5 reviews
  • Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS

British English speakers of RMN, I need your help! How do I write a 'British' speaking character?

Before you answer 'uh, obviously as a person, British people aren't aliens', yes, true, but that's not quite what I mean!

One thing I'm pretty okay at is giving my characters varying differences in verbal habits and mannerisms; it's a great way to have your characters stick out and stand apart from one another. One of my characters is from an area of the game world where British English is spoken, and thus she has that manner of speaking as well.

I'd like to adopt that as I write it, but alas, I'm American, and thus while I've been to Europe and personally know a few British folk, I'm not British myself and have never spent enough time over that way to get an intrinsic grasp on the British verbal tic. Most of my knowledge just comes from reading and TV! So can anyone help me out? Here's some points, and what I do know.

-This character is the only major character with this manner of speaking, so the player won't be visiting her home region of origin, saving me some work on that front.

-My game is all text and no voice acting or anything, so I'm writing out an accent.

-This 'accent' will be reflected more along the lines of vocabulary and verbal habits than a thick brogue or something. Chrono Cross totally laid it on thick with the accents and that's not what I'm going for.

-I am aware that there are several different British accents, from Queen's English, East End, to Cockney. I'd be going for a relatively 'standard' British accent, but if I had to pick an accent, I'd figure it's definitely not a high class one, as the character is a thief from middle class origins.

-If for some reason Sera from Dragon Age Inquisition comes to mind, please don't. Her voice work was done well, but she's so Derbyshire/Cockney/East London it hurts. My brain would melt trying.

And maybe anything else I forgot. British posters, any tips!?

Posts

Pages: 1
Not british nationality here, but I know a few things you can abide to:

-Use spelling and vocabulary from British English rather than US English (Armor->Armour, Chips->Crisps, French Fries->Chips, Gray->Grey etc.)

-Abide to cultural differences in Europe over America (such as using the metric system).

I think the Sherlock Holmes novels might be a good read for british mannerisms.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
What time period is this set? I know you've got 1864 in your description, but that isn't on 'our' Earth, is it contemporaneous?

Also what part of Britain is this character from? Whilst class does make a difference in certain aspects of speech, mostly pronunciation, regional differences would be more obvious in a written form.
I think if you're going for a sort of amalgam of various British tropes without being over the top, the accent will come off more in the formality of speech rather than any dropped letters. Saying "Good show, old boy!" instead of "Nice work, man!" pretty quickly establishes the character as being either upper crust New Englander or British. If you want something a bit less formal and more "middle-class Brit", just ape mannerisms as much as you can. "Alright, love?" is more British than "Are you OK, lady?". I think Midsomer Murders is on Netflix right now. Watch an episode or two and you'll be able to learn mannerisms pretty quickly.
Dropping in quick to address a few posts;

I'd like to make clear that since my game is in a fictional universe of my own making (as in, totally fictional, and not a 'fictional Earth'), the UK does not exist in Chronology. As I stated before the character in mind comes from a rough analogue (and never visited by the player) of the UK in terms of culture and that's reflected in her speech. It's sort of like how in FFXII, Archadia was a rough analogue of Great Britain, and you could tell from the people who hailed from there.


author=LightningLord2
Not british nationality here, but I know a few things you can abide to:

-Use spelling and vocabulary from British English rather than US English (Armor->Armour, Chips->Crisps, French Fries->Chips, Gray->Grey etc.)

Slang and British/American word swapping I can do. Familiar enough with a lot of those.

Spelling is a weird one, since the dialogue is spoken and not written. It WOULD be an interesting attention to detail on my part if I wrote out all of her dialogue with the British spellings. Cool!

author=nhubi
What time period is this set? I know you've got 1864 in your description, but that isn't on 'our' Earth, is it contemporaneous?

Also what part of Britain is this character from? Whilst class does make a difference in certain aspects of speech, mostly pronunciation, regional differences would be more obvious in a written form.

As stated before, the date has no bearing on 'our' date, as its just the date for the fictional world. Like Kaempfer said, it's just a general collection of Brit 'tropes' for speech rather than a sharp focus on a particular region.
replace all O's with OU's

look up a cockney accent, gub'ner!
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/slang/cockney-translator.html

Hello how do you do? I am a famous hero from this region. What are you about? ->
Wotcha 'a do ya do? i'm a famous 'ero from this region. Wot 're ya abaht?
Gosh darn, jolly good old chap!

Fancy a cuppa tea?
author=kentona
replace all O's with OU's

look up a cockney accent, gub'ner!
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/slang/cockney-translator.html

Hello how do you do? I am a famous hero from this region. What are you about? ->
Wotcha 'a do ya do? i'm a famous 'ero from this region. Wot 're ya abaht?


author=Shinan
Gosh darn, jolly good old chap!

Fancy a cuppa tea?


Not that intense, haha. Think Lara Croft, Cammy, Balthier of FFXII, Zaeed Massani of Mass Effect, or Alistair from Dragon Age.

