Trope Workshop:Accent Depundent

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It's been said that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America are two countries Separated by a Common Language. These days, that might truly be said about the entire Anglosphere. Despite the homogenising effects of mass media, different English-speakers continue to speak English differently. Some of the differences are:

1. Pronunciation: Does "caught" sound like "court" or "cot"?
2. Vocabulary: Are "chips" thin crunchy things you eat with dip, or long chewy things you eat with vinegar?
3. Spelling: Can "storey", as in "floor", be spelled the same as "story", as in "tale"?

One of the consequences of this is that wordplay may not always work as well for one English-speaker as it does for another. In the British Isles, for example, words that sound the same in London may sound very different in Bristol, and words that rhyme in England and Wales may not do so in Scotland and Ireland. And in America, words that sound the same in New York may sound very different in Pittsburgh, and words that rhyme in the US may not do so in Canada. And a commonplace word in the United Kingdom may not even exist in the United States.

This page is for puns, rhymes, and other forms of wordplay that work in some varieties of a language, but not in others. These typically involve forms of English spoken in different countries, but may also be accounted for by regional or class differences within a country. Moreover, English is not the only language with diverse forms: Québécois sounds very different from Parisian French, and Spaniards do not speak Spanish the same way Mexicans do. In order to belong here, all that's necessary is for a play on words to be comprehensible to one group of people who speak a language, and incomprehensible (or, at least, less obvious), to another group of people who speak the same language.

Thanks to books, movies, music, and jet planes, most of us have some idea of how English is spoken in different parts of the world. If you're looking for more information, check out this page for a concise break-down of the pronunciation differences between some of the major English accents.

Examples are listed by country of origin.

Examples of Accent Depundent include:

British English

Advertising

• The AA (a motoring service) once ran a series of ads based around the slogan "Just AAsk". Works fine in some parts of Southern England, where "ask" is pronounced with a darkened and elongated A sound. In most of the UK (and indeed, most other countries), it doesn't work at all.

Other

• Supporters of Newcastle United FC are known collectively as the "Toon Army" ("toon" being how town is pronounced locally). It's a play on the Japanese word tsunami; depending on exactly how strong a Newcastle local's accent is, they're either too-nahh-mee/syoo-nahh-mee or too-naww-mee/syoo-naww-mee.

American English

Anime and Manga

• In the English dub of Pokémon, the original protagonist's name is Ash Ketchum. It's a play on the franchise's slogan, "Gotta catch 'em all!", which works well in some accents and only roughly works in others.

Video Games

• Several English Pokémon names are portmanteaus of words that might share a vowel pronunciation. Examples include Squawkabilly (squawk + Rockabilly), Gastly (gas + ghastly) and Kangaskhan (kangaroo + Genghis Khan).
  • Sword and Shield feature an inept scientist named Cara Liss. It's a play on the word "careless", but it only works if your accent is rhotic and you pronounce "Cara" a certain way.
  • Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl introduced an area called Ramanas Park. "Ramanas" is a play on the American pronunciation of "reminisce", hinting at the area's purpose.
• The original Paper Mario features a bespectacled Koopa named Kent C. ("can't see").
  • The first sequel has a pro wrestler named Rawk Hawk. "Rawk" is supposed to be a homonym of rock, and the two words are supposed to rhyme.

Western Animation

• In The Simpsons episode "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot", a pair of robot fighting commentators twice describe a blade-wielding contestant as "killing [its opponent] softly... with his saw!" It's a reference to the Roberta Flack song "Killing Me Softly with His Song"; whether saw sounds anything like song depends on how you pronounce them.
  • Similarly, the episode title "Strong Arms of the Ma" relies on Ma rhyming with law (as in the phrase "long arm of the law").

Other

• A lot of internet slang relies on the blending of vowel sounds in American accents, like hawt ("hot"), wut ("what") and smol ("small").
• In the US, many product names include the letters "EZ" (pronounced "ee-zee") to signify how easy they are supposed to be to use. Pronouncing it "ee-zed" doesn't quite have the same effect.