What do the various Elder Races sound like?

[Beoferret]

How do you all imagine what Aldryami, trolls, etc. sound like when they speak their own languages and when they speak human languages? Do Mostali speak in a veritable monotone? Do Uz incorporate clicks and other sounds that might carry in the dark into their speaking (even when using Heortling or Tradetalk)? Do they have deep, rumbling voices or are they actually high-pitched and insect-like (in contrast to what one might expect when looking at them)? Do Aldryami rustle their leaves or rub patches of barkskin together when agitated? Thoughts?  

[AndreJarosch]

Uz speak is a hard german accent when they speak a human language. 

[Akhôrahil]

Dragonewt speech is highly sibilant, and you need a cleft tongue to speak Auld Wyrmish properly.

[Baron Wulfraed]

25 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Dragonewt speech is highly sibilant, and you need a cleft tongue to speak Auld Wyrmish properly.

<sharpening dagger> "You wish to speak Auld Wyrmish? Stick out your tongue!"

 

[Akhôrahil]

33 minutes ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

<sharpening dagger> "You wish to speak Auld Wyrmish? Stick out your tongue!"

That's in King of Sartar, basically.

[Beoferret]

1 hour ago, AndreJarosch said:

Uz speak is a hard german accent when they speak a human language. 

Northern German? Though it'd be kind of funny to have trolls speak with a kinda of sing-songy Alpine German accent (esp. if it was Schweitzerdeutsch in inspiration.) 

[AndreJarosch]

47 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

Northern German? Though it'd be kind of funny to have trolls speak with a kinda of sing-songy Alpine German accent (esp. if it was Schweitzerdeutsch in inspiration.) 

Have a look at (i think i remember correctly) Trollpak, and the Uz Chapter of the Glorantha book (for the Hero Wars RPG). 

Hoomans!

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, Beoferret said:

Northern German? Though it'd be kind of funny to have trolls speak with a kinda of sing-songy Alpine German accent (esp. if it was Schweitzerdeutsch in inspiration.) 

Not an Austrian Ahrnie accent?

[Agentorange]

They sound like whatever you want them to sound like......it's all made up you know  😄

( burn the blasphemer, burn him I say ....)

[Sir_Godspeed]

I like to think Trolls have fairly deep, rumbling voices, with implied infrasound. They've got big ol' chests after all.

Makes me think of Warcraft Taurens, admittedly.

[Rob Darvall]

My Morocanth all sound like Frank Spencer (I've no idea how this happenned)

[Bill the barbarian]

I had a baboon that talked like a bad film noir detective!

[jajagappa]

The Ducks in my games tend to have lisps.

I've not tended to characterize the voice quality of dwarfs, dragonewts, or elves to date.  Dwarf speech patterns though tend to be like reading an Instruction Manual filled with incorrectly "translated" words (though it varies by caste).  Dragonewts that talk to humans tend to have an extremely bizarre and nonsensical vocabulary (if they actually talk to humans and not just take whatever actions they feel like taking).

[Beoferret]

23 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Dragonewts that talk to humans tend to have an extremely bizarre and nonsensical vocabulary (if they actually talk to humans and not just take whatever actions they feel like taking).

So... almost as if they were reading a transcript of dialogue put through Google translate a few times?

 

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Beoferret said:

So... almost as if they were reading a transcript of dialogue put through Google translate a few times?

That would be one approach. 

I usually select random fragments from certain preferred texts.

[Leingod]

I like the portrayal King of Dragon Pass had with the dwarves (or at least this is how they remember them; it's been a while for me), where they're so to-the-point and so hate wasting time that they cut out as many words as they possibly can without rendering themselves unintelligible. It's basically caveman talk, but out of brusqueness rather than stupidity, and if they need to they can and will drown you into long, verbose technical info about something related to their task. Personally, for similar reasons I imagine that they'd also speak as quickly as they could without making themselves harder to understand (because repeating yourself is even more inefficient than speaking slowly), so they always sound very rude and impatient. Their enunciation is immaculate, though.

I also lean towards the "very deep and rumbling" interpretation for trolls; in fact I like to think that Uz (especially the Uzuz and Uzdo) actually have to take care to "pitch up" their voices in some cases, because their voices can actually get so low as to be incomprehensible to human ears. Similarly, I think you would actually feel the war cries of a charging Uz horde rather than hear it. Except in the case of trollkin, obviously, who on top of all the other ways they're so un-Uzlike are also shrill little bastards whose awful cries can be absolutely torturous to Uz ears and still pretty darn annoying to others.

I haven't really got anything in particular in mind for other races, though, other than the obvious, well-known one that dragonewts (at least when speaking human tongues) are very sibilant.

[Joerg]

Mostali might sound tinny like through an old landline phone.

It is quite likely that knowledge of Tradetalk leads to Openhandism. There might be memetic countermeasures to that developed by the Nidan Decamony.

The human slave population in Slon may speak a simplified dialect of Mostali, possibly with elements of Brithini.

 

Darktongue is a shared language, spoken by the hardly corporeal Dehori, the humanoid trolls and trollkin, the bordeline humanoid dark elves, and darkness-worshiping humans. It has a written form which must be almost as wide-spread as the Theyalan scripts, at least in and around Kethaela and Ralios.

When humans (and to some extent trollkin) speak Darktongue, it will lack the dark undertones of Darksense emanations true beings of Darkness add to it - a bit like how the Swedish of the Swedish-speaking part of Finland lacks the elaborate melodies that make mainland Swedish almost a sing-song.

 

Aldryami might sound like Treebeard using helium or played at multiple speed. Their biology is similar, but they are so much smaller and hastier.

 

 

[Akhôrahil]

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

When humans (and to some extent trollkin) speak Darktongue, it will lack the dark undertones of Darksense emanations true beings of Darkness add to it - a bit like how the Swedish of the Swedish-speaking part of Finland lacks the elaborate melodies that make mainland Swedish almost a sing-song.

I will not be able to get the notion that humans speaking Darktongue sound like Moomintrolls out of my head now!

[Joerg]

I would associate few of the moomins with Darkness, but otherwise, why not?

[Darius West]

When I GM I do them this way:

Aldryami- Whispery, musical intonation, emphasis on "Shhh" noises, a lot of directional gestures and hunting signs, undulating run-on sentences.

Baboons- Screechy, hooting, growling, farting and scratching.

Broos- Slurping, leering, gurgling, booming for big, or "Peter Lorre-esque" for small.

Dragonewts- Hissing sibilants, guttural croaking, decontextualized pauses that relate to non-verbal Dragonewt grammar such as scent and telepathy. 

Ducks- Normal but slightly high pitched voices, more like Donald Duck speak when they get agitated.

Mostali- Monotone, precise, clipped and quick spoken, silence as they choose their responses carefully.

Morokanth- Snuffly, squeaky, sometimes growly, some troll slang.

Newtlings- Croaky, deep voiced, gurgling, musical intonation, lots of Pavic slang.

Trolls- Booming, deep, guttural, chewing noises, hard consonants, farts,  plenty of gestures as they work well with darkspeech radar.