This video was sponsored by Campfire More on that later
(Impact followed by shattered glass)
Howdy y'all Welcome to the video
There comes a moment in every character's development
When the writer must ask themselves "What does this character sound like?"
Maybe you think this guy's gotta sound tough and coarse like he really means business
Or perhaps they must sound ancient and ethereal by which I of course mean kind of British
Or maybe you'll just do your best Scottish even though your only exposure to the accent has been Gimley and Scrooge McDuck
Or maybe you'll just go for the Nick Cage impression and call it a day
A character's character really comes through in their voice
In written media that's a narrative voice, the tone they're written in
But in media with an audio component it's a literal voice
While you might think that audio media would have a serious advantage in this category
Prose can be really good at communicating a distinct narrative voice
The written word is a very impressive thing
But there's some trickiness there right of the bat
See, language is very weird conceptually and it changes very quickly
Try getting a laugh with "What are those?" these days
So unless the story you're writing is taking place in the time and place that matches up with the version of the language you're writing in
There's liable to be some dissonance between the story and the language it's written in
Lots of 60s sci-fi is set in the future, sometimes even the past by now
But it still has some hallmarks of the 60s baked into the language and it still feels very much of it's time
Obviously the ideal course of action to avoid this kind of dating would be to write in a totally formal and neutral form of the language
Which while theoretically free of watermarks of the era
Also doesn't work because even the formal textbook stuff changes over time
How many of you are properly using thee and thou these days?
There is no such thing as dialect free language
Since slang has a tendency to creep in from social context, language is buried in the social context it's used in
And when a dialogue forms, that social context is really baked in
Every form of language has associations and this is most obvious with accents
Every dialect has at least one accent and all language is subdivided into dialects
There's no such thing as unaccented speech just like there's no dialect free speech
And because accents are rooted in dialects and dialects are rooted in specific social contexts
Accents carry some of that context with them
Now the thing is, most people don't really think they speak with an accent
Everyone sounds "Normal" to their own ears
There's this false dichotomy between "has an accent" and "doesn't have an accent"
And writers fall into this very noticeably if they decide to write a character with a specific accent
For instance Bram Stoker loved giving his side characters nearly incomprehensible transcribed accents
While his main characters - with the exception of the definitely American Quincey Morris
Have no phonetic accent and are generally using dictionary-accurate English
But from the narrative voice it's still pretty clear what accent it's supposed to be spoken in
Some sentences like "Here am I, who shall be twenty in September, and yet I never had a proposal till to-day, not a real proposal, and to-day I have had three. Just fancy!"
Just don't sound right in my neutral accent, or any accent but posh British
And then there's Quincey, who's lines don't sound right in any accent
"Miss Lucy, I know I ain't good enough to regulate the fixin's of your little shoes,-
-but I guess if you wait till you find a man that is you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you quit.-
-Won't you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the long road together, driving in double harness?"
(Eugh)
So writers usually write in their own "Neutral Language"
Which is of course a uniquely personal dialect and accent that still registers as normal to them due to familiarity
And when they want to single out a character as outside that normal, well, sometimes they give them an accent *they* find outside the normal
Hoping to carry the associations they have with that accent
Since language is steeped in implications this is one of the most efficient ways to get across some structural character traits
In theory
In practice, because language is *so* steeped in implications,
This can be a bit like trying to paint on a little bit of smokey eye and accidentally dropping the entire housewares section on someone
Of course sometimes characters just get given accents because they're fun, It's not always that deep
And in cases when that's true, it's just as casual as any other character trait
We made this character have this accent because they're from this place or because it's fun and that's as far as that goes
But while sometimes an accent is just an accent, sometimes it's meant to signal more than that
And that's where things start getting complicated
But before we dive into accents and how they're used in fiction, specifically accents of English
We have to address why this story is written in English at all
Many stories take place in settings that aren't specifically the English-speaking regions of modern-day Earth
In fact, they may have very little to do with Earth at all
And English is a serious hot mess of a language with it's linguistic development rooted in a lot of goofy and highly specific historical shenanigans
How do we justify it's presence in a story or world that doesn't line up with the version of the language we're using?
Now the realistic, or "Doylist" explanation is that:
The story is written in modern English because it's being written by a writer that's fluent in it and intended for an audience who is also fluent in it
And as narratively accurate as it might be to write the whole thing in your own personal conlang
The goal of a story is to be read, so you probably want to make it readable
Finnegans Wake is purposefully written in not-contemporary English and it's notorious for being nigh-incomprehensible
But like all Doylist explanations, this require's a little suspension of disbelief
And since we're asking the question, we're clearly not suspending out disbelief
Specifically we are harpooning our disbelief out of the sky for the purposes of narrative analysis
So let's look at the in-universe, or Watsonian explanation
Now this explanation can vary a lot, sometimes it's just not addressed, which is fine most of the time
Like I said, suspension of disbelief
Totally fine to hand-wave the language you're writing in because what else can you be reasonably expected to do?
