Funetik Aksent

Uh-huh... I see... interesting... go on...

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. Most importantly, though, it assumes that there is a single "correct" way to speak English, which is certainly not true. (There is no equivalent of the Academie Francaise for the Anglophone world.)

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.

Conversely, some readers will read such implications into texts written in a form of Funetik Aksent regardless of whether the author actually intended them or not. In such cases expect loaded words like "stereotypical", "clichéd", "music-hall dialect" etc. to be bandied about. One can say that a wide-spread double standard about accents and dialects hold true here too: If they're not a native speaker of the accent and dialect in question, no matter how good writers or performers are at reproducing it, they will be accused of getting it wrong or caricaturing and making fun of the speakers of said dialect. This is not the case with people using Funetik Aksent spellings to write in their native dialect, even if it is as hard to read. With writing in dialect Funetik Aksent spelling can be pretty much unavoidable, as for most dialects, especially regional and local ones, there exists no standard spelling.

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 Psmith Psyndrome, in which characters insist that someone else is using the wrong Funetik Aksent. And to read this article in a Funetik Aksent itself, see here, exactly as that poor sod was trying to do a few minutes ago (and now I'm off the the Bar...

To some more phonetic-savvy people, the accent might not be phonetic at all. "Funetik", using default phonetic rules, would be pronounced "few-nitt-ick".

Examples of Funetik Aksent include:

Anime and Manga

  • In the English language translations of the Hellsing manga, Father Anderson speaks with an immensely thick brogue.
    • Which is especially funny seeing that he speaks completely normal Japanese in the original (along with the Germans and other characters who were given accents in the English adaptation). As normal as a character voiced by Norio Wakamoto can be.
    • Also funnier yet if you know the sound of a real Glasgow accent well, and Anderson's voice is most definitely not one. What it is, in fact, is a poorly-guessed imitation by someone who's never met a Glaswegian.
  • In the english translation of the Azumanga Daioh manga, Osaka's Southern dialect is clearly visible when she speaks. Most notably, her use of "Ah" rather than "I".
  • The English translation of the Excel Saga manga gives Sumiyoshi, his sister and father a Geordie accent that's written this way.
  • This trope exists in Japanese language manga as well. Thick accents will probably rendered phonetically in one of the Japanese syllabaries or "kana" (most of the time, in katakana) instead of the standard "mixed script" with is made up by using Kanji (ideographic characters and Kana. Native accents may be spelled in standard scripts and bear "furigana" (small kana over kanji) in phonetic spelling. Foreign accents will be rendered with lot of katakana and only few kanji, to give a sense of illiteracy.


Comic Books

  • Until well into the Silver Age, this was pretty standard for foreign or immigrant characters of any kind - yes, even if they were heroes! Take Mademoiselle Marie, a French Resistance fighter in a series of World War II adventures put out by DC in the 1950s. Marie was an Action Girl and looked every bit the part with her tight skirt, even tighter sweater, bright red beret, and Sten gun - but all this was undercut somewhat because the letterer insisted on writing all of her lines as if they were being spoken by Pepe Le Pew.
  • 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.
    • One particular issue of X-Force reveals that Cannonball actually writes in a phonetic accent.
  • 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 V for Vendetta, a character with an absurdly thick Scottish accent shows up. Alan Moore renders the accent funetikally.
  • This concept was parodied in an Inferior Five story where the villain was the Masked Swastika, who naturally was a former Nazi. While he can speak perfect English if he wants to, he speaks with a ridiculously exaggerated German accent, because it's "an unwritten law" for Nazi villains.
  • 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 (see above image). And a different set of phonetic spelling for characters who aren't Scottish putting on bad fake Scots accents.
  • Used extensively in Preacher (Comic Book). 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.
    • Creator Dave Sim is a big fan of this trope, to the point that after a while, practically every new character he introduces has either a phonetic accent, or a major verbal tic. They're never hard to understand, though, and perhaps most impressively, he never uses the same accent twice.
      • He even invents some fictional accents. Cerebus himself speaks with a "northern accent," which is characterized by an over-reliance on short declarative sentences, and never speaking in the first person.
  • 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.
  • Modesty Blaise:
    • Willie Garvin, Modesty'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, um, 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."
    • 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 McDuck 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 One Hundred 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).
  • Monterey Jack has a slight Funetik Aksent in the official Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers comics. In Fanfic 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 no other 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 incomprehensible to other characters (unless they speak the language) rather than simply hard to understand - but it's a related phenomenon.
    • In the original French, a lot of the "foreign" languages are actually the Brussels dialect of Flemish given an exotic (not phonetic) spelling. For instance Bordurian is this "Marollien" dressed up as a Slavic or other kind of language spoken in the Balkans.
    • Quite a lot of Franco Belgian Comics use this, actually.
    • Some examples remain untranslated in English. For example, one recurring character, a Saudi-style royal, is called Emir Ben Kalish Ezab. "Kalische Zap" is a kind of liquorice-flavored liquid apparently sold in Belgium.
  • 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 esual brain pattern. It doesn't help that the computer pulls out oddities like spelling "have" as "1/2" and the overall inconsistency in the spelling.
  • In Strontium Dog, Middenface, and occasionally other Scottish characters, speaks with an accent so thick it is sometimes incomprehensible. Wulf has a Norwegian accent, which is much easier to follow. Welsh and Irish accents also turn up occasionally, but those are mostly implied by the characters' vocabulary.
  • Whah? Aw, why didnja mention the Thing yet? It's Clobberin' Time!
  • In the Radioactive Man comics, Dr. Crab is supposed to be a hideously mutated Russian, but his accent looks like a wild mixture of Russian and German sounds. This is finally explained in Radioactive Man's last adventure, where it's revealed that the Germans had forced the (communist) Crab to conduct experiments for them during the Nazi era.


