I'm curious, what accents do you imagine for various races/cities in Achaea? Since they have different languages, it stands to reason they would have different accents.

Here's my personal take:

Ashtan = New York accent
Mhaldor = Russian accent
Hashan = Italian accent, because Italy was heavily mercantile during the renaissance and the only defining feature of Hashan I can think of was that it houses the Crown Merchants
Cyrene = Swiss accent
Eleusis = Irish accent
Shallam = Arab accent ("What are those? Are those subtitles? What, you can't understand what I'm saying?")

Human = Hispanic. I'm not entirely sure why.
Dwarf = Scandinavian. Of course.
Tsol'aa = English
Mhun = American accent. Again, I'm unsure why.
Troll = German, because it's a very good language to get angry in.
Atavian = ? Not sure
Horkval = Nothing that would ordinarily be produced by human vocal chords
Grook = Chinese. It's both foreign and hyper-intelligent.
Rajamala = African, with the language itself being a bit like bushmen but with growls/purrs instead of clicking
Xoran = Again, nothing a mammal would have an easy time mimicking
Siren = French. No offense to the French intended.
Satyr = Scottish

Achaean = Not sure, but probably American. Why? Because Achaean would've been developed by Seleucar, which was primarily influenced by three cultures: Moghedu (especially early on), Shallam, and Ashtan. Two of those three have accents originating in America, and the third has accents originating in a non-English speaking country. Achaea is an English game. QED. Presumably it's a different dialect than Mhun.

No offense meant, and I think you've got a very interesting and creative thing going here, but I lol'd hard at a few of those accents. I can't claim that they're not what you say they are, either, but I never came up with any aural-in-mind accents myself, so Eleusis -> Irish especially made me chuckle.

(They do make a lot of sense when you think about them. )

I always figured Mhaldorian to sound like Egyptian, or a language built around demons and hell and whatnot.

Mhaldorian is angry Russian.

Actually, a lot of them (Eleusian included) I'd never really thought about before, so I had to stop and think "What would an Eleusian sound like?" Irish just seemed to fit them best. And I decided to explicitly ignore mudsexing Druids when thinking about it, both out of respect for the good RPers of Eleusis and for the sake of my sanity.

Angry German, you mean. Mhaldor is far more akin to stereotypes of early '40s Germany than, say, '60s Soviet Union.

I can see Mhaldorians speaking Russian much easier than I can trolls, though. Plus, Mhaldor is in a cold war with the world in general fairly often.

It's the sound of the language/accent, not a parallel to the political situations.

I always imagined Cyrene as having an Italian accent...not sure why.

...Mhaldor is totally sexy angry German.

Always imagined Cyrene's accent to be Greek myself, considering that Cyrene was a figure in their mythology on top of being the name of a city in North Africa during the days of the Greek Empire and all...

Of course, it's a city founded on the concepts of peace protected by a snowy mountain range. That strikes me as decidedly swiss, besides which, just about everything in Achaea was named after something in Greek mythology.

Okay...how about a Sweek accent then?

We need a kind of accent that ends in T to mix in with it, so we can have a sweet accent.

Tsol'aa - English accent? Do you mean cockney?
Edit: and what does Swiss accent sound like? There are four official languages there, one of those being a very ugly version of German.

The way the Arcadians speak Atavian, it's got a lot of "set" and "the" sounds in it. Like "Tuccet". Pretty heavy use of the C and K. But that's only the very little I got to talk to Amae (Atavian language tutor) about. If I had to make a guess, I'd say it'd be something vaguely Arabic.

There are several topics like this, with some interesting results.

http://forums.achaea.com/index.php?showtop...&hl=accents
http://forums.achaea.com/index.php?showtop...&hl=accents
http://forums.achaea.com/index.php?showtop...&hl=accents

Personally, I always thought Elusian sounded like

Lol at Eleusian Irish people. I just got an image of Rangor popping in and saying "Top of the morning Laddy."

Rangor does this.

"Baelgrim" totally sounds more German than Russian.

True. All in favor of renaming it "Wulfengrad Fortress?"

Correct.

'Grad' already means a fortified place in Slavic languages, so Wulfengrad will suffice.
Edit: it also means city.

Oh God. Now whenever Spire is in Raja I'm going to picture him as an ewok. :lol

Yub yub!

Having pissed off both Russians and Germans in my time: angry Russian is not as angry as angry German.

You mean he isn't?

But I like my Ls sounding like Ls!

jk. I never really imagined any specific accents, except the Dwarves... and I pictured Scottish for them x)

Sharramite!! Terr me the rocation of your secret base. Ah, I see you suppry I speak Achaean so werr.

Werr I wirr never terr you anything you Mhardor roser!


...

I can live with this accent...

Right!

Horkval speech = A combination of clicking noises combinated with buzzing and humming, very hard to understand.

I've made an mp3 (108kb) a horkval girl speak horkvali.

Horkval speech

That totally made me LOL But yeah I can imagine those accents so well, although like someone pointed out, there are 4 official languages in switzerland (german (or a dialect of sorts), italian, french and that raeto-roman thing), but I see the correlation switzerland-cyrene Ich veel schmite yoo veed my beeg mace!

