History Main / FunetikAksent

-->'''Totsumura''': Whassa matter, Mio-chan? Watcha staring at yer own house for?

* Until well into UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks, this was pretty standard for foreign or immigrant characters of any kind, even if they were heroes. Take Mademoiselle Marie, a [[LaResistance French Resistance fighter]] in a series of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII adventures put out by DC in the 1950s. Marie was an ActionGirl and looked every bit the part with her tight skirt, [[SexySweaterGirl 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.

* In ''ComicBook/AllStarWestern'', ComicBook/JonahHex's dialogue has a Southern accent to it - he pronounces "I" as "Ah", for instance.

** "Condouisez ploutôt aoune brouette" ("you'd better drive a wheelbarrow" - without trying to reproduce the phonetic American accent), by an American soldier yelling on a French taxi driver in S.O.S. Meteors.

* ''ComicBook/TheFlash'': Mirror Master has a phonetically-spelled Scottish accent - when he's written by Creator/GrantMorrison. In the hands of other writers, it tends to come out more like Cockney.

* ''ComicBook/{{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.

* Mosta' the cast of ''ComicBook/WetMoon'', too - it ''is'' the moderately DeepSouth - but especially sweet redneck Fall Swanhilde. "Hey Paw, burgers're dunn!"

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

-->"Howondalandian bush mechete." she explained, pulling it partway from its scabbard. "We use these et home for all kinds of things. Stubborn bush. Chopping wood. Clearing a peth, if you're trekking in the deep jungle bush."... she frowned. She was starting to pronounce words like path as ''peth''. Her r's were getting distinctly rhotic, too. Her iccent – ''accent'' - and even her intonation had changed too, as if under a weight of unspoken expectations from the other girls.

--> '''Tunip''': Shellydo gabadazu?[[labelnote:Translation]]"{Will} Shellington get better soon?"[[/labelnote]]

** Kipling's ''Soldiers Three'', featuring 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.

** Viktor Krum's Bulgarian accent[[note]]really a stereotypical generic "Eastern European" accent - Bulgarians, having mostly been exposed to English directly, as opposed to borrowing Latin alphabet pronunciation rules from another Western European language (Bulgarian pronunciation of foreign words works like writing down the word's (approximate) pronunciation in the original language in Cyrillic and then reading that out loud), don't use VampireVords (something that's influenced by ''German'', in which "W" is read as a "V") and approximate th" to a "T/D", not "S/Z" like in the book[[/note]] is used to teach the reader how to pronounce Hermione's name.

* 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:

* ''Literature/MaximumRide'': [[MadScientist Roland ter Borcht]] speaks in a clichéd, thick German accent - to the point where some fans have mistaken it for a ''French'' accent.

** Additionally, Mannie [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] his own use of the trope when relating his visit to the American South - he uses it heavily on the first line of dialogue, then ''apologizes'' because he knows it's distracting, and promises he won't do it again. This allows Heinlein to put the accent into the reader's mind, but avoids the distraction that it can cause, and further illustrates Mannie's CultureShock.

* Toward the end of Helen Hunt Jackson's ''Ramona'', a family of Tennessee mountain folk shows up (somewhat inexplicably) in Southern California just a few years after the Mexican War. They speak English in a "hillbilly" dialect, which Jackson renders by wildly misspelling almost every single word out of their mouths, making their speech difficult even for English-speaking readers to follow and comprehension for the Spanish-speaking characters in the novel (who know only a little English) all but impossible. Fortunately, one of the Tennesseeans can speak Spanish and acts as interpreter for both parties. But since ''Ramona'' is for the most part a monolingual novel with the odd Spanish phrase salted in, when the translator speaks English he does so in the hillbilly dialect, but when he speaks Spanish it comes out as perfect English - thus combining this trope with TranslationConvention!

* 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.

* ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfWiglafAndMordred'' - 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 WordOfGod) that she gets it from her father, who also has a noticeable southern accent.

