Character Accents

kkbe said:

I imagine something akin to, "You want hotel key?"

Or, "I bring you waffle. No? Yes?"

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This is what I prefer.

How I did it, with a character from Hungary who has become a U.S. Army Drill Sergeant. Introducing himself to a group of draftees on their first day of basic training, he has them all doing pushups because nobody could tell him what a Magyar is:

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]"I am Sergeant First Class János Rákosi. Always you will address me as ‘Drill Sergeant’. You may think I talk funny. Do not laugh. That is an order. It is because I am Magyar. How many of you pissants know what is a Magyar?”

[/FONT] [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]He paused. Silence abounded.[/FONT]

“[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Outstanding,” Sergeant Rákosi said. “Now, everyone drop and give me fifty pooshops! Count them, and let me hear you!”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Bodies dropped, and counting began. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]He strolled among the grunting forms, and continued at a near-shout:
[/FONT][/FONT]
“[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Now, I will tell you what is a Magyar. A Magyar is someone from Hungary. Hungary is very unhappy country. When I am thirteen, in 1956, I throw rocks at communist tanks in Budapest. I hit them. They shoot bullets at me. They miss me. My brother Imre, he is not so lucky. I swim the Danube to Austria, for freedom. I hate communists. I want them all to be dead. I come to America where I become citizen. I join the Army to fight communists, to make them all be dead. Now I am here to help you to make them all be dead. Do you understand?”[/FONT]




You don't need "phonetic" spelling, except maybe once in a great while, for effect. I used "pooshops" there. I'm not sure I should even have done that.


caw

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Sunflowerrei said:

The many, many Russians I went to high school with did, along with inserting other Russian words in the middle of English sentences. Or they'd say something in English and say "da?" at the end, the way we'd go "yes?" if we were looking for an agreement.

It may have had to do with code-switching for them, but I know Japanese people who know "Yes" and "No," but "hai" just slips out of their mouths more easily.

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Oh, fair enough! I suspect it varies by language, too; I don't see it happening a lot in switching between English and Spanish, but those have rather different patterns for the end-position interrogative than Japanese does, and Russian I just don't know at all.

James simpson said:

I have a Russian character and I was wondering if there is a more professional way of presenting his accent? for example:

"Hey! Vat do you dink you are doing?” Vlad said through a very thick Russian accent.

or

"Hey! What do you think you are doing?” Vlad said through a very thick Russian accent.

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This is such a difficult thing for me. I haven't found a way to perfectly navigate it. In my opinion, written accents ought to be done exceptionally well, or not at all. When I see any mistake in accents, it turns me completely off of the entire work. When done right, it can be very appealing. I really enjoyed Lee from East of Eden although it would make me uncomfortable hearing someone else talk like that.

One technique I would suggest is to hunt down dialogue in your target language. Go to Youtube, listen, and cut out sentences you like. Use those sentences as templates for what you want to say. Also, instead of trying to show the accent, search for idiomatic expressions and use those instead. Use slang and other things from the target language. Those will add more than enough to hint to the reader that this is a particular language. You can also change the grammar a bit too, but be careful with that.

Buffysquirrel said:

Russians speaking English typically leave out articles, which don't exist in Russian. So, "Where is hotel?" for example.

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Spot on.

In any accent, there are distinct ways that people phrase things. Some people avoid using contractions, as another example. Most of the time, I find intentional mis-spellings too gimmicky, though I'm fine with blacbird's 'pooshups'... a person could probably get away with the odd 'leetle' as well as if they don't over-do it. For some reason, I find wrong vowels less jarring than consonants.

However it's important to have an ear for it. Maybe listen to some youtube videos of a Russian speaking in English as a guide, if you're not overly familiar with how they would sound otherwise.

blacbird said:

How I did it, with a character from Hungary who has become a U.S. Army Drill Sergeant. Introducing himself to a group of draftees on their first day of basic training, he has them all doing pushups because nobody could tell him what a Magyar is:

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]"I am Sergeant First Class János Rákosi. Always you will address me as ‘Drill Sergeant’. You may think I talk funny. Do not laugh. That is an order. It is because I am Magyar. How many of you pissants know what is a Magyar?”[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]He paused. Silence abounded.[/FONT]

“[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Outstanding,” Sergeant Rákosi said. “Now, everyone drop and give me fifty pooshops! Count them, and let me hear you!”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Bodies dropped, and counting began. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]He strolled among the grunting forms, and continued at a near-shout: [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]
[/FONT]
“[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Now, I will tell you what is a Magyar. A Magyar is someone from Hungary. Hungary is very unhappy country. When I am thirteen, in 1956, I throw rocks at communist tanks in Budapest. I hit them. They shoot bullets at me. They miss me. My brother Imre, he is not so lucky. I swim the Danube to Austria, for freedom. I hate communists. I want them all to be dead. I come to America where I become citizen. I join the Army to fight communists, to make them all be dead. Now I am here to help you to make them all be dead. Do you understand?”[/FONT]




You don't need "phonetic" spelling, except maybe once in a great while, for effect. I used "pooshops" there. I'm not sure I should even have done that.


caw

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Spot on ...... I really like this example it is exactly how I have tackled the accents of the ESL characters in my novel .... a few words here and there to indicate they are very much Italian Ie Theese for this Shit for sheets etc Leetle for little etc but mostly a change in word order and inappropriate word choice seems to have created the Ilusion of an Italian Speaking Character.

Also because my Novel is set in Rural Italy where there are only a handful of Native English speakers it is more believable that the characters would not be able to speak English very well. This is contrasted even more so by the fact that the only English speaking characters are from a Landed Gentry background so once again their usage of the English Language would be different to the everyday normal English spoken in England.

Also these characters are very pompous arrogant and selfserving so this creates a very strong light dark comparison between them (the family) and the simple rural Italian characters who live in Italy.

Knowing your characters and their culture well and having a genuine authentic understanding of how English as a Second Language is spoken in the part of the world where the novel is set does help significantly. I think it is the key to creating the correct Timbre of voice and one that will resonate well with the reader