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So, to clarify, I'll be using the words accent and dialect here, and wanted to give a brief rundown of their differences. An accent is the sound a language makes when it is influenced by the speakers primary language (like a French accent for a French person speaking English). A dialect, however, is a different way of speaking the same language. British English, and American English, for example, are two dialects of the English language.

So a brief rundown on what I assume to be the real-world equivalent to each Races accent. This is totally just me spitballing, so if anyone has any other ideas for them, please share! Before I go on to potential develop a working model for each language, I want some input, and at least a basic consensus!

Lithmorran - Closes approximation in my mind is the English. They're an Empire, It's likely their language would influence other nearby languages, so that the geographically close duchies would have a bit of a Lithmorran lilt to that areas dialect (only if they're close, Tubor, for example, wouldn't have much). Conversely, I like to think of Lithmorran as being heavily influenced by the primary language of a speaker, but more on that later.

Tubori - Simple, relaxed. Most languages mirror the lifestyles of the area that speaks them. When I think of Tubori, I think of a relaxed sailor or fisherman. Clipped, lots of dropped letters (th' instead of the, m'self instead of myself). They probably speak quickly, as well. In my head, they have an Irish/Welsh accent.

Vandagan - Taken over by the Lithmorrans, the Vandagan have managed to not just deal with it, but prosper. Based on the documentation, they don't just immitate Lithmorran culture, they've made it their own. I see the Vandagasns as posh, overly proper. The documentation makes it seem like language is a very important part of Vandagan culture, which would back up the posh sound.

Charalin: Being a Charali is hard. The summers suck, the winter sucks, they can't stay in once place because of food, and everyone wants their land. They fight because they have to, and their language reflects that. They have less an accent as a way of speaking. Because they don't value the truth as much as others, and they speak in puns regularly, their sentences would be simple. Less ways to mess up.

Vavardi: I'm actually totally at a loss as to what the Vavardi might sound like. I go to stereotypes, but none come to mind. I imagine they'd still sound like Lithmorrans, as they come from Lithmore.

Hillmen: Definitely come to mind as Scandanavian. Norway, Swedish, like Viking warriors. I'd need a bit more on that, but I'm curious what others think.

Farin: So the Farin actually come to mind as French. They're way different than pretty much every other Duchy, but close enough that they're a part of the Kingdom. They're trained to fight, mostly, and are more organized than the Hillman or Charali.

Pretty much everyone ends up with their own interpretation of Earthly equivalents for the Urthly regions. The Tubori are Hawaiian-Scottish, the Vavardi are an Italian-French hybrid, Lithmorrans are German, Vandagans are Russian, Farin are Mexican-African, Charali are Native American-Eurasian, Daravi are Persian, the Tarnished are dwarves... or, you know, however it works in your head.

You do see people borrowing real-world accents to make their characters distinct and/or to support the player's interpretation of that culture. I have a Southsider who drops all kinds of letters, for example. But the languages actually have their own sounds already, and as a player who likes seeing more "Urthly, not Earthly" touches in game, I'd love to see that reflected IC more often.

Here's the first sentence of the Erra Pater in each accepted language (just don't tell the Order since the Erra Pater is ONLY written in Lithmorran...):

The world began in water and fire, a great spring birthed beneath the brilliant heat of the sun.

Dve ooawwd fedam em ooadew amd fewe, a dwead dfwemd fewdved femeadv dve fwewweamd vead af dve doom. (Lithmorran)

Kata kollk totapos tas koktal osk totalta, o pltaok ktoltasp totalkatak totastaoka kata toltalltaosk ataok oto kata kks. (Farin)

Dhchi oueraradh biliel il ouedhira eldh birai, e liraiedh dhbrailli biradhchidh biliedhch dhchi brairaraieldh chiedh eb dhchi dhoul. (Charali)

Dki voaad rikios is vodia osd riai, o kiaiod draiski riadkid risiodk dki raiaaiosd kiod or dki dvs. (Vandagan)

Salase umvilalasa nasenavime seme umvisasela vimesa naselase, vi nalasevisa sanalasemena naselasalasesa nasemesevisala salase nalaselalasevimesa lasevisa vina salase saumme. (Hillman)

Uha olohahau waakolowa awa olouaha lowau waahaa, lo kohaalou uwahaawako waahauhau waawaalouh uha wahaahahaalowau halou lowa uha uowa. (Tubori)

Parati oonnpa ptichon tin oopatin onpa ptinti, o chntiopa papntinch ptinparatipa ptintiopara parati pntinntionpa ratiopa op parati paon. (Vavardi)


Obviously some of this is hard to pronounce but you can see that each language has a certain feel to it. I'm not trying to say your approach is wrong or anything, just offering an alternative point of view!

