Goblin Accents - What Do You Use?

[unseenmage]

For writing or roleplaying, what accents do the Playground think fit best with goblinoid heroic NPCs?

[RedWarlock]

I use the back-of-the-throat nasal Stitch/Gollum voice.

[Psyren]

Depends heavily on the type of goblin:

In Golarion (and the Pact Worlds), goblins are almost feral except when it comes to blowing things up, in which case they are uncannily inventive idiot savants. For these, the common approach would be a voice that is equal parts manic and childlike.

In Azeroth, goblins are a former slave race that became hyperintelligent, overthrew their oppressors and more or less became Ferengi-style crimelords. In keeping with their shady mafia-like enterprises, the vast majority are voiced with Brooklyn or Bronx-style accents.

In Harry Potter, goblins are commercially-savvy like the Azeroth variant, but their enterprises are wholly legitimate, and they have innate magic powers that rival those of wizards themselves to keep them in check. These versions get a sophisticated speaking pattern, like a classy/proper English.

In the Lord of the Rings movies, goblins are basically the weaker and more cowardly versions of orcs. The film versions of Tolkien races being British-themed, they get a lower-class street cockney that cements their status as the lowest of the low, commanding even less respect than the already downtrodden orcs. I think regular D&D goblins are closest to this version as well, though exceptions exist.

[Zaq]

One word: nasal.

[Aniikinis]

Depends on the setting, as with all things, but I tend to use a back-of-the-throat nasally voice with a lot of broken english and repeated and shortened words.

[Malphegor]

A-Hah! It is I, Skeletor! Or at least he voice of him in the form of a goblin!

BEHOLD UPON MY WORKS, AND DESPAIR! For the Green Tide of goblindom is RISING! A-ha-hah-hah-HA!

[thelastorphan]

Lots of odd noises and long sounds. Nasally but trying to talk like a kid.

[daremetoidareyo]

I listened to a podcast where they had a blue-collar North Jersey accent.

[Efrate]

Heroic goblin npcs are weird concept to me, but assuming they are a villain but statted to be more than 5 hp of minor resource drain, either embrace the trope and crank It to 11, or go hard against it so they stand out even more.

BBEG a goblin? The British make the best villains. Have it be distressingly polite and condescending because it KNOWS it's better than you, your family, and your entire nation and race, and even if it may never say it directly you know it.

Normal goblins speak monosyllabicly with lots of various grunts and noises to form a sort of pigdin. Go high and nasally or low and growlly. I use the latter for my Golarion goblins, they are mean, creul and evil but dumb. Drown in a rain barrel dumb because they dont close their mouth to try to get their massive heads out.

For a wandering goblin hero it just speaks as any adventurer would; possibly very carefully to show it's not that dumb, with extremely precise diction, but might occasionally slip back into it's more feral native pigdin and be embarrassed about it.

[Ravens_cry]

I have a goblin character I really like, and I play her accent as being rather Smeagol though even more frantic, dropping 'unnecessary words like 'are' and 'is', rarely using pronouns, and a bit more squealing. The thing is she's quite intelligent, and when I am talking with another character in Goblin who speaks the same, I have her be quite articulate and reserved sounding.

[Ken Murikumo]

Raspy, high-pitched, & manic. Usually with awful sentence structure (when speaking common). Kind of like the grunts from the Halo games.

[unseenmage]

...

For a wandering goblin hero it just speaks as any adventurer would; possibly very carefully to show it's not that dumb, with extremely precise diction, but might occasionally slip back into it's more feral native pigdin and be embarrassed about it.
As the only nerd son of a red neck family myself I like this option best. Try as one might escaping one's linguistic roots can be most difficult.
Or as my kin would say, Dat ****'s super hard y'all.

[BWR]

That really depends on where the goblins was raised and where it currently lives. Obviously it would most likely have a Yazak if it lives somewhere on the Savage Coast of Mystar, or a Tharian accent if it lived in the Broken Lands. Goblins of the Dymrak Forest are a bit trickier but I assume they have a bit more of a Traldaran twang, perhaps even speaking Traldaran instead of a Goblin dialect.

