Hagrid Eyes

In my excessive reading of Harry Potter fanfiction, I’ve often been astounded to find, in the middle of stories, a note from the author complaining that “Hagrid’s accent is too annoying to write, so I’m not going to.” It’s astounding mostly because I’m perfectionist enough that I cannot understand releasing a half-finished story, not when something so glaringly obvious is still undone; but, as well as that, I’m astounded because Hagrid’s accent just isn’t very hard.

It’s nowhere near as bad as the still-legible Scottish of, say, James Kelman or Irvine Welsh, e.g.

They aw went tae fuckin Cambridge or wherever, n ye dinnae git in thaire unless yuv goat brains. Ye kin bet they didnae start daein silly walks n aw that shite in thir exams. (Irvine Welsh, “Glue”, p. 41)

J.K Rowling’s Hagrid-speech is more about the illusion of local colour. It might be irritating to write Hagrid in character — fawning over Dumbledore, using phrases like “thumping good one”, and so on — but there’s very little to his accent.

I collected all of his dialogue from “Philosopher’s Stone” through “Goblet of Fire”, roughly nine and a half thousand words (thank heavens for e-book piracy!), and took a good look at it. The conclusion is that his accent, such as it is, consists of pronouncing “for” as “fer”, “to” as “ter”, “you” as “yeh” and “your”/”you’re” as “yer”; dropping the “g” from the “-ing” suffix; and occasionally dropping the “t” from words like “just”. Using “summat” for “something” is by far the most interesting change; and that’s pretty much it.

I’m not sure how many of the discrepancies are OCR error, but it seems that Rowling isn’t very consistent. Of the 250-odd instances of the word “to”, for example, just under 200 of them were accented into “ter”. The other 50 were left as regular ol’ tee-oh.

word frequency
aren’ 3
aren’t 4
d’yeh 6
do you 3
mornin’ 5
morning 2
o’ 64
of 52
on’y 6
only 10
tha’ 3
that 68
tha’s 6
that’s 21
teh 2
ter 198
to 52
wan’ 8
want 16
wha’ 3
what 52
won’ 5
won’t 7
yeh 212
you 105
you’d 1
yeh’d 7
y’are 2
yeh’re 13
you’re 2
yeh’ve 16
you’ve 3
yeh’ll 13
you’ll 5
yer 86
your 7

Anyhow, as a public service, I offer this little Hagridizer script. It’s a five-minute job, to be sure, and can’t correct any serious defects — Hagrid will sound out-of-character talking about stochastic calculus no matter how much you accent it — but hey, at least it’ll be consistent.

   
This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2004, in the categories “projects” and “fanfiction”.
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Thus far, 6 responses.

Said Posky:
April 1st, 2006 at 6:18 am

Thanks! I can’t help, after reading your very well written explanation and the linked article about “illusion of local colour”, but think of Jeff Foxworthy and his assertion that 15 minutes outside any major metropolitan area, everyone is the same.

I am now more convinced than ever that it does not take even 15 minutes…

Thanks again for this - I’ll be using your chart while constructing my fic. If you care to see the results, I hope to have it accepted for publication on Mugglenet Fan Fiction - I site with which I supect you may be familiar…
ProfPosky

Agnes:
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:47 pm

Hello,
I’m a doctoral student doing research on linguistic stereotypes, many of which are reflected in the Harry Potter books, and your Hagrid-word-frequency table came in quite handy today. I also had some fun with your Hagridizer. May I point out, though, that Hagrid also uses the odd double negative (’Won’ make no difference’, Prisoner of Azkaban p. 162) and turns ‘going to’ into ‘gonna’ (p. 216). I think I also read a ‘gotta’ somewhere. Just thought you might like to include those in your Hagridizer - even though it might not be simple. Like the rest of us, Hagrid might say ‘I’m gonna do this’ (going to + verb –> gonna) but not *’I'm gonna Hogsmeade’ (going to + place name, remains unchanged.)
Just my two cents there. Thanks for the chart anyhow, and greetings from another, worse dork! :-)

Posited Sam:
October 4th, 2006 at 12:04 am

Thanks Agnes!

At the time, I decided that it was only going to mimic Hagrid’s accent (such as it is), not his entire idiolect.

I don’t have the natural language processing credentials to do it right even if I tried, but I’ll give it a go if I ever get around to rewriting the thing. :)

Reckoned Yarochisai:
March 17th, 2007 at 8:00 am

YOU are a GOD. It drives me crazy how some people don’t get the accent or don’t get it right, yet when I right it, I can completely understand how they feel! And the fact that I contradict myself can just drive me crazy sometimes! I…I think I love you! (hugs feet) And the Hagridizer is just fun, hilarious (as in the namethe name), and useful, all in one! XD

Thank you!

Offered Alyssia:
September 21st, 2008 at 5:52 am

Thank you! I was really wanting to type “Hagrid-Speak” correctly.

Reckoned mikki:
May 24th, 2009 at 8:35 am

Oh, thank you, I’ve been having so much trouble writing his accent.This is a god send, I hate not being able to do things correctly, but I’m in New Zealand, where am I going to be able to find any obscure accents? This has just made my life so much simpler. You are Incredible!

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