I was wondering this myself, because in my opinion the entire reason I ship Harry/Fleur is that fucking accent.

But I've heard some people don't like it so I'm not totally sure. I'm also curious as to how you go about writing her accent. What letters are you supposed to leave off? How do you change it from normal? Does anyone have experience with French accents?

and for those who've written Fleur wtih an accent before, is it a pain to write?

 

A little goes a long way. Sub out the occasional "This" for "Zis" or "There" for "Zere", drop the occasional "oui" or "non", and the occasional "Muzzer", and it's sufficient. The point is not phonetic precision so much as giving the impression of a French accent to the reader, who will fill in the rest in his or her mind. Readability of a story is more important than precision with which you render the accent.

 

Pers is spot on here, in my opinion. You don't want to make her dialogue a chore to read or write. Keep things subtle enough and people will read it with a french accent.

Also, I'm a big fan of Fleur pronouncing his name without the 'H'. I mean, sexy French pronunciations of your name are pretty much one of the most amazing things ever.

I think I need to go to France again...

 

Yeah, it should definitely be written. Fleur's accent is quite heavy, even in HBP and DH.

These two quotes together are a good basic example of her accent nuances:

 

Would you guys switch every word that started wtih a "th" to a "z"? Or just some. Zat, zeir, zem, zey.

Trying to think of longer words that would be affected. Zeatre? Zimble. Zatch. Yeah that doesn't feel like it works to me. So just the some small common words then?

 

Keep it to the small common words.

 

Also, avoid idioms.

List of examples of French idioms, which you could try translating literally, and have people confused by.

 

I think skipping h sounds is more important than the th->z transformation when it comes to depicting a French accent.

 

Sounds like a lot of work. I'm more a have a hair in one's hand kind of guy.

 

What is that suppose to be? I'm french and I don't even...

Anyway, most french have difficulties with 'H' as in Harry (H at the start of a word is considered mute and is not pronounced) and the 'TH' as in the (they tend to either pronounced it as De or Ze or Te).

Otherwise, I don't think there is much more.

 

Grandmuzzer? Like the part in GoF where she shows Ollivander her wand. How else would you write it?

 

I think the 'z' thing is overrated. It would probably be something more like moder and grandmoder. Might seems stupid, but like I said TH is quite hard to pronounce for french native and while T is too blatant of an error, they will settle for a sound resembling 'D'. Same thing for 'THE' and 'THEY'. I've never heard of anyone saying ZE and ZEY; and I have suffered through 7 years of english class with french people.

Worst case, someone will try to accentuate the TH sound because they know they have difficulty with it and sound completely retard saying Thhhhe and Thhhhey.

 

I've read some stories where she said grandmudder rather than grandmuzzer. Do you prefer the D over the Z? How consittent are French accents from word ot word.? Do you use both sometimes? Does one person tend to do one more than the other?

How close is JKR's portrayal to real accents. If it's off then can her "imperfect" accent be apart of Fleurs character?

 

To be honest, I don't really care when I read them because I don't actually read the word. If I was actually pronouncing it in my head every time I would prefer the 'D' over 'Z' because that how I and most were saying it before learning the proper sound for it.

As for consistence, I'd say really consistent. The accent is all over the place because they still pronounce the letters as they would in french (I'm talking about french knowing english but not speaking regularly).

Here's a video about a french girl reading english word compared to american accent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39IVNt_zqKg

If you look at 1:37, she's going to read a question. Look how 'THE' becomes 'D'
Same thing at 2:30 THE sun becomes DE Sun

 

Is it wrong that I find that girl twice as hot based entirely on her accent? How the fuck Hermoine and Ginny are supposed to compete with that, I have no idea.

But what you notice about that video is that every word said feels totally different. That feels like a totally difficult thing to convey. Do peoples brains fill in the accent for you? What if you aren't familiar at all wtih French accents.

 

Back to the arrogant Harry, if you are going the genius route like Tony Stark, it's a bit more than just being a genius.

