Race Accent Stereotypes

[zorba1994]

Thanks to High Fantasy's seeming origin in a landmass to the northwest of Continental Europe, fantasy games are littered with the Perpetually Scottish Dwarf, the Perpetually Celtic Elf, and the Perpetually Irish Halfling.

I have now taken it upon myself to completely set these stereotypes on their heads. As a result, I have now taken it upon myself to give the Dwarves speak Yiddish, and Halflings speak Spanish. Elves speak Russian.

Has anyone else resorted to gimmicks like this?

[Sipex]

Nope, I find my players get pissy if I mess with key tropes like that. Things like 'Drunken Scottish Dwarf' is something they've come to expect.

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

I change the accent by region, not by species.

[Amnestic]

Pshaw. Any Brit can tell you they're stereotyping the accents too. There's dozens of accents in England alone, not even going into Wales or Scotland variations.

Ireland (including the Northern part) aren't part of Great Britain. Northern Ireland is part of the U.K. (also called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland") but the Republic of Ireland is a separate country in an of itself.

The More You Know.

[zorba1994]

Pshaw. Any Brit can tell you they're stereotyping the accents too. There's dozens of accents in England alone, not even going into Wales or Scotland variations.

Ireland (including the Northern part) aren't part of Great Britain. Northern Ireland is part of the U.K. (also called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland") but the Republic of Ireland is a separate country in an of itself.

The More You Know.

First post now changed to say: "Land mass northwest of Continental Europe".

[Xefas]

Thanks to High Fantasy's seeming origin in Great Britain, fantasy games are littered with the Perpetually Scottish Dwarf, the Perpetually Celtic Elf, and the Perpetually Irish Halfling.

I don't think I've ever actually heard a Celtic Elf before. Usually we give them a French or very posh British accent.

In my last setting, the six main races went:
High Elves -> Posh British for the patricians, cockney for the plebeians (They were actually Romans, but I don't know what a Roman accent would sound like. And I mean ancient Rome, so I doubt it would be as Italian as it is now.)

Wood Elves -> German (They were like the various tribes of Visigoths and other barbarians, perched precariously in and around the High Elven empire.)

Dwarves -> Russian. They were very very communist.

Orcs -> Native American (They were plains-dwelling nomads, and basically acted like the savages that early European settlers demonized the Native Americans to be.)

Humans -> French for the nobles, and more creole Louisiana-esque accent for the working class.

Halflings -> Spanish

[some guy]

My hobgoblins speak with an accent that fluctuates between French and German. Drow too. It... it just happened?

[Amnestic]

First post now changed to say: "Land mass northwest of Continental Europe".

"British Isles" is also an acceptable title. Yes, the British Isles encompass Ireland, but Ireland isn't part of Great Britain.

[zorba1994]

To add a few more to mine...

My dragons speak a highly variant form of Hebrew (my players speak hebrew, but so do I so I can just change it up a little and it works fine).

My goblins USED to speak Chinese, but now I have a Chinese player so I need to fix that.

My gnomes speak Italian

Giant = German (which works extra well, because Dwarvish comes from Giant and Yiddish comes from German).

Primordial = Icelandic

Abberations speak gibberish

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

What is a "Native American Accent"?

I feel like Bjork pretty solidly established Icelandic as the language of fey folk, though.

[manyslayer]

In my one campaign, one clan of dwarves talked in New England accents (Ya can't get there from here). They were the river merchants and looked on as kind of weird by the other dwarves, though.

[LtPowers]

In the Realms, I usually imagine Illuskan being Germanic or Nordic, Cormanthan French, Damaran and Thayan and Rashemi Slavic, Mulhorandi ancient Egyptian, and Chondathan Spanish.

For the demihuman races, I find sticking with the traditional accents is best. =)


Powers &8^]

[Xefas]

What is a "Native American Accent"?

I tried to find a good example on Youtube for about 15 minutes, but 99% of the search results for anything I put in related to Native Americans were slideshows of various old photographs played to sappy music (or remixes of Kocoum from Disney's Pocahontas dying? ).

But anyway, have you ever seen an old John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movie?

[Gnoman]

Dwarves speak Yiddish

This is pretty fitting. Tolkien always said he viewed the dwarves as analogous to Jews.

[Cogidubnus]

I don't think I've ever actually heard a Celtic Elf before. Usually we give them a French or very posh British accent.

In my last setting, the six main races went:
High Elves -> Posh British for the patricians, cockney for the plebeians (They were actually Romans, but I don't know what a Roman accent would sound like. And I mean ancient Rome, so I doubt it would be as Italian as it is now.)

Just so you know, it'd be basically Italian, but no soft "c" sounds, and J pronounced as "I". It's more complicated than that, but that's a basic.

I always stick a Yorkshire accent in somewhere, (though rarely as thick as Joseph in Wuthering Heights), just because I'm Yorkshire born, Yorkshire bred, so I feel it necessary to represent the superior accent
They make good dwarves. They just sound grumpy and unintelligible (uncharismatic).

