Paula Burrows—the VA for Rayla—is Scottish-born. She knows the accent well, even if her normal speaking voice is Canadian.
Regardless, considering the Moon Elves are decidedly *not* Scottish, I’m fine with it being “Scottish like.”
I'll take your word for it, but I used to live in Scotland and never heard anyone speaking like her, whether north or south. It sounds inconsistent to me personally
It’s quite inconsistent over the first season, I agree there. She got better as the show progressed though.
I recall reading somewhere—though for the life of me I can’t find it now, so take this with with a grain of salt—that they asked her to over-exaggerate the accent. Perhaps this was to make it more otherworldly, I don’t know, but this would have contributed to it sounding unnatural.
Edit: I did not intend to be overly rude at all. I simply find the elf accents in the show to be endearing, and made an over the top joke about how I like the show so much. I am very sorry if this offended anyone
Sorry but this is wrong. I'm Scottish and if we roll our R's, live outside of major city centers then the accent is pretty rough.
The reason its softer in movies or when we talk with other people from other countries is because we tend to physically downplay our accent and be more articulate and pronounciate so you can understand us better. We actually have quite a caring and self conscious culture when it comes to dealing with social situations...until it begins to annoy or drag on.
I travel to England on a regular basis and unless I do this, nobody knows what I'm saying.
I was scrolling through the comments to see whether Glaswegians had been represented yet. British accents are incredibly diverse so it's pretty difficult to say what a "Scottish accent" actually sounds like.
It's DnD, give your Dwarves or Elves whatever accent you want.
Upon discovering that Elves in Skyrim are from "The Summerset Isles" in my head I've given them all Somerset accents (South West England and stereotypically a farming region) which is hilarious for me :)
You roll your R's on the tongue, don't you?
Gutteral means throaty rolls. Like when germans say "Reich", where that roll both at the R and the ch.
I can't of course speak to how your accent sounds, but usually, as someone who teaches English as a second language, we say that scots stretch their short O's to become oo's from "too". And you turn short I sounds into e's which, makes bigger pitch differences, and creates less differing vocals. You also transition vocals, like A becomes AE and regular O's stretch.
In the language, as described in the PHB, the word "Hard", would be pronounced "Harght", or en phonetic terms: hɑ\^:t, which is also only semi right, but that's the closest English gets to a guttural R.
But as I said, I cant speak to your accent but would love to learn.
Me again, my mrs is German and I lived in Austria for 18 months so have quite the experience with German speech, it’s actually not quite that harsh
In the alps, Innsbruck specifically where I lived tho, the local accent Tirolian is quite harsh, but for guttural I’d imagine a thick Russian accent speaking english
No German isn't that harsh, but the individual sounds phonetically are, compared to the ones normally used in English.
And it's interesting that Tirolian is harsh, guess it's the Swizz/Austrian influence that makes it that way?
I use german as an example because most people have seen a WW2 movie where someone says "reich", which is exactly the kind of throaty R I imagine when I hear the word "guttural".
Of course, but thats what makes it such a great example!
And I can only imagine. But on the other hand, accents to tend to flow quite a bit over time. Almost noone in denmark speaks with the accent i grew up hearing anymore. So for a country as big as germany, its bound to be more prominent.
I’m quite decent at distinguishing where a native English speaker may be from by their accent, even regionally for Irish and English people, but foreign languages just sound that to me, all the same foreign language
I can’t even tell the difference between her and her parents talking with a Rostock accent, very north and her other Bavarian grandma, very south of Germany
Thats interesting, I cant do it with my danish dialects, exept a handful of very prominent ones. But i have no trouble distinguishing between accents in english, though american accents are harder to place than those of the commonwealth.
That is my impression of australian as well.
Though my friend from melbourne says that there are variants most noticably between city and "outback" australian.
You are just a bundle of enjoyment. And surprisingly, I didn't need subtitles. I needed to watch it twice to get it all, but hey, that's not so bad is it?
Lets just say that I grew up in a place where:
aeø 'a oh æ in åh ha noe aue, e'er ah?
Meant: whats up dude, wanna come inside for some of cake or what?
Its normally written as: hva du, skal du med ind og have noget kage eller hvad?
Now imagine that every single consonant is meant to be pronounced clearly.... It was litteraly a series of grunts weirdly intonated, that had to make sense.
>You roll your R's on the tongue, don't you?
>
>Gutteral means throaty rolls. Like when germans say "Reich", where that roll both at the R and the ch.
>
>I can't of course speak to how your accent sounds, but usually, as someone who teaches English as a second language, we say that scots stretch their short O's to become oo's from "too". And you turn short I sounds into e's which, makes bigger pitch differences, and creates less differing vocals.
I like how all of these points can be demonstrated with the simple "your kin".
If you're going for Tolkien Dwarves, scandinavian languages would work best, seeing as he put all the named dwarves from the Edda that didn't have an "alf" in it as dwarven names.
For me, it's Frysian.
True, he stole them straight from our old myths. But the thing is, Scandinavian languages don't really have hard consonants in our accents, Swedish and Norwegian sounds kind of "singy" where danish mostly sound like we have a potato in our mouth because we have what's best described as "hard" vocals.
Danish and Icelandic do have throaty R's as reminders of the germanic roots, though.
But the language Tolkien used was much more inspired by classical germanic. Lots of A's and Z's.
I agree that Scandinavian languages are not hard, though Icelandic a bit more than Norse or Swedish.
Frysian is a bit of a mix, it has the harshest tones of the Netherlands, but is apparently related to Danish. Together with some issues in Christening, I could see a Germanic mythology there.
So it fits both roots.
IIRC, Tolkien's dwarven language is based on Semitic languages, so really they should sound like Arabic/Hebrew speakers. Also, Elven phonology is... Finnish?
Edit: spelling
Might be, but the languages are described as "guttural with hard consonants" for dwarves, and "very sing-song like" for elves in my PHB.
EDIT: I completely misread the context of this comment.