Which is another way of saying that mapping real world accents to fantasy creatures and languages is to my mind entirely pointless unless said language and/or is explicitly based on a real world language...which is not the case for any goblin languages I am familiar with.

[NNescio]

For a wandering goblin hero it just speaks as any adventurer would; possibly very carefully to show it's not that dumb, with extremely precise diction, but might occasionally slip back into it's more feral native pigdin and be embarrassed about it.

Kinda like Billy Slick, heh.


That really depends on where the goblins was raised and where it currently lives. Obviously it would most likely have a Yazak if it lives somewhere on the Savage Coast of Mystar, or a Tharian accent if it lived in the Broken Lands. Goblins of the Dymrak Forest are a bit trickier but I assume they have a bit more of a Traldaran twang, perhaps even speaking Traldaran instead of a Goblin dialect.

Which is another way of saying that mapping real world accents to fantasy creatures and languages is to my mind entirely pointless unless said language and/or is explicitly based on a real world language...which is not the case for any goblin languages I am familiar with.

Usually one tries to identify the distinctive parts of the dialect (which may include absolute qualities like phonemes, but it also covers relative traits vis-a-vis to the predominant language in the region like perceived cultural attributes [e.g. sterotypes]) and try to map them real-life English (or whichever target language) dialects. That's why people suggest posh Received Pronunciation for upper class dialects, Cockney for lower-class ones, Bronx/Queens/Brooklyn/Skeletor impression/etc. for the nasally-sounding ones (and shady criminal-ish class), and so on.

It's how the translation convention works for fantasy settings. (Or interlingual ones, like how Kansai gets mapped to Southern American). What, you speak in full Goblin/Common conlang at your tables? I think not.

(Even a conlang fanatic like Tolkien wrote his books in [mostly] English. With dialects to match whichever socio-economical class of the characters, as appropriate.)

[BWR]

Usually one tries to identify the distinctive parts of the dialect (which may include absolute qualities like phonemes, but it also covers relative traits vis-a-vis to the predominant language in the region like perceived cultural attributes [e.g. sterotypes]) and try to map them real-life English (or whichever target language) dialects. That's why people suggest posh Received Pronunciation for upper class dialects, Cockney for lower-class ones, Bronx/Queens/Brooklyn/Skeletor impression/etc. for the nasally-sounding ones (and shady criminal-ish class), and so on.

It's how the translation convention works for fantasy settings. (Or interlingual ones, like how Kansai gets mapped to Southern American). What, you speak in full Goblin/Common conlang at your tables? I think not.

(Even a conlang fanatic like Tolkien wrote his books in [mostly] English. With dialects to match whichever socio-economical class of the characters, as appropriate.)

I know what and how and why people do it, I just disagree with it. It's quite frankly a bit stupid, even when Tolkien did it. The worst I do is gabble incoherently at the players if they don't understand whatever language they are listening to.
I certainly don't invent languages to use, because none of my players would bother to learn them even if I could be bothered to create them (and I would want to do it properly if I first attempted - no crappy glosses of existing languages here). If accents are important I note that X speaks with a Y accent and tell the players if Y have any cultural baggage, and leave it at that. Usually accents aren't important so they get ignored.

[Duke of Urrel]

If you REALLY want to sound like a goblin, you need to master Gobbledigook.

Iggabiff yoogaboo caggaban reaggabead thiggabiss, yoogaboo caggaban lurgaburn toogaboo speaggabeak Gobbledigook. Juggabust pooggaboot toogaboo eggabextraggaba siggabilaggababuggabulls iggabantoogaboo eaggabeach siggabilaggabull uggabuv uggaba wurrgaburd. Shurgaburr, iggabitt taygabakes suggabum praggabacktiggabiss, buggabutt juggabust iggabamaggabajiggabin howgabow iggabimpreggabest yorgabor freegabends wiggabill beegabee.

(Or you can just paraphrase.)

[weckar]

I tend to give them a cockney.