Fan Works

Pippin, now wearing a string vest for no good reason, said to the world in general, "Tha'ala'ti'mrsh'weebasser."
There was a moment of complete confusion.
"What did he say? Was that English?" asked Legolas.
"Glaswegian. Haven't you heard the story?"
"Ah'm'invennnorglasweginansoaham."
"Yeeees..." said Aragorn, "He's not exactly the inventor. Perpetrator possibly. Centuries ago he tried to teach the old South Farthing dialect to some guys in a pub in south west Scotland..."
"That's nothing like South Farthing dialect," argued Sam.
"I did say this was in the pub."

  • In recent memory, the Ranma ½ fanfic Grand Tour. Ranma speaks (or is written as speaking) a more standard English. Writer Drunkengronard took it to abrupt and ridiculous levels in subsequent stories. In Walkabout:

"I see I ain't t' only one lookin' fer info. I'm guessin' ya got some Ju Jutsu an' one'r two schools of Karate?"

    • He admits to purposely writing Ranma in that manner though Ranma speaks nowhere this badly in the manga.
  • In a lot of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers fan fiction, Monterey Jack's Crocodile Hunter-style (yet preceding Crocodile Hunter) Australian accent, as heard by Americans, is written almost phonetically, sometimes appearing to be exaggerated. It often goes something like this:

Monterey Jack: Croikey, Gadget-luv! Remoinds me o' th' toime when...

  • The author of Decks Fall, Everyone Dies has chosen to write out Joey's accent whenever he is speaking or when any of the other characters are imitating him.


Film

  • Taken Up to Eleven in the World War II-themed comedy Under the Rainbow, in which a Japanese agent's inability to properly pronounce "The pearl is in the liver" actually sets the whole plot in motion!