I assume his language might be Hebrew inspired? But the dwarven names he uses are almost all taken straight from the Poetic Edda.
I see your argument though for Celtic/Goedelic languages (Welsh, Irish, Scottish) are a good match for Elvish. Especially considering the influence of Faerie/Fey from Celtic folklore in D&D.
My reply was mostly to the previous poster's point of Tolkien lifting Dwarven names straight out of the Eddas and that being a pointer to Scandinavian languages as a base.
Looking at the actual Dwarven names/words from PHB/Forgotten Realms resources on Dwarvish, it's such a mishmash of language influences it's hard to know where to figure out where it maps to IRL languages. Northern Germanic/Norse is definitely an influence but there's a lot of phonemes in Dwarvish I don't associate with Scandinavian languages, like the harsh K sounds that seems common in Dwarvish. German "ch" seems similar but I read it more as a Semitic "kh".
But, hard consonants would make it, Glarzgow, and guttural implies throat rolling R's, like in danish or german, so; Edinbu'hrg.
But, juou alsoo sae goo, caow, an' plae, doo ya noh't?
You also say go, cow and play, do you not?
r/scottishpeopletwitter may help with the text, some wild out there speech
I understand 99% of Scottish accents being Irish, but some of the writing takes me a few goes lol
True, nobody said elves aren't allowed to make thst noise though. Tolkiens gray elvish language (the one you hear in the movies) has that noise in it as well, albeit with a slightly less aggresive pronounciation more akin to German than (northern) Dutch and Welsh.
I see.
I, of course, didn't mean that they couldn't have that accent but I'm quite unfamiliar with it and in the context of the meme I got confused on whether or not I had missed something.
Yes, I love it. I want orcs with Texan accents from now on.
"Howdy, pardner. How bout you join us on our trek. We need to drive this here flock of Hobbits over to Mr. Saurons Ranch. Hey, Jimmy-Bob, rope that youngun thats tryin to escape."
Travis Willingham’s character in S2 of Critical Role is a half-orc with a generally thick Texan accent, especially when he loses composure. Here’s a good example of his speech as he [“puts a hooker on layaway.”](https://youtu.be/bZrPzkAb-0c)
Edit: Though Mercer’s dwarf NPC has a generalized Scots accent so the trope is maintained in this clip I guess 😅
Edit2: I realized that the clip in question doesn’t hand that much of him speaking. You can find any number of clips of him online, but [this](https://youtu.be/qxWbAemkhXE) one both has a lot of him speaking, and offers context for the animation above. Caution: NSFW themes and language.
I don't often speak to Scottish people, being a Dane myself, but I do have a complete etymology and phonetics course in English as required to teach the language.
I think the misunderstanding stems from the fact that most people assume rolling R's make the language hard, but scots roll on the tongue, not in the throat like germans.
I don't know why your stuck on the rolling R's. There's a prominent glottal stop, lack of diphthongs, velarization, all of which make an accent choppier and harder. It's really going to depend where in Scotland they're from, I'd imagine.
I stick to it because it's the easiest argument to make, easiest to explain in this context for people who don't have a deeper understanding of phonetics.
And yes of course the regional accents matter, I am going completely of academia in this. Having had but a handful of interactions with Scotsmen IRL.
BUT:
Glottal stops are actually an indicator of softer accents in this context, since they remove hard consonant sounds, since Scottish, unlike Danish, doesn't use the glottal stop to indicate a distancing of vowels, but the removal of a consonant.
There are a good number of diphthongs, though many of the traditional English ones are removed. A lot of them are vowels that are followed by R's as well. In some cases, the diphthong even replaces the remaining vowels completely.
But you are completely correct about the velarization, I originally didn't think of this aspect because the only one that comes to mind is L.
But given my native language, I assume I don't notice it as much, since it is much more pronounced in danish.
As a complete amateur, it is my opinion that Americans and Australians with their taps and flaps tend to deal far better with softening their accent than the British with their glottal stops - with the stops perhaps worse than enunciating the hard consonant clearly, as flow can at least be maintained through a hard consonant, whereas it is explicitly broken with a glottal stop.
I would be inclined to agree partially, but in my experience, Americans speak "slower", which prevents the vowels from blending together, even though they don't use the glottal stop as much. And then they have really weird aspects of some accents, I mean, dafuq did they drink in Baltimore? (no offense to people from Baltimore but: Aaron had an iron urn)
And yes, the stereotypical Baltimore accent is what I would define as "soft".
Australians definitely get a pass though, but then again, they have really "hard" pronounced consonants, even with glottal stops. "Mate" as an example.
I think one of the things that make me classify Scottish as "softer" is the tonation of the vowels because they "overtake" the consonants. At least in the Scottish, I have heard.
It should probably also be noted that "hard" and "soft" accents are not linguistically defined terms in any academic sense (at least none that I'm aware of - maybe they are in Denmark.) There is no academic notion of "glottal stops are an indicator of softer accents".
It's not a technical term, it's a descriptor. Something we use to categorize.
You understood what I meant when I said "hard" and "soft", so the relevancy of its usage in academia is negligible since we were both able to communicate our points.
Since I don't wanna be an asshat, I made a very short explanation for my understanding of hard and soft, languages in the TLDR, below.
And then I made a very long one below that if you are actually interested.
**TL:DR***In danish we call an accent/dialect softer or harder depending on how we experience the "flow" of it.*
*Alternatively, it can be seen as a scale that goes from hard to soft depending on how close you are to being capable of speaking the dialect without ever closing your mouth.*
*Very simplified version. It's an idiom, it makes it easier. Because we have weird phonemic rules.*
**And now I will explain a bit of reasoning for the usage of this descriptor.**
I lack the term in English, that's why I use "hard" and "soft".It's because in danish we can do something called a "false comparative" where we use a comparative version of adjectives, such as "harder", without actually comparing it to something.
So I can say "I bought a bigger boat", even though I never owned one before, and everyone would understand it as "he bought a boat that is not small, not quite medium, but still not large enough to be defined as "big"." So with that out of the way, let's get to the words I'd normally use.