[Bonecrusher Doc]

I do tend to base some descriptive aspects of fantasy races off of real world languages and cultures, but I like to change it up each campaign.

Here is my most recent - some cliche, some not.
Gnomes - Croatian
Elves - Russian
Halflings - Roma and Irish
Dwarves - Scandinavian

[dsmiles]

Well, for one, I use different races than most. Here's my list:

Dwarves - Predictably a Scottish accent.
Elves - A snooty, upper-class English accent.
Orcs - Orcs speak Ork.
Goblins - Goblins sound like Gretchin (Grotz).
Humans - Humans vary by kingdom. I have a kingdom where humans have a cockney-style accent, another where they have a (somewhat) Korean accent, another where they have a Middle Eastern (primarily Egyptian influence) accent, and another where they have a Five Nations Native American accent (since I grew up in upstate NY).
Half-Elves - Wherever they were raised.
Half-Orcs - Wherever they were raised.

[Theodoxus]

My buddy an me, we made us halflin's speak with a hillbilly accent that gits the whole group roflstomping th' roof down.

Iz fun, y'know?

[Drakevarg]

For some reason, in my last campaign I decided that my elves spoke Japanese with a Scotch-Irish accent. ("Scotch-Irish" because any time I attempt either a Scottish or Irish accent, it always tends to waver between the two.) This may have been because two of the PCs were playing brothers based off of the Boondock Saints.

The nation of humans they ran into (one of two) were ethnically Germanic, culturally Greco-Roman, and spoke German with southern accents.

[Shademan]

elves- horrible australian

[Sinfonian]

I made a list a while back of what real world languages I thought corresponded with DND languages. I figured I could throw in something that would tie them closer but I never finished. Here's what I had:

Spoiler

Show

Aquan- Inuit
Auran- Hopi
Celestial: Latin
Common: English
Draconic: Greek
Druidic- Esperanto
Dwarven: Russian
Elven: Welsh
Giant: Polish
Gnomish: Arabic
Goblin: Xhosa
Halfling: French
Ignan- Yucatec
Kuo-toan- Japanese
Modron- Spoken Hexadecimal
Orcish: German
Sahuagin- Hindi
Sylvan- Basque
Terran- Nahuatl
Undercommon: Chinese

[Vknight]

Humans: Any accent
Elves: British or Australian
Dwarves: Scottish or Irish
Halflings: Italian
Gnomes: Any Accent
Drow: Gangster or British or Australian
Orc: The Sweddish Chef from Muppets
Giants: Rednecks
Kobolds: High Pitched Nasely Voice No True Accent
Dragonborn: American

[gorfnab]

In college my DM had Undercommon as Ebonics and Jive, which made Drow Sign Language as Gang Hand Signs.

[Cespenar]

Lycanthropes: Engrish.

[Unrest]

@Sinfonian: Giants with a Polish accent? Perfect!!

@Cespenar: For me, they speak faux-French... and Engrish and netspeak is, by default, the language of all goblinoids. (Don't you think that upon being caught in a trap, the orcs would shout "LOL NOOB JAJAJAJAJA" and the goblins would go "AHUAHUAHAU Lulz teh f00lzez!"?)

[gibbo88]

This is something I wanna get going in our games, speaking with teh accent is definately more RP than saying "I say...in draconic". Though, the only one we have one for is Draconic, and we stuck it with High British. Nothing says old and cultured/snobby like it does.

No offence to any Brits.

[NothingButCake]

I have now taken it upon myself to completely set these stereotypes on their heads. As a result, I have now taken it upon myself to give the Dwarves speak Yiddish...

That's not much of an inversion considering physical stereotypes of Jewish people are partly the basis of our contemporary idea of what dwarfs and goblins look like.

[Vknight]

Does it really matter, I'm not complaining.

[Mephibosheth]

My homebrew setting has a lot of regional language variation and no Common, so I've had to give this a lot of thought. Humans have three kingdoms; one with a German-based language, another with a Hindi/Tamil-based language, and another with a Chinese/Tibetan-based language. There are also two dwarven groups. Sea dwarven is based on Farsi and standard dwarven is based on Chinese/Tibetan (there are close ties between the mountain-dwelling dwarves and the humans who share their language). Halfling is based on Irish Gaelic and elven is based on various languages from central Africa. I only actually speak German, Hindi, Tamil, and Farsi, so I've relied heavily on online translators and dictionaries for place names in the languages I don't speak and nothing is particularly authentic. I intentionally changed some of the letters and messed with the words in order to make them different from real-world languages.

[Gensh]

I change the accent by region, not by species.

This is also what I do. Of course, certain regions are controlled exclusively by one species, but there are always others mixed into the general population. Nothing points out you're far from home like when even members of your own species are speaking a different language or have an accent you've never heard before. On that note, Draconic is nearly always Latin, seeing as they're both mostly-dead languages used by scholars that want to sound uppity, but for whatever reason, all the characters that speak it in my current game are actually Russian and don't have any other languages in common.

In college my DM had Undercommon as Ebonics and Jive, which made Drow Sign Language as Gang Hand Signs.

There are people who don't do this?