Fictional Accent

Greer: Where's that accent from?
Laura: Wundagore.
Greer: "Won-da-gore"? Is that a place or a prize at a horror convention?
Laura: It is in Transia.

— Secret Warps

When a character is from a Fictional Country, a fictional planet, or some other fictional place, or when a work takes place in one, sometimes the creators go the extra mile and make an accent to go with it. Maybe they combine several existing accents into something new. Maybe they make one completely from scratch. Either way, it's the accent equivalent of a Conlang.

This generally comes in two variations:

• Frankenstein's Accent — an accent that was created by combining aspects of two or more real life accents. This is what's most common, as it's easier to create something by combining several existing things than to make something from scratch. That's not to say that this type is inferior. In fact, it can often be the better option for accents originating from a fictional country on Earth, since it's more likely to sound like a natural accent (and if the work involves actors, it's easier for them to speak with such an accent).
• Original Accent — an accent made completely from scratch. Whereas the Frankenstein Accent is generally the better option for accents originating from a fictional country on Earth, this is typically better suited for accents that come from a place not on Earth and instances of Aliens Speaking English.

Since accents are part of verbal communication, any examples from written media must explicitly state that a character has an accent and possibly change the spelling of certain words to reflect the way they speak.

Often overlaps with What the Hell Is That Accent?, where an accent confuses the audience, and Unexplained Accent, where the character is given a carefully-crafted accent that is inexplicable.

Contrast Invented Linguistic Distinction, where everyone from the fictional place usually speaks an existing accent that sounds foreign to domestic audiences.

Super-Trope to Animal Species Accent.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Chikako Awara from GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class speaks Chubu-ben, a fictitious dialect based on Nagoya accent and Kansai grammar. The story happens in Fukui, which is economically associated with the former.

Comedy

• Andy Kaufman's "Foreign Man" character, who spoke in a meek, high-pitched, heavy-accented voice and claimed to be from "Caspiar", a fictional island in the Caspian Sea. Latka, his character on the sitcom Taxi, would adopt the same speaking mannerisms.

Comic Books

• Weapon Hex and Secret Warps: Laura Kinney/Weapon Hex apparently speaks with a Wundagorian accent. Since Gavrill Kinney/Speed Weasel also grew up there, it's implied that she has one as well.
  Greer: Where's that accent from?
  Laura: Wundagore.
  Greer: "Won-da-gore"? Is that a place or a prize at a horror convention?
  Laura: It is in Transia.

Comic Strips

• The dimwitted crocodile neighbors in Pearls Before Swine have a pidgin accent ("Hullo zeeba neighba", "Peese shut mouf", etc.) that intentionally doesn't resemble any real-life accent.

Films — Animation

• The Incredibles: Edna Mode, voiced by director Brad Bird himself, has an accent that resembles a blend between German and Chinese. It fits with the film's aesthetic, which Bird says is based on what people in the '50s and '60s thought the future would be like.

Films — Live-Action

• After Earth: Everyone speaks with an accent that was created from scratch to sound futuristic.
• Avatar: James Cameron had a team create an entire language for the Na'vi of Pandora. He allowed lead actress Zoe Saldaña to create the accent in English for the Na'vi, which she described as being difficult since in her words "[she] barely speak[s] English all in itself."
• For Enemy Mine, Louis Gossett, Jr. as the alien Drac would gargle saliva as he talked to give his voice an odd, non-human quality.
• Galaxy Quest: The Thermians speak with a very distinct accent seemingly meant to sound as alien as possible.
• Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings speaks in a mixed accent that alternates between English, American and vaguely Irish that no other Men in the films use. Presumably, seeing as Aragorn is a Long-Lived Dunedain, the accent is part of their regional dialect.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe makes use of this.
  • Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, who are from the fictional Eastern European country of Sokovia, speak with an accent that resembles a blend of Russian, Ukrainian, Slovakian, and a couple other existing accents. Wanda's gradually grows softer and less noticeable after several years of living and fighting alongside people who are primarily American, though it has a tendency to get thicker when she's stressed, angry, or otherwise upset.
  • T'Challa and the other native Wakandans speak in an accent that resembles a blend of several real African accents.
• Starman: Jeff Bridges uses a bizarre accent that sounds alien to most but feels right at home with his sudden, jerky movements and strange mannerisms.

