Need a little advice on writing a character

[John_Black]

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on writing a character with an old British accent? preferable a commoner type if that helps....

 

[GroverLang]

If you mean for a story set decades ago, say eighty years, then I would suggest you read stories written around that time or stories set in that time and written by top mainstream authors. The same would apply if it’s in respect of a character in a story you are writing but set in the present time period.

“Old British accent” is a little vague. If you give more detail I’m sure you’ll get more detailed and constructive advice.

 

[MohanSingh]

Google cockney phrases. Stick a few in.

 

[GroverLang]

Google cockney phrases. Stick a few in.

That’s like saying stick a New Jersey accent into a cowboy story set in Texas.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on writing a character with an old British accent? preferable a commoner type if that helps....

One piece of advice off the top of my head - avoid cliche and corny old tropes. Cockney is not Dick Van Dyke, it's more Arfur Dailey.

Keep it subtle, else it will come across as pastiche, and make sure there are no anachronisms. If you get tiny details wrong, you'll be spotted a mile off as faking it, and where would your story be then?

Like the clown who wrote a heroine visiting a ranch in Australia, five-hundred miles west of Perth. Good luck finding cattle there. Good luck finding a ranch, come to that .

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The thing to remember is that, until comparatively recently, just about every region had its own, very distinctive, accent. You need to figure out where the speaker is coming from. Beyond that, EB66 is quite correct - less is more.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

The thing to remember is that, until comparatively recently, just about every region had its own, very distinctive, accent. You need to figure out where the speaker is coming from. Beyond that, EB66 is quite correct - less is more.

TP is absolutely right, there's no such thing as a 'British Accent' or to put it another way, there's an absolute plethora of regional accents in Britain, and, for the most part, they're highly regional and stratified; Black Country dialect sounds nothing like Yorkshire Dales, accents from Liverpool, Merseyside, and The Wirral are indecipherable to Londoners, Brummies from Birmingham can't understand West Country, and no-one except Geordies understands Geordie, the regional accent of Tyne & Wear, South Shields, and Newcastle Upon Tyne.

You need to decide which region your MC's from, and research the peculiarities and anachronisms of their regional word use, You Tube will be useful here. My husband was born in the Somerset Levels, in the deep West Country, and normally speaks with a clear, boarding-school 'received pronunciation' accent, like a BBC World Service radio announcer, but when he wants to be difficult, he defaults to a form of archaic English still spoken in the villages and hamlets of Somerset but not spoken generally in probably 500 years, because he grew up speaking it. As an import from Louisiana, I manage one word in six, but people assure me it's English, just loaded with anachronisms and dialect shifts.

I lived in England for 20 years, my home is still there, and my locals speak with a soft, West Country/rural Oxfordshire burr, but count in an ancient, Brythonic language very similar to the Cumbrian 'Yan Tan Tethra'. My stepdaughter still counts in this Cumbrian dialect, her mother was from the Lake District, and it's nothing like English, anyone not from there is not going to understand a word of it.

Cornwall is the same, many Cornish people speak Kernow in their daily life, it's related to Welsh, which my husband speaks, and even when they speak english for the benefit of tourists, they pepper their speech with Kernow words and phrases, usually without realizing they're doing it.

 

[Javahead]

Like the clown who wrote a heroine visiting a ranch in Australia, five-hundred miles west of Perth. Good luck finding cattle there. Good luck finding a ranch, come to that .

Seahorses?

 

[Javahead]

The thing to remember is that, until comparatively recently, just about every region had its own, very distinctive, accent. You need to figure out where the speaker is coming from. Beyond that, EB66 is quite correct - less is more.

And if you're not Henry Higgins, they all sound much the same to an outsider.

My first visit to England, nearly thirty years back, had me working in Exeter for a few days.

My second day there, my opposite number told me "I suppose you can tell by my accent I'm not from around here." As a matter of fact, no. To my American ears, unused to the variety of English regional and class speech variations, there didn't seem to be enough difference to even note.

Then again, how many Britons can reliably tell a Tennesse accent from a Texas one?

 

[John_Black]

Well can anyone at least suggest a few book titles to read on this subject?

 

[NotWise]

Well can anyone at least suggest a few book titles to read on this subject?

I wouldn't try to reproduce accents phonetically. If nothing else, it would be difficult to read. Maybe you're thinking of using British slang? If so, then Wikipedia has an article on British slang that might be a starting point.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Like the clown who wrote a heroine visiting a ranch in Australia, five-hundred miles west of Perth. Good luck finding cattle there. Good luck finding a ranch, come to that .

Ranching dugongs maybe?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Well can anyone at least suggest a few book titles to read on this subject?

"Old British" is impossibly broad. Are we talking a 19th-century London chimneysweep? Pre-Roman Scots Gaelic farmer? 15th-century Welsh miner? You'll need to narrow it down before anybody can make useful recommendations.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on writing a character with an old British accent? preferable a commoner type if that helps....

I would write it and then ask a Brit for suggestions. Failing that, listen to to some BBC shows that relate to the period and class you are trying to capture. Particularly 80 years ago class is a thing and if governs word choice and diction. Then nice thing about the BBC they have offerings that span time and place in the UK.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I would write it and then ask a Brit for suggestions. Failing that, listen to to some BBC shows that relate to the period and class you are trying to capture. Particularly 80 years ago class is a thing and if governs word choice and diction. Then nice thing about the BBC they have offerings that span time and place in the UK.