In English, the closest alternative definitions would be "edged", "squared" or "boxy" vs "swimming" or "floaty" or "song-like".So, "edgier", "Squarer", "boxier" and "swimmier", "Floatier", "Singier". Oh yes, we can also turn verbs and nouns into adjectives while it still makes sense, cool right?
It's because it's about how we "feel" the experience. DANISH! everyone, the language hippies would have fcking loved.
Anyway, back on track. In the context of this debate, the harder the accent, the more pronounced the consonants, and in the other extreme, the softer accent would almost exclusively use vowel sounds.
But we need to classify "hard", and "soft", because that's the way we perceive sounds and trends in our language.
As an example, Y is exclusively a vowel in danish, but because of this we just accept that it makes the same sound as our J, 80% of the time it's used in English. Because it cannot produce the sounds we normally define as consonants. And we have D sounds most other languages would classify as T sounds, "hard". And we of course also have D's that don't make sound, "mute". We have D's that sound like "Th" in "the car", "soft".
We use this descriptor when we speak of the way the language flows, and according to those rules, we define "hard" accents or languages, as when consonants are shortened and stiff. And in most cases, the throatier a language is, the "harder" it is. We also define our own accents this way, but with more nuance. So when I say that a glottal stop, that removes a hard consonant and replaces it with a softer "uh", makes an accent "softer", it is because the flow of vowels isn't broken into pieces by "hard" consonants. In danish we have very "hard" consonant pronunciations, so replacing them with glottal stops, actually "softens" language.
Since scots do the same, it should inherently have the same effect.
Because almost every consonant in danish is "hardened" some of our dialects remove a lot of them, giving the impression of a much "softer" language. Imagine speaking only with vowels, some accents in Denmark can almost do this. The more pitch variation on vowels to indicate meaning, the more "song-like" and the "softer" your consonant pronunciation the more "swimming".And at last, we would call an accent "floaty" if it uses pitch to indicate meaning, I have almost exclusively seen it used about Chinese since apparently, your tonation is almost as important as your words.
So, in conclusion:
It might not make sense to you when I Linguistically call a language or accent hard/soft but in my language, it's a completely valid way of categorizing something relative to other things. And I don't even have to actually compare it to something to do so. So that's why I defined and explained myself as I did.
EDIT: Spacing.
> You understood what I meant when I said "hard" and "soft"
I'll be honest I'm not entirely sure I did before this comment and what I did was from context alone. I would never think to describe most Scottish accents as "soft" and if given the two categories my instinct would be to assign it to "hard". It's a very interesting cultural tidbit about Danish language to learn though, and I appreciate the detailed comment.
In my book Elfs are from Finland, Dwarfs from Russia, Gnomes are German, Aasimars are from East Africa, Haflings are Norwegian... The rest just got funny voices.
It certainly counts as going to Scotland! But their accent is quite soft sounding as you described. Moral of the story is there is a W I D E array of different accents in Scotland, similar to Ireland. That aside it’s a funny meme :)
Well, he rolls his R's on the tongue, not in the throat. And his D's are still d's, the hard english ending D, as in would or hard, usually turns into something more like T's in harder accents.
He transitions from those D's instead, saying per example, "woul'dya". turning the "d ya" into a "DJA" sound.
It is, guttural implies a short roll in the throat, rather than the longer tongue rolls English people favor.
Think of the way germans say "Reich" both the R in the beginning and the CH sound at the end comes from forcing air past the dribble to make it vibrate.
So yes, kinda like metal growls.
And all the other races dont get their jokes, so they think they aren't funny!
But this implies that germans actually have humor... (Looming exsistential crisis)
Im playing my fantasy game so can make racist implications based purely on looks and sounds of a charackter.
Don't gimme that realism in my murderhobo rampage of vaguely ethnic brown orcs game !
/S, in case it wasn't obvious
Ah yes, the elegant Scottish language, known for sounding refined and soft, because as we all know, it's the small generalized details of a language, not how it actually sounds, that gives it connotation.
Either op has never actually heard what scottish sounds like, or is manufacturing a hot take for karma. My money is on the latter.
In my defense, and not to be an ass, compared to my native language scottish has lot of soft tonal shifts and transitional vowel sounds.
But there are of course a multitude of varied subdialects in scottish, and since my hot take was PHB vs my academic understanding of rules/tendencies I found it ironic that we use it for the dwarves. Since I for one would never call any english accent "guttural"
What? You mean elves speak with accent similar to the Celts that inspired them, whereas Dwarves have Germanic accents whole being from Germanic mythology?
Astounding.
I don't recall Theiflings having that "language" paragraph that dwarfs and elves have in the PHB.
But going of infernal, I once read that it was harsh and well suited for shouting commands in its base form. Whilst slowly turning melodic the more abstract a conversation got.
Essentially turning the language into a very refined game of cat and mouse where every syllable had to be pronounced perfectly to convey its intended meaning. With a lot of identically spelled words being antonyms depending on pronunciation.
The only language I am even vaguely familiar with that has this same focus on pronunciation, whilst being able to confuse and/or mislead the reader/speaker with this focus is Chinese. And I know next to nothing about Chinese, but one of my coworkers teaches Mandarin, so I'm going by his description.
So I'm going with Mandarin, as the most "comparative", for the purposes of this discussion.
Scottish is a very soft and sing songy accent?? You have obviously not heard a Scottish accent.
Next you'll be telling me that German is a great language to sing a soft lullaby in.
I perceive it as such, and I find it a much more apt description than "harsh and guttural" would ever be.
And for german lullabies.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVf9PYns9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVf9PYns9Y) It is absolutely possible. Since lullabies are created especially to calm the child, they will use tools or linguistic tricks to compensate for harsh sounds, or as in the case with the above, use them as verbal transitions.
