Game in the Brain

I was checking out G+ Hangouts if anyone wanted to discuss accents or practice them. I don’t feel uncomfortable working out an accent with a stranger, its not for a professional need anyway its for a game.

I’m getting bored with my Pirate-y Old man accent. I like playing older uninhibited men, (hehehe like my father LOL). When such men say something incredulous they don’t take a credibility hit as badly as a younger man, because of all the history they built up.

I like doing accents because the Vulnerability pushes me to get more into character. There is a level of commitment in embarrassing yourself in-front of strangers. Being able to perform and free to fail was a great way of getting over my anxiety when I was cripplingly shy when I was younger.

Happy Jacks have a good episodes on accents where a listener who was an expert chime in.

Anyway, the other accents I have is the “Latin” one because its just a variation of the Filipino Broken English Accent. Of course there is the Broken Filipino Accent Rex Navarrete.

Filipino Provincial Accents speaking English are plenty, but are lost to a foreign audience. It funny to some filipinos, I’m not entirely capable of grasping it. A close friend would do is mix Irish and “Batangeneo” accents to produce an “irish batangeneo” which is hillarious, what he would do is use the Irsh accent, then add in the Batangeneo suffixes and mannerisms.

There is the Rhotacism Accent which i thought was a cartoon accent until I met people who really had them. I was asking my brother, is he faking that or is it real – he talks like elmer fudd? I don’t know anyone in the Philippines who has that accent.

An accent I was able to do once because I finished listening to Nightflyers, which I cannot find out who read it, but it was a woman with a Caribbean Accent (I’m guessing Hatian). Damn, got find my old copy of that and re-listen for the accent.

Australian and Kiwi is something we used to train our agents for, Carl is good with that accent. I actually need to learn this accent because I’m playing with them more and My filipino ears is not able to pick up the words as quickly.

Eastern Eurpoean or the Russian Accent is also pretty fun to play, but I have not had a character that fit that profile quite well. I got a lot of ideas listening to Kimi do her russian accent.

Chinese speaker accents is tricky, there is the “holywood” version which sounds more like singaporean than mainlander (which singaporeans have good humour about, they would even type La on chat messaging). then there is the accent in mainlanders or holywood and chinese cinema actors like Jacking Chan and Jet Li which is harder for me to define.

• Chinese accents can pronounce Ls and Rs (Beijing Accent is like japanese, but unlike japanese they just use MORE  “Rs” not complete phasing Ls out).
• B and P are interchangable, the same way we can’t hear the tones they can’t here the difference between B and P. So if you listen to Jet li’s accent he would say Better Bebber (better pepper), but thats not all of it.  

Japanese accent is easy, because I grew up in Anime. Its also boring given the crowd I game with, anyone my age can do a convincing japanese accent. Also, many of my generation when listening to japanese can pick the words out and sometimes get the gist out. Every High Schooler who was an avid anime fan would have tried to learn japanese – I did, my little sister did, my brother did.  We can even pronounce it with a good understandable accent. Also there are a lot of Language Similarities to a Malay Based language as to Nippongo. The syllable structure is similar.

anecdote: I one time helped immigration because they could not understand a Japanese person regarding some requirements. I was in the immigration office at the time, and the japanese man was being asked some additional requirements because there was a bureaucratic error. Its not that I used japanese, but used Gestures and focusing on Key words he would know like: passport and plane and said it slowly. That was such a wonderful and memorable experience. It taught me gestures and key words were more important in communication because people naturally realize a Schelling point to what the circumstance may mean and are looking for these key words. 

I work with a fair number of indians, and have made some indian friends because of the BPO industry here. The accent is fairly easy to mimic, but hard to understand. The funny thing is to Mimic it is to Understand it, so I end up mimicking the accent of the Indian I’m talking to without any intention to mock them. Being polite, I would have to rehearse what I’m going to say mentally to maintain my accent.

the English gentleman accent I can’t hold for long, I can do it in a sentence at a time and with some mental rehearsal slowing down my “Improv”.

The Amercian accents, there are so many. I guess its a great way to make an anology of how regional accents work in other countries.

The new-york accent is very easy to find sources online, there are a lot of movies and youtube videos of people practicing it. I guess I can try that since it is an accent you don’t here much in the Philippines. I kinda know it from living in Jersey (my family is all over there). My brother makes a good impersonation of that accent since he’s lived there for about 10years.

American accents are lost to a Philippine audience, as much as Filipino accents are lost to non-Filipinos.

The best I can do right now is practice my accents, when I have an opportunity to game. Given how busy anyone is outside of game, practicing out of game is a feat for me.
So many accents to choose from, and more