"This is the BBC Home Service. From the depths of deepest, darkest Wales we bring you the highly esteemed GOON SHOW!"

(Bad trumpet fanfare...)

Just for some 50's / 60's English silliness.

 

[NotWise]

"This is the BBC Home Service. From the depths of deepest, darkest Wales we bring you the highly esteemed GOON SHOW!"

(Bad trumpet fanfare...)

Just for some 50's / 60's English silliness.

A syndicated comic that runs in the local paper had a series a few years ago in which the main character determined that Welsh was actually a diabolical alien code.

 

[SamScribble]

A syndicated comic that runs in the local paper had a series a few years ago in which the main character determined that Welsh was actually a diabolical alien code.

It is. My mother was Welsh. I'll tell you for why.

 

[NotWise]

It is. My mother was Welsh. I'll tell you for why.

I don't know for why, but I've heard that expression and similar all my life. Maybe there's some Welsh in my Mom's background that she won't admit.

On a side note, I Googled Maserati earlier today (story research, you know) and now it seems like every web site I go to is popping up adds for Maserati, including two where I just wanted to know where "for why" came from.

That's actually a WAY better outcome than when (for another story) I Googled about menstrual cramps.

 

[SimonDoom]

My first thought in response to this thread is that you hear an accent, but you don't necessarily read or write it. Most English authors I've read don't do much to try to convey an ACCENT via writing, although they may make some effort to ensure that the character's vocabulary and word choices are consistent with whatever his background is.

My second thought is it's much better, with trying to write dialect or slang, to underdo it than to overdo it.

 

[KeithD]

My first thought in response to this thread is that you hear an accent, but you don't necessarily read or write it. Most English authors I've read don't do much to try to convey an ACCENT via writing, although they may make some effort to ensure that the character's vocabulary and word choices are consistent with whatever his background is.

My second thought is it's much better, with trying to write dialect or slang, to underdo it than to overdo it.

This.

 

[Rustyoznail]

My first thought in response to this thread is that you hear an accent, but you don't necessarily read or write it. Most English authors I've read don't do much to try to convey an ACCENT via writing, although they may make some effort to ensure that the character's vocabulary and word choices are consistent with whatever his background is.

My second thought is it's much better, with trying to write dialect or slang, to underdo it than to overdo it.

Accents would be hard unless the area had particular phrasing that would be identifiable.

 

[ishtat]

. My husband was born in the Somerset Levels, in the deep West Country, and normally speaks with a clear, boarding-school 'received pronunciation' accent, like a BBC World Service radio announcer, but when he wants to be difficult, he defaults to a form of archaic English still spoken in the villages and hamlets of Somerset but not spoken generally in probably 500 years, because he grew up speaking it.

I was born in South Gloucestershire as were my father and grandfather (farmers). When I returned after several years in the USA an old farmer greeted me and asked 'Iya our Tam, Bissent th' gwine down th'wuk? which is obviously 'Hello Tom, are you not going down the Oak?' (pub). Rural people who learned their speech before the advent of radio all spoke like this but although the accent persists the dialect words are much less common. But some do; my great grandparents originally migrated north from the Badgworth/Mark area of Somerset and even after 3 generations my father always referred to ants and old ladies as emmets.

I suspect that BB and I could hold a conversation neither of our wives might fully understand.

 

[Handley_Page]

Like the clown who wrote a heroine visiting a ranch in Australia, five-hundred miles west of Perth. Good luck finding cattle there. Good luck finding a ranch, come to that .

Would these be those cows crossed with pilot whales ?
Last I heard, they didn't swim well . . . .
And the milk was 'off'.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on writing a character with an old British accent? preferable a commoner type if that helps....

How old ?
The English of the 1890-1920 is nowhere near the same as post WW2.
I suggest you look at several of the old 1950s B&W movies (Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick and all of them. Listen more to the rhythm of the speech,.
Of course, a great deal will depend upon whether the character is a good guy or a baddie.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I was born in South Gloucestershire as were my father and grandfather (farmers). When I returned after several years in the USA an old farmer greeted me and asked 'Iya our Tam, Bissent th' gwine down th'wuk? which is obviously 'Hello Tom, are you not going down the Oak?' (pub). Rural people who learned their speech before the advent of radio all spoke like this but although the accent persists the dialect words are much less common. But some do; my great grandparents originally migrated north from the Badgworth/Mark area of Somerset and even after 3 generations my father always referred to ants and old ladies as emmets.

I suspect that BB and I could hold a conversation neither of our wives might fully understand.

I once heard BB tell someone he was arguing with 'Harkit, thee casn't 'ere as well cas't, cust? A'in if thee couldna, wust!' *

*Trans: Listen, You can't hear as well as you could, can you? And even if you could, you wouldn't, would you?

I had to memorize it, it sounded so Shakespearean, with all the accents in the wrong places and he did it without having to think twice about what he was saying.

He still calls badger's 'brocks', and woodpeckers are 'yaffles', squirrels are 'ekerns', and wood-pigeons are 'culvers', the newts and salamanders in our pond were always 'efts' and 'asks', and crawfish are 'crevis'. When we go back to his family home in Wellington, I can hear him slipping almost by the hour into the way he spoke when he was a boy, and after a couple days have gone by I can't understand him at all; his mother thought it was a low-class way to speak, and tried to beat it out of him, but she never managed to.

 

[HarryHill]

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on writing a character with an old British accent? preferable a commoner type if that helps....

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