Literature

  • Anthony Burgess plays with this at some length in A Clockwork Orange in which the central protagonist, Alex, speaks a heavily Russian-influenced patois in which individual words are Anglicised ( "horrorshow", meaning "excellent" or "very good", is derived from a Russian word normally transliterated as Hara-sho, for example) and the whole dialect is generically referred to as "nadsat", a Russian suffix used in forming numbers in the same way you would use "-teen" in English, although Russians don't call teenagers that. Much of the book is written in Nadsat, which flows much better than you might expect. Kubrick wisely avoided most of this in the film.
  • Jumps in and out for Scotty in differing books of the Star Trek franchise fiction, depending on the author. Sometimes his accent is spelled phonetically, other times its presence is just noted in the prose. The same goes for Chekov. (William Shatner in particular favors "vw" for Chekov's 'nuclear wessels' accent, which is somewhat difficult to read.)
  • The original novel of Forrest Gump is written in Forrest's Southern dialect.
  • George Bernard Shaw lampshades this in his play Pygmalion.
  • Manly Wade Wellman slips in some of this in his Silver John stories, all set in the (very) backwoods of Appalachia.
  • Redwall. The mice, otters, etc. tend to speak normally (apart from the random Scottish characters here and there). However, rats have a sort of broken cockney-slash-pirate speak, the shrews seem to lisp, and moles? The mole-speech is almost incomprehensible. Moles speak with accents from The West Country - the same as Hagrid, but written even more phonetically. The Hares have a Verbal Tic modeled after the stereotypical 19th/early 20th century British military officer, ending most sentences with "wot".
    • Somewhat reported in the Italian translation of the book, with the Funetik Aksent being Italian ones complete of dialect words (The Hares speaks like Tuscany peoples and the Moles in south Italy [Naples] accent, all reported on paper). Also their names has been translated to stereotypical names from such places.
    • Incomprehensible? Hurr, oi grew up readin' 'ee gaffer Redwall books, burr aye.
    • What the bats have isn't exactly an accent, an accent, but a habit of repeating themselves, themselves, themselves ...
    • Most of the vermin don't have a recognisable regional accent, just generic poor grammar with a dash of Talk Like a Pirate, except for two in Salamandastron who are inexplicably Brummie.
  • One character in a Xanth novel speaks with a lisp; all the "s"s in his speech are replaced with the letter "v", except when he says the word "island" (in which the "s" is silent). One of the other characters asks if it should have been "ivland", to which the lisping character responds, "Whatever for?" Interestingly, when the narrator momentarily changes focus to the lisping character, his speech is normal and the other characters have extra "s"s in their speech, as though they were hissing.
  • Any American novel that involves soldiers from the UK and a Lieutenant. Whenever one of the British say that officer's rank, it's always 'Leftenant'. Tom Clancy is extremely fond of this, and Call of Duty had Price say this once (subtitles say 'Leftenant').
    • The Goon Show had an American character called "Lootenant Hern-Hern"; he may have appeared in just one episode, but it was printed.
  • Vaska Denisov in War and Peace is said to swallow his R's when talking, which the translators decided to replicate by putting "gh" in front of any R's in any words he says. It takes some getting used to.
    • The Ann Dunnigan translation either omits the R's or turns them into W's, which makes poor Denisov sound like he has a speech impediment.
  • Horrible Science magazine once showed an American and a Russian trying to launch rockets in a comic strip. Both failed. The American said "Rats!", the Russian said "Ratz!" Interestingly enough, "Ratz" in Russian would still be pronounced as "Rats" due to pronunciation rules.
  • John Kennedy Toole took great care to transcribe the accents of his New Orleans characters as perfectly as possible in A Confederacy of Dunces. Ooo-wee!
  • Terry Pratchett does it a lot, too - the Nac Mac Feegle are a whole race of tiny Violent Glaswegians, Granny Weatherwax's warning sign for when she's out "borrowing" reads I aten't dead (admittedly that's more because spelling's optional in most parts of the Disc), and Death even speaks in his own font.
    • Igorth lithp, even in wordth where it would be unneceththeththary. And are apparently doing it on purpose. The more modern ones occasionally forget, and will on occasion forgo it when they need to explain something really complicated, like in Making Money.
    • Pronouncing words with correct phonetics is also sometimes used in these when a character is obviously repeating the word from hearing it but not properly learning it, such as Nanny Ogg saying "swarray" in Maskerade, or Granny Weatherwax's "Jograffy."
      • Or, as with Tiffany's vocabulary, if they'd learned the word from a dictionary that didn't include pronunciations.
  • The book Good Omens, coauthored by Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, uses and parodies this with Shadwell, whose accent is described as an arbitrary and inconsistent mixture of British regional dialects.
  • Used quite a bit - and much mocked in fandom - in The Baby Sitters Club, from the Australian family the Hobarts, to Jessie's French ballet teacher, to Logan's Kentucky accent, to his brother's "allergy dialect".
  • Nick Cave's And The Ass Saw The Angel (which is like a cross between William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is narrated by a nut from the Deep South, so the whole book is like this. Here's a sample:

Ah cannot, in all honesty, state the exact age ah was when ah first entered the swampland.