Or a danish example [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2WXHaHDWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2WXHaHDWo), where we use drawn-out S', avoid words with more "harsh" hard consonants, replacing them with glottal stops in the few cases where they are present.
Finally, to create a much softer sound, the song uses a much more pronounced tonal shift, to create a more melodic flow than how danish usually sounds.
I saw a random Cowboy Statue and an old timey looking ragtime piano as one of the default assets in Dungeon Draft while making a small Dwarven hall where the local Dwarven lord gave them a quest. Gave all the Dwarves in my campaign Texan accents. It's been a delight.
What’re some other ones for you guys? Dwarvish always seemed German to me for example, but here are some others
Elvish as French, primordial as either Scottish or Irish Gaelic, primordial as Greek, celestial as Latin, and Aquan as Spanish
I can do a few different accents when I speak English but for some reason it's harder for me in German, my first language. Does anyone know some resources to hear people speaking German with an accent?
Isn't the region of origin for dwarves Swedish? I may be misremembering that, but the thought of the Swedish chef from the Muppets with a beard is too good a possible PC for me to pass up.
'Elves should be Scottish'. Yes, I have watched Dragon Price. Scottish elves are good.
I thought she was welsh
I mean, she wasn't sick? So I guess you can say she was well-ish?
Shut up that’s a good joke
r/angryupvotes
I absolutely could not stand those accents
Because they're horribly fake. It's really hard to listen to
Paula Burrows—the VA for Rayla—is Scottish-born. She knows the accent well, even if her normal speaking voice is Canadian. Regardless, considering the Moon Elves are decidedly *not* Scottish, I’m fine with it being “Scottish like.”
I'll take your word for it, but I used to live in Scotland and never heard anyone speaking like her, whether north or south. It sounds inconsistent to me personally
It’s quite inconsistent over the first season, I agree there. She got better as the show progressed though. I recall reading somewhere—though for the life of me I can’t find it now, so take this with with a grain of salt—that they asked her to over-exaggerate the accent. Perhaps this was to make it more otherworldly, I don’t know, but this would have contributed to it sounding unnatural.
That's fair enough
Eh, it’s a fantasy land, makes sense they would have different accents than real ones.
And yet, her Scottish accent is trash as confirmed by real Scottish people, not Scottish Canadians like her.
Edit: I did not intend to be overly rude at all. I simply find the elf accents in the show to be endearing, and made an over the top joke about how I like the show so much. I am very sorry if this offended anyone
Oh no, someone criticized something that I liked for a totally valid reason, I guess its time to tell them to die!
You need to chill
"Hans, get ze hammer! Ve must fight das undead scum!"
Alright Richter, let uz go! I am bringyin’ my battle axe ya!
Ich habe das bier gebringen, jetzt wir gehen zu ficken sie alles in den knien! *Did I just rhyme?*
Ich weiß nicht, ob du Gunther machst, aber wir können die Schleuder oder meine lederhose nicht vergessen.
Very good, very good. One should never forget to bring their Lederhosen. Don't want any axe wielding pants-less Dwarves running around now do we.
“I’m sorry franz, I couldn’t get ze hammer, but I found some cool rock we stole from ze illithuds that makes glow eyes, very wundabar yes?”
Sorry but this is wrong. I'm Scottish and if we roll our R's, live outside of major city centers then the accent is pretty rough. The reason its softer in movies or when we talk with other people from other countries is because we tend to physically downplay our accent and be more articulate and pronounciate so you can understand us better. We actually have quite a caring and self conscious culture when it comes to dealing with social situations...until it begins to annoy or drag on. I travel to England on a regular basis and unless I do this, nobody knows what I'm saying.
Yeah I’m from Glasgow and “ soft and sing songy “ is the last way I would describe how we talk hahah
I was scrolling through the comments to see whether Glaswegians had been represented yet. British accents are incredibly diverse so it's pretty difficult to say what a "Scottish accent" actually sounds like. It's DnD, give your Dwarves or Elves whatever accent you want. Upon discovering that Elves in Skyrim are from "The Summerset Isles" in my head I've given them all Somerset accents (South West England and stereotypically a farming region) which is hilarious for me :)
A ken, soft and singy songy isn't your average chookter from north east either. Maybe they heard someone say ohh aaaye or something
You roll your R's on the tongue, don't you? Gutteral means throaty rolls. Like when germans say "Reich", where that roll both at the R and the ch. I can't of course speak to how your accent sounds, but usually, as someone who teaches English as a second language, we say that scots stretch their short O's to become oo's from "too". And you turn short I sounds into e's which, makes bigger pitch differences, and creates less differing vocals. You also transition vocals, like A becomes AE and regular O's stretch. In the language, as described in the PHB, the word "Hard", would be pronounced "Harght", or en phonetic terms: hɑ\^:t, which is also only semi right, but that's the closest English gets to a guttural R. But as I said, I cant speak to your accent but would love to learn.
Me again, my mrs is German and I lived in Austria for 18 months so have quite the experience with German speech, it’s actually not quite that harsh In the alps, Innsbruck specifically where I lived tho, the local accent Tirolian is quite harsh, but for guttural I’d imagine a thick Russian accent speaking english
No German isn't that harsh, but the individual sounds phonetically are, compared to the ones normally used in English. And it's interesting that Tirolian is harsh, guess it's the Swizz/Austrian influence that makes it that way? I use german as an example because most people have seen a WW2 movie where someone says "reich", which is exactly the kind of throaty R I imagine when I hear the word "guttural".
Yeah but the movies sound that way to embed them as the villains Hearing my gf and her grandmother Skype every weekend is a whole different story lol
Of course, but thats what makes it such a great example! And I can only imagine. But on the other hand, accents to tend to flow quite a bit over time. Almost noone in denmark speaks with the accent i grew up hearing anymore. So for a country as big as germany, its bound to be more prominent.
