Does anyone know where I can see examples of how other artists have written a character with a strong British accent.

'ere now, 'oos tawkin' 'bout no straynge ahccents, guv?..Oy, which bloody one's the one? depends on which accent you're talking about, there's so many, that most Brits can peg you by social class and region after a coupla sentences..writing 'in dialect' isn't quite as popular as once it was, though gets used on occasion. All that comes to mind is a book called 'the House that Jack Built' series, by Asprin, sci-fi, they're time travellers to 1880's London..you'd probably have to go back further to get more examples. Then you have to figure in the slang, idioms, etc., some of which gets convoluted..heck, if you could heyar me, y'all maht thank I wus south of th' Masun-Dixun lahn..;) do tell..

Attached Link: Writing Dialect: It's in the Rhythm

This may be of interest to you. The last paragraph says it all for me.

thanks dialyn this is helpful Pakled, You are right I need to be a little more specific. Modern day, London, not extremely high social class but by no means low. Average London citizen but very well educated. Thanks

"Very well educated" and "by no means low [class]" would almost certainly mean that there were very few remaining social / regional / dialect markers in the speech. Most likely the person would speak a 'standard' English with perhaps only minor identifiers in the production of vowels. I don't think you could show this in written form. It is only the 'common folk' who have different transcriptable linguistic structures and dialect patterns. In other words just make him speak normally!

Thanks that was very very helpful. I apretiate it

Yes, you don't have to make it sound all cockney just to make them sound " British ". Just make sure you relay within the story somewhere that the person who you're writing about is infact from the UK. Give them a momentary back history on the character to strengthen his British background. Thats just my 2 Bob's your uncle! ( no he's not....)

Actually, Bob is my uncle. And Uncle Bob has been my uncle all my life. :)

I think it's more in the turn of a phrase than in the "writing in dialect". That can work, but it is hard to pull off without sounding forced or fake. I just read Bill Bryson's book In a Sunburned Country. It struck me as odd that he "sounded" British when I knew he was from Iowa, but then I found out that he was born in Iowa but had moved to the UK in his youth, lived there for about the next 20 years or so, and then moved back to the States. The result is that he writes with perfectly good English, but his phraseology sounds British, at least to me. It's a subtle thing, and probably hard to fake. So I'd suggest you read a lot of British authors to try and develop a feel for it. Or just write normally and let it drop that the character is from Britain, like DoctorWHO suggested. jon

yeah..sorry, I was just having fun..actually, the words that get used can be more defining..not to start a row, I fear, but it's just my 2p..I'm just being cruel to be kind..but to be honest, I'd agree with the above that there's easier ways to convey the charactarization (as an apologia to our friends across the water, it seems that yanks tend to reach for the hackneyed cockney, minus the rhyming slang, and get their knickers in a twist..;)

Attached Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk

Don't worry about the accent as much as the choice of words and how they're put together - Mum vs. Mom, Lift vs. Elevator, etc. If you want your characters to sound British, especially "average, middle class British," I'd suggest going to the BBC website and reading around there, especially the travelogues. (The travelogues tend to be written in a conversational manner so you'll pick up a lot of current phrases and phrasing.) If you want to hear different British accents, they do have video/audio clips all over the place as well. Cheers!

THANKS EVERYONE. I NOW HAVE A SOLID FOUNDATION TO BUILD ON. TIME TO GO TO WORK...

A couple of things: If using MS Word or something similar; set your spell-checker to English: UK and run through all the dialogue by the character, so that your spellings reflect the nationality (I thought of this from what crescent said). ie. programME, coloUr, mUm, etc. etc. and 'yes' rather than 'yeh' dominates too (I think - at least from my experience with brits) ALSO Is your character in a familiar environment (ie. does everyone around him/her have a similar accent)? I presume not, as there would not be much point in conveying accent apart from in initial descriptions and setting (and indeed using the UK spellings, etc - subtleties). If this character is in a foreign environment, you can occasionally mention, or preferrably show over the course of the story, how they pick up the local lilt, or regional phrases, etc. -when you're exposed to, or more correctly immersed in, a culture you tend to unwittingly pick up small mannerisms and characteristics...all subconscious! Just ideas...my >>1c<< worth you could say(not that we have those coins in Australia any more anyway!)