  • Rudyard Kipling wrote many poems with characters speaking in a stereotypical Cockney accent, to the point that George Orwell considered it irritatingly condescending and opined, in an essay, that they read much better if you added all the aiches back.
    • Kipling also wrote quite a bit in other Funetik Aksents, most notably the stories involving his Soldiers Three, Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd - an Irishman, a Cockney and a Yorkshireman. The Mulvaney stories in particular can be a bit of a chore to read. Note however that Kipling was very capable of nuances, for instance another Irish character, Father Victor in Kim, speaks only with the occasional "ye" or "o'", and in the same novel Kim's English changes after he begins to attend a British school. Also not that though e. g. Indian characters often speak English brokenly with a partly phonetically rendered accent, when these same characters switch to their native Hindi, this is rendered as a slightly archaic but grammatically and orthographically flawless English.
  • Many of the servants and lower-class characters in The Secret Garden speak in a phonetic Yorkshire accent.
  • Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming has James Bond and Felix Leiter overhear a conversation between two people in Harlem. The long argument and makeup between the black couple is done in the "negro dialect". The conversation doesn't even HAVE a purpose other than to show, how black Americans speak according to Fleming.
  • Done badly in Maximum Ride, where Roland ter Borcht speaks in a clichéd, thick German accent - to the point where some fans have mistaken it for a French accent.
  • The Moorchild features toned down but clearly Scottish dialect, being set in Scotland.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird had a small bit of this as one character would slip in an out of a dialect.
  • Used by Vladimir Nabokov in Bend Sinister when a native French speaker switches the language of conversation to English to flatter protagonist Krug, who he knows is an Anglophone. In the few sentences we get of it, his grammar is note-perfect, but Nabokov sneeringly describes his English skills as "textbook." So it's probably used to underscore his ineptitude and the general tackiness of the character. For similar reasons, some poshlosty characters who attempt using French on Humbert Humbert in Lolita have their dialogue rendered in atrocious American accents.
  • Patrick Dennis does this for pages and pages and pages in Auntie Mame, with a wide selection of different accents. Joisey girl, Southern belle or Cockney orphan, he will drill it into your head that these people talk funny until the misplaced consonants and mangled vowels swim in front of your protesting eyes.
  • In The Baroque Cycle we have Rufus MacIan, a Scottish nobleman whose accent is as impenetrable to English-speaking readers as it is to to the English-speaking characters who talk with him: against all the rules of polite society, they are forced to straightforwardly tell him that he is not, technically speaking English, and then beg him to tone it down to the point where they can understand.
    • This makes sense in a way, since—though they are both descended from Anglo-Saxon, and thus close linguistic relatives—Scots and English are, in fact, different languages.
    • Certain German and Irish characters will also have written accents, but only when they are speaking English; at all other times the Translation Convention is in effect.
  • In The Age of the Pussyfoot, de man out to kill de protagonist speaks like dis. Assumed to be German, but revealed to be Martian instead. The thin atmosphere caused the Martians to lose the higher frequencies.
  • Trainspotting (and everything else by Irvine Welsh) uses this trope so extensively it take most people several chapters before they can fully understand anything. While there are a few chapters narrated in standard English (from a third person omniscient perspective), most are from a various first person points of view and written in that character's particular brand of thick Edinburgh Scottish.
    • It helps if the reader says the words out loud as they are written - what comes out is the word or phrase, but in a Scottish accent.
  • Amalia Ivanovna/Ludwigovna from Crime and Punishment had one.
  • In Push by Sapphire, the whole story is like this, but it is implied in the story that she is writing this herself. Precious is an illiterate (possibly mentally retarded) girl, so it makes sense.
  • Neatly averted in Les Misérables: only once or twice does Hugo render Toussaint's speech difficulty phonetically. Then he changes to standard orthography, with the parenthetical comment, "We have already noted once for all the fact that Toussaint stuttered. May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical notation of an infirmity is repugnant to us."
    • However played straight with the transcription of Joly's words when he has a cold and blocked nose. Translators differ as to whether they reproduce this in other languages.
  • Neil Munro's Tales of Para Handy often makes use of this trope, although with a lot of care given to properly depicting accents appropriate to the background of the characters. The narrator and Para Handy's middle-class employer are written as Standard Scottish English, while working class characters are written in colloquial Glaswegian and those from the Highlands and Isles, particularly Para Handy himself, have a notably distinct, Gaelicised accent.
  • The works of Zora Neal Hurston, most notably Their Eyes Were Watching God, frequently feature speech written in a thick, southern, African-American dialect that received mixed reactions from African-American critics.
  • Freak the Mighty gives us one line of this from a local bully, then renders the rest of his speech normally, with a remark that it's bad enough transcribing his words without having to copy how he says them.
  • Used frequently by William S. Burroughs.
    • "No glot. Clom Fliday." From Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine
    • "Meester" to imitate a Mexican accent in The Soft Machine.
  • Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban is written entirely in Riddley's dialect. It gets easier to read after you've been reading it for a while.
  • Alex Kilgour from the Sten series comes from a world colonized by Highland Scots and has a thick accent represented this way. Lampshaded when Sten gets a letter he's startled to realize is from Alex, but then faces the fact that even Kilgour wouldn't write with an accent.
  • In Aristophanes' play Lysistrata, the Athenians speak normally, but the Spartans have their Doric Greek accent spelled out phonetically. Modern translators may render the Doric (a Greek redneck accent) as Irish, Scottish, or Southern, or may omit it.
  • Malakai Makaisson of Gotrek and Felix, a dwarf, speaks in this way. Dwarves in that setting generally speak as humans do or at least very close, but Makaisson is said to be using an uncommon regional dialect.
  • In Dear Enemy, the sequel to Daddy Long Legs, Sallie McBride does this in a few of her letters to her friend Judy. This is actually Justified—what she's describing is conversations that the Irish Sallie has with the Scottish Dr. Robin MacRae, in which they both playfully use their ancestral accents. She writes out the dialogue phonetically so Judy (and the reader) can see what she means.
  • In Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie, the heavily Gaelic-inspired accent of the Hebrides is written phonetically, with normally voiced consonants changing to voiceless: "beer" becomes "peer". When the characters actually speak Gaelic, it's written using standard Gaelic spelling.
  • In David Eddings' "The Tamuli", one character speaks exclusively in a phonetically spelled and deeply hokey dialect—until it is revealed that he naturally speaks quite normally and is in fact practicing a variety of Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • It Takes a Thief by Mercedes Lackey has Skif doing this through most of the book—to the point that the dialogue is incomprehensible. Ow my eyes.
  • An example of Funetik Aksent spelling by a native speaker of a dialect - the beginning of the most well-know poem in Lancashire dialect, by cotton-worker Samuel Laycock (1826-1893). Note for instance the three different "thou"s in the first stanza and the two spellings of "come", reflecting different pronunciations according to stress and context:

Th'art welcome, little bonny brid,
But shouldn't ha' come just when tha did;
Toimes are bad.
We're short o' pobbies for eawr Joe,
But that, of course, tha didn't know,
Did ta, lad?
-
Aw've often yeard mi feyther tell,
'At when aw coom i'th' world misel'
Trade wur slack;
And neaw it's hard wark pooin' throo--

