: Re: How to describe accents? India has a diverse range of languages and accents. Moreover, people from different parts of the country have different accents of speaking the same language as well.

@Steve161

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Simply telling, e.g.

he said with a heavy Gujarati accent

would be my solution, but you say that isn't enough for you. Which is fair.

What is the most characteristic aspect of the accent you wish to describe? What would stand out most, and make it most recognisable? Is it the way a certain vowel is pronounced? Or some consonant? Is it that particular words are pronounced differently? I would focus your description on the element that stands out most.

For example, if I were describing the speech of a man from rural Andalusia, I might write

"The event will commence" - he pronounced it 'commenthe' - "at ..."

Or I might just describe:

His 'S's and 'Z's were all soft 'Th's, making it hard for me to follow what he said.

Of a woman from France, I might write

Her English was impeccable, except that her 'N's had a slight nasal quality.

In addition to accent, it might be that a person from one place would use particular words more often than a person from another place. Such distinctions are more related to dialect than to accent, but they too offer a way to convey the location flavour you're looking for.

What I would avoid is spelling out the accent phonetically (see also tvtropes Funetik Aksent). Unless done very sparingly, it is distracting, and it can be particularly hard to read for English-as-Second-Language speakers, who are, according to this source, ~70% of all English speakers. Do take a look at the tvtropes link however for some examples of phonetic accent done well (and some examples of it being done badly).

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