No, no, I totally understand! And that's a solid way to go about it ICly, and it makes sense when it comes to teaching the language, but it won't work for creating proper accents in English (or, it might, but it'd be really difficult). Unless someone has a solid idea of how to figure out which ones would develop which sounds based on the letters above, it might not be as practical.

So I figure we have to decide what people would prefer?

As the person who generated the language "garble" rules (on a previous version of the game, but it's currently the same on TI:L) I can hopefully provide some insight into the thought process behind it. Obviously I don't claim any kinda authority as far as how anyone should play or do anything, so feel free to speak however you want =)

TL;DR version: Here's what each language generally sounds like to a non-native speaker of that language, and therefore the base from which to derive a Lithmorran accent. Lithmorran = Old English. Vavardi = combo of Italian and modern British English. Vandagan = Russian. Charali = Gaelic. Tubori = Hawaiian. Hillman/Daravi/Eld = no RL comparison in particular, but distinctly "foreign" and mostly unintelligible.

--- For those who want way too much detail, here ya go ---

What I'm talking about in this post is what a language "sounds like" on its own, because that directly affects the accent a native speaker of that language would have when speaking in a different language. For example, if you only speak English IRL, you are used to only making certain types of sounds with your mouth bits, so learning French or Chinese would introduce new physical movements that you are not familiar with, and that unfamiliarity produces your spoken accent. Similarly, a native Tubori speaker speaking Lithmorran would sound very much like a RL native Hawaiian speaking English, because those are the actual families of sounds each IC language encompasses.

When coming up with the translation data, for the most part I did NOT try to go by what RL cultures approximate the IC cultures, mainly because there's not a good consensus across the playerbase. For example, some people see the Tubori as culturally Hawaiian, but others see French, others see east Asian, still others see pirate versions of the British. Truthfully, every duchy has some non-RL facets combined with aspects from multiple RL cultures; even Lithmore itself is a mashup of "white Europe" (weather adapted from German historical data, timeline names mostly Welsh, culture Victorian English, etc.) plus some good old made up stuff. So it's not to say that Charali culture is Irish culture, but it is absolutely true that the LANGUAGE is based on Irish Gaelic.

LITHMORE:

Lithmore is the IC heart of the game, and Dav's Consolidation meant that much like the RL English language, spoken Lithmorran should appear to be the most "native" to most players. By that I mean the garbled version of Lithmorran is actually almost readable by RL English speakers. It's sort of how you might sound if you spoke with a mouthful of bread. For example, "In-qui-si-tor" becomes "Em-vooe-de-daw" - it may not LOOK similar, but try reading each word aloud and you might be able to trace it back. Really, if you (as a player at the keyboard) try to read any garbled Lithmorran word aloud you should have a strong chance of OOCly guessing what it was. That's intentional, to show the IC ubiquitousness of the Lithmorran language.

Take a look at Inertia's awesome Erra Pater example too, you can see stuff like "water and fire" becoming "ooadew amd fewe" sorta like Homestar Runner saying the words... Am I showing my age with that reference? -_-

VANDAGO AND VAVARD:

Vandago and Vavard are physically relatively close to Lithmore, and to the extent that anyone travels (for trade or whatever) these three regions would probably be most familiar with one another, and as a result their languages would evolve together. Vandagan garbles in a similar manner to Lithmorran, but it sounds sharper or harsher; where Lithmorran has a lot of soft "d" and "m" sounds, Vandagan introduces harder "k" sounds. That said, if you were to see a few garbled words in both Lithmorran and Vandagan, you should notice the languages are related. The average Vandagan probably won't have much of an accent when speaking Lithmorran, though she might sound unintentionally harsh or curt as a combination of the harder sounds they are used to and the fact that it's significantly colder than even Lithmore - gotta save your breath and be succinct!

