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alt title(s): Phonetic Accent 
In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.
A Funetik Aksent ( Phonetic Accent) is dialogue spelled phonetically, so that it looks the way the character sounds to someone with another accent.
Accents are one of the major ways of providing characterization. This creates a challenge for writers, since it's not just a matter of word choice and grammar. The same word can be pronounced very differently in different regional accents, let alone ethnic and foreign accents. Authors can get past that limitation with a phonetically spelled accent, sometimes called an "eye dialect" (because it looks how it sounds) or a "pronunciation respelling".
However, a Funetik Aksent has a large number of downsides. Non-standard spellings will slow readers down, especially if English is not their native language, since they're likely more adept at reading standard written English than at deciphering an unfamiliar accent. Moreover, to do a Funetik Aksent well requires a keen ear for how people talk in the real world, and painstaking attention to detail to ensure that the accent is represented consistently throughout the text. But most importantly, it assumes that there is one "correct" way to speak English, and that people who speak this "correct way" "don't have an accent", which is utter, utter, utter nonsense: every native speaker has an accent, and every native accent in existence is just as thick as every other accent to those who aren't familiar with it. You'll see this with Midwestern or California accents in the US and Received Pronunciation in the UK, where speakers will loudly proclaim that they "don't have an accent" when, by definition, their having a different way of pronouncing words qualifies as an accent. (An example is when a writer pokes fun at a Canadian saying "around" with a shorter "ow" sound, but doesn't even think to laugh at an American saying "aree-ow-nd", which is how Canadians hear the American Midwestern pronunciation.)
The Funetik Aksent is often used to imply that the accented characters are less educated, less intelligent, or less literate than the reader or the protagonist. A classic example of this is Gone With The Wind, where the black slaves' and poor whites' accents are given phonetically but the white owners' accent (which is every bit as thick) isn't. The implication is that the slaveowners' language is proper English while the slaves and poor whites just aren't smart enough to speak properly.
Also, since standard English is not spelled phonetically, a Funetik Aksent can be used to give the impression of an uneducated speaker even when the pronunciation is perfectly standard (as with the name of this trope). The latter use has given the term "eye dialect" a negative connotation for some.
Interestingly, some instances of Funetik Aksent have preserved accents that became extinct before the invention of sound recording. A well-known example is the character of Sam Weller in Dickens's The Pickwick Papers; Weller's "Cockney" accent is nothing like a 20th century Cockney accent; without Dickens, nobody would have known.
Littering the text with apostrophes is optional. See also Speech Bubbles, for alternative ways of conveying information about the characters' voices. And to read this article in a Funetik Aksent itself, see here.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- In the English language translations of the Hellsing manga, Father Anderson has such a brogue that this troper has to go back and read his lines multiple times to figure out what he said.
Comic Books
- This was once very common in Newspaper Comics. Li'l Abner, The Katzenjammer Kids, Krazy Kat, and Pogo are some of the best known examples (indeed, The Katzenjammer Kids remains the archetypal example of a bad, broken German accent in the English-speaking world, and comparisons to it are made by those who have never seen the original). As time went on and dialect humor fell out of favor, most mainstream comics have stuck to proper English.
- A buttload in X-Men, such as Gambit and Rogue, courtesy of Chris Claremont.
- It's been said Chris Claremont only put Wolverine on the team because he wanted to write a Canadian accent.
- Gen X had Husk slip into a Kentucky accent when scared or stressed.
- Cameron Spector from The Filth talks in an almost illegible Scots dialect.
- At least one character in anything written by Grant Morrison.
- As well as Morrison himself as written by Brian Azzarello in Tales of the Unexpected.
- In the comic version of V For Vendetta, a character with an absurdly thick Scottish accent shows up. Alan Moore renders the accent funetikally.
- Platinum Grit uses phonetic accents for just about every character who isn't Australian, including a talking cupboard from Jamaica, a ridiculously German cafe owner, and a plethora of Scottish characters with accents so authentically thick and indecipherable that fans have actually asked for translations. And a different set of phonetic spelling for characters who aren't Scottish putting on bad fake scots accents.
- Averted in Warren Ellis' run of The Authority where British, Tibetan, American, and Dutch characters have their dialog written in standard English...except when Jenny Sparks repeats something the Doctor says to tease him for his Dutch accent.
