do you thee and thou and whence?

[Gnarlo]

Nope, standard (Southern) English around the table, occasionally spiced up with a bad accent for certain important characters.

Heck, one of my players is Canadian ... we Georgia boys have a hard enough time understanding what she's saying without throwing a bunch of thees and thous on top of it...

 

[Angcuru]

Ah dinnae ken wha ye spake of, laddie.

 

[Mouseferatu]

We use modern English and slang, although when I play a character, I try to do one thing differently:

I do not use contractions. You would be surprised at how this affects the attention of the other players. Acting as if I cannot and will not contract a phrase seems to add a slightly different air then when you're like using all these different modern terms and stuff at the table.

Heh. If I tried that, my group would probably just yell at me for trying to sound like Data.

 

[Piratecat]

Usually no. However, Glaswegian slang has various things left over from the days of old english and old scots, so things like "ye" often creep in.

You're speaking in Glaswegian? How in God's name does anyone understand one another? A friend of ours from Glasgow once confided the secret to us. "We can't understand one another, either," he said. "We just sit around and grunt."

Actually, I'm just jealous that I'm not in Scotland.

 

[LGodamus]

Straight up modern man....

Lots of 4 letter words as well.....lol

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

There are a variety of language structures and accents around the table for different characters and regions.

There are also a variety of actual accents. Mostly midwestern and Southern, a Californian, and one or two straight up speakers of high academic. And let me tell you terms like homosocial have to be translated but quick.

We had a French Canadian character for a while, a piratical character-supposedly that cinematic accent is based on the Legendary Disney Treasure Island Long John Silver and the actor based that on Welshmen he'd grown up with-, we've had a few violent Quaker characters ala Moby Dick, and we had a Mississippi Delta bard for a long while.

 

[drnuncheon]

I put down 'speak like normal folks' but I guess that's not quite true.

I avoid pop-culture references, for one, and I do try to speak as the character would if they spoke modern English. For example, someone like my wizard Ciramar or Tensin Naïlo from my Freeport Story Hour speaks in slow, considered tones, each word chosen before they begin. On the other hand, Kraydn the sailor (from my Planescape Story Hour) not only has the distinctive speech patterns of his homeland, but he also tends to talk before thinking, and winds up stumbling over his words or getting flustered as he runs out of words and tries to think up some more.

My biggest complaint about thee'ers and thou'ers is that most people that use them don't know how to use them properly. 'Thee' and 'thou' used to be the familiar words, not the formal ones...

J

 

[scadgrad]

Nope, standard (Southern) English around the table, occasionally spiced up with a bad accent for certain important characters.

Heck, one of my players is Canadian ... we Georgia boys have a hard enough time understanding what she's saying without throwing a bunch of thees and thous on top of it...

Ah yes, the beautiful, yet classic Southern accent. As opposed to the nasally Appalachian twang that we have here in Tennessee. Y'all (or y'uns) sound so much more educated than us hill folk

We're the same way though, mostly normal voice except for the occasional outrageous accent. These are usually lifted from MP's Holy Grail or some other film. Bad accents are funny & keep the mood light & reinforce the fact that it's a game.

No thee's & thou's...don't want to be mistaken for those Ren Fair types

YMMV...

 

[Nifft]

Devils Do It in 9 Layers

My demons (& other old souls) tend to use the older forms, while modern people & beasts tend to speak like normal folks.

-- Nifft

 

[arwink]

Mostly like normal folk, although I'll slip in the thees and thou's when I want the Players to understand that the person they're talking to is coming from an archaic, chivalry driven culture.