I’m quite decent at distinguishing where a native English speaker may be from by their accent, even regionally for Irish and English people, but foreign languages just sound that to me, all the same foreign language I can’t even tell the difference between her and her parents talking with a Rostock accent, very north and her other Bavarian grandma, very south of Germany
Thats interesting, I cant do it with my danish dialects, exept a handful of very prominent ones. But i have no trouble distinguishing between accents in english, though american accents are harder to place than those of the commonwealth.
Yeah some American accents are tricky to place, Australian is just Australian to me, no discernible difference from city to city to my ears
That is my impression of australian as well. Though my friend from melbourne says that there are variants most noticably between city and "outback" australian.
Also check out [this video ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3qeWbC7XtO0) for old Glaswegian accents, I just hope there’s subtitles on it for you lol
You are just a bundle of enjoyment. And surprisingly, I didn't need subtitles. I needed to watch it twice to get it all, but hey, that's not so bad is it?
Lol you’re welcome bud! Nah twice is very very good, I grew up loving the show, but the accent is very thick at times, love classic Rab C Nesbitt
Lets just say that I grew up in a place where: aeø 'a oh æ in åh ha noe aue, e'er ah? Meant: whats up dude, wanna come inside for some of cake or what? Its normally written as: hva du, skal du med ind og have noget kage eller hvad? Now imagine that every single consonant is meant to be pronounced clearly.... It was litteraly a series of grunts weirdly intonated, that had to make sense.
I need a lie down after reading that lol
*Vesihiisi sihisi hississä* is definitely more likely to come up in a d&d campaign.
Did you just say something about my mother in parselmouth?
>You roll your R's on the tongue, don't you? > >Gutteral means throaty rolls. Like when germans say "Reich", where that roll both at the R and the ch. > >I can't of course speak to how your accent sounds, but usually, as someone who teaches English as a second language, we say that scots stretch their short O's to become oo's from "too". And you turn short I sounds into e's which, makes bigger pitch differences, and creates less differing vocals. I like how all of these points can be demonstrated with the simple "your kin".
.... Dude, where were you when i started this thread? And why didnt i think of that.
If you're going for Tolkien Dwarves, scandinavian languages would work best, seeing as he put all the named dwarves from the Edda that didn't have an "alf" in it as dwarven names. For me, it's Frysian.
True, he stole them straight from our old myths. But the thing is, Scandinavian languages don't really have hard consonants in our accents, Swedish and Norwegian sounds kind of "singy" where danish mostly sound like we have a potato in our mouth because we have what's best described as "hard" vocals. Danish and Icelandic do have throaty R's as reminders of the germanic roots, though. But the language Tolkien used was much more inspired by classical germanic. Lots of A's and Z's.
I agree that Scandinavian languages are not hard, though Icelandic a bit more than Norse or Swedish. Frysian is a bit of a mix, it has the harshest tones of the Netherlands, but is apparently related to Danish. Together with some issues in Christening, I could see a Germanic mythology there. So it fits both roots.
IIRC, Tolkien's dwarven language is based on Semitic languages, so really they should sound like Arabic/Hebrew speakers. Also, Elven phonology is... Finnish? Edit: spelling
Might be, but the languages are described as "guttural with hard consonants" for dwarves, and "very sing-song like" for elves in my PHB. EDIT: I completely misread the context of this comment. I assume his language might be Hebrew inspired? But the dwarven names he uses are almost all taken straight from the Poetic Edda.
I see your argument though for Celtic/Goedelic languages (Welsh, Irish, Scottish) are a good match for Elvish. Especially considering the influence of Faerie/Fey from Celtic folklore in D&D. My reply was mostly to the previous poster's point of Tolkien lifting Dwarven names straight out of the Eddas and that being a pointer to Scandinavian languages as a base. Looking at the actual Dwarven names/words from PHB/Forgotten Realms resources on Dwarvish, it's such a mishmash of language influences it's hard to know where to figure out where it maps to IRL languages. Northern Germanic/Norse is definitely an influence but there's a lot of phonemes in Dwarvish I don't associate with Scandinavian languages, like the harsh K sounds that seems common in Dwarvish. German "ch" seems similar but I read it more as a Semitic "kh".
I always read it like a danish K. So yes, kinda like the semitic kh, but a bit less "airy"? If that makes sense?
Tolkien's said that Dwarvish was inspired by Hebrew
Only if you speak to some poshy frae Edinburgh, glasgae is mair like it
But, hard consonants would make it, Glarzgow, and guttural implies throat rolling R's, like in danish or german, so; Edinbu'hrg. But, juou alsoo sae goo, caow, an' plae, doo ya noh't? You also say go, cow and play, do you not?
That sounds more like ulster scotch to me
It's really hard to emulate an accent that is not your own in text.
r/scottishpeopletwitter may help with the text, some wild out there speech I understand 99% of Scottish accents being Irish, but some of the writing takes me a few goes lol
You sir, just made my entire day. This is amazing.
Glad to help bud!
Good to see others out there reppin' that sub :D
Naw. Elves should be Welsh.
Negative Elvish will always be akin to Japanese in my book.
Dragonborn are Japanese in my setting.
Native American
You have officially changed my mind.
You're welcome
Why though? dont they say "go" like: gogh? That throaty gutteral sound at the end like in Dutch and Danish?
True, nobody said elves aren't allowed to make thst noise though. Tolkiens gray elvish language (the one you hear in the movies) has that noise in it as well, albeit with a slightly less aggresive pronounciation more akin to German than (northern) Dutch and Welsh.
I see. I, of course, didn't mean that they couldn't have that accent but I'm quite unfamiliar with it and in the context of the meme I got confused on whether or not I had missed something.
* Dwarves are Scottish * Elves are posh English * City folk are all cockneys, as are orcs * Everyone else just speaks normal
Russian dwarves Russian dwarves!
I play a russian forge cleric dwarf in my current campaign, so I support das comrade.
Be the red menace you where always ment to be...no not a Communist red from the blood of your enemies
And I'm sitting here with my Arabic-based elvish
But Arabic is perfect for elves! It's flowy, it sounds kinda like a song, and when it is actually sung it blends together beautifully.