* Quinsy in ''Webcomic/TheMotleyTwo'' speaks like this - and, this being the ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' universe, also types this way.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language Scots]] (not to be confused with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic Scots Gaelic,]] which is a Celtic language related to Irish) is officially considered a separate language to English, to which it is closely related. (Some scholars still maintain it is merely a dialect of English as the border between "dialect" and "language" is fuzzy, but is recognised as a European "regional or minority language" and is often unintelligible to speakers o Inglis.) Since the Eighteenth Century, written Scots often used the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetic_apostrophe "apologetic apostrophe"]] to indicate where the spoken word differed from Standard English spelling, as Scots was regarded by most as a low-prestige, "uneducated" dialect. In recent years there has been an organised effort to revive the language, and the standard has been to write Scots exactly as it sounds rather than rely on inconsistent English orthography. Therefore, written Scots looks exactly like it sounds. Indeed, many of the above examples could be considered to be accurately transcribed Scots rather than phonetically transcribed "bad" English.

--->"Och, I'll tell, I'll tell!" She sobbed. "And mebbe it'll bring the peace to me sowl at last that it hasn't known for years an' years. I'll tell--and be able to face the praste again widout blushin' at the black shame of the thing I've been hidin' all these years..."

** Sean Cassidy, also to varying extents. It's shown early on that, as a side effect of [[MakeMeWannaShout his]] [[GaleForceSound powers]], he can shift accents any time he likes. His 'natural' accent at this point in life is a thick mixture of Scottish and Irish Gaelic, but he softens it considerably around most. The author explained that a) he got tired of it, b) it was coming out as a parody and c) the average teenager at Hogwarts wouldn't understand it.

* In Yen Press's English translation of the ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' manga, Osaka's Kansai accent is [[AccentAdaptation adapted]] as a Southern accent written this way. Most obviously, she uses "Ah" and "mah" rather than "I" and "my".

* One chapter of ''Manga/StopHibariKun'' features an old friend of Kousaku's from Kumamoto with an accent so thick it requires subtitles in one scene, and in a flashback to before he moved to Tokyo, Kousaku is shown as having an accent just as severe.

* Used effectively in ''ComicBook/OneHundredBullets'' to show accents of the Urban, Southern and Louisiana variety.

'''Robo:''' [[FlatWhat What?]]\\

* ''ComicBook/CerebusTheAardvark'' was the ''master'' of this, with everything from [[Creator/MarxBrothers Chico Marx's]] fake Italian accent to Cerebus's cold to Creator/AlanMoore's Britishisms.

** 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."

* Mirror Master from ComicBook/TheFlash has a phonetically-spelled Scottish accent - when he's written by Creator/GrantMorrison. In the hands of other writers, it tends to come out more like Cockney.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Merrick Joseph Merrick's]] dialogue in ''ComicBook/FromHell'':

* In the ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons 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 [[spoiler:the Germans had forced the (communist) Crab to conduct experiments for them during the Nazi era]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'': While it's not always obvious in the text, it has sometimes been observed that Kryptonians have a rather noticeable accent. In ''ComicBook/SupergirlRebirth'', [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara Danvers]] has a weird lilt and struggles with contractions ("They do not exist in Kryptonian"), to the point her accent has been mocked by her schoolmates. Ironically, she [[ComicBook/Supergirl2011 has]] [[ComicBook/LastDaughterOfKrypton previously]] noted "[Superman's] accent sounds like he learned Kryptonian from a textbook".

* In ''Franchise/{{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.

* A buttload in ''ComicBook/XMen'', courtesy of Creator/ChrisClaremont:
** ComicBook/{{Gambit}}'s Cajun accent.
** ComicBook/{{Rogue}}'s Southern accent.

** It's been said Claremont only put Wolverine on the team because he wanted to write a Canadian accent.

* Mimi in ''ComicStrip/RoseIsRose''. 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.

* Pippin Took had a distinct Scottish lilt in Peter Jackson's ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' movies, which some fans try to replicate in fic, with varying levels of success. ''Fanfic/BagEnders'' manages it fairly well most of the time and parodies it on one occasion, when Pippin starts speaking in a Glaswegian dialect to annoy the others;

** Baron Zemo, to a varying extents, which [[LampshadeHanging deliberately noted. Apparently its appearance depends on his mood and whether he wants to suppress his accent or not]].

