World of Warcraft®

Hello everyone! :-)

I had a small question that I carried around with myself for quiet some time now and I would love if you could help me out.

Those of you who read my post in the Compliment Thread might know that I as a German am not particularly confident of my English. Here on the forums, I have time to think about what I want to write and also a spellchecker - both don't apply in the actual game.
Thus I was thinking of ways to make my insecurity part of my role-play by rolling a character that doesn't speak "Common" (or "Orcish") as his first language.

Now I was wondering what race might be suited best for this kind of background. The most obvious choice that comes to my mind would be Draenei, but I really don't want to play one of those (No offense, you Draenei! ^_^"). The thing with other races like the Blood elves is that they (at least as I experienced it on 'Die Aldor') might not speak orcish that much but rather speak in their own language - and a Blood Elf who either only speaks a fairly broken Orcish or flawed Thalassian would be somewhat strange.

I really hope that you can help me because I don't want to play something that's inconsistent to the lore - this is such a great role-play Server, I want to do my best when contributing to it. :)

Yours
Fendrik

You could actually play any race with a broken common/orcish. For instance, you could play a dumb human/orc. But beyond that, practically any race that isn't human or orc works, since you can make up plenty of reasons for why your character hasn't learned that language properly, most of them being that your character only had reason to engage with other races recently, and therefore has not had much time.

You could also just play your character as someone who is slow (not in mind, just in general), and by this give yourself the time to form the sentences the way you want them to be.

29/04/2011 22:31Posted by Razitshakra

practically any race that isn't human or orc works, since you can make up plenty of reasons for why your character hasn't learned that language properly

Of the various races available, I can see the following having excellent excuses to (a) speak poor common/orcish, and (b) speak poor common/orcish in preference to a fluent version of their own tongue:

1) Worgen - specifically, a worgen Gilnean who either refuses to or cannot leave the wolf-man form, whose jaws might give a good excuse for broken Common.

2) Goblin - goblins are stereotypically multi-lingual as benefits business, but considering the great range of geography that goblins cover, multi-lingual does not necessarily include orcish, or even goblin, really. More pertinently, as orcish is the new "lingua Franca" for the Bilgewater goblins, it would make sense to stick to orcish in preference, even when still learning to master it.

3) Troll - not that a troll would not speak in troll, but rather that the wide variety of player-made personal accents would easily disguise your mis-spellings or hesitations. Whilst some players of trolls type no accents, and some players of trolls type with an accent only in orcish, some players of trolls type accents in both orcish and Zandali -- and all of these choices are perfectly correct, given the nature of accents. This option is of less use however if your familiarity with English makes reading it difficult, as trying to red the variations on "Darkspear" accents would cause as many problems as being able to disguise misspellings would solve.

So in the end, for your specific concerns, I'd most recommend either always-wolfen-worgen, or else always-speaking-orcish goblin.

That said, the above advice [anything has a good excuse to be poor at orcish/common] is true, but some race choices have an easier time explaining why they do not speak their "native" tongue in preference.

Blood Elves would have a rough time to speak orcish i belive, same goes for the Goblins of Kezan and of course the space goats.

Debatable it is even possible that different regions of humans have different dialects. Although this is only present in game for the Gilneans, I would imagine someone with a dialect from near Arathi would talk different and perhaps even have trouble trying to talk normal "common" as spoken in Stormwind for example.

I've known of people playing mutes for just this reason. It's an interesting type of character to play anyway, but it might help you out if you're not so confident with your English (which, on the forums at least, is pretty great, I should point out!). As a mute you'd just have to emote in English - admittedly quite a lot to make up for your silence.

30/04/2011 11:42Posted by Eweger

I've known of people playing mutes for just this reason. It's an interesting type of character to play anyway, but it might help you out if you're not so confident with your English (which, on the forums at least, is pretty great, I should point out!). As a mute you'd just have to emote in English - admittedly quite a lot to make up for your silence.

Admittedly, to help this, the list of "standard" /emotes [including those with animations] has steadily grown with each patch - I keep discovering new ones [though I await with 'bated breath the upcoming /map animation, for all explorer/adventurer/archivist type characters]. Whilst that would not completely see you through by any means, it would certainly help.

Just remember that /shake is NOT "x shakes their head."

My poor toons have shaken their rears far too many times because I've forgotten that >.<

Just remember that /shake is NOT "x shakes their head."

My poor toons have shaken their rears far too many times because I've forgotten that >.<

Priceless.

If I recall correctly, there are some add ons that can help you with your spelling. I can't remember the names, but maybe someone else does?

Thank you so much for all your replies! :-)

The idea of a foreign human is something that came to my mind as well and I find it rather interesting since I really do like Fendrik. :) Still, I wasn't sure about whether people from other human nations or regions speak different from Stormwind- or Lorderon-Humans. I must say that I didn't find a satisfying answer on WoWWiki, it's simple stated that Humans speak Common. They may know many other languages, however, as they deal with many different creatures.
I think this means that they might now the Dwarf- Night Elf- or even the Orc-Language but generally, all humans speak Common as their "mother language".

Still, I guess it could work if played out like a strong accent or dialect so I'll most likely go with this concept. Thanks a lot, guys! :D :D

Oh, and thanks to Taniella I stumbled upon "Misspelled", a nice and simple spell-checker AddOn. Can't wait to try it out! :)