History Main / InventedLinguisticDistinction

* ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'': In keeping with the films' frequent use of EvilBrit characters, Sith Empire characters in the game tend to speak in British- or British-descended accents, but with a much wider range than usual (everything from Scots to a couple of Australians). Republic-affiliated characters tend to speak with either American or Canadian accents. This gets lampshaded a couple times: at two points in the Imperial Agent storyline, Cipher Nine affects a "Republic" accent while undercover, while Imperial [=PCs=] of all classes can pull a hilariously bad BriefAccentImitation to make fun of a Republic character on Belsavis.

The creative decision to more realistically define a fictional culture through language, where such distinctions do not already inherently exist due to the culture not existing in the real world, or existing in the real world, but being far enough in the future that major changes in language are justified, is key to the trope. Localizing linguistic differences to characters based solely on personality or to more accurately depict real world locations and cultures is not this trope. If Aerith only [[SmartPeopleSpeakTheQueensEnglish sounds British to show that she's a genius]], not because she's fictionally foreign, then that isn't the trope . If Bob is from modern New York and Aerith is from past France and they both sound appropriately different and accurate to what a person from those times and places should sound like (or [[MisplacedAccent they]] [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign don't]], but that was the intent) that's just regular old realism, not the trope. It has to be fictional cultures, but realistically utilized linguistics.

A Subtrope of MulticulturalAlienPlanet. Compare AliensOfLondon, another trope that deals with giving accents to fictional races. Contrast SmartPeopleSpeakTheQueensEnglish, where an accent is used as a shortcut to show a character's personality rather than because of their nationality, AliensSpeakingEnglish, where people from fictional populations from outside of Earth speak Earth languages without explanation, or AnimeAccentAbsence, a tendency in Japanese media to not bother giving foreign characters distinguished accents at all.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'': The English dub has two examples. Though all of the characters sport accents from across southern England, most of them are distributed based on character rather than nationality (despite living together for most of their lives, siblings Fiora and Dunban speak in Estuary and Received Pronunciation accents, respectively, for example). The first exception and example of this trope is the High Entia race, who all speak in Upper Received Pronunciation accents and are the sole users of it. As a very long-lived and somewhat isolationist society of High Elfish people, the language difference checks out. The other example is the Nopon race, who aren't so different accent-wise, but speak in their own unique dialect full of broken English and strange terminologies.
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChroniclesX'' implies that the various alien races encountered on the planet Mira have their own languages, but an [[HandWave unexplained phenomenon on the planet translates them all]], so we mostly end up getting everyone speaking the same language in the same way. Some quirks still manage to make their way through though, such as the Ma-Non tendencies to repeat conjunctions or phrase sentences as questions, or the many oddities of the ever present Nopon dialect.
* The English dub of ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' kicks things up a notch by giving every one of the fictional nations of Alrest their own set of dialects taken from the real world. The Ardainians all sound Scottish, the Urayans are all Australian, the Gormotti are all Welsh, and so on. The Nopon return yet again sporting working class southern English accents, presumed to be the native dialect of the Nopon founded MerchantCity of Argentum, as well as their unique broken speech patterns and terminologies.