Hey, I am doing a story right now and I would like to know your opinion on acccents of people like Mundungus or Hagrid. Since I cannot imitate there accents very well should I ignore it or try to do it?

 

It depends. Go read a few scenes with them talking again and if you still think it looks ify, leave it out. Personally I think being able to write the talk is impressive but if done wrong, it looks very bad. Your call.

 

Meh, character accents always annoy me when I'm reading a story unless it's done perfectly. Unless it's really neccecary, I wouldn't do it. Maybe a bit with Hagrid, but I wouldn't bother with much else.

 

Hagrid, I think, needs his accent, but the other character's don't really need it. I mean, you never see any Scottish, even though the school is in Scotland.

 

It's good to note that where we use the ending of “ing”, Hagrid uses a contraction of “in'” leaving off the “g” except when the word is stressed. He also tends to leave the “t” off any words that end in it, again except when the word is stressed: "nothin' abou' — about ANYTHING”

He also moulds two words together in his speech. For example: “do you” becomes “d'yeh” when said by Hagrid. Another example of this is “shouldn't have” becoming “shouldn'ta”.

To make matters even worse there are also words where Hagrid speaks as though the middle letters of a word have been removed: “governors” becomes “gov'nors”, “better” becomes “be'er”, “difference” becomes “diff'rence”

It should also be noted that Hagrid does not contract every word that can be contracted. There are plenty of instances in the books where Hagrid uses words as they're supposed to be. There are also some words that are always contracted, and there's variation in how he chooses to contract them.

Hagrid's speech pattern really is just a big convulsed mess, unless you feel really comfortable writing him then I suggest you just write like he speaks normally. It can add to a story when done right, when done wrong, however, it starts to grate at peoples nerves.

 

Yeah, but some of the kids have got to be from other areas of Britain.

 

Yes, but:

1. You've got to live in Britain (for a reasonable period of time) to know the different accents

2. Some accents aren't actually too dissimilar when written down, just when spoken

3. It'd probably piss off readers not from Britain if every character had a different accents

4. Harry is from Surrey, thus no distinct accent. Same for the Weasleys and many others. You'd have to do craploads of research to get it right.

5. At the end of the day, the ends don't warrant the effort.

 

If a story is heavy on accents I don't bother with it. Hagrid is the only one I make an exemption for. Anyone else with accents tend to just annoy the hell out of me because the author always overdoes it.

Dung Fletcher's another bad one for annoying the hell out of me with. Keep the damned cockney the hell away from me

Fleur's speech singlehandley is the reason I wil not read Harry/Fleur.

 

Yes, this thread hasn't been touched in ages - (I just stumbled on this site and I thought I should share) for the good of everyone, if you're ever having problems writing an accent, go here:

http://www.cybamall.com/nomadsrealm/hp/hagridizer.htm

Spot-on at the easy cut/paste.