inventing regional accents

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

k, yeah, I need some help with this.

Version 1.0 of Peks has a very simple spoken accent expression. "You" became "ya" and "your" and "You're" both became "yer"

<shrug>

I'm not sure it made the whole speech sound consistant. so I'm trying to nail it down now.

is it too much or over the top if I just change the "ou" dipthong found in "you" to an "uh" sound? thus "you're" becomes "yer" and "your" becomes more of a "yore." This vague rule is applied to all 'ou' combos in this particular group's speach.

Too much? Not enough?

The other thought is to try and imitate welsh accent, which I haven't heard enough of to attempt it. Is there a simple way to poke a welsh accent out there?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

another option has been suggested to me. syntax switching.
I need brainstorming on acceptable syntax switching. Nothing so dramatic as yoda, for example, but something frequently seen.

[Entsuropi]

Afaik, welsh speak in a sing-song accent. But don't really change the letters much.

[EUOL]

Here's the thing I've found with dialects.  Some people like them, but they annoy A LOT of people.  I think the changes you described are good ones, and are subtle enough, that people will get the idea without being too distracted.  I'd avoid going any deeper into it, though.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

k, yeah, I need some help with this.

Version 1.0 of Peks has a very simple spoken accent expression. "You" became "ya" and "your" and "You're" both became "yer"
<snip>
is it too much or over the top if I just change the "ou" dipthong found in "you" to an "uh" sound? thus "you're" becomes "yer" and "your" becomes more of a "yore." This vague rule is applied to all 'ou' combos in this particular group's speach.

Ah...huh? I'm confused. In the dialect of English I was raised with, "your" and "you're" sound the same...exactly like "yore" as in "days of yore." So I'm really not sure what you're saying...

Hm...looking on m-w.com, you're and your have the same pronunciations listed in the same order, except for an extra one for "you're" making it sound like "you" with an "er" sound added on the end.

I've seen accents before using a "yore" spelling for "your" and I've never been able to figure out how it differs from the usual "your" pronunciation. But on m-w only the 3rd and 4th pronunciations of "your" and "you're" are shared by "yore." Personally I'd say that the vowel of "your" and "you're" tends to neutralize in plain speech, but when I emphasize the word for some reason ("You're the one who volunteered; this is all your fault.") it definitely sounds like "yore."

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

actually, I'm going with the "You-rr" pronounciation of "you're." (part of the acent, y'know) Which then SHOULD be changed to "Ya-rr" if I was consistant (since You is now Ya) but "yar" is far too pirate-y

when I stress "You're" it's almost always because I want to stress the second person pronoun bit, you I very clearly say "you-rr"

The final changes are these, unless my readers get annoyed:
You -> ya
your -> yer
you're -> yor
to -> ta (i think i may be inconsistant with how I've rendered these)
and most ending "g" sounds dropped.

[stacer]

I think my problem with the "ya" has always been that we use it ourselves in a standard American dialect, but only when we're not stressing the word "you." So reading it consistently as "ya" really bothers me, because it fits sometimes and doesn't others--languages are often like that, especially English, that schwa (or however that's spelled) some vowels when they're not being emphasized. Example--bold on the words that I'm emphasizing in these sentences.

Ya didn't have to tell me that.

Well, it wasn't me, it was you.

So reading "ya" all the time is annoying to me in a very specific way. It doesn't read naturally.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, i need something that sounds rural. That seemed natural. I guess I don't have a problem with it becuase it's SUPPOSED to sound strange. It's something we hear, but not HOW we hear it.

[Oldie Black Witch]

SE, be very careful. you don't want to do something that makes your character difficult to understand.  I think ya and yer are fine, and dropping the gs off words will also work. Hoever, having yor for you're is probably a little over-the-top. When I read it in your post, I had to stop and think about what you were doing. That's story death, and I haven't even read the story. The ya thing might get irritating after a while.

I think that a syntax change would be better, perhaps something simple like putting adjectives after the nouns (which would only work in a parallel universe setting and may be a little too overt), or only using "is" and "was" for all the be verbs.

Edited for hubris.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in and say that I agree with Stacer. The "ya" seems too forced in much of your dialogue and stands out when it shouldn't.