How we talk is part of our personality. How we talk tells volumes about us: our nationality, religion, education, and more. Every person, every culture, has their own recognizable speech patterns. Applied to our favorite hobby, this can help us roleplay characters of diverse origins and backgrounds with greater realism and color, which in turn helps our imaginary worlds come to brighter life.

Who's that man swearing colorfully, his mighty oaths larded with nautical references? The pirate! Who's that old woman with the high-pitched singsong patter? The fishwife. She's from a village of the Gudari people so her accent is different from ours. And that knight who just called upon Saint Illusia must be from Caer Paraffyn, where the saint is most popular... See the possibilities?

Designing unique or evocative speech patterns for your NPCs takes just a little work. Mainly, it's a matter of reading widely and being observant. Check out Lord of the Rings and see how the orcs talk. There's no mistaking their innate nastiness. Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series points out some of the uniquenesses of Martian biology and culture through the way the Barsoomians swear ("by the [egg]shell of my first ancestor!").

Observe the people you meet. People at work, on the street, and especially people of other nationalities or cultures. Try to figure out what makes their speech patterns distinctive and you'll start assembling the raw material you need.

There are four distinguishing speech pattern elements that I notice most often: intonation, grammar and pronunciation, common expressions and phrases, and gestures.

1. Intonation

Without paying attention to the words themselves, you can often tell a lot about a person just by the way their speech sounds. This is usually an indication of a person's ethnic or cultural origin.

How might a person sound? Some possible styles of intonation, and what I usually associate with them, include:

• Singsong (rising and falling in pitch): sounds foreign, humorous.
• Harsh (lots of hard k's and kh's): sounds aggressive; can you say Klingon?
• Low, guttural (sounds made from back of throat): sounds bestial, primitive.
• Sonorous (low and slow): sounds dignified.
• Birdlike, trilling (fast, high-pitched): sounds hurried.
• Melodious: sounds like singing or cooing.

2. Grammar and Pronunciation

How a person pronounces words and puts sentences together can reveal much about them--usually about their education, and by extension what tier of society they're from. It's a common writer's device to portray street and rural folk by having them speak with twisted or broken grammar, and at the opposite end of the spectrum, to portray high society folk by having them speak in a more formal and precise manner.

Some possible grammatical and pronunciation styles and what I tend to associate them with include:

• Precise and formal: suggests education, wealth, and status.
• Curt and clipped: suggests authority, sternness, or meanness.
• Flowery: suggests foppishness, flightiness, or pompousness.
• Broken and rough: suggests lack of education and breeding, rural, or nautical origin.
• Broken and halting: suggests a foreigner trying to speak an unfamiliar language.
• Lisping: suggests effeminacy or decadence.

For example:

"And if yuz got a drop o' drink on yer lordly person, Mithraik's yer man fer life, sir!"

Did you think "pirate?" If you did, you're right. This rough seafarer is from the pages of Allan Cole and Chris Bunch's novel "Kingdoms of the Night".

3. Common Expressions

There are some words and phrases we use very frequently, especially when we're startled, frightened, angry, or mean to insult someone. Interestingly, the ways someone cusses, and what one cusses by, form part of his speech signature. The same goes with our choice of words when we try to compare something with something else, or try to express an idea with examples.

For example, a hunter might describe something moving fast as "fleet as a frightened deer," while a sailor might describe the same as "swifter'n a hungry shark." Elements that often go into such signature expressions include:

• Names of gods, saints, devils, etc.
• Familiar objects, creatures, and natural phenomena.
• Allusions to events from mythology.
• Allusions to historical figures and events.
• Allusions to historical or mythical objects and artifacts.
• Comparisons to objects or animals held unclean, stupid, evil, etc.

Examples:

"Ringing like the bells of Beng Kishi."
- from Alan Burt Aker's Kregen novels; compares the sensation of being knocked on the head to a famous saint's bells.

"Die, dog!"
- usually the last thing a desperate villain says to Conan the Cimmerian before Conan splits his skull ...

4. Gestures

Lastly, the non-vocal part of speech is part of the pattern and can sometimes be as telling and interesting as the speech itself. Gestures may come from the character's cultural heritage, or may be a personal expression of some private, important concern.

For example, Indians have very expressive hands. Their hands are in constant motion while talking. In Raymond Feist's novel "Daughter of the Empire", the character Papewaio has a habit of scratching a chin scar when he's worried.

Depending where you're from, you will probably have a repertoire of gestures you commonly use that your friends are familiar with. To convey the idea that a different character is talking, you could try to come up with a suite of gestures different from your norm. Consider the following ideas:

• Expressionless and stiff; highly appropriate for an Oriental Adventures daimyo!
• Head wagging for "yes," nodding for "no".
• Substituting hand gestures for nodding and head shaking.
• Fast, flowery hand gestures.
• Deliberate, stately gestures.
• Clenched-fist gestures to suggest aggressiveness or authority.
• Baring teeth in a snarl.
• Sneering.
• Blinking.
• Different forms of greeting gestures.

Star Trek and Star Wars provide many good examples of how the alienness of different races are brought out through gesture and posture. The monkeylike Ferengi, the introspective Vulcans, and the rough and warlike Klingons all display their natures clearly through their body language.

Well, that's it!  I hope you find these useful in your games.