- Used extensively in Preacher. Mainly for the Texan/Southern accents most of the cast possesses, but also a thick Irish one for Cassidy, and the gibberish of the facially-maimed Arseface, which somehow comes out actually readable if you sound it out.
- Cerebus The Aardvark was the master of this, with everything from Chico Marx's fake Italian accent to Cerebus's cold to Alan Moore's Britishisms. This troper found himself baffled until he read everything aloud, whereupon it made surprisingly instant sense.
- This is the whole point of Dutch comic series Haagse Harry, where anything and everything speaks phonetically transcribed Dutch with a very strong The Hague accent. And yes, it tends to be incomprehensible unless read out loud.
- Willie Garvin, Modesty Blaise's Cockney sidekick, drops his aitches and frequently exclaims, "Blimey!"
- Lady Janet Gillam, who's Scottish, tends to begin her sentences with "Och..."
- Julius, kommandant of Das Primate Patrol in The DCU, a gorilla with, uhm, fascist leanings, speaks with an atypically phoenetic German accent. "I'm gonna krush you all, grint you inda dusd! "I'm an aybe. Dad's how I rdoll."
- Not to mention Captain Fear, with his Spanish accent and "debil may care" attitude. "I'm da ghoaz, but I can e'see righ' t'roo joo, Doagtar Dirteen."
- Don Rosa's The Life And Times Of Scrooge Mc Duck has Scrooge's family, Scrooge himself included, speaking in Scottish accents. Both Scrooge and his sisters drop their accents after moving to America.
- Mazekeen of Sandman and the Lucifer comics doesn't so much have an accent as she only has half a face. Nonetheless, Neil Gaiman wrote all her dialogue by transcribing what he thought he sounded like when he tried to talk with only one side of his mouth, resulting in fully funetikally-rendered lines.
- Used effectively in 100 Bullets to show accents of the Urban, Southern and Louisiana variety.
- The Asterix comics do it with some people, such as the Arvernes.
- Most of th' characters of Bone.
- Mosta' the cast of Wet Moon, too—it is the moderately Deep South—but especially sweet redneck Fall Swanhilde. "Hey Paw, burgers're dunn!"
- Bunnie Rabbot and Antoine D'Coolette of Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog, who are respectively Texan and French.
- Most of the American Disney comics featuring José Carioca or Panchito give them phonetic accents even though their accents aren't nearly that thick in the movies they appear in. The most obvious example is the actual adaptation of The Three Caballeros, where the accents are so over the top, that they're toned down in reprintings. (eliminating a few jokes making fun of them in the process)
- In the Scottish newspaper comic The Broons ("The Browns") every single charcter speaks like this- in a thick Scottish accent, of course. For this English troper, reading the strips as a child, half the fun was working out what they were actually saying...
- The language in The Broons, and its stablemate Oor Willie ("Our William") is actually standard Scots, correctly rather than phonetically spelled.
- Monterey Jack has a slight Funetik Aksent in the official Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers comics. In Fan Fic and Fan Web Comics, especially Of Mice And Mayhem, this is often done to the extreme since they're based on the animated series.
- In the German Werner comics, characters without a Funetik Aksent are quite rare. Most characters speak with an assortment of Northern German dialects or even Lower German which have realistic representations in the Speech Bubbles.
- In Tintin it is common for "natives" to speak something which appears incomprehensible until spoken aloud, as a way of showing they speak nother language. For example, the Amazonian tribesmen in The Broken Ear have speech bubbles which appear to be full of gibberish, but if read aloud turn out to be English with a strong Cockney accent. This is not a Funetik Aksent per se, as it's totally incomprehensible to other characters (unless they speak the language) rather than simply hard to understand - but it's a related phenomenon.
- The Scamp comics love this. Any particular breed of dog is highly likely to have an accent from where the breed comes from.
- In American Splendor, Harvey Pekar gives a Funetik Aksent to almost every character. Unlike most of the examples here, he doesn't have characters who speak "proper" English, so it doesn't leave an impression of lingual elitism.
Fan Fiction
- This is often done to characters who speak with strange accents in nonwritten mediums, and usually not well. In the Transformers Animated fandom Blitzwing gets the short end of the stick, with half his consenents reduced to 'v' and 'z'.