* The author of ''Fanfic/DecksFallEveryoneDies'' has chosen to write out Joey's accent whenever he is speaking or when any of the other characters are imitating him.

* In the ''Land of Oz'' fic ''Fanfic/TheRoadBuiltInHope'', Dorothy has a mild accent due to her Kansas heritage and her youthfulness.

-->''"I heard ya like blowin' things up."''
-->''"I snuck in and stole somethin' for ya."''

** In ''[[Film/Napoleon1927 Napoléon]]'' (1927), the intertitle explains that UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte pronounced his name "Nap-eye-ony" because of his Corsican accent.

* John Buchan in his Richard Hannay novels, beginning with ''Literature/TheThirtyNineSteps'', depicts Scottish accents phonetically, and with sufficient faithfulness that several different accents can be distinguished between the various characters Hannay meets on his Scottish adventure in ''Literature/MrStandfast''. Lampshaded and averted with Jack Godstow in ''Literature/TheIslandOfSheep''; Hannay-the-narrator says he's not going to attempt to represent Jack's Cotswold accent, and paraphrases everything he says instead of reporting it as direct speech.

* Dickens loved this trope and used stereotypical accents of his time. Sam Weller, Dickens's first EnsembleDarkHorse character, speaks with a nineteenth-century Cockney accent that has all his ''V''s replaced by ''W''s, and vice-versa. (Even the most extreme modern Cockney accents have lost this tendency.) This becomes a plot point when he's put on trial and there is some confusion on how he spells his name. In ''Literature/GreatExpectations'', a minor Jewish character speaks with a lithp, which was considered a stereotypically Jewish trait at the time.

* Creator/HPLovecraft loved to do this; most notably in ''Literature/TheDunwichHorror'' and ''Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth'' with [[UnfortunateImplications lower-class and non-white characters.]]

-->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.

** Used quite a bit - and much mocked in fandom - from the Australian family the Hobarts, to Jessie's French ballet teacher, to Logan's Kentucky accent, to his brother's "allergy dialect".

* In ''Literature/TheBaroqueCycle''

* In ''Literature/TheCrewOfTheCopperColoredCupids'', [[HerrDoktor Doctor Sigma]]'s dialogue writes out his comedy Austrian accent, with Vs standing in for Ws, Ds for [=THs=], and so on.

* The 1912 serial novel ''[[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hxdjjk;view=1up;seq=11 Eve's Other Children]]'' by Lucille Van Slyke -- a FairForItsDay depiction of Syrian immigrant women and their children living in New York and working as lace-makers -- had most of them speaking Ameer'can En'leesch but ees nod too hod t'onde'stan once you get used to it. Van Slyke shows they are EloquentInMyNativeTongue by writing the Syrian dialogue in classically beautiful English, with thee and thou.

** Hagrid's [[UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry West Country]] accent, to the point of sometimes being unintelligible to Americans. Go [[http://rephrase.net/box/hagridizer/ here]] to translate anything into Hagrid speak.

---> "Can't do nuffink underwater. Ere, you did flag us down, dincha? Stuck out your wand 'and, dincha?"
----> -- Stan Shunpike, as written out in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban''.

** A minor example in the second ''Mage Winds'' book -- Elspeth leaves a note for Darkwind, but since she's not fully fluent in Tayledras she spells everything the way it sounds to her.
* ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'': For certain words pronounced by the Gyptians and Lyra. The most frequently used one is "en't" for ain't.

* Done ''badly'' in ''Literature/MaximumRide'', where [[MadScientist Roland ter Borcht]] speaks in a clichéd, thick German accent - to the point where some fans have mistaken it for a ''French'' accent.

* Jumps in and out for Scotty in differing books of the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' 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 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.

** Creator/NeilGaiman's short story "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" in ''Smoke and Mirrors'' parodies the New England accent found in Lovecraft stories.

* Creator/JamesHerriot'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.