Tony is more than just a genius. He's a freaking prodigy. Age four he built his first circuit board. Age six, his first engine. And he graduated summa cum laude at age 17 from MIT. That alone would put him ahead of practically everyone (Harry would have to have at minimum Dumbledore+ level skills in school).

But a rapid climb like that has a price. Constantly being applauded by your teachers, being far more intelligent than your peers, and skipping grades like they were nothing would not endear him to others of his age-group or class level. He likely never had a friend in his entire life, without which he wasn't nearly as grounded as any of us would be. That is what caused most of Tony's arrogance: Nobody to keep him grounded, and no challenges worth mentioning at any point of his life, allowing him to do a bit of easy quick work for the company and party the rest of the time.

A Harry equivalent of this path would have him displaying great skill in an extremely early age, with him spending one or two years at Durmstrang before graduating, and then if the post-school schooling (Mastery?) is implemented, graduating at that early, beating everyone in his class by far and setting a new record score--possibly with some Academic equivalent of an Order of Merlin, all before the age of 17 (the point being he does this all before the age of majority).

 

I don't know, I think Jbern did a decent job of it as well in TLIL. Of course, he weaved it into the larger plot to help drive the storyline rather than being a distraction.

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Makes it a lot easier to read that way as well. Then, if you want to show the accent deepening out of fear or excitement, add the 'z' for the 'th' in an exclamation.

 

Probably the best way to have a 'prank-war' is to have it going on in the background. Like you get occasional moments of Harry or Fred/George carrying various supplies back from Hogsmeade, or during a conversation you hear a bang off in the distance and later see Malfoy covered in feathers. Less of seeing it front-and-center, and more of having just something that the characters are doing in their off-time. At least if you are just blending it in for flavor.

 

Yeah I think I'd prefer any pranking to be done in the back ground or severely limited.

The more subtle you can make the whole thing the better.

What I really hate are those scenes where everyone is in the great hall, something happens, and suddenly Malfoy is the victim of some "outrageous" prank. He runs off humiliated. Harry and his friends laugh. The whole school laughs. But you can almost feel the author laughing uproariously and he turns to the read and goes "You think this is funny too right?"

But it's not. They were trying way too hard.

God I hate it when that happens. So if you're gonna do a prank do it subtle, and do it well.

If it desolves into a "prank war" you probably stopped being subtle, or stopped being funny.

 

Yeah, Harry's school life would probably be not too dissimilar to that of the one in the Santi's BWL if not more prodigious. Top of his classes, skipping grades, published advances in various fields of magic.

Durmstrang works well because it means he doesn't have history with any of the canon characters and their interactions can show the seperation between him and his peers rather than if they'd all gone to school together. Plus if his parents are still alive it would show the distance between them, that they'd sent him off to a school in another country.

One problem I'm seeing is what it would be Harry's actually selling. Wizards don't really need more than their wands to fight. Potions supplies are possible, but to show Harry's true genius you'd want to have him inventing things. I kind of had a thought that he might be enchanting/runecrafting/charming (whatever you want to insert here) weapons of mass destruction that allow ordinary wizards to do acts of magic on par with Dumbledore and Voldemort. Give Harry a sort of Prometheus complex, and some resentment that he's as talented as someone like Dumbledore but not as powerful.

That would create a lot of conflict around the amount of power Harry wields and the destruction his weapons are causing, and I imagine it would attract Voldemort's attention. He wouldn't like ordinary wizards to be able to match him.

Otherwise I'm not really sure what he'd sell. I imagine commerce can be difficult in a world where people can conjure things.

On the topic of pranking (for the record, I'm against it in most forms in HP fiction), one problem I always have is when the pranks makes people do something embarrassing against their will. Like they get up and dance in front of the entire school, or Malfoy confesses his feelings for Goyle, etc. It's extremely prevalent in some stories, and I can't help but be bothered by how similar it is to the Imperius curse. I guess it must be some sort of compulsion, but you have to wonder why one way of making people do something they don't want to is illegal while another isn't.

One day I want to see a fic where Harry charms Malfoy to kiss Goyle in the middle of the Great Hall, and then the next day Aurors show up and lead him off to a year in Azkaban or something.