But aw munno fear thee,--iv aw do
—Tha'll go back.[1]
  • Harry Stephen Keeler does this a lot. A lot.
  • Used for nearly all dialogue in Christopher Brookmyre's novels.
  • In Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, whenever Cándido tries to speak English it comes out like "No espik engliss." And one of the book sections is titled "El Tenksgeevee" as in Thanksgiving, rather than the more correct and fan-prefered "El Tenksgivi" which would preserve Spanish spelling rather than putting that poor word in the anglicization blender.
  • As indicated by the quote, best known examples may be Mark Twain's regional dialects.
    • And especially noticeable example is his short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", written in a very heavy Southern drawl. It is much harder to read aloud than it looks, especially if you're student teacher with a New England accent trying to read it aloud to a class of kids.
  • As mentioned above, Dickens loved this trope and used stereotypical accents of his time. Sam Weller, Dicken's first Ensemble Darkhorse character, speaks with an old-timey Cockney accent that has all his Vs replaced by Ws (and the other way around). This becomes a plot point when he's put on trial and there is some confusion on how he spells his name. In Great Expectations, a minor Jewish character speaks with a lithp, which was considered a stereotypically Jewish trait at the time.
  • Done pretty risibly throughout Dracula. A particularly egregious example is the old Yorkshireman; one edition noted that his use of 'belly-timber' was ridiculously archaic and that nobody would have really said this. It went on to note that Bram Stoker was very proud of what he considered his incredible ability in writing accents.
  • Fleur Delacour's French accent in Harry Potter is a case that isn't always consistent. Sometimes she says "think," and sometimes, as in her Crowning Moment of Awesome / Heartwarming, she says "theenk." JK Rowling uses Viktor Krum's Bulgarian accent to teach the reader how to pronounce Hermione's name. Also Hagrid and the Cockney-accented Knight Bus operators.
    • The argument could be made that Fleur's accent actually diminishes as the series progresses.
    • Go here to translate anything into Hagrid speak.
    • Professor Quirrell's stutter: "P-P-Potter," stammered Professor Quirrell, grasping Harry's hand, "c-can't t-tell you how p-pleased I am to meet you." In fact, any time a character stutters, it's written out thus.
  • Agatha Christie: her representations of the "uneducated adenoidal speech" of the British lower class makes some of her books very difficult to understand.
  • The Grand High Witch in The Witches had a similar accent, but it was supposed to be Norwegian.
  • Jane Eyre
    • Also Joseph (and practically everyone else in Heathcliff's household, but the main offender is Joseph) of Wuthering Heights.
  • Stephen King often does this with New England characters.
  • The Sound and the Fury is told by an idiot with a Funetik Aksent to match. The novel is split into four parts, the first three with a different character providing a first-person POV. The idiot is one of those three characters (with the others related to him in some way). Then the last part is third-person, sorta.
  • The Uncle Remus stories are incredibly difficult on the first reading. Reading them out loud may help. A little. "Br'er" is "Brother", ok, but what's "bimeby"?.[2] However, this is as another example of a fairly accurate representation of an archaic accent; in this case, the mid-1800's Deep South
  • H.P. Lovecraft loved to do this; most notably in The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow over Innsmouth.
    • Brilliantly parodied by Neil Gaiman in his short story "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" in Smoke and Mirrors.
  • The Bridge by Iain Banks has a Scots warrior speaking in broad Scottish.
    • Feersum Endjinn by the same author (with an M. in his name this time) has a viewpoint character, Bascule, whose entire sections are written in a funetik aksent. It takes a while to register that the character is actually very intelligent despite this: his sections are essentially a diary, in which he explains that the thought-interpreter he's using doesn't agree with his unusual brain pattern. It doesn't help that the computer pulls out oddities like spelling "have" as "1/2" and the overall inconsistency in the spelling.
  • Almost all the characters in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath speak in some variant of a rural-American accent: the Joads' eldest daughter's name is given as "Rose of Sharon" in narrative, but always rendered as "Rosasharn" when spoken. Steinbeck even hangs a lampshade on his characters' awareness of their own, and others', speech:

"I knowed you wasn't Oklahomy folks. You talk queer kinda--that ain't no blame, you understan'."
"Ever'body says words different," said Ivy. "Arkansas folks says 'em different, and Oklahomy folks says 'em different. And we seen a lady from Massachusetts, an' she said 'em differentest of all. Couldn' hardly make out what she was sayin'."