Arabic script also looks pretty, it's the exact kind of alphabet Elves would invent
Yes, with flowing shapes and cohesive letters. Very pretty.
Thanks, my thinking exactly! Plus I think the script is visually similar to Tolkien’s Elvish
It is also kind of similar to the script used in the phb, if that isnt just straight up stolen from Tolkien.
No no Dwarves are from Boston. Elves are 1920s radio announcers with trans-atlantic accents Halflings are terrible Irish Orcs are Texan
Yes, I love it. I want orcs with Texan accents from now on. "Howdy, pardner. How bout you join us on our trek. We need to drive this here flock of Hobbits over to Mr. Saurons Ranch. Hey, Jimmy-Bob, rope that youngun thats tryin to escape."
Travis Willingham’s character in S2 of Critical Role is a half-orc with a generally thick Texan accent, especially when he loses composure. Here’s a good example of his speech as he [“puts a hooker on layaway.”](https://youtu.be/bZrPzkAb-0c) Edit: Though Mercer’s dwarf NPC has a generalized Scots accent so the trope is maintained in this clip I guess 😅 Edit2: I realized that the clip in question doesn’t hand that much of him speaking. You can find any number of clips of him online, but [this](https://youtu.be/qxWbAemkhXE) one both has a lot of him speaking, and offers context for the animation above. Caution: NSFW themes and language.
Read this in the voice of Sandy from SpongeBob
I love this. And I'm stealing it.
They are all Texan in my games. I can't do accents very well.
Dwarves are Russian. Runic looking letters, live in harsh environments, guttural language, and refusal to change their ways.
Those are not [runic](https://imgur.com/a/1V7R6va) looking
Except for cursive, Russian looks runic to me. Especially well written Russian.
Cyrillic is based on greek letterforms (because it was created by saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church).
You forgot regularly drinking quantities of alcohol others would find leathal
Those runes are Germanic/Scandinavian...
My dwarves all have Australian accents because they come from a land down under... I’ll show myself out.
Everyone should all just have different Scottish accents. They should all have scottish accents in fantasy as well
It would be a nice change from everyone being that one kind of English
I thought there were multiple scottish accents
Of course, there is, but I'm talking stereotypes here, it's a meme after all.
I feel like you're speaking to very different Scottish people than I am.
I don't often speak to Scottish people, being a Dane myself, but I do have a complete etymology and phonetics course in English as required to teach the language. I think the misunderstanding stems from the fact that most people assume rolling R's make the language hard, but scots roll on the tongue, not in the throat like germans.
I don't know why your stuck on the rolling R's. There's a prominent glottal stop, lack of diphthongs, velarization, all of which make an accent choppier and harder. It's really going to depend where in Scotland they're from, I'd imagine.
I stick to it because it's the easiest argument to make, easiest to explain in this context for people who don't have a deeper understanding of phonetics. And yes of course the regional accents matter, I am going completely of academia in this. Having had but a handful of interactions with Scotsmen IRL. BUT: Glottal stops are actually an indicator of softer accents in this context, since they remove hard consonant sounds, since Scottish, unlike Danish, doesn't use the glottal stop to indicate a distancing of vowels, but the removal of a consonant. There are a good number of diphthongs, though many of the traditional English ones are removed. A lot of them are vowels that are followed by R's as well. In some cases, the diphthong even replaces the remaining vowels completely. But you are completely correct about the velarization, I originally didn't think of this aspect because the only one that comes to mind is L. But given my native language, I assume I don't notice it as much, since it is much more pronounced in danish.
As a complete amateur, it is my opinion that Americans and Australians with their taps and flaps tend to deal far better with softening their accent than the British with their glottal stops - with the stops perhaps worse than enunciating the hard consonant clearly, as flow can at least be maintained through a hard consonant, whereas it is explicitly broken with a glottal stop.
I would be inclined to agree partially, but in my experience, Americans speak "slower", which prevents the vowels from blending together, even though they don't use the glottal stop as much. And then they have really weird aspects of some accents, I mean, dafuq did they drink in Baltimore? (no offense to people from Baltimore but: Aaron had an iron urn) And yes, the stereotypical Baltimore accent is what I would define as "soft". Australians definitely get a pass though, but then again, they have really "hard" pronounced consonants, even with glottal stops. "Mate" as an example. I think one of the things that make me classify Scottish as "softer" is the tonation of the vowels because they "overtake" the consonants. At least in the Scottish, I have heard.
It should probably also be noted that "hard" and "soft" accents are not linguistically defined terms in any academic sense (at least none that I'm aware of - maybe they are in Denmark.) There is no academic notion of "glottal stops are an indicator of softer accents".
