak says, in very-low-class southern sirihish:
"That man stole from me."
The curvaceous aide says, in middle-class southern sirihish with a hint of a lower-class southern sirihish accent:
"That man stole from me."

[Rindan]

I tend to mangle my words the lower class I am playing, but I tend to cut it off before it become unreadable.  I do this for my own sake so I can actually type it, and for others so they can actually understand it.  The point of an accent is not to make people struggle to understand you, it is to show something about your character.  If people can't understand you, even people that come from the same place as you, I think you are just handicaping yourself.  

"I am goin' ta fuck up tha' krath damned elf when I get my hands 'round his scrawny little fuckin' neck.  I swear on Tek's fuckin' balls tha' my smilin' face is goin' ta be the last thing tha' little bastard sees!"

That is about as thick as my accents ever get, but I think it is still easily understandable and gives off the impression that the speaker is not exactly a educated noble.  To mangle it more I think you risk making it so that people just scratch their heads when you talk.

[Space Ace]

There was once a particular leadership character to whom my PC reported whose speech was so rife with apostrophes and missing / swapped consonants that I literally couldn't decipher it.  I had to repeatedly ask for clarification.  Naturally, the horribly-accented leader took offense and probably figured my PC had about as much brainpower as a half-giant.  My IC solution was to get my PC transferred to someone who spoke / typed more clearly.  I regarded that previous leader as someone who probably thought a super-duper accent was the pinnacle in character development... but to me, it was a major hinderance to playability. (Ju' 'ay n' t' eh 'eal'ah h'vah 'ccen'!)

If you take an accent too far to where people don't want to deal with your PC because they don't enjoy sitting there and staring at the screen for 5 minutes trying to figure out what the hell your PC just said, be prepared for the IC consequences of being shunned.  I know that I, for one, don't have the patience to go through that again and I will simply start ignoring PCs who can't enunciate (ie. type clearly enough) for me to understand after reading the line once.  (If you've ever been at one of the HRPT's where there's so much action that your screen scrolls very quickly,  that's all the time you really get).

Also, if I have issues parsing a single line, I feel very sorry for those other players who don't speak English as their primary language.  Just think about those poor folk trying to figure it all out!

[spawnloser]

I'm with Space Ace.  I can think of one character that I've RP'd with that had a horrible accent...and was understandable.  I can think of another that had a horrible accent...and was not.  I can't stand being around the second and don't like RP'ing with them just due to the fact that I don't want to bother having to take the extra time.  Come on people, RPing an accent is great, but lets make it understandable, okay?