  • P. G. Wodehouse did it too, sometimes getting it completely wrong (e.g. a New Yorker who pronounces long A's "oi").
  • James Herriot's tales of life as a vet in the pre-WWII Yorkshire Dales—starting with All Creatures Great and Small are thickly seasoned with this trope. Interestingly, as with the Dickens example above, there's evidence that the Herriot stories may have helped to preserve records of a dialect that's very different today.
  • The title character in Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles speaks with the author's idea of an Irish accent. This is particularly interesting since he was born in Chicago and grew up in a Chicago orphanage. Not only does he have an inherited accent, he has an inherited upper-class accent: "Somewhere before accident and poverty there had been an ancestor who used cultivated English, even with an accent."
  • S.M. Stirling does this frequently. In the Domination series, parsing Draka speech patterns (a sort of mutated 18th-century American Southern, influenced by Afrikaans and filled with loanwords from languages of the peoples they've enslaved over the centuries) takes some getting used to. In one of the books, a character describes the accent as "a German trying to sound like Scarlet O'Hara."
  • When a battle in Starship Troopers goes horribly wrong, the commanders broadcast sauve qui peut ("let him save himself who can")--that is, the only objective is to get yourself and any living buddies back to an escape ship and get off the planet. Later on, a character (smart enough, but without much formal education) refers to the "sove-ki-poo".
  • In The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky renders Lebedev's speech phonetically to indicate when he's mispronouncing French words.
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden has Dickon, whose broad Yorkshire dialect is rendered so faithfully as to be incomprehensible at times.


Music

  • Oddly enough, Led Zeppelin's name is an example of this - the misspelling is to emphasize that the word is pronounced like the metal lead, and not like the verb "lead".
    • Their 1973 reggae song "D'yer Maker ("joor-maker")," which represents the lower-class British English pronunciation of "Jamaica," but probably had many Americans wondering why the song was named for someone who made dyes.
  • Many hip hop artists combine this trope with Xtreme Kool Letterz for the way they spell their stage names, album titles, song names, liner notes, etc.
  • 2D and Murdoc of Gorillaz have occasional hints of this in interviews and their autobiography Rise of the Ogre.
    • And "Dare" is so-named because of how guest vocalist Shaun Ryder pronounces "there" in the song.
  • The Pearl Jam song "Breakerfall" is titled such because of the way Eddie Vedder sings "break her fall" in the chorus.
  • Similarly, the Iron Butterfly classic "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (supposedly the "stoner" pronunciation of "In the Garden of Eden").


Newspaper Comics

  • 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.
  • In the Scottish newspaper comic The Broons ("The Browns") every single character speaks like this- in a thick Scottish accent.
    • The language in The Broons, and its stablemate Oor Wullie ("Our William") is actually standard Scots, correctly rather than phonetically spelled. It only appears to be a case of Funetik Aksent because Scots and English are so closely related linguistically.
  • Mimi in Rose Is Rose. This is a child learning to speak more than an actual accent, however. Rose's son Pasquale used to speak like that as well, but eventually grew out of it.
  • The male crocs in Pearls Before Swine speak in a funetik aksent ("Hullo, zeeba neighba?") which is also rendered in mixed-case instead of all-caps. There is a boy croc who speaks normally, but still refers to Zebra as "zeeba neighba."
  • In Swedish comic Elvis (no relation), the title character does this from time to time when speaking English. Also, he's the only one who does this. This Running Gag has mostly faded out, but still crops up from time to time. Examples:

Airport security man: Are you wearing any knife?
Elvis: Eny najf? Nå, böt aj näver gå änyver vizååt... (Any knife? No, but I never go anywhere without...)
Airport security man: (Gilligan Cut to having wrestled Elvis to the ground, calling for backup) He says he's wearing a Magnum!
Elvis: It vas a djååk!!! (It was a jooke!!!)

Store clerk: Hi, how're you doing, sir?
Elvis: Ajm fajn, tänk ju. Hau ar ju? (I'm fine, thank you. How are you?)
Store clerk: That[3]'ll be $19.55.
Elvis: Ålrajt. (pats self) Jöst a se... Oops. It siims aj häv ran aut of käsh.! (Alright. (pats self) Just a se... Oops. It seems I have run out of cash.!)

  • Invoked in a series of Dilbert strips in which Dogbert temporarily becomes a militant animal-rights activist. He protests in front of a store with a "Fur Sale" sign, until the owner informs him that he's not selling fur; the entire store is "fur sale" (for sale). Dogbert retorts that incorrect spelling offends him just as much.


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:

THE MOTHER: How do you know that my son's name is Freddy, pray?
THE FLOWER GIRL: Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy athaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them? [Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London.]

  • 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.
  • Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off is written mostly with exceptionally thick Scottish accents built in.
  • Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer: "Oi tell you true which I've never done sir/Oi loike you as oi never lik'd none sir"


Tabletop RPG

  • Orcs and Orks in Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000, with a Cockney-like Accent.
    • Also, and more obviously, whenever the Warhammer 40000 Orks are quoted in writing, virtually every word is misspelled. Boyz, Deffkoptas, Meks, etc. even ORC.
    • For added amusement, note that the way it's written works equally well as a Deep South or Redneck accent. (Except for the part where they call you a "daft git".)
  • Cultist-chan: "Hwee are captooring waffles fhor khay-oss."
    • Her accent is shared by the Cultists in Dawn of War, all of which have incredibly silly ways of talking.
  • Deadlands uses this throughout, including in rule-text. Skills are named shootin' and ridin', the reader is addressed as "pardner", and so on.
  • Similarly, the Serenity RPG has everything in cowboy-speak. If possible, assets and flaws are named after actual lines from Firefly.