- Shinji Ikari speaks Japanese just fine in Shinji And Warhammer 40 K; however, he speaks English with an Ork accent.
Literature
Music
- Oddly enough, Led Zeppelin's name is an example of this—the misspelling is to emphasize that it isn't pronounced "LEED".
- Or, more accurately, lead. As is in, "The farmer lead his cattle to market."
Theater
- The book and lyrics to Oklahoma! are rendered this way, including the song titles ("I Cain't Say No," "Pore Jud is Daid," etc.).
- Oscar Hammerstein loves this trope. See Carousel, South Pacific, Flower Drum Song, et al.
- Similarly, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers has the song titles "Bless Yore Beautiful Hide" and "Goin' Co'tin'".
- In Pygmalion, Eliza's dialogue is at first spelled phonetically. Shaw got sick of writing it that way and, with an explanatory note, switched to standard spelling partway through.
- Alfred Jarry's "Ubu" plays have Ubu and his wife's peculiar accent written into the dialogue—an accent made up by the author. This has made translation of the texts tricky, to say nothing of placing the accent. The most famous example is that of "Ubu Roi"'s first word, 'merdre,' which is the French word for 'shit' with an added extra R.
- The Dark of the Moon by Howard Richardson does this, too. Because it assumes that the actors are not from Appalachia, everything is done in phonetics. What's really annoying is that the lyrics in the script are written phonetically, while the unaccented words are written under the notes in the sheet music. Also, the "he" in "you ain't got no man to make you he bride" should probably be pronounced like "heh," but the way it is written, it should be pronounced "hee." Rednecks have terrible grammar as well as atrocious accents, apparently.
Tabletop RPG
- Orcs and Orks in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000, with a Cockney-like Accent.
- Also, and more obviously, whenever the W 40 K Orks are quoted in writing, virtually every word is misspelled. Boyz, Deffkoptas, Meks, etc. even ORC.
- Cultist-chan: "Hwee are captooring waffles fhor khay-oss."
Video Games
- Most of the characters in Chrono Cross have accents in the English translation, in order to add variety to what would otherwise be interchangeable snippets of dialogue spoken by whatever characters you happened to have in your party at the time.
- May account for Ultimecia's bizarre "Kursed SeeDs! You will not stop me from achieving Time Kompression!" speech patterns in Final Fantasy VIII. May be a somewhat dubious way of making her sound "Russian". Or may be just Xtreme Kool Letterz.
- Which really doesn't make a lick of sense given that she is well-spoken in Japanese, wherein the most interesting thing about her dialogue is the dissonance between how she speaks (polite construction) and what she says (being a cutting bitch and all). So really, it was probably an attempt at a Woolseyism of some sort, that just ended up as poor translation choice and caused Narm to gum up her big reveal.
- She speaks normally in Dissidia, thankfully, which also helps her sound like a more dangerous character and makes it clearer that she is The Vamp. Note that the localizers also tried the Vampire Vords/ Lzherusskie method with Rosso the Crimson, creating the same distracting and narmy effect.
- In Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, Athena replaces all W's with V's. She speaks as if she is two separate people, both with the same accent.
- In Grand Theft Auto IV, one character speaks Rastafarian English, and another Jamaican Patois. They're nearly unintelligable despite technically speaking the same language. Their dialogue is rendered phoenetically in the subtitles too, rendering them almost useless for deciphering them.
- This is perhaps lampshaded to a degree when the character speaking Rastafarian (The one who can be half-way understood at points) has to translate for Nico Belic (The Player Character) and by extension, the player, the other character speaking Jamacian Patois. Truthfully, the 'translation' didn't help much.
- The DS remake of Dragon Quest IV added this to the new English translation. For example, in the first town the people speak with thick Scottish accents.
- In the MMORPG Urban Dead, the zombies are limited to only a handful of letters, meaning the language invented by creative players is entirely phonetic. For example, "zombie" is spelled "zambah" and human is spelled "harman".
- O' Chunks from Super Paper Mario talks like this, as do the people with French and German accents.
- Even better is the female chef at Hot Fraun, who speaks with a very heavy German accent.
