Writing character accents better

[NuttsnBolts]

Russians, Polish, Germans, and Spanish...

How does someone portray a character from a certain nationality in a writing form with their intended dialogue? It has been a curiosity of mine as I look to expand my stories and attempt to play around with the lingo more often, but occasionally I find it difficult to write a section of speech without adding something as simple and dull as "he spoke with a Southern twang".

Any sources and support would be great as I believe the shared info will help with a lot of other roleplayers.

[BrokenPromise]

Admittedly, I don't write a lot of characters that don't speak my dialect. The trick is to do it in a way that is both convincing, interesting, and easy to read. There was a Scottish character in an RP that was played by an actual Scottish person. He wrote a paragraph or two entirely in scots, and was proud of the fact that nobody in the RP could read it, and google translate couldn't properly decipher it (but it did get you close). What's the point?

The truth is that most people who don't have English as their primary language may pronounce words a bit differently, but the sentence structure more or less stays the same. It's hard to make those odd sounds come out in text without misspelling the word, which I don't recommend. That's why I choose to substitute certain words or phrases with words of the character's primary language. A french man who's confronted with a perilous situation might say "Oh mon due!" (oh my god) or "Sacare bleu!" (sacred blue!) Both are common french "cuss words," and can add a little flavor to your character's dialog. The french also have a system where their nouns are denoted with a sex. Le for masculine nouns, la for feminine nouns, and les for plural nouns. So someone could say "You hit le hand!" and become decidedly french while doing it. Do make sure you're using the correct prefix if you decide to go this route. Lastly, you can observe the things that people with different primary languages struggle with. The french don't actually say "turn on" in their own language, but "open." My Canadian-French friend will occasionally ask you to "open the lights" when she walks into a dark room.

[Lady Absinthia]

A lot of it, from what I have found, goes with spelling it how it sounds. Southern accents are pretty simple since Southern Dialects have a speech all their own. G's get dropped, s's get added, few things actually have a single syllable, O's get changed to U's. Granted that is depending on if you are going Ga Southern, Lousianna Southern, Texas, or Virginian - since they are all their own monsters.

TWD Rp I am Gming, for example, has a Virginian, 2 from Boston, 2 from South Ga, 1 from Texas, and a Russian. Each of them speak in their own way, with their own inflection. The Rper who controls one of the ones from Boston doesn't use R's when he speaks. The Russian, v's and w's get interchanged and Th's at the beginning of words then to come out as D's.

Though going beyond that, a lot of it has to with turn of phrase. Each area has little lingo's all their own - get to know the catch phrases and it becomes a bit easier. Your traditionally thought Southern Redneck seems to be the easiest for many I have seen to pick up on portray, then branching out. Though, if you live in a particular area, draw on your own experience and try typing how you and others sound around you.

I will say though, take it little by little - Been there with the Scots accent thing Broken was speaking about. Lines of text I had no idea what they were talking about. Granted if you are playing a Scots meeting a Redneck and you want them both to be confused as hell by what the other is saying.... Go all in LOL

[Scout]

I love this topic and in my short chance to get on the internet I wanted to be a part of it. So, to me, there are two routes and a middle ground to pursue that are entirely up to the writer - because the reader will interpret them very differently.

The first route is to do exactly as you have - state that the character speaks that way, establish it early, and mention it now and then to keep the reader immersed and sounding it out in their head. The pros to this are that you can still write fluidly without having to sit and think overly long about how to spell it out. However, using this method you should still try to throw in the vernacular and slang of whichever dialect you're planning on using. The cons here are that it can seem, to the reader, as a lazy way to circumvent the challenge facing the writer, no matter how many dialects or accents are out there. And that's unfortunate, but in some ways it's true. Especially if we're not just talking about an American from the Deep South, but rather a Scot - where they actually spell words in social media with their accent (it baffles me and is almost unintelligible; one of the most amazing things linguistically I've seen - I love it).

That brings me to the second option, which is to spell and write as though you're speaking it - using phonetics in dialogue because that beautiful little margin of space between two quotation marks is permitted to be a veritable wasteland of grammatical anarchy and character reflection. Pros to this method are that, in my opinion, it's more immersive to an extent. If you can do it right, though far more difficult, it helps to really feel a character out just right. The downside is the difficulty, the time it can take to think and write it out and research it, and the fact that whether done right or not can make a conversation seem jagged and tedious to the reader.

So, when I'm reading at least (I struggle with how I write the characters myself, to this day, but try to lean on the second option moreso), I prefer that perfect middle spot. The place where a writer and speak through the character without sacrificing the message and comprehensibility of the words just for a gimmick. Especially when the world is primarily one accent - if everybody has a drawl, then perhaps stick to the vernacular and keep the phonetics to a minimum. However, if you're in... say, England, and all of the characters have a posh, well-educated, measured speech until some Southerner from America shows up and starts spouting with a twang - even if educated - you'll want to use that chance to show the dichotomy of cultures.

Just food for thought - these might be ramblings, I just got off a really long shift and have had only sporadic days off lately, but I really wanted to weasel in on this discussion.

[Didgeridont]

I think the most direct way to portray an accent is to reinforce it with idiosyncrasies various groups have when they talk. This was mentioned earlier regarding the way people pronounce words differently in a phonetic sense, but you can go further than that by injecting the grammar of the speakers native language into English. This action further shows how this person is a non-native English speaker, and thus speaks differently and with an accent.

Take Polish for example. The Polish language does not use articles ('a', 'an', 'the'), so you can often reflect this fact in the character's speech.

If someone asks you to turn on the the lights in Polish, they say, "włącz światła". However, this phrase literally translates to "turn on light(s)", not "turn on the light(s)". Notice the lack of an article. You can use small difference in speech patterns in order to convey something as big as the characters native language, accent, etc.

[ArenaSnow]

I use both elements mentioned above - I reference that there's a certain dialect involved, and I try to integrate actual parts of the accent into the writing. It's best executed if you actually know how it's spoken and can say it aloud, and then reflect how it's said into your writing.

That said, I'm not particularly good at it - like all things, it's a matter of practice and skill with handling real world dialects to sound natural. I don't roleplay in other languages because a) I'm horrible with other languages and b) if I don't have a mastery of the language, I won't be able to properly connotate speech beyond "I suck speak".

[Scout]

@Didgeridont Slavic languages in general tend to be like that - it's an incredibly confusing grammatical function for them because they've learned that it's implied all their lives. It's a real pain, because it's *so* important for the Germanic folks like English speakers. That's a great point though :O