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. This was an attempt to come up with an English equivalent to different ways of speaking Japanese.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, this may account for Ultimecia's bizarre "Kursed SeeDs! You will not stop me from achieving Time Kompression!" speech patterns. 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.
    • Then again, it's odd to consider that the dub team hired Tasia Valenza for Ultimecia, who is one of the few voice actresses that can make this sort of ridiculous accent sound good, and then didn't make use of her talents.
    • Any Final Fantasy game (or Updated Rerelease) featuring dwarves has given them thick Scottish accents (Square Enix joost loves 'em) and vocabulary.
  • 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".
    • "HARMAN HAMBARGARZ! HAR HAR!" Not your average zombies!
  • 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.
  • In Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, Tink's French accent is rendered phonetically.
  • Team Fortress 2: "Sandvich". Never "sandwich."
    • And you cannot outsmart boolet.
  • Salvatore, the owner of the "Sinking Ships" minigame on Windfall Island in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, speaks with a heavy German accent replacing all W's with V's.
  • In Death Smiles, Casper (a German) and Follett (a Frenchwoman) and their familiars have their dialogue written with accents and occasional foreign words.
  • Persona 3 has Bebe, a foriegn exchance student who speaks with a French accent. He also throws in Gratuitous Japanese, which makes for very confusing dialogue.


Web Comics

  • Girl Genius has the Jägermonsters (Super Soldiers transformed by Mad Science) with 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.
    • It probably IS the pointy teeth. It is very difficult to speak properly when one cannot close one's mouth without fangs poking out, as anyone who's ever been a vampire for Halloween can attest. While the Mechaniacs (their compatriots) occasionally have the same accent, this may be Jäger influence.
      • Amusingly enough, the Jägers actually write in their Aksent, as is seen with Gil's Schmott Guy hat and Mama Gkika's Dollink.
    • The Foglios have described the Jaegermonsters as "The Mongol Horde, staffed by the Katzenjammer Kids".
      • Mostly Rule of Funny, though; the Jagers started out as generic monsters, segued quite quickly into violent slapstick on the Tom-and-Jerry level (see the "clenk gun" business in their first appearance) and took on a life of their own with their hat fixation, ludicrous cod-Napoleonic uniforms, gallows humour, the whole Mechanicsburg/Mama Gkika's bar/"fake" Jager bar-girls thing and under it all, being genuinely dangerous - they DO kill people on quite a few occasions.
    • The Boyz are hundreds of years old. They're speaking with an accent of their era.
    • Interestingly, some Martians in XXXenophile use the same accent as the monsters. Is this Author Appeal?
    • 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.
      • It's likely (assuming the lingua franca is, well, German) that Wooster DOES have an accent to the "Continental" characters' ears (for that matter, "Trygvassen" suggests our Gentleman Adventurer is from somewhere north of central and likely sounds different.) The problem is, assuming he's not from anywhere with an especially obvious accent (the North, Manchester, Yorkshire, Wales, etc), there's no way to render that on paper in a way that differentiates it from written American English.
    • And then Gil tries to sound more British.

Trelawney Thorpe: (Face Palm) Never, ever talk like that again.

  • 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.
  • 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 Adventures of Dr. McNinja 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. Thankfully his appearances are rare.
    • That's because it's Just for Pun; his garage is called "Aries".
  • Lackadaisy Cats 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 Hellboy 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? [4]

  • Maria, Bjorn and Johan of Anders Loves Maria are from a rural, northern part of Sweden, so Rene Engstrom renders their dialect in English with a Lancashire-like funetik spelling.
  • Done intermittently in Nip and Tuck, for the character's "hillbilly/redneck" accents. The author mercifully spares us the use of this trope for long speeches.
  • Darths and Droids has fun with this
  • The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred - Driver and Galen both speak with very heavy accents (Deep South and Russian, respectively). In Driver's case it's shown in The Rescue arc (and Word of God) that she gets it from her father, who also has a noticeable southern accent.
  • Angus speaks with a Scottish Funetik Aksent. This wouldn't be notable outside of Angus' species except that the author is himself Scottish, and he doesn't give any of the other characters such treatment, so one wonders exactly what the effect he was intending.
  • All Over the House played this for laughs in a news report about regional accents on street signs; which were apparently intended to enhance 'local identity'.
  • The Martians in Triquetra Cats: "'ul gonna da'z be ohhzen else Miss Ushiro?, Borrrd'n iz ha Starport 3B y'un da eur gran' trip!" "if yoo'll ho ye, ay wur hactually deal'n wi d'lydy in front hay yeur! Ohz tiribly soz 'but dat but ohz clap d' ammust flecht teur d'lunaaar colonoys, baint fe sex os sa yaeur wonnot be yabble ta..."
  • In The KAMics Sven & Oli speak in a Scandahoovian accent. Fortunately they don't show up much.
  • Each of the trolls in Homestuck has a unique typing quirk that apparently mirrors how they actually speak: Kanaya Carefully Enunciates Every Word She Says; tAVROS, uHH, tENDS TO FALTER; Eridan has a kind of wwavy soundin accent; Vriska is very dramaaaaaaaatic; KARKAT IS ALWAYS RAGING AT SOMETHING; 2ollux 2peak2 with a lii2p; and so on.
  • Darrik of The Cyantian Chronicles, when he's speaking English.
  • In Wapsi Square, Euryale's southern accent is rendered this way.
  • In Bloody Urban, Angelica speaks vvith a vvery thiick Яussian accent, vvhiich iis rendered like thiis.