Speaking as a Brit, I think Americans try too hard sometimes :-) We have a multitude of staggeringly different dialects here in the UK, certainly more than the generic upper-class and cockney stereotypes (Lady Penelope and Parker, anyone? Or Dick Van Dyke in "Mary Poppins"? :-D) The only way is to listen and study... try British TV exports for example. But don't try too hard guys, we're all so different after all :-) The one accent that REALLY made me cringe and want to throw plates was Jonesy's "possessed" alter ego in the recent Dreamcatcher movie... I don't know of anyone over here who speaks like that, and if anyone does they're in a serious minority. It's such a clich and characters like that perpetuate the myth for Americans. Shame really :-D Okay guys, don't take that as a rant, just my penny worth :-D

Ewan McGregor playing Obi-Wan Kenobi too... god I could stick his light sabre where the sun won't shine ;-) It's so fake :-)

Just remember we don't all live in London, a common mistake:) And Cockney and Australian are not the same at all:) Also remember to study what area of Britain the character comes from. There are hundreds of different dialects here. I, for instance, speak with a completely different dialect from people who live in a town just 8 miles down the road. A few more miles and I have trouble understanding them at all:) Another thing to remember, to most Englishmen all Scots, Irish and Welsh sound the same, but they don't to each other:) Also It depends on how old the character is in some places. I am from Yorkshire and there are places where even generations sound differently, in some places there are old men who are completely incomprehensible, using very broad accents and dated vocabulary, whereas the younger generations tend to have a more understandable accent.

Some reading material: Tolkien (I always thought Sam Gamgee was from Somerset for some reason) Dickens (some fantastic characters too).

Wise words from pdblake there :-) Yorkshire does vary a lot, he's right. And yes, Cockney does not resemble Australian in any way, I've no idea where that came from ;-) Of all our indigenous accents, the most baffling must be Glaswegian (natives of Glasgow, Scotland)... at its strongest, this dialect is almost incomprehensible to anyone living outside that area, and even many Scottish people have a lot of trouble understanding it!! For a good demonstration of the Glaswegian accent, there was a Scottish comedy show on TV called "Rab C.Nesbitt", no idea if it's been exported, maybe it's been repeated on UK Gold, I dunno. Anyway I remember an episode where the phrase "commit suicide" is pronounced "camat sooiseed", and they even used to spell episode titles phonetically, for example "fitba" (translation: football) :-D Okay, guess I should say at this point that I'm not taking the piss, it's just light-hearted observation (just in case any Glaswegian members hang out here) ;-D

...and in response to sleiqu, we say "yeah" instead of "yes" a lot over here, probably as much as you guys... but again it depends a lot on class and region ;-) Fascinating really, it must be a minefield for Americans... we're so used to it all over here, but for Yanks it must be such a culture shock :-) Conversely, Americans seem to be able to identify their own local dialects whereas we can only differentiate between the "standard" American accent and the obvious Southern drawl... a friend in San Clemente was telling me about the "New York accent" only the other night, and I had to confess to her I didn't know there was one ;-D

Noo Yawk accent? Loin to tawk Noo Yawkish, youse!!! Fer fye dolliz I'll teach ya. I guess "yoo nevah hoid" of the northern city shift then either;)

I guess the closest resemblance between an american accent and an english (standard) would a new england accent (roughly speaking a "boston accent") even though it's still very different.

The southern drawl is way different for example in Texas and Louisiana. I guess the Southern Drawl is a collective name for a speaking disorder, lol.

I've been to Britain twice (once that I remember - I was 2yrs old the first time I went!), and it is very true that accents vary greatly... Same thing in every country! We had an English GAP student staying with us for about 6 months recently. He was from Yorkshire, and his mother has a VERY strong (low[er] class) accent. He himself had had elocution lessons to overcome ending up with this accent himself. He therefore had what I guess you could call a highly cultured accent, but over the course of his stay (he leaves for the UK in a couple of weeks), it has been well noted that he has picked up many local mannerisms, and even some of the accent! What I mentioned about 'yeah' and 'yes' was just a little such thing that was noticed with our Pom. Of course there is great variety, but I think that that little reference might yet be quite applicable for the upper-middle class 'typical' British accent (I'm avoiding 'stereotypical', because that's always over the top and misleading). Perhaps that generational thing mentioned earlier applies with this situation, and it certainly seems to in Australia.