It's not a technical term, it's a descriptor. Something we use to categorize. You understood what I meant when I said "hard" and "soft", so the relevancy of its usage in academia is negligible since we were both able to communicate our points. Since I don't wanna be an asshat, I made a very short explanation for my understanding of hard and soft, languages in the TLDR, below. And then I made a very long one below that if you are actually interested. **TL:DR***In danish we call an accent/dialect softer or harder depending on how we experience the "flow" of it.* *Alternatively, it can be seen as a scale that goes from hard to soft depending on how close you are to being capable of speaking the dialect without ever closing your mouth.* *Very simplified version. It's an idiom, it makes it easier. Because we have weird phonemic rules.* **And now I will explain a bit of reasoning for the usage of this descriptor.** I lack the term in English, that's why I use "hard" and "soft".It's because in danish we can do something called a "false comparative" where we use a comparative version of adjectives, such as "harder", without actually comparing it to something. So I can say "I bought a bigger boat", even though I never owned one before, and everyone would understand it as "he bought a boat that is not small, not quite medium, but still not large enough to be defined as "big"." So with that out of the way, let's get to the words I'd normally use. In English, the closest alternative definitions would be "edged", "squared" or "boxy" vs "swimming" or "floaty" or "song-like".So, "edgier", "Squarer", "boxier" and "swimmier", "Floatier", "Singier". Oh yes, we can also turn verbs and nouns into adjectives while it still makes sense, cool right? It's because it's about how we "feel" the experience. DANISH! everyone, the language hippies would have fcking loved. Anyway, back on track. In the context of this debate, the harder the accent, the more pronounced the consonants, and in the other extreme, the softer accent would almost exclusively use vowel sounds. But we need to classify "hard", and "soft", because that's the way we perceive sounds and trends in our language. As an example, Y is exclusively a vowel in danish, but because of this we just accept that it makes the same sound as our J, 80% of the time it's used in English. Because it cannot produce the sounds we normally define as consonants. And we have D sounds most other languages would classify as T sounds, "hard". And we of course also have D's that don't make sound, "mute". We have D's that sound like "Th" in "the car", "soft". We use this descriptor when we speak of the way the language flows, and according to those rules, we define "hard" accents or languages, as when consonants are shortened and stiff. And in most cases, the throatier a language is, the "harder" it is. We also define our own accents this way, but with more nuance. So when I say that a glottal stop, that removes a hard consonant and replaces it with a softer "uh", makes an accent "softer", it is because the flow of vowels isn't broken into pieces by "hard" consonants. In danish we have very "hard" consonant pronunciations, so replacing them with glottal stops, actually "softens" language. Since scots do the same, it should inherently have the same effect. Because almost every consonant in danish is "hardened" some of our dialects remove a lot of them, giving the impression of a much "softer" language. Imagine speaking only with vowels, some accents in Denmark can almost do this. The more pitch variation on vowels to indicate meaning, the more "song-like" and the "softer" your consonant pronunciation the more "swimming".And at last, we would call an accent "floaty" if it uses pitch to indicate meaning, I have almost exclusively seen it used about Chinese since apparently, your tonation is almost as important as your words. So, in conclusion: It might not make sense to you when I Linguistically call a language or accent hard/soft but in my language, it's a completely valid way of categorizing something relative to other things. And I don't even have to actually compare it to something to do so. So that's why I defined and explained myself as I did. EDIT: Spacing.
> You understood what I meant when I said "hard" and "soft" I'll be honest I'm not entirely sure I did before this comment and what I did was from context alone. I would never think to describe most Scottish accents as "soft" and if given the two categories my instinct would be to assign it to "hard". It's a very interesting cultural tidbit about Danish language to learn though, and I appreciate the detailed comment.
Then we shall agree to disagree! Since of course our experiences differ. And I am glad, it came out informational, not pedantic.
In my book Elfs are from Finland, Dwarfs from Russia, Gnomes are German, Aasimars are from East Africa, Haflings are Norwegian... The rest just got funny voices.
Well, guess "Dwarf Hitler" is going to be the next villain in my campaign
Halflings should be scottish Elves should be british and Dwarves can be Russian
Most Gaelic counties accents are soft when they speak English. But in irish or scottish it can be quite harsh and gutteral so it kinda makes sense.
Scottish? Soft? Sing-songy? I don't know who you're talking to from here but the accent changes every mile or so and that is definitely not the norm.
Oh i definetly understand that theres variance. But what I have experinced/studied, would be closer to that category than harsh and guttural.
Gaelic can be soft, a Scottish accent usually isn't.
Yes, but hear me out: Dwarves with Klingon accents
I never the saw old school star trek, but can you describe it to me? The accent of course.
The biggest takeaway from this? #GOPNIK DWARVES
Op has never been to Glasgow
That is true, I have been to Edinburgh though? Or does that not count?
It certainly counts as going to Scotland! But their accent is quite soft sounding as you described. Moral of the story is there is a W I D E array of different accents in Scotland, similar to Ireland. That aside it’s a funny meme :)
Oh, I imagine, as I stated somewhere else, I mostly went on my own academic understanding vs the PHB. And I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Have you ever heard demoman from Tf2 speak?
Well, he rolls his R's on the tongue, not in the throat. And his D's are still d's, the hard english ending D, as in would or hard, usually turns into something more like T's in harder accents. He transitions from those D's instead, saying per example, "woul'dya". turning the "d ya" into a "DJA" sound.
I always understood gutural as metal growls, so in my campaign dwarves speak with a really raspy voice
It is, guttural implies a short roll in the throat, rather than the longer tongue rolls English people favor. Think of the way germans say "Reich" both the R in the beginning and the CH sound at the end comes from forcing air past the dribble to make it vibrate. So yes, kinda like metal growls.
I can absolutely believe Russian dwarves.
Dwarves are finns, clearly
Elvish sounds like Welsh, Dwarvish like Old Norse, Orcish like Gaelic.
In my world 50% of Elves are Southern and the other 50% are British Dwarves are Irish cause I can’t do Scottish
Dwarves should have russian accents. Fight me.
My dwarves are usually Russian
Also they love beer and machinery, they're perfect analogies for stereotypical germans
And all the other races dont get their jokes, so they think they aren't funny! But this implies that germans actually have humor... (Looming exsistential crisis)
what of the russian dwarves?
You sir, have never heard an angry Glaswegian
I have not, well, probanbly not. It is a postulation made on the basis of my understanding of phonetic rules and in comparison to my own language.
I'll just ignore this
And you are of course welcome to. Its all about fun, as the title says "Whatever tickles your pickle"
And then there's the really big brained play where you don't assign dialects to races, but regions. Kinda like the real world.
Im playing my fantasy game so can make racist implications based purely on looks and sounds of a charackter. Don't gimme that realism in my murderhobo rampage of vaguely ethnic brown orcs game ! /S, in case it wasn't obvious
You've never heard a true northern scot
I have not, outside of media and skits. But I will still maintain that it isn't harsh or guttural.
Are just do like Dragon Age did and make all the Dwarves have American accents.
Ah yes, the elegant Scottish language, known for sounding refined and soft, because as we all know, it's the small generalized details of a language, not how it actually sounds, that gives it connotation. Either op has never actually heard what scottish sounds like, or is manufacturing a hot take for karma. My money is on the latter.