Then some stories write in stuff like universal translators, especially popular in sci-fi narratives
Though there's still no explanation as to why the version of English the translators default to is the same one that was popular when the story was made
And then as always there's Tolkien setting the high bar of insanity with the ultimate explanation for why his high fantasy epics are written in English
Specifically that he translated them into English
In the meta-narrative around The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings,
Tolkien claims he's drawing on a primary source called "The Red Book of Westmarch"
Specifically, several annotated and edited copies of the original manuscript which was written by Bilbo but lost to history
He's basically deriving this from the Norse Eddas where the originals are also not available
This original story would have been written in one of the many conlangs Tolkien created for this world
And The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were just translations and compilations from this original source text
The names aren't even the same like Merry, full name Meriadoc, who was supposedly originally named "Chilimanzar"
Which was shortened to Chillic, which meant "happy or merry"
So in the process of translating, quote-unquote, Tolkien renamed him Meriadoc, which could be shortened directly to Merry
This is the high-bar explanation for why the story is in English when the original has no reason to be
And it's also a convenient Segway into an extremely relevant topic:
Localization, Localization is a term that'll be painfully familiar to anime fans
It describes the process by which a story is translated, rewritten, and adapted to appeal to a specific regional audience
It essentially attempts to recontextualize the story so this new audience can appreciate it in the same way it's original audience would have appreciated it
Mapping unfamiliar contexts from the original into a more familiar parallel
Attempting to reproduce the original vibe which was lost when the story was removed from its source context
Kinda like those early 2000s reimaginings of Shakespeare plays into modern settings
Tolkien renames his characters Merry and Pippin because to his audience of mid 1900s England those names would have sounded cheerful and homey to match the characters
Where the original names of Chillic and Razal would sound weird and alien
Of course since he was making up the original story and localizing kinda backwards
This is a dubious example
Unlike the case of Lysistrata, A comedic play written by Aristophanes in the 400s BC
Wherein the women of Athens and Sparta worked together to end the Peloponnesian War by refusing to bone the men until they cut it out
I read a translation of it in high school and noticed something very weird about the Spartan character Lampito...
She was written with a very noticeable Scottish accent
Recognizing this play had been written in ancient Greek, I asked the teacher where the heck that accent had come from
And she told me that the author of our translation was British.
The logic had basically been that to the Athenian audience the Spartans were crude, violent brawlers, so Sparta was to Athens as Scotland was to England
Basically it's a big ol' stereotype full of ethnic humor, isn't that fun?
It's not just England by the way, since the English perception of Scotland isn't the same as, say, the American perception of Scotland,
Or the Scottish perception of Scotland
Other translations localize with different accents to carry the same implications
For instance, American translations of Lysistrata often suggest an Appalachian accent for Lampito
So the translator for Lysistrata localized the play to an English audience by telling them these Spartans were "basically Scots"
And they weren't the only ones, thanks to Jerard Butler's dulcet tones the Spartans in 300 also sound Scottish
Except for the queen, she gets to sound English
In fact, English seems to be the official accent of all of human history, since everyone from Roman emperors to French revolutionaries will be inexplicably, Extremely British
Les Mis has this bad, we show that the students at the barricade are classy because of their mild BBC English accents
And then we show that Gavroche is a low-class guttersnipe by giving him a Cockney accent
In France, lest we forget
The use of accents in fiction is often a tool to localize a narrative by leveraging local stereotypes to map to less familiar stereotypes
We might not be able to recognise a low-class French accent, so when we translate it into English we use Cockney as the code instead
Though of course we Americans only recognise Cockney as the stereotypical low-class accent because it gets used that way so much
It's pretty circular
And accents don't always have to be linked with Ethnic stereotypes
Consider talking like a pirate when you've gotta get across that you're pirates, For instance
That accent has the distinction of being almost completely made up, too
Which I guess just proves that you don't need to leverage existing stereotypes when building your fictional demographics
Anyway, Classical literature aside, localization was also a serious concern in the earlier days of anime dubbing
This might sound weird in the post-simuldub world we live in where anime has infiltrated every level of our society
But back in the day, the idea that Americans might enjoy Japanese television was extremely controversial
At minimum it was kind of untested
So when dubbing companies started trying to dub anime for a mainstream American audience, sometimes they made some pretty significant changes to make it more "palatable"
The dubbing company 4Kids was kinda notorious for this
When they dubbed Pokemon, for instance, they would systematically scrape out any and all references to Japanese culture, including the food
Rice balls would be crudely photoshopped out and replaced by things like crackers or sub sandwiches