- The German Lieselotte Achenbach of Arcana Heart uses this together with the occasional Gratuitous German when she speaks.
- Any Final Fantasy game (or Updated Rerelease) featuring dwarves has given them thick Scottish accents (Square Enix joost loves 'em) and vocabulary.
- Tink in Disgaea2's French accent is rendered phonetically.
Web Comics
- The jägermonsters (monstrous-looking soldiers transformed by Mad Science) in Phil Foglio's steampunk comic Girl Genius have silly "Germanic"-sounding phonetic accents. Even more bizarre given that, although the comic itself is written in English, the main characters are actually speaking in German and Romanian (as confirmed by the Foglios on the Yahoo Group fanforum
 ) and the only British character speaks without any phonetical accent. Maybe it's the pointy teeth...
- The Foglios have described the Jaegermonsters as "The Mongol Horde, staffed by the Katzenjammer Kids".
- One could argue Wooster's simply especially good at being fluent. While he does once and awhile flaunt his Britishness to people he knows and likes and/or who are already in the know (like Gil), having an obvious accent would somewhat put a dent in his spy capabilities should the moment arise.
- In The Order Of The Stick, Durkon has a Scots-like accent; this is lampshaded on more than one occasion ("He can pronounce 'stratosphere' but not 'the'?").
- At one point he writes a letter in the same manner. When told he didn't have to transcribe his accent, he responds "Transcribe my what now?"
- One of the prequel books reveals that the OOTS universe has a spell called "Comprehend Inconsistent Accents" specifically for dealing with such characters. It causes a translated speech bubble to appear alongside the character's regular one.
- Gunnerkrigg Court renders some characters' accents this way: Surma's Yorkshire accent, Zimmy's (presumably) Birmingham accent, and Red's completely fictional accent. On the other hand, the main characters avert this: Antimony has a slight Yorkshire accent and Kat has a slight Scottish accent, but we only know this because Word Of God says so.
- This troper always read Red's accent as one part New York and one part just plain bizarre, based namely on the intermittent pronunciation of "th" as "d".
- JD, the scientist Space Pirate from the webcomic Metroid: Third Derivative (named himself after "the greatest pirate in human history: Johnny Depp"), speaks with a German accent. ("Just take ze damn veapon already.") At least, his W's are written as V's, and his S's are Z's. When he's alone, though, he sometimes drops the accent. ("Thank God, now I can drop this stupid accent I used to impress the idiot.")
- And on one occasion: "And vhat is ze deal with my accent! It rages out of my control!"
- Averted with the Dr Mc Ninja villain Frans Rayner. The Alt Text in the strip in which he is introduced reads:
I'm afraid you'll have to imagine Frans's accent without my help. It looks just far too silly typed phonetically.
- In Misfile garage owner Harry has the most appalling Cockney/Welsh fusion accent that has ever been this editor's misfortune to read. Thankfully his appearances are rare.
- That's because it's Just For Pun; his garage is called "Aries".
- Lackadaisy has several examples: Viktor (Slovak), Aunt Nina (Irish) and the Savoys (Cajun).
- "Now he got no lag room bag dare." Hee hee.
- Kroenen and Johann Krauss of Abe Kroenen both have phonetic German accents (and Krauss speaks in his own capslock font).
- Tony from Charby the Vampirate speaks with a very strong accent that may or may not be intended to be something Germanic. (Elements of his backstory indicate that Tony came from Germany or somewhere thereabouts, but the accent is not recognizable as such.)
- It's a 1920's New York gangster-speak accent (hence the preference for the word "youse") mixed with a slight lisp and his natural Germanic accent.
- Dwalin the Dwarf from Irregular Webcomic speaks with a hoots-mon style scottish accent that is spelt out phonetically in the comic itself. Generally it's perfectly easy to understand so long as you're familiar with the scottish vernacular "ken" which means "know". The "vision impaired transcript" however provides the phonetic version and a translation, like so:
Dwalin: So, hoo mooch of thus epic quist ye're on ha' ye achivved soo far? {translation: So, how much of this epic quest you're on have you achieved so far?}
Web Original
- Keith Jackson and Maxie Dasai in Survival Of The Fittest both have their accents rendered in the dialogue itself. Notably, their accents are almost identical.