* In ''Fanfic/TDWTReducksRedux'' and ''FanFic/LoveAintEasyItsEzzy'' (both ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'' fanfics by Creator/TheKoboldNecromancer), Ezekiel's [[CanadaEh thick Canadian accent]] is written phonetically. This is very noticeable, as Ezekiel is [[CreatorsFavorite the author's favorite character]] and gets a lot of focus in both fics. Furthermore, since Creator/TheKoboldNecromancer is a FandomVIP in the ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'' fandom, a lot of fans began to [[FollowTheLeader follow Kobold's example]] and write Ezekiel's accent phonetically in their own fan works.

* 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 VideoGame/CallOfDuty had Price say this once (subtitles say 'Leftenant').

* Novelists often use a Funetik Aksent to indicate something about character. Thomas Hardy does this in ''Literature/JudeTheObscure'', and for most readers it backfires. He lets us know that Richard Phillotson really doesn’t understand his wife Sue Bridehead (and by silent contrast shows her cousin Jude’s closeness to her) by having Phillotson mispronounce her name as “Soo” (book iv, ch. 3). This doesn’t work for all those readers who normally pronounce that name thus.

* In the early 20th-century confectionery industry in England, some adverts featured cartoon Frenchmen snakily hissing, '‘Vill you try mine nougat?’

* This was once very common in NewspaperComics, with ''ComicStrip/TheKatzenjammerKids'', ''ComicStrip/KrazyKat'', ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'', ''ComicStrip/{{Pogo}}'', and ''ComicStrip/SnuffySmith'' being some of the better-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.

* This was once very common in NewspaperComics. ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'', ''ComicStrip/TheKatzenjammerKids'', ''ComicStrip/KrazyKat'', and ''ComicStrip/{{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.

* ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'' has Hagrid, naturally, Baron Zemo, to a varying ([[LampshadeHanging deliberately noted. Apparently its appearance depends on his mood and whether he wants to suppress his accent or not]]) and Sean Cassidy (at first. It's shown early on that, as a side effect of [[MakeMeWannaShout his]] [[GaleForceSound powers]], he can shift accents any time he likes. The author explained that a) he got tired of it, b) it was coming out as a parody and c) [[spoiler:the average teenager at Hogwarts wouldn't understand it]]).

* Until well into UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks, this was pretty standard for foreign or immigrant characters of any kind, even if they were heroes. Take Mademoiselle Marie, a [[LaResistance French Resistance fighter]] in a series of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII adventures put out by DC in the 1950s. Marie was an ActionGirl and looked every bit the part with her tight skirt, [[SweaterGirl 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.

** In ''Film/{{Napoleon}}'', the intertitle explains that Napoleon pronounced his name "Nap-eye-ony" because of his Corsican accent.

-->"Howondalandian bush mechete." she explained, pulling it partway from its scabbard. "We use these et home for all kinds of things. Stubborn bush. Chopping wood. Clearing a peth, if you're trekking in the deep jungle bush."... she frowned. She'd starting pronouncing words like path as ''peth''. Her r's were getting distinctly rhotic, too. Her iccent – ''accent'' - and even her intonation had changed too, as if under a weight of unspoken expectations from the other girls.

* Any forum where people are quoting [[Film/TheRoom Tommy Wiseau]]. Oh hai, Mahk! Yuuah TERRING mi APAHT, Lisa!

* ''ComicBook/{{Preacher}}'' uses this rather sparingly, considering how many accents get bandied about. Most Texans get away with a dropped letter here and there, such as "an'" instead of "and," and Cassidy's Irish accent mostly comes out only in his {{catchphrase}} "Jaysis!" People occasionally mention that Starr has a German accent, but not a trace of it is evident in the spelling of his speech. The biggest example of the trope is the facially-maimed Arseface, whose speech is so garbled by his handicap that he's often given a translation.

* In Yen Press's English translation of the ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' manga, Osaka's KansaiRegionalAccent is [[AccentAdaptation adapted]] as a Southern accent written this way. Most obviously, she uses "Ah" and "mah" rather than "I" and "my".