Accents

Dropping letters out randomly doesn't constitute an accent!

A positive example is people doing scottish, irish, jamaican, and european accents (to name a few i've seen in Sindome) - that is what roleplaying an accent looks like.

It drives me insane - you could always just use the voice thing to signify them having a rough mixer accent and stick to using things like wot instead of what, or drop off the end of words like fuckin' - or even better - fucken - to create that feel of an accent.

Been roleplaying across a number of games for about 20 years and its one of those things I wish we as a community would squash (no doubt we're playing most of the same games!)

Honestly, I'd rather have bad accents than none at all. Let people build their RP. Not everyone can intuit accents as easily as others.

But let people have fun, use their imagination as they want. It's not a rule to speak perfect standard English or perfectly imitate an accent, otherwise let's forget about slang as well while we're at it. Moreover everybody twists the language in their peculiar ways in everyday language too. To me, there's no point in discussing the validity of some character's accent, too subjective. You don't like it, then that's you're right but respect others right to create the style they want.

I know people and have people in my family that speak English and for the life of me I can't understand what they say due to their accent or even a disability.

"Gobble gobble goo goo"

Sorry chum, don't know what the fuck you're saying.

I tend to conjure up in game reason why a player might have x y z accent the way they do.

Over-using words. Someone wants to be known as a certain nationality. Overusing a word becomes a matter of national pride perhaps. It's hard to use your native language when no one knows what you're saying. Sticking to a few words let's your usual contacts learn them without forcing them to learn an entire language for you, and still get to cling to your roots.

Dropping letters. Someone wants to be seen as a stereotypical this or that. Or they want to be harder to understand. Or maybe it's just a side effect of picking up the accent of the street.

And sometimes it makes for good RP all by itself.

First, echoing Grizzly. If your character can't understand what another character is saying (either when reading it or having a screen reader read it to you), deal with it ICly. Tell them you don't understand. Nod and smile. Any one of the many things people do IRL when they can't understand someone they are speaking with. It's good RP.

Second, instead of listing how YOU feel people are doing accents wrong, list ideas on how you think it could be cool to do an XXXX accent. Like:

Uneducated Street:

Mix and match some of the following elements.

Use 'got' as often as you can instead of 'have': I got ten bucks to my name!

Combine to and leading words: 'bunch of' becomes 'buncha'. 'Lots of' becomes 'lotta'. 'Got to' becomes 'gotta'.

Use the wrong verb tense: 'He were there' instead of 'He was there'

Drip the trailing G in most cases (sometimes adding an '): I was lookin' for you.

Replace long 'oo' (like 'to') with 'uh' or 'a': I want tuh see yuh later.

Replace 'er' sounds with 'a' or 'uh': Let's do it togetha.

Always choose the simple word: "You're pronouncing that wrong!" becomes "You aren't sayin' that right!"

Use 'ain't' often: I ain't know. You ain't where you're supposed to be.

Use all the contractions: 'He is quick.' sounds smarter than 'He's quick.'

The fact is that there is no right or wrong way to do any particular accent. But throwing out suggestions on how you think a particular accent could be done might help others and is far more constructive that asking people to stop doing things you don't like.

Besides, there's already characters that don't speak English fully, in the game, you don't understand what they say? Deal with it IC. There are some things that really bug me with some characters' accents, especially if I've done some research on the language they're trying to copy and some things seem illogical to me, but I honestly prefer accents over none. They make roleplay far more interesting. I used to advocate for just letting 'voice' explain it all, but honestly it just wouldn't be as cyberpunk if you didn't hear thick accents and weirdass dialects here and there. In my opinion.

Whether that's doing an accent that you don't feel quite nails it, or overusing a couple of non-English words, people are just trying to have fun, don't make them feel like crap for trying...

That said, accents are a big part of the game and I think they're great when done really well, you can even vote for your favourite accent when the January Town Hall comes around, so giving people tips on how to make their accent the best it can be is a great idea (No fun winning an award if you didn't have to crush some other baka's dreams to win it)!

My biggest personal tip to anyone wanting to add a heavy accent to their character is: TRY AND BE CONSISTENT, not just within words, but between words.

"Yah ain't goin' -to- tha shop, yah is goin' -tah- tha shop, chummer."

If that makes sense?

... wonder if Slither might do one of his awsome videos on the subject?

If someone's throwing modern dictionary definitions at you to tell you you don't know your own slang, well, call them out right back for how little they know about life on the streets of Hong Kong, or wherever you're from ;)

Seems there was confusion.

That said, accents are amazing ways to RP and build your character. I fully support players who stick to their accents even in harrowing times. If you can't understand someone, then handle it ICly. Maybe you ask them to clarify five times and they get frustrated with you and stomp off. Maybe you get angry and break their face. Sooner or later you'll find yourself picking it up and understanding it just through contact and osmosis. That moment when you become the translator for the 'unintelligible' character because you understand everything they are saying after having been there yourself is a good one, and should not be deprived.

Finally, as to busting people's chops for accents and such on SIC, can we just not? Ribbing and such is to be expected, but trying to break out the SIC rules of engagement as to what constitutes good or bad RP on SIC is time better spent elsewhere, I think. Let people have their fun and RP, and if you really hate it, hire your fellow players to get ultraviolent with them.

I have to disagree with your last point TalonCzar. If people are complaining that an apostrophe is in the wrong place or something, then yeah, they should probably drop it, but straight insults about accents? Let them roll in.

I can think of one particular example of someone being pretty fucking horrible to my character about their accent IC, but in no way was it meant as a negative comment from the player about my RP. At a later date they actually dropped me a quick OOC compliment about it, which just made me as a player appreciate the insulting outburst even more in hindsight :)

Just trust people to RP their character, same as you're asking them to trust you to RP yours, and if you really think they're just trying to be a dick on an OOC level, xhelp it.

The main thing that lets down accents a lot of the time in my opinion is inconsistency between similar sounding words. If you say 'you' like a badass mixer (yu, yah, ya, etc/whatever), but then in the same sentence say 'to' like a well-schooled corpie, it just feels a little bit jarring.

Not something I think people should worry about *too* much, but it's an easy thing to fix if you pay attention to yourself (and you think it needs fixing of course), and it'll come naturally quick enough.

That internal consistency is what I meant though... I can't tell you how to develop/not develop your character :D