- This troper, as Maxie's handler, has been told more than once that people sometimes struggle to understand her speech.
- In scripts for This troper's flash cartoons (which I won't Entry Pimp for once), he likes to write certain characters' lines like this in order that the voice actor can deliver the inflections as hilariously as possible. It backfired on me once: "Li-owl gewl" was interpreted as "Lil' ol' girl" rather than "Little girl", ruining the comedic value of the joke.
- Zer Germans in AH Dot Com The Series. As well as the Funetik Aksent, they also evoke German grammar by e.g. capitalising nouns.
Other
- Read many forums on 'talk like a pirate day' an be sure ya sorery wretchers bain't so cussed blinded tha cha cannaugh make 'eads er tailses uv wot we's been sayings.
- My first day of classes in September 2007 occurred on a day when 10,000 students, mostly of the Internet Generation, descended upon the university, on Talk Like a Pirate Day. It was very hot, I got lost a few times, most of my classes were not enjoyable, and trying to deal with all that with 10,000 people all talking like goddamned pirates... if I had been there any longer think I would have murdered someone.
- Don't forget LO Lspeak. Givz me hedakes bi lokin at it. I mean: gives me headaches by looking at it...
- In the Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams (no, not that one,) some of the sample text, rather than being lorem ipsum, she has a very extreme Funetik Aksent version of fairy tales. So extreme that at first, and even third glance, it looks like just a bunch of random words thrown together.
- Example: "Wants pawn term dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage honor itch offer lodge, dock florist.
- Translation: "Once upon a time, there was a littler girl who lived with her mother in a little cottage on the edge of a large, dark forest.
- The LPer Electrical Beast is probably an example of a human actually talking like an Ork.
Real Life
- From the perspective of a speaker of English, the Scots language is this trope, with a few foreign words. (see the Scots Wikipedia for examples.)
- From the perspective of a speaker of Scots, the English language is this trope, with a lot of foreign words and some bizarre spelling. (see the English Wikipedia for examples.)
- Dude. You just won the Internet.
- Most (or just some, depending on whom you ask) linguists consider English and Scots to actually be different languages.
- Most foreign languages are actually spelled phonetically as a rule, while Italian has a word that means "to spell" it is rarely used to describe Italian (they just use the word that means "to write").
- Haitian Creole too.
- Also Spanish.
- Are you sure? In this troper's experience, native speakers get confused if you ask "¿Cómo se escribe?" instead of "¿Cómo se deletrea?" When asking the former, the more sarcastic ones will say: "with a pen, of course."
- That could also be a joke based on the fact that deletrear is to spell orally while escribir is spell when writing. Remember that Spanish is not entirely phonetic. You can pronounce any given written word correctly from its spelling, but the spelling of some sounds (like B/V and C/S/Z) isn't predictable from speech, so the question is more common than in totally phonetic languages.
- As for C/S/Z, that really depends on the area. In most of Spain and Equatorial Guinea, it's extremely easy to predict which letter is used when.
- Hungarian as well.
- Most languages that have a written language younger than five hundred years are this trope. Examples include Icelandic and Japanese roman.
- Although Icelandic has been written in the latin alphabet since the twelfth century…
- And also Serbian.
- Also Filipino.
- Also Korean - the entire point of the invention of hangul, in fact.
- There are no languages in which the written form functions as a phonetic transcription. There is always variance in the spoken form.
- When John F. Kennedy held his speech at the Berlin Wall, he had a note with the foreign language sentences: "Ish bin ein Bearleener" and "kiwis Romanus sum". Correct German and Latin spelling is "Ich bin ein Berliner" and "Civis Romanus sum".
- This troper has known people on the internet to type with an accent.
- It's very common among Scots
- I had to demonstrate a Texan accent online. Nobody understood what I said at all. Demonstration is required:
- Howdy. I wuz jes inda kictn an taut eyd mek mi up eh sammich! I was just in the kitchen and I though I'd make a sammich. To anyone in the South, I apologize for exaggerating that so much.
- Also common with people from the Caribbean. Example(this is Guyanese Creole): Yuh tek yuh eyes an pass meh? (literally, "You take your eyes and pass me?", the actual meaning is "Are you trying to disrespect me?" or "You think you're better than me?")
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