Is there a way to phonetically write English so that when read it is with a "British accent"? [closed]
I am going to be performing a monologue which will mostly be in a southern accent, but there is one brief part, where I quote a British person, and would like to give it a general British accent. Is there a way to phoneticize (phoneticise) English so that reading it would make it sound British? Or give a close approximation (that's all I need).
I realize that there is not a universal "British accent" any more than there is a single "[American] southern accent" - but just something that's close enough is good enough for me. If specifics are needed, the person being quoted is the Prince of Wales around 1880 or 1890.
Specifically, the quote is,
Nice to meet you again, Mr. Twain...Why, yes, don't you remember? You were on the top of a bus and I was marching at the head of a temperance procession, and you had on that gray coat with flap pockets?
e.g., a general idea of what I mean might be:
Noys to maet you a-gayn, Mr. Twain...Why, yes, don't you remember? You were on the tawp of a bus and I was marching at the head of a temperance pro-cession, and you had on that gry coat with flap pawkets?
...but I suss there are people here who could make a much better go of it than I can.
If this is something you're going to do regularly, I suggest you learn the International Phonetic Alphabet, which was designed to precisely replicate what a word sounds like, no matter the language (or accent) of the speaker or listener.
For example, the word again is given two pronunciations on Wiktionary:
(UK) IPA:
/əˈɡeɪn/
,/əˈɡɛn/
(US) IPA:
/əˈɡɛn/
But what might be more helpful to you, since this is for your eyes only, is to go to a pronunciation website, like Forvo and simply listen to how people form different countries pronounce each word you're looking for, which you can then transcribe any way you like.
For example, their page for the word nice has pronunciation from the U.S., U.K, Australia, and Canada, and both females and males.
In this situation, any system you devise will serve you better than trying to learn a systematic one. Unless your monologue isn't for another year and you have time to learn IPA systematically and read it by eye. I study linguistics and it's sometimes slow going...
You may get some inspiration from Irvine Welsh's book Trainspotting which is set in Edinburgh, Scotland.
John Mullan in the The Guardian newspaper writes regarding
the diverse uses of dialect in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting [...]
For Welsh's characters do not only speak in dialect, they narrate in it too. "The sweat was lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling," the book begins.
...
"Thuv goat tae dae it aw fir thumsells." Only the "it" is standard English, but it is a phonetic representation of a perfectly ordinary clause ("they've got to do it all for themselves").
EDIT: The suggestion here, is not to reuse Welsh's 'Scottish-English' words, but rather to look at his approach for writing in accents as inspiration, sort of 'phonetically', but not in official IPA - while still understandable to the layperson.