Troll Mage, accent?

Guys I have yet another RP question, if anyone is willing to discuss it with me I would highly appreciate it.
Troll Mages.
Hear me out: If a dude from, lets say Serbia, moves to America in his twenties, he is bound to have that weird foreign accent. But at his sixties (after 40 years of living and working in America), his accent will be lost. Most of the time at least.
Is it possible for a Troll to speak without an accent if he has been living in Dalaran for a long time?
I have an idea for a new character, but I don’t like accents on any race (dwarf, troll or any other).

1 Like

Cant imagine why not, people pickup/lose accents at different rates

2 Likes

You don’t need to type an accent at all, even if your character has a strong accent. If you have an add-on like TRP, you can just include the accent in the description or in one of the first glances.

Don’t feel forced to come up with an IC excuse if you don’t want to type out an accent.

7 Likes

Most certainly! It’s very possible, people’s accents change all the time depending on who you are with and where you are. I’d say it’s easily done, and as well as Taxania said, don’t feel as if you -have- to roleplay with an accent or feel as if you must write it out. You can simply put it in your roleplay and leave it up to the imagination of others, because half the time, people struggle to decipher an accent when IC anyway because it’s hard to convey. You can write a ‘First glance’ perhaps stating that his or hers accent has gone and been replaced with a wordly one - I’ve seen people do that.

2 Likes

Good question, I say!

To be fair I don’t see why not.
I have met many people in real life, who do this, and speak so well that you can hardly tell they are from another country or nationality.
Unless you pay close attention.

More than often it is a wide range of factors such as:

Do the person make a continues effort to speak like the local’s?
Listening closely, practicing it, reading and so on.
I believe its also a little bit of what your body can adjust to.

Now this is not exactly the same, but when I learned Dutch I had a hard time with the sounds you make in the back of the throat, since we simply don’t use that part of our mouth in my native language.

Currently learning Finish, where the vocals are more closely related to my own, so it’s easier to pick up and pass on.

I also agree whole heartedly with what Yileath said.

Yes, but it’s not possible for a troll to have been living in Dalaran for so long a time, to my knowledge.

2 Likes

It’s been 12 or so years since Dalaran opened to Horde races? Not a huge amount of time but probably long enough to lose an accent with effort. /shrug

1 Like

I was thinking more like 5-7 or so, i.e Legion. The purge of Dalaran kind of put a stop to the whole ‘Horde living in Dalaran’ thing in MoP.

8 Likes

Wha’ ya mean mon, ya dawnt wanna tayp like dees all da time mon?

Like others have said, merely do not type the accent, or if you feel like you have to, write in a less thick accent.
People will read and interpret it in their own way anyway, most people will probably subconciously just think of your character speaking in a “generic” troll accent.

I do think it’s worth asking why a troll would live in Dalaran for so many years though. It is an Alliance city that’s only been tolerating Horde for a very limited time, not to mention its direct connection with the Troll Wars.

By the time Shadowlands comes to an end we’re at year 36, Dalaran opened up to the Horde in 27, but like Tehya said Dalaran was part of the Alliance from roughly half-way through MoP to Legion, so between years 30 / 31 and 33 a troll could not have lived in Legion.

So assuming a troll moved to Dalaran the moment they were able to do so, a troll could have lived in Dalaran for only around 5-6 years.

But all of that is also assuming the accent isn’t a result of their tusks, in which case there’s not really any way for them to get rid of the accent.

Dalaran wasn’t founded until centuries after the Troll Wars.

2 Likes

I’m a Dutch guy living in Belgium. For people who don’t understand, both countries speak Dutch, but the Flemish version has a different dialect and uses different words.

My dialect didn’t change, but I now use many words automatically that are only used only in Belgium, even when I’m in the Netherlands. I also prefer to have a less direct approach when speaking.

So yeah, living somewhere for a while does change the way you speak.

2 Likes

As has been stated before, there’s no need to type out an accent in your RP, and I find that most who do so do it poorly.

That being said, the Troll accent is a huge part of their identity so
 if you’re not looking to be rid of it just for the sake of not wanting to type it out, why play a Troll to begin with?
I’d take the advice given earlier to simply throw “speaks with an accent” somewhere in your TRP.

2 Likes

Voice alteration magic because the troll believes it makes casting go quite smoother could be a reason for him to not have an accent.

Yeah you don’t have to type in an accent.
Whether or not, I usually imagine an accent unless your TRP specifies something different.

1 Like

Accents are a weird thing anyway. Why would a troll have the same accent in Orcish as well as in Common? Like we go to Zul’aman as an Ally char and Vol’jin will speak just as troll-tacularly as he does as if you were a Horde character. Phonetically they’re very different languages.

I think accents can also be unlearned if someone is devoted enough to it. I can’t testify to it personally but I know someone who says they ‘unlearned’ their accent or adapted to a different way of speaking so people wouldn’t be able to tell he was from a ‘bad’ part of the country, as sad as that is to say.

TL:DR there’s no reason he has to have an accent/not have one. You can spin it off a dozen different ways, like his peers speaking Common or Orcish as a second language, which means he’s adapted his own accented Common/Orcish to be more easily understood. Yada yada!

2 Likes

But-
 that’s kind of our thing! D:

Why live in Dalaran when you can be a cool Arcanital in your tribe?

1 Like

Some players don’t want their characters to revolve exclusively around whatever race or culture they might belong to. Some would rather incorporate other elements of the setting into their characters.

4 Likes

The lack of Arcanitals outside of the Zandalari, one could imagine.

I think in a fantasy setting certain accents should stay around even when around different people for a long time. You have to factor in that every race has a different mouth and as such their language evolved with those traits. Certain races will always have a lisp or problems pronouncing certain words or phrases. At least that’s how I see picture it. I never really gotten into Star Wars for the reason that no matter what race they are, they can speak perfect English as if it’s just a guy in a costume.

1 Like