Troll Accents

Lore Story Forum
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So, every troll speaks Zandali - the Zandalari made a huge effort to unify them all under one language, and due to the frequent councils between the troll tribes, I imagine Zandali is still the common language of most troll tribes today.

But what of their accents? These are civilizations that have lived in relative isolation for centuries - how have they differed?

Here’s my take. :3

Zandalari
This is the baseline for troll speech - I’m drawing from Zandalari citizens and War-God Jalak. There doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on specific vowels or sounds - it’s read as a flow.
Example!
“Di chuka Zandalar!”
Farraki
I imagine the Farraki accent is quieter than most troll accents, due to their environment. Perhaps there’s emphasis on the “s”, “sst”, and vowel sounds to mimic sounds of the desert, where voices may carry.
Example!
“dI chUkA fArrAk!”
Gurubashi
This is arguably one of the largest existing tribes, being that they claim the entirety of Stranglethorn vale as their home, and they still have a great deal of infrastructure there that they still use despite being separated into different factions at the moment. I feel like this would be quite similar to a Zandalari’s Zandali.
Amani
These trolls…i’m not sure if their accents may be influenced by thalassian in any respect due to proximity, or if it’s just their own isolation. I’m imagining more emphasis on the consonants in order to be heard through the thick forests that surround Quel’Thalas.
Example!
“di CHuKa aMaN!”
Drakkari
This one’s tricky. They’re just as civilized as the Gurubashi - even more so though. They didn’t give into tribalism in the forests of northrend, and in fact developed their civilization far past that. Drakkari words might be even more exacting than Zandalari, as the Highborne are to the Night elves.
Darkspear/ Horde aligned.
I imagine this version of Zandali would be mixed with a lot of orcish and common words. There’d be more emphasis on the gutteral sounds of the throat, and the softer sounds of the tongue. Both Common and Orcish share these traits, and they’d probably be incorporated to ensure one can swap between the three as needed. A darkspear’s version of “Di chuka x” (which I’m taking to mean “For the honor of x” May be closer to sounding like “Di chuGA Vol’jin!”.

Anyways that’s my take - I’d love to hear others’!

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Looking at it from the actual OOC history/development of the franchise…

In Warcraft II, when Trolls were introduced, they had Cuban-inspired accents and even a jokey reference to Scarface. Cuban

Warcraft III continued with the Caribbean influence. They gave Trolls–Now Jungle Trolls to distinguish them from WCII’s newly dubbed Forest Trolls–more Jamaican inspired accents.

WoW continued with the Jamaican-inspired accents, but applied it to ALL trolls. That is until BfA and the Zandalari, where they went with a kind of generalized West African-inspired accent.

The evolution makes some sense, as the various forms of English/Spanish/French/Creole spoken in Cuba and Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean are heavily influenced by West African and Indigenous American languages.

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That’s a neat take - and a lil slice of history I didn’t know about! Thank you!
Goodness that’s actually kinda neat how that tracks. :no_mouth:

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The accents used for Zandalari also resemble the Xhosa-based accents like was used in Black Panther, but softer.

In an AU:

  • Zandalari sounds like Xhosa accented English
  • Gurubashi sounds like Jamaican Patois as is currently
  • I’d change Amani to sound Haitian Kreyol accented English
  • Change the Farraki to sound North African, maybe Moroccan accented English

Alternatively make one of them Desi accented English (maybe Urdu accented) and another one Latin American accented (maybe Quechua accented, or Dominican Spanish, etc)

Since Trolls use a lot of Latin American and Latin American Indigenous themes

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I found that many of the Zandalari accents sounded very similar to Nigerian accents.

There’s one vendor in Zul’Dazar that sounds so much like Folake Olowofoyeku. Ahhh!! just checked her IMDB and she does do voices for battle for Azeroth, I knew it!!

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Ye some NPCs 100% used Nigerian-based accents

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Which vendor is this?

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The one that asks you to drop more coin.

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