Yangus from Dragon Quest is borderline.
I should probably play Tomb Raider, Street Fighter 2 Turbo, FFXII, Mass Effect or Dragon Age some day.
Well, you're about 20 years late on Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Might as well start on Street Fighter 4.
Good news here, since you're not working with an our-earth world. The accent doesn't need to be strict British. It just has to evoke British in a way that tells the player something about the character. Which probably just means being a little more circumspect with the way sentences are arranged and throwing in the occasional grammatical quirk/noun swap. I can't really speak for how Britishness comes off to non-east-coast-US perspectives, but that's how it usually reads to me.

Everyone knows the crisps/chips thing, so why not take a few examples of words being substituted across cultures and make them setting-relevant? Gyshal greens and potions and whatnot are pretty much primed for a word-swap, and give you a good opportunity to address other characters being confused by the accent in the dialog.

Likewise, if you can get one or two good, recurrent grammar quirks (the northern us-meaning-me, for instance) you might not have to mess about too much with weird spellings (color/colour, etc) for your point to get across.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
The word swap is a pretty good idea, it will carry the colour you are looking for without being too blunt, and the English rather than American spelling would be noticeable enough to garner the player's attention.

If you want a couple of quirks that are almost entirely British, replace 'will' with 'shall' at every opportunity and use the the do/done ending for sentences, Americans almost never use it. By that I mean a British person is more likely to avoid answering a question about their actions with 'I could have done', rather than 'I could have.'

Also English tends to use the 't' endings for some verbs, whilst American rarely does, so words like spoilt, dreamt, leapt, spelt etc. are rare or non-existent in American speech but common in British.
Just wanted to pop in here and say thanks for all the tips, guys. Feel free to keep 'em coming, as I've gotten a lot of great input on this topic. You guys rock.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/geordie-sayings-top-56-things-6466922

Look at that charva owa there, she thinks she's a right bobby dazzla
The bairn's ganna bubble if there's nee pop left
Me nappa's knacking off gannin' on the hoy


Having a character that is nigh incomprehensible could be played for laughs.
go doric e: <-- this is a link that nobody will ever see /e:
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
I've lived in the UK for nine years now and went to schools teaching American English previously, so maybe I should chip in (is 'chip in' a Britishism?):

As FG said, the accents vary a SHEDLOAD in the UK. You mentioned someone having a Derbyshire/Cockney accent but those are two VERY different ones (unless your point was the voice actor was bad, in which case LOL).

nhubi
By that I mean a British person is more likely to avoid answering a question about their actions with 'I could have done', rather than 'I could have.'
I'm not sure about this one - I hear 'I could have' fairly frequently around here, but pronounced (and sometimes typed!) by many Brits as 'I could of'.

Bit of a left field suggestion, but Mog, I'd suggest you check thestudentroom.co.uk. It's a forum I used to frequent when I wanted information on potential universities/degrees, and as such, it's full of British teenagers. This is important because the vast majority of users are kids born and bred in the UK, so are unlikely to ever deviate from, well, Britishness in terms of sentence structure (like I do about 30% of the time). Also, it's a boatload of TEXT to reference instead of speech, which would probably be more useful to you in a RPG Maker game.
Despite
When the going gets tough, go fuck yourself.
1340
top o' the mornin to ya gov'na

why i mustve misplaced my dosh you gormless tosser, oh bloody hell


im bleedin like a stuck pig ya wanker
I'm a foreigner living in England and it's easy to notice their language mannerisms.
English people use the following words and phrases a lot :

-Quite
-I suppose
-For God's Sakes
-Indeed
-At the end of the day
-mate (yes, it's a modern day thing)
-Rubbish! (when someone is bullshiting)
-Bollocks
-Piss off
-Actually
-Calling people 'darling' and 'sweetie'
-Supper and tea are words for 'dinner'
-Oh, Bugger! (Same as goddammit)
-I'm going to fix some food
-saying you're going to get things 'sorted' (I have to sort that out)
-They say 'brilliant!' and 'Fantastic!' as a response to almost everything
(e.g Jonny: I sorted out my schedule, we can meet up tomorrow
Mary:Oh, Brilliant!)
-A little bit, or 'a bit of' (Fancy a bit of footbal?) ("She's a bit of a mess isnt she)
- Instead of saying "do you want to...." they often say "Do you fancy..."
- Shite instead of shit


If you wanna pick up a lot of typical british words and mannerisms, I suggest you try the series called 'This is England', it's a very accurate account of british language and the population in the 80's and 90's (a lot still valid to this day). It's also an amazing show.
Also you could watch 'Hollyoaks' it's a piece of shit soap opera, but you can pick up a lot of different phrases with that show.

I also agree with the person who suggested going on the forum studentroom. Great idea.
some words/expressions:

cheeky
bloody
bloody hell
flippin'
mate (=pal)
rubbish (=garbage)
dust bin

"I was wondering if..."
"Would you mind..."
"I'd rather you..."
never use "can" when asking for a favour
shall, shan't (shall not)
Pages: 1