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Contents › Section 1: Phonetics, phonology and orthography › answer 26 of 32

We have constructed languages, but are there constructed accents?

Answered 8 October 2015

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In a sense, the national language standards of all languages could be said to be 'constructed' (to different degrees). They tend to be more artificial than other dialects and accents, and their histories can often be traced to some more or less purposeful efforts.

You also seem to broaden the definition of accent to dialect which includes grammatical forms. In this case, the 'standard Czech' was 'constructed' in the 19th century. And it's not particularly unique. The rationale behind it was not that dissimilar from constructed languages like Esperanto.

Of course, there's a whole class of constructed languages in the entertainment context like Dothraki or Klingon and with these you'd find constructed accents as well. Joss Whedon's Firefly comes to mind.

© Dominik Lukeš. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Originally published on Linguistics Stack Exchange, attributed there to Dominik Lukes (profile).