Heh, accents always make me laugh. When someone has a "heavy Hashanite accent", I always wonder if that means they talk exactly like me or Grind. No one talks like Elentari

Long ago, if I remember right, consensus was Ashtan spoke German, but when Mhaldor was made, they spoke German in nothing but the angriest, gravelly of voices. Which is an entirely different language, you know.

It's funny how things change, though. Each city had a cultural influence that is almost entirely eradicated by now, even in the accents y'all suggest.

Horkval - Xhosa

I wanna learn to speak Horkval now.

Oh yeah? Oh yeah?

Mhun (midget)
Occultist (shady, possibly hooded)

You're a -ing Jawa!

Oo tee hee!

this made me lol XDoccultists in the crown merchants are now jawas

Gorlasintan, Messiah of the Damned (male Dragon)


He is a Blue Dragon, immense and powerful. Mighty wings jut from a huge, scaled back, and a large sinuous tail trails off his hindquarters. Four powerful limbs terminating in deadly-looking claws support its massive, scaled body, but the most impressive feature of this most impressive being is the proud, regal head. A long, flattened snout sports row upon row of razor-sharp teeth, and the glint in his saucer-sized eyes speaks of an ancient and formidable intellect.

Ashtan- I used to disagree with the Cockney assumption in favour of vulgar Latin, but that was before, when at least half the city could type properly. With the new influx of idiots who can't use a simple spell-checker, I agree that Ashtani probably sounds a lot like Cockney, while the more educated sliver of the population likely speaks the Queen's English

Shallam- Hands-down, Arabic. The climate, the architecture, the orphan-buggery, everything points to Ottoman empire influences.

Cyrene- Swiss, because of the frigid weather, and the goddamn clocktower.

Eleusis- The more intelligent members speak Tolkien's high Elvish, the average citizen speaks Ewok, and the Cortens speak Wookiee.

Hashan- Cheerful German, because all of them are so sweets-and-beer, pounceycuddlysnugglylickers that all I envision when I go there is a bunch of pudgy Aryan children in lederhosen.

Mhaldor- Angry Japanese, which is much more sinister and terrifying than angry German or angry Russian.



Human- Hindi or Sanskrit, due to the name of the city they were built-- Ceylon.

Dwarven- Something Nordic, for the Blackrock dwarves, who seem far more hardcore, but Gaelic for the rest of them, including the player dwarves. I think something about every dwarf ever portrayed in the media speaking with a Scottish or Irish accent has ruined it for me.

Tsol'aa- High Elvish, like the more intelligent citizens of Cyrene.

Mhun- Since they evolved from plagued Ceylonese humans, I'd guess they carry a rather faded Indian accent, like a native of India who has lived in a western country for decades upon decades.

Troll- Monosyllabic grunts and growls.

Atavian- Classical Greek.

Horkval- Gciriku, or another language with a lot of click consonants. They've always reminded me of mandibles being slapped together.

Grook- A mix of amphibian mating calls and telepathic communication.

Rajamalan- Kind of like Wookiee, but more fluid-- like the movements of a cat. I think both body language and feline vocalizations would be appropriate.

Xorani- Hisses and roars, like serpents, or dinosaurs. Perhaps with some velociraptor shrieks.

Siren- Dutch-- because prostitution is legal in Amsterdam.

Satyr- French. Think Pepe LePeu.

Whenever I think Xoran, I think of Marquoz off of Chalker's books, just taller.




As a result, I think of Xoran speech as being like Jack describes Marquoz's: deep and gravelly 'as if coming from a giant speaking through a hollow tube.'

Or maybe it's just because they're on an island.

*croaks repeatedly, then psychicly tells you "correct"*

Oh my god. I love you.

yeeees, because all us english sound like cockneys.
I figured she meant the more typical accent from movies and such, slightly silver spoon. Harry potter has a lot to answer for, but at least it has accents that don't make us all sound like morons!

Ah right. I was thinking dialects not 'accent'.

He, actually, but I confess the name is misleading. It's based off of "Asher," which is decidedly male. And also, yes, I'm pretty sure I also listed "American" as an accent somewhere, even though America doesn't have a default accent anymore than England.

Like Erick Avari?

It just occurred to me: The racial languages can all be learned, and are taught much the same way as a skill. The Divine could, if they want, hardcode the languages by dropping hints during the learning text (instead of the generic "you learn the xth segment" text they have now). Like, for example, if mention was made that the Grook written language was composed of thousands of characters, each representing a single word, it'd eliminate half the languages in history and nearly all of the ones in modern usage.

I'd rather not have this, because then it's like seeing a book in movie form. Whatever ideas YOU had about how things looked/happened are kind of..pushed aside. I'd rather have it open to interpretation so we can talk about it here. Also, who says they are based on actual languages? If they wanted to, the Divine could say that the grook language was made up of one syllable and it was body language that determined how it was used.

Haha. I was thinking more of the South Park episode where Starvin' Marvin and the Ethiopians get taken to the planet Marklar, where all people, places, things, concepts, and so on are referred to as 'Marklar'.