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Accents - Nature or Nurture?
#1
Right, so, my question is this: if a character of a race that is known to carry an accent (eg. Troll, Dwarf, etc.) is raised in an environment away from said accent, would he/she develop the accent regardless as a member of his/her race, or would the character in question instead develop no accent?

To clarify, we'll say that for some off-the-wall reason a Dwarf grows up in a family of Humans, with little contact with members of his own race. The Dwarf in question is raised and taught by the Humans. Maybe he becomes a Brewmaster or Priest or something, I dunno - but would he develop the iconic Dwarf accent?

The reason I ask is out of curiosity, because this phenomena can be observed in the real world as well, in immigrants. Say a native Chinese family moves to the USA and has a daughter here. The girl would grow up here and would develop an accent distinctly different from that of her parents, regardless of her Chinese heritage.

So, what say you CotH? I'm eager to see what you all have to say.
"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."
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#2
I say in real life it is all nurture, but for some of the races in Azeroth it may be different. Trolls develop a lot of their accent because their tusks make it impossible to use certain sounds, same with Orcs speaking Common. For Dwarves, in the situation you said, they would probably not have much of an accent. In fact, if you've read Night of the Dragon, the leader of the group of Dwarves only faked his accent in front of his own people, and could speak without it because he had lived in Stormwind for a long time.
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#3
Accents aren't genetical, at all. What we see as a troll accent is the troll language carrying over some into common and orcish,which produces the accent. A troll who was raised by humans would have common as their first language, so they wouldn't have an accent in common, but they would in a troll language.
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#4
I´d think a troll would still have an accent, due to the reason ulteo29 said, their tusks. Common and Troll are probably very different sounding and since the Trolls ahve those huge tusks we can assume that their langauge is adapted around them, while common never had a need to take such things into account.
All makt åt Tengil, vår befriare!

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#5
A quick character situation, then.

Another reason for my posing this question was because I have a Troll, Zambanti, who I'm currently testing out. I wanted him to have been raised by Orcs, but was cautious because of the problem of the accent, as well as because I didn't want him to feel too "mary-sue-ish". Also, I didn't know is it was acceptable, but I digress.

Point -> Would it be safe to assume that a Troll raised by Orcs would speak with a reduced accent? That is to say, he would speak in relation to his tusks like most Trolls, but would not carry the iconic "island speech" of his race.
"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."
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#6
I suppose that's possible, but I'd be worried that people would do it just to get out of typing the accent when they aren't speaking their own language.
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#7
Saying mon at the end of every sentence has nothing to do with having fangs, it would be reduced, some words are probably real accents and not caused by fangs. Do try this at home:

Stretch your mouth out horizontally with your fingers, now try to speak english. That's how your troll would talk!
Mabra Dragonbasher- A battle hungry dwarven lady, hirable for personal protection and for larger tasks requiring violence.
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#8
Also make sure to keep the timeline in mind, the Orcs and Trolls joined forces only about seven or ten years ago.
All makt åt Tengil, vår befriare!

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#9
Right.

Well, I think I know how I'm going to be able to work it into the timeline, though the story requires a bit of editing to do so...

And thanks for all the input, guys. Helped me a lot. Please, continue the convo if you wish.
"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."
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