Using an accent in LARP

October 29, 6:08 PMLA LARP ExaminerRob McDiarmid

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Astavakra is a great example of a solid accent

A swarthy looking man in a red and gold striped vest approaches and lifts his mug in your direction. He speaks with a thick, gravelly voice. “Hello. My name is Federico Eziquiel Teresa Catalina Hernandez. But my friends call me Fetch. And who would you be?”

It took me a long time to get up the nerve to use an accent with a LARP character. Like most, I was nervous about doing a poor job of it and making a fool of myself. But eventually I plucked up the courage to start. I used a few tricks to get started.

Movies

The first character I ever did with an accent was a Scottish trinket merchant. To prepare it, I watched movies. Mostly Braveheart and Rob Roy, both of which were pretty new at the time. I also made an audio tape of some good parts so I could listen to it while driving.

One of the nice things about movies is they not only give you an accent to copy, but if you can find one set in a relevant time period, they can give you some terminology to use. For example, I’m currently researching a 1930s mobster character. Finding consistent accents to copy is a bit challenging because the various movies are set in Chicago, Brooklyn, and other parts of the country. But certain catch phrases and styles of address are pretty common, and I’ve begun picking them up.

One of the nice things about learning accents from movies is that the actors are often using artificial accents themselves. I don’t know exactly why, but it’s easier for me to mimic another actor’s version of an accent rather than try to mimic a native accent. I suppose the actor is exaggerating certain elements a bit, making them easier to distinguish and copy.

The Speech Accent Archive

A couple years ago I decided to play a Middle Eastern character. I knew this was going to be challenging on a few fronts. For one, I didn’t know of a lot of movies with lots of applicable accents for me to listen to. Especially not ones with non-native speakers using the accents, which as I said before, is easier to learn from.

The other issue for me was that the main accent from that region that I’m familiar with is from India, which tends to lilt. I’m really bad with lilting accents. That’s why I can do Scottish but never Irish.

So a helpful person posted a link to the Speech Accent Archive http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_atlas.php . I was able to go there and listen to different accents around the region. I found that accents from the border areas between the Middle East and Russia worked best for me - like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The site has these nice long samples of people speaking the same few sentences. And they are written out in phonetic transcription, so you can learn to read along with the sounds they are speaking, which helped me learn to mimic a little more quickly.

The Introduction

I found that one of the keys to helping myself get back into character was having an well-practiced introduction. My pirate character, Fetch, introduces himself at the beginning of this article.

Often during a game an out of character conversation ends when a new person walks up. So launching into my introduction helps me snap back in to character. Also, my introduction is usually one of the first things I say at the beginning of a game, so it helps me get off on the right foot with my accent.

Even just having a very specific way that you say “Hello” can help you maintain your accent. My half-troll says “Hello” very differently from my pirate, who says it differently from the Middle Eastern character. Just the one word helps me maintain accent.

Why Try?

Researching and practicing an accent takes some time, especially if it’s something you haven’t done much of before. So why try? I find that when I develop a character with an accent, it’s easier for me to create a divide in my mind between the character and Rob. When I start to hear my character in my head as a voice that is distinct from my own, I have an easier time thinking about things from the character’s point of view.

And on a related note, it’s easier to clarify to another player whether I’m speaking in character or out of character. When I’m playing my half-troll character and drop accent for a minute to explain a game mechanic to a new player, it’s easy for me to jut my lower jaw out and say “OK, back to work.” And bam, I’m back in character again.

The amount of positive feedback and warm fuzzies you get from entertaining your fellow players with a well-maintained accent is worth every bit of effort it takes to develop.