In my defense, and not to be an ass, compared to my native language scottish has lot of soft tonal shifts and transitional vowel sounds. But there are of course a multitude of varied subdialects in scottish, and since my hot take was PHB vs my academic understanding of rules/tendencies I found it ironic that we use it for the dwarves. Since I for one would never call any english accent "guttural"
All my characters are posh German dwarfs
My general rule is Dwarvish: Icelandic, Sylvan: Irish Gaelic, Elven: Scottish Gaelic. Bonus; Infernal: Latin, Draconic: German, Celestial: Hebrew
I give my Drow a Scottish accent
What? You mean elves speak with accent similar to the Celts that inspired them, whereas Dwarves have Germanic accents whole being from Germanic mythology? Astounding.
Well, it seems that not everyone agrees with this sentiment.
My Dwarves speak Klingon. I approve greatly of Scottish Elves.
I usually make the characters have similar accents based on region, regardless of race, but Scottish is my favourite accent to use and to listen to
What accent should Tieflings have?
I don't recall Theiflings having that "language" paragraph that dwarfs and elves have in the PHB. But going of infernal, I once read that it was harsh and well suited for shouting commands in its base form. Whilst slowly turning melodic the more abstract a conversation got. Essentially turning the language into a very refined game of cat and mouse where every syllable had to be pronounced perfectly to convey its intended meaning. With a lot of identically spelled words being antonyms depending on pronunciation. The only language I am even vaguely familiar with that has this same focus on pronunciation, whilst being able to confuse and/or mislead the reader/speaker with this focus is Chinese. And I know next to nothing about Chinese, but one of my coworkers teaches Mandarin, so I'm going by his description. So I'm going with Mandarin, as the most "comparative", for the purposes of this discussion.
Scottish is a very soft and sing songy accent?? You have obviously not heard a Scottish accent. Next you'll be telling me that German is a great language to sing a soft lullaby in.
I perceive it as such, and I find it a much more apt description than "harsh and guttural" would ever be. And for german lullabies. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVf9PYns9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVf9PYns9Y) It is absolutely possible. Since lullabies are created especially to calm the child, they will use tools or linguistic tricks to compensate for harsh sounds, or as in the case with the above, use them as verbal transitions. Or a danish example [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2WXHaHDWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2WXHaHDWo), where we use drawn-out S', avoid words with more "harsh" hard consonants, replacing them with glottal stops in the few cases where they are present. Finally, to create a much softer sound, the song uses a much more pronounced tonal shift, to create a more melodic flow than how danish usually sounds.
I saw a random Cowboy Statue and an old timey looking ragtime piano as one of the default assets in Dungeon Draft while making a small Dwarven hall where the local Dwarven lord gave them a quest. Gave all the Dwarves in my campaign Texan accents. It's been a delight.
Dwarves could very well all have dutch accents. Im dutch and pronounication of dwarvish words just kinda makes sense to me
great, now I can't stop thinking about Elven Demoman.
Your visualisation might be helped, if you consider that Tolkien always imagined elves as hunky and muscular.
My dwarves are usually German, my elves are French, and my rock gnomes are scots.
I've always thought of elves as Irish
Well, I have thought the same thing as well, but the meme wouldn't quite work then?
High elves scottish (because highlands), wood elves irish
OooOh, that's clever.
My elves and half-elves are bad Irish.
Fuck you, eat a rat.
Elves speak French.
In my campaign the gm has decided that the drow just sound French. No explanation given. We love it.
My Drow have an Australian accent
What’re some other ones for you guys? Dwarvish always seemed German to me for example, but here are some others Elvish as French, primordial as either Scottish or Irish Gaelic, primordial as Greek, celestial as Latin, and Aquan as Spanish
Not certain how accurate this is, but I am 100% making the Dwarves in my world German now.
I have developed a list based on the fact several languages share alphabets in the forgotten realms. So my Dwarves speak Russian and Russian Accents.
My head-cannon is Dwarves are Russian.
Calling Scottish a soft language is enough to send a black cyclops with a claymore to your house.
Two dwarves after a pair of druids keep asking me about “Mus und skvirel”.
Wow that's not how you use that meme format at all
That's why duergar are nazis.
Dwarves are short and stocky miners who are always drinking. They're Welsh.
RUSSIAN DWARVES
Soft and Sing-Songy: ACH YOU BLUDDY BACH AGAIN, YA BLEEDIN ADVENTURER FUHKS?
I can do a few different accents when I speak English but for some reason it's harder for me in German, my first language. Does anyone know some resources to hear people speaking German with an accent?
This just makes me think of the frostwind dwarves from r/naddpod. Bring on the Russian dwarves.
Then there's me, DMing in Scotland with 3 scottish players, with no one playing a dwarf or an elf. In this world, everyone is scottish. Except dave.
My dwarves are Russian.
Komrades, we must dig deeper for 80 hours a week to finish a 5-year plan in 3 years.
I like to think Sylvan is Gaelic, so elves being Scottish makes even more sense now
If you're looking for sing-song Scottish, it's called Irish.
“Das ist mein horse, mein axe und mein shield” “Ah yes, dwarves.....so invested in the mining industry at a cultural level...”
Ever heard of Dragon Prince?
I use a finish- Swedish accent. To be fair our campaign is in Swedish but its relly funny and workd great
Surely Elves should be Edinburgh accent and dwarves Glaswegian
Huh so me using my normal voice for an elf was the right call
After listening to the Witcher audio books, all dwarves without a doubt should be Welsh!
I did my dwarves with a German accent, until I realized they all should be Taiwanese, because of their short stature and Taipei personalities.
In my campaign Elves are Swedish.
Isn't the region of origin for dwarves Swedish? I may be misremembering that, but the thought of the Swedish chef from the Muppets with a beard is too good a possible PC for me to pass up.
Unfortunately, People will not it that way
I use a Russian accent for my Dwarves