Web Original

  • Stetson MacLee does this in Darwin's Soldiers story Nietzsche's Soldiers 2.
  • The tumblr-famous meme, "WHY U NO guy," is usually imagined by speaking in an accent.
  • Quinsy in The Motley Two speaks like this - and, this being the Homestuck universe, also types this way.
  • 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. Rein Bumgarner of v4 also has a notable German accent shown in his dialogue. Iris Landon of Evolution is also an example of this trope, speaking with a Southern accent that is always written out.
  • A natural part of attempting to write an accent on The Gungan Council, such as with Mao and Steph.
  • Technical support scam baiters on YouTube often title their videos after pronunciations characteristic of an Indian accent, particularly "wiruses" and "dextop".


Western Animation

  • In the Alvin and The Chipmunks episode "Dear Diary" the Chipettes' babysitter not only speaks in this type of accent, but also writes that way, setting up the conflict in the plot.


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.
    • LOL Speak. Givz hedakes bi lokin at it. Er.. gives headaches by looking at it...
    • Also, any forum where people are quoting Tommy Wiseau. Oh hai, Mahk! Yuuah TERRING mi APAHT, Lisa!
  • 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 1st, and 3rd 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 little girl who lived with her mother in a little cottage on the edge of a large, dark forest.
      • That's not extreme Funetik Aksent, that's extreme use of homonyms.
      • The usual term for that is Anguish Languish.
  • The LPer Electrical Beast is probably an example of a human actually talking like an Ork.
  • One player on the Champions Online boards presents all his posts in capital letters and phonetic spelling in the manner of, say, the Incredible Hulk as said poster is more or less always acting in character (or presenting said persona). It manages to be both a good example of why it's the trope can be good and bad. It's good because it is certainly very character forming. It's bad because otherwise intelligent and sensible points can be lost when it takes 15 minutes to translate a short paragraph.
  • In Time Fcuk, all the people that send "text messages" to you enunciate each letter individually.
  • Xenophobia in the early 20th century confectionery industry (from here, and well worth reading): 'Perhaps the British could hardly be blamed for distrusting foreigners, especially when confronted with adverts featuring cartoon Frenchmen snakily hissing: ‘Vill you try mine nougat?’ (Any accent would do, it seemed, even if inaccurate).'


Real Life

  • 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".
    • Note: the Romans pronounced the letter "v" as "wuh". E.g. servus, "slave", was pronounced "saer-WOOS".
  • We'd be spared all this nonsense if everyone just learned to read the International Phonetic Alphabet.
  • Katakana is used by the Japanese to make foreign languages easier for them to read (and pronounce, just with a lack of 'L's), the foreign language in question being written in a phonetic Japanese accent.
    • For example, 'chocolate cake' becomes 'chokorēto kēki" (which sounds more like 'chocoretoh cakey' written in English phonetics) but spelling varies with individuals' own pronunciation.
  • In Spanish, differences between dialects of the language can be either: variations in the grammar, dialects having unique words proper of them, or variations in the locations of the tonal syllable in a determined word. The latter one meaning that, when wrote, the same word can have the tilde(graphical accent) in different syllables(or be missing in one of the writings) depending on the dialect.
  • American native-speakers of Spanish who went to school (that is, first learned to write) in English will sometimes write Spanish using English phonetics—the h vs. j thing, for instance. Left uncorrected, this can be a problem if they later take Spanish (foreign language) Class and lose points for spelling.
  • Sarah Palin, like George W. Bush, pronounces "nuclear" as "noo-kyoo-lur". She pronounced it correctly in her acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention—but only because the text, as flashed to her on the teleprompters, included such lines as "build more new-clear plants" and "Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons".
  1. ↑ You're welcome, little bonny bird, But shouldn't have come just when you did, Times are bad. We're short of money for our Joe, But that, of course, you didn't know, Did you lad? I've often heard my father tell That when I came into the world myself Trade was slack; And now it's hard work pulling through--But I mustn't fear you, if I do You'll go back.
  2. ↑ By and by -- via "by'n'by"
  3. ↑ a CD
  4. ↑ translation: So, how much of this epic quest you're on have you achieved so far?
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