Post History
Simply telling, e.g. he said with a heavy Gujarati accent would be my solution, but you say that isn't enough for you. Which is fair. What is the most characteristic aspect of the accent you...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:40Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47274 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T12:41:52Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47274 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Simply telling, e.g. > he said with a heavy Gujarati accent would be my solution, but you say that isn't enough for you. Which is fair. **What is the most characteristic aspect of the accent you wish to describe?** What would stand out most, and make it most recognisable? Is it the way a certain vowel is pronounced? Or some consonant? Is it that particular words are pronounced differently? I would focus your description on the element that stands out most. For example, if I were describing the speech of a man from rural Andalusia, I might write > "The event will commence" - he pronounced it 'commenthe' - "at ..." Or I might just describe: > His 'S's and 'Z's were all soft 'Th's, making it hard for me to follow what he said. Of a woman from France, I might write > Her English was impeccable, except that her 'N's had a slight nasal quality. In addition to accent, it might be that a person from one place would use particular words more often than a person from another place. Such distinctions are more related to dialect than to accent, but they too offer a way to convey the location flavour you're looking for. **What I would avoid is spelling out the accent phonetically** (see also tvtropes [Funetik Aksent](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FunetikAksent)). Unless done very sparingly, it is distracting, and it can be particularly hard to read for English-as-Second-Language speakers, who are, according to [this](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/which-countries-are-best-at-english-as-a-second-language-4d24c8c8-6cf6-4067-a753-4c82b4bc865b/) source, ~70% of all English speakers. Do take a look at the tvtropes link however for some examples of phonetic accent done well (and some examples of it being done badly).
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-08-12T13:40:28Z (over 4 years ago)
Original score: 8