As for Vavard, I figured they would act like the French who prefer not to "sully" their precious native tongue by incorporating sounds or words from other languages. So while the process of translating Lithmorran into both Vandagan and Vavardi is similar, the latter does have a few unique sounds. There's a lot of front-of-the-mouth "pati-pati" sounds, I would describe Vavardi as "chirpy and energetic" and Lithmorran as "mumbly". Native Vavardi people probably DO have a noticeable accent when speaking Lithmorran because they would be encouraged to speak exclusively Vavardi back home, compared to other duchies where Lithmorran might be seen as a sort of Common Tongue. IMO the Vavardi Lithmorran accent is a sort of fancy-pants or high-class accent similar to how Americans perceive the typical British accent (aka "Received Pronunciation" English).

CHARALI AND TUBOR:

These two regions are much farther from Lithmore, geographically and culturally. You could reasonably walk or ride a cart from Vandago to Lithmore, but it would take much longer from the Charali plains and you'd of course need a boat to come from Tubor. As a result, these two languages are much more distinct from Lithmorran and therefore designed to be harder for a player to guess at garbled words.

To compare to RL languages, Charali was specifically based on Irish Gaelic and Tubori on Hawaiian. Not to say you'll get a REAL Gaelic or Hawaiian word in RP, of course, but if you (the player) don't actually know any Hawaiian IRL you might THINK you do when you speak garbled Tubori. Hulaoowalowaluau....

FARIN:

Farin is in its own category. It has fewer sounds overall, which makes it much harder for a player to guess at translations. It also has much harsher sounds, with a lot of K and hard T sounds. For legacy RP purposes I had also wanted the word "goodness" to be garbled as "pookstall" but I didn't quite get there, it actually becomes "pookstakk" Sorry, Savana.

HILLS, DARAVI, AND MAGES, OH MY:

The hillish language is not based on any specific RL language, but it was intentionally made hard to OOCly guess at, and the sounds are generally grunty and hissy. I was going for a vaguely primitive or simple-sounding language.

Daravi only uses the letters from the word "daravi". Seriously, anything you say will ONLY garble to those particular letters. Similarly, Eld only uses the letters in "klaatu" (as in "klaatu barada nikto" for you sci-fi geeks out there). This makes both languages sound super foreign and all but impossible to OOCly translate.

A note about BIRTH CLASS:

Just as there's a huge difference between the Received Pronunciation and Cockney variations of British English (or for a more American comparison, the lilting Southern drawl of gentlefolk attending a cotillion versus the sound of twangy rednecks getting hit by ternaders), there would be a huge difference between the dialect of a born noble (or gentry) and that of a working-class freeman. Both people might natively speak the same language, but the whole "dropping letters" thing would typically be seen as a feature of class more than region.

For watchers of Game of Thrones, there's a bit where Tywin notices Arya saying "My Lord" rather than "milord" or "m'lud" like the commoner she's pretending to be. Notice he doesn't say she sounds like she's from Winterfell instead of Harrenhal, but rather he knows she was raised among nobles rather than commoners because of her dialect.

What does this mean for regions? Well, someone who's poor in Vandago might also speak poor-people Lithmorran when they arrive at the capital, because they're now living and working among working-class natives who themselves speak crappy Lithmorran. Similarly, if someone's a rich Vavardi, they would probably speak very proper Lithmorran because they would not only have had good teachers, but they would also be surrounded by proper native speakers on a daily basis.

All analysis aside, I don't mean any of the above to determine "this accent is this, that accent is that" but since it's the actual definition of the languages I hope it helps come up with some kinda baseline for crafting your own accent or dialect.

Sabrelon wrote:No, no, I totally understand! And that's a solid way to go about it ICly, and it makes sense when it comes to teaching the language, but it won't work for creating proper accents in English (or, it might, but it'd be really difficult). Unless someone has a solid idea of how to figure out which ones would develop which sounds based on the letters above, it might not be as practical.

So I figure we have to decide what people would prefer?

Please don't take this as me trying to shut you down or anything, Sabrelon! My preference on this topic would be to leave what the accents sound like in English to the imagination - i.e. "He speaks with a Vavardi accent" lets me decide for myself what that sounds like versus, say, there being a help file telling me "the Vavardi language sounds like Esperanto."