They would also rename characters which was more notable in how they dubbed Yugioh
Japanese names like Jonouchi Katsuya, Anzu, and Honda, Became Joey Wheeler, Téa, and Tristan
And this is also where they really went ham on the accents
Those of you that watched the dub or are otherwise familiar with Yugioh the abridged series, will know that Joey has an extremely noticeable Brooklyn accent
And Bakura has a British accent, Neither of these make all that much sense in context
Everyone seems to have grown up in roughly the same neighbourhood, but the accents are there anyway
This is because in the original Japanese, both characters had fairly distinct styles of speech
Styles that don't translate into English very easily
Japanese has some very specific modes of formality in speech, ranging from a very informal mode, used when talking to close friends and family
Up to a very formal mode that can sound almost archaic in daily use
Joey, or Jonouchi, notably uses the absolute least formal speech no matter who he's talking to
Because he's a pretty brash, rude guy, without an ounce of respect for authority
It doesn't really matter to him if he's talking to his best friend or a bazillionaire CEO, he'll be casual just the same
And in contrast Bakura speaks extremely formally, most of his lines could come from a textbook
No slang, informality or abbreviation anywhere
This doesn't apply to his evil alter-ego by the way, kid's just polite
So when localizing, the translators gave Joey a thick Brooklyn accent, and Bakura, a British accent
To clue the audience in that Joey was loud and rude, and Bakura was formal and polite
And while it wasn't strictly an accent, when translating for Yugi and Yami,
they had to deal with the fact that Yugi describes himself with the personal pronoun "boku", which just means "I" but has implications of youth or immaturity
While Yami uses "ore", which also just means I, but has implications of masculinity, maturity, and superiority
So while the original Japanese version just had Yami kind of sounding a little more confident than Yugi,
the dub also made Yami sound considerably older, with a much deeper voice
What's interesting is that their localization efforts actually kinda flattened one of the characters
The villain Pegasus was an American in the original Japanese version, and he talked really really weirdly
He would use English words in place of Japanese words almost at random, and he handled honorifics really bizarrely
Japanese appends honorifics to names, you don't just call someone by their name,
you append something like "kun", or "san", or "sama", or "Chan"
They mean stuff like "Mr.", or "Ms.", or "Lord", or imply diminutives like "Kid"
Pegasus would append "Boy", like, the English word boy, in place of "Kun",
which kind of means boy, but you would never use them interchangeably
And he still does this in the English dub, calling people like "Kaiba-boy" and stuff
But while it's still pretty weird, it loses the context of how staggeringly bizarre he sounded in the original Japanese
He was like the inverse of that person who sprinkles random Japanese into their English
Because they've gotten way into anime and think that's sufficient to learn a language
To properly localize it he probably should have been saying stuff like:
"KONICHIWA EVERYBODY, I'd like to welcome you to my simply sugoi tournament"
So specifically giving a character an accent is usually meant to code to the audience-
-that this character is intended to carry associations of that accent
Where not giving the character an explicit accent leaves it implied to be "neutral",
Though as we've discussed, there still is an accent present, just one considered neutral by the author
Bram Stoker's non-Quincey-non-Van-Hellsing main characters still sound strange when read in a non-English accent
Because the accent is connected with the dialect and the dialect the book uses is fairly standard high-brow English
But because those characters speak in a similar dialect to the one used in the narration
It comes across as a neutral accent
We're not supposed to infer anything about those characters from their speech patterns
Unless they're like the goofy foreign Dr. Van Hellsing or the bold American cowboy Quincey Morris
Now, like all coding, this is very tricky to do, and it's easy to accidentally communicate associations you don't mean
And it can also be hard to distinguish traits of the character from traits of the stereotype you're coding them with
Tolkien's elves might have talked kind of posh British in the movies but derivative elves often also act posh British where the originals were just very ancient and alien
And how many traits of modern fantasy dwarves borrow from Tolkien's complex originals instead of dipping into the well of Scottish stereotypes that got attached by the movie?
When you're coding a character, you have less control than you might want over how the audience reads the character
The other difficulty, of course, is that because language changes surprisingly quickly, the coding can also change out from under you
Stoker's use of transcribed phonetic accents probably carried a lot of associations at the time, but nowadays they're nearly incomprehensible
It's hard enough to even understand what the characters are even saying, let alone what stereotypes we're supposed to be assigning them
The problem with localizing or coding for an audience is it only works for that specific audience
And as time and society marches on, the coding loses some of the context that made it work in the first place
(Sigh)
Let's see, Sometimes an accent is just an accent, but sometimes it's a lot more than that
And sometimes that can be a problem
Language is weird, writing is hard, accents are deceptively hard, and if you think you're good at one you're probably wrong
So..... yeah
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