So I know in Roleplaying a lot of accents are mosty based off the race of the character but I gotta ask.
Is it possible for a another race maybe to have a different dialect and accent when it comes to the way you type. A lot of my ocs are either of African heritage or islander backgrounds but since you know Africa doesn’t really exist in Wow and is more shown through the Zandalari Trolls (Zandalar Forevah!) I think its kind of impossible to have what I envision to be a human with a African accent unless perhaps his family has a relation to the Zandalari trolls.
It kind of reminds me of that scene from Thor Ragnorak, when Hela came to Asgard when Hogun came on screen. He is Japanese but still a resident of Asgard so its kind of like, maybe if Asgard has mixed cultures places like Gilneas and Stormwind are a little mixed here and there. Just some food for though but I just really wanna know if I can bust out some yoruba slang in my rp without people looking at me crazy.
“Kosi Wahala, I will help you dis quest King of Light.”
I would never tell anyone not to use accents in RP. But in my experience, they can make it pretty hard to parse the scene.
I believe these things can be more coherently expressed either by dialogue tags (“Hi, I’m a Night Elf,” said Enekie in a thick Darnassian accent) or by word choice and placement (“Welcome to being in the Exodar,” said a Draenei because sometimes they do that).
But I do not believe we should put people who RP accents in jail. Not yet.
It depends on how thick the accent is. If the accent is thick enough that it would impede someone from understanding them at times, then write it out. If not, do what Enekie says above and imply it’s in the accent.
For me it isn’t accents themselves that are the most important part of conveying linguistic differences, it’s how you format your sentence, and the words you choose to use.
For example:
Character 1- “Thanks buddy, I owe you one.”
Character 2- “My sincerest thanks, I am indebted to you for many moons to come.”
The sentences have the exact same meaning, but I bet when you were reading that you gave the two sentences their own accents inherently due to the different pacing and word choice.
The example that I always think of is Data from TNG. He’s an android, and the manner of speaking that sets him apart is that he doesn’t (generally) use contractions when he speaks. This makes him sound more robotic and mechanical and further adds to his nature as a synthetic lifeform.
“I cannot.” vs “I can’t.”
In general I think the most important thing is just communicating effectively.
From a lore perspective, you could say the accents that we are familiar with IRL found a way to manifest on Azeroth. I don’t think it’s impossible to have what you envision.
We have british accents, scottish accents ect. To say that one of the human nations that branched off and formed a language that would give the accent you see for you character I’d say is completely withen the realm of reality. Humans are diverse, in their own lore and how they appear.
I am not an expert on how to treat the situation between having a dark skinned character raised by trolls, but I’m unsure if that would be the best option.
But yeah, I think what you want is very 100% possible! I’m sure you know your human lore, but dive back into it, see what you can find. Have fun
These days I tend to lean more on word choice, diction, other’s imaginations, and sentence structure than trying to phonetically type it out.
there was one person in my guild way back when that i could never decipher what their character was saying
Mind you I’m also a hypocrite because I don’t know how my apostrophe key isn’t broken from writing my stupid GW2 cowboy, that one is just overdone to the point of absurdity.
I remember when I first started RPing my dwarf hunter way back in Wrath, I had to provide translations for my friends because my accent was thicker than Mr. Krabs.
I do believe that it would be fine to play a human with a different accent, I think it’s even mentioned in books like Traveller (don’t quote me on that, I may not be recalling correctly).
I do agree with others that depending on how you type it, it could make things very hard to read. How I type my troll’s accent has changed as I’ve gone along, mainly because I found certain things annoying to type or I thought they were too difficult to understand. But yeah, I say go for it!
This is generally how I roll with Juspion.
I either have him use incorrect grammar or will just emote /em gasps in Draenei.
A little off-topic but there are a few examples in the game with Draenei Eredar characters without the typical Draenei accent so you could play a Draenei that speaks clear perfect pitch common. So who’s to say you can’t play a human with an accent?
There’s honestly a lot of room to explore this topic, we know a lot of the main human character cast don’t have accents despite coming from regions with a notable one (Jaina and Glenn specifically). So you could lean in and look at real life examples to explain this, maybe Jaina and Glenn coming from the ruling class was taught a more “refined” common that strips away some of the regional dialects their home countries are known for. While those not from those social circles continue to speak with a number of colourful regional dialects and accents. Considering how far and wide humanity has spread, it’s safe to assume that there’s probably been some natural evolution.
Oh dang, thinking more, I wonder what kinda creole languages that could exist around Azeroth. Especially in more mixed communities like Booty Bay, Freehold or anywhere with a lot of interaction between different groups and cultures. Imagine a creole language made up of common, goblin and zandali spoken by residents in neutral goblin settlements.
I only RP accents enough to where it’s clear under the most basic and understood terms that that character “has” an accent or speaks in some way that is universally associated with a culture.
It’s just as understood to say “Ah goin on tour tommorow, yeah” versus “Mi deh go pah tour tomarraw” though one is far easier to understand, type, and you hear the same “voice” when reading the dialogue. Anything else beyond that I think is just hubris on the writer’s end.
I think this question is more so if its possible to have certain accents that we know of irl but haven’t seen in game yet rather then writing out the dialect in written form.
But in the context of how you portray it yes. I recommend doing research on writing accents and dialect in creative writing. Because more often then not, you shouldn’t really have to all the time. There are times where certain words could allude to the accent you imply for them but if someone is inexperienced with accent writing it can become incredibly hard to process and read for people with dyslexia, this makes the dialogue distracting and detract away from post, or story, you’re writing.
And depending on the accent itself, if its something you have no irl connection, and have little to none research, it can come off as offensive and more of a caricature of the real language its based off of. I’ve seen people get rather upset at this idea, but this is the truth with creative writing when you research it.
A lot of the times, you don’t really have to write out a heavy accent unless it actively brings something to the story itself. And seeing as there are certain races we already know the common accents for, pushing the accent writing in RP can be unnecessary at times. If its anything other than what we’re use to, put it in your first glance!
But aside from that, I believe any sort of accent could exist in WoW! Just treat it with respect, do your research, try to figure out what the closet thing in WoW it could be connected to (and by that I mean mostly human groups) and if that in itself might be seemed as problematic you could figure out an independent way as to how to go about it.
And aside from the accent existing, again, this is actually a bit of a serious topic! So dive into some creative writing, see what they say about certain things and how it comes off. Some of the RP questions I see are mostly creative writing ones. (Like how do I balance my magic in rp, how do I portray this sort of character ect)
Also my least favorite example of accents gone wrong is the Darkhorse English Hellsing release. Anderson’s dialog is horrible and unreadable that I bought the Japanese releases instead than continue reading that nonsense. (But also I lived by a Japanese bookstore that had more volumes than English at the time.)
The German accents are pretty bad but not nearly as unreadable as Anderson’s forced Irish accent.