I don't have a lot of input, given I haven't put too much thought into how most languages should sound outside of the garbling. However, as a long term Vavardi player, I thought I'd add in how I handle it in text: I just replace the "ih" sound in words with "ee". Not all instances of i but also other letter combos that end up making that sound. Marisa is an upperclass woman from Vavard City, as well, for the difference that makes.

"I am afraid that I weell have to excuse myself, as I had eentended for my sheep to depart thees morning and I have beeseeness to attend to before that."

Everybody loves the "sheep" and teases her about it ICly too - well, those who aren't afraid to tease a noblewoman.

While I kind of like leaving things to the imagination, I feel like we run into a problem if two people are phonetically typing out 'Vavardi accents' yet they're utterly different! I'd love to see one or two small things, like Mareesa's i's, become common parlance - and a few words, perhaps, be used to differentiate the duchies. Really minor things like that as a base, and then clarify that people can embellish with more details so long as it fits the general theme.

For example, if we take the sort of 'wahalaou" sound of Tubori and use it to say that Tubori have a tendency to be less than crisp about their consonants in Lithmorran, and that they're more likely to use "aye" instead of "yes" (admittedly that is 100% my own character), there's room to both just say "speaks with a Tubori accent" and to try and phonetically spell that out, without too much contradiction.

Applesauce wrote:The average Vandagan probably won't have much of an accent when speaking Lithmorran, though she might sound unintentionally harsh or curt as a combination of the harder sounds they are used to and the fact that it's significantly colder than even Lithmore - gotta save your breath and be succinct!

I think this gets across pretty well! I've emoted that my Vandagans have a habit of sounding like jerks when they're just trying to say normal stuff. =] I like Sab's interpretation of Vandagan poshness, too, given their cultural obsession with appearances - it fits in nicely with the recent Vandagan FQ and cultural rewrites.

I am not a linguist:

I think the way it manifests for me - my upperclass Vandagans all tend to talk quite properly (except when the sailor is on her boat and needs to communicate with her boat people, and then she traumatizes poor Galen - people change up their dialects based on company, too!) - and they avoid using contractions, because contractions like "don't" or "can't" require a bit of dexterity that can make you sound clumsy or stuffed up, and avoiding them just makes you sound fancier anyway.

I noticed people (including me) tend to pull from Vandagan slavic inspiration and append -i to the ends of adjectives when they end in hard consonants; something out of Pronsk is Pronski, something out of Vostock is Vostocki. I wouldn't expect it, but I also kind of like the idea of drawing from how ICly (even if you don't know Vandagan it's easy to find out by reading lore) Rosdokios is "Vandagan" and -os is the garbled/Vandagan version of "an." Haizea had a habit of slipping "Batarostros" instead of the Lithmorran "Batarostran" into her dialogue when describing her own people. There's a lot of greek influence in the established names and words of Vandagan things, like Dusairus, and I believe Greek uses -os for a lot of adjective endings and medieval Russian would much more closely resemble Greek than it does today, so I assumed it was intentional!

As for my Hillmen,

The language garble is sort of whispery and grumbly and doesn't seem to have much in the way of hard consonants at all, so when Azi was first learning how to write, she mixed up her K's/G's/H's a lot. I assume someone with a Hillish accent would slur their Lithmorran a little and be really terrible at sharp languages like Vavardi and Vandagan. I imagine them tapping their R's bluntly; the garble sort of implies a lot of up and down tongue movement and nasal sounds versus sounds where you really need to press your tongue against your teeth or palate - they wouldn't sound quite as Norse or as Mongolian as they look. A lot of 'low' vowels like O and U might be pronounced like A's.

In the new Hillman helpfiles, there's documentation on why the Hillmen have an alphabet - it's basically just a simplified Lithmorran alphabet that only concerns itself with the sounds made in Hillish, and each stroke is the same length because they chisel words rather than write them. Lithmorran missionaries had to bring language and reading/writing to the Hillmen in order to bring them the Erra Pater, so Hillish priests began making notes by writing their own familiar words with this new alphabet. Sort of like a lot of the native languages over here using english characters to transliterate for road signs (british columbia).

The clans are so insular, too, I bet they could recognize each other based on dialect specifics. You know how sometimes your family will have a word for something that no one else seems to use or understand, or you'll learn how to pronounce something sort of funny because of your family?



I kind of imagine the fancy Vavardi speaking like the people from the Capitol in the Hunger Games movies, but with more I/ee sounds like Marisa.