Literature

• In the Doctor Who New Adventures book First Frontier, Bernice (who's from several centuries in the future) has an accent that 1950s Americans can't place, but sounds "vaguely colonial."
• In the Honor Harrington series, a number of accents are noted: The crisp accent of Sphinx, the soft slow accent of Grayson, the upper-class Legislaturist and lower-class Doleist accents of Haven, and the affected drawl of certain Manticorian aristocrats, among others. It is eventually revealed that the Grayson accent actually sounds identical to a Welsh accent from Llandovery.
• Into The Broken Lands: The local accent in Gateway is fast-paced and slurred in ways that outsiders struggle to understand. Some passages from an outsider's viewpoint write it as a Funetik Aksent full of mashed-together words and add the character's best guess at what's being said.
• T'e Prince Roger series gots t'e pocking Pinopan accent of Poertena, t'e unit armorer. His uncle (actually an older cousin) only reverts to that accent under stress, having worked hard on surpressing it in his speech.
• In Robots and Empire, some attention is given to the accents of different planets. This becomes a plot point when it turns out Solaria is guarded by robotic overseers programmed to only regard people as human beings if they have a Solarian accent.
• "A Study in Emerald": The narrator takes note of the human Prince Albert's distinct accent, pronouncing S sounds as Zs in imitation of the Eldritch Abominations that rule over humanity.
• Under the Pendulum Sun: The gnome Mr. Benjamin affects a proper Oxford accent along with other human customs, but slips into a Fae accent with no earthly equivalent in times of stress.
• The Wheel of Time: Although everyone speaks the Common Tongue, there are several regional accents and speech patterns, such as the fast, clipped speaking style in Cairhien. More extreme are the slurred drawl of the Seanchan invaders, which Westlanders struggle to understand, and the Creepy Monotone of the Sharan army that fights for the Shadow.

Live-Action TV

• A notorious example is the bizarre heavy accent Peter Jurasik created for his alien character Londo Mollari in Babylon 5, which was mostly vaguely Slavic in nature but occasionally had Italian overtones. Jurasik has given conflicting statements about whether it was based on anything real, on one occasion claiming that it was based on an old man he'd known as a child, who came from a very aristocratic pre-revolutionary Russian background and had grown up mostly speaking Russian-accented French. No actors playing other characters from Londo's species, the Centauri, attempted to copy his accent, with some prose Expanded Universe material claiming that within that culture it was a very old-school ultra-aristocratic way of speaking that was barely used anymore (like "heightened RP" or "Sandhurst" in England).
• The Expanse: The Belters, in addition to speaking the Conlang Lang-Belta (a creole of several current languages, with English, Mandarin, and Spanish being the "base"), also speak English in a variety of different accents. This lack of uniformity, both in language and accent, is because the Belt is a collection of rocks, not one large land mass. This means there are Belter who speak Belter but cannot understand a Belter from another far away rock who is also speaking Belter. This is also noticeable in the accents. Several Belters having the Ceres Dawes accent (which kind of sounds like a white guy imitating a generic "African" accent). Others have accents that are similar to English speakers from the Caribbean.
• The Harfoots' in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power speak with a fictional Irish dialect inspired by the Dublin accent, according to Leith McPherson.
• Fez from That '70s Show is from an unidentified fictional island nation and as a result, speaks in an unidentifiable accent that borders on Spanish and Portuguese. In the final season of the show, Andrew (Fez's friend from the island) comes to visit and speaks with a British accent. When pressed by his friends about this, he explains that Andrew is from the west side of the island. When the gang asks what country the two of them are from, they explain that it depends on if you ask the British or the Dutch, further elaborating that the British hate them and wouldn't tell them and nobody can understand the Dutch.

Music

• Eminem's Relapse album features a new incarnation of Slim Shady who speaks in a bizarre accent combining various Central European, Indian, Middle Eastern and West Indian accents and dialect (as well as Eminem's own Midwest accent). Eminem claimed he did it to explore "bending the word" as much as possible, and suggested it was an "Alien" accent.

Web Videos

• PopCross Studios: Dr. Champagne McGreggor, a grumpy, sarcastic, cynical dinosaur geneticist from Christian's Multiverse Tales, speaks in a unique accent that is a mixture between Cockney and Australian. His confusing accent is added to by the fact that, following repeated blows to the head, Champagne no longer remembers where he's from. In his own words, "I think I'm British, but sometimes I sound like "Crocodile" Dundee having a stroke." Whilst a character portrait released in 2022 reveals Champagne is Ambiguously Brown, Christian has refused to reveal where he's from initially For the Lulz.

Western Animation

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Breezies speak in a language and with a matching accent that seem to be a blend of Swedish and Scottish.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: Ren's cousin Sven speaks with an accent that's a mix of German and Swedish, mostly leaning towards the latter. According to Billy West, he played with the Swedish trait of pronouncing their "J's" like English "Y's" (ex. "Yiminy!") and applying it to other letters like "T" and "W".

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