system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[TOLKIEN]. Is there such a thing as an Elvish accent? Do humans, dwarves, etc. have distinctive accents when speaking Elvish languages, and vice versa?
gpt
Elves, Dwarves, and Men would have all had distinctive accents. Unfortunately, it is very difficult, if not impossible to determine what that would have been. We pretty much only have written records of the languages. Also, as others have said, different groups of Elves would have had different accents. For example, Galadriel's Elves in Lorien would sound different from Elrond's Elves in Rivendell.

For the people saying accents would sound "English" or related accents, remember that apparent Britishness of of the way characters speak is an artifact of the Professor localizing his translation of the Red Book to his home country. **Westron is nothing like English.**

We know very little about Westron (the main Mannish language) except that it appears to be vaguely semitic. Samwise Gamgee's untranslated name is *Banazîr Galbasi* for example.

Rohirric (language of Rohan) is apparently like a more ancient version of Westron. If Westron were English, Rohirric would be Old English by analogy. Interestingly, certain aspects of Hobbit-Westron are very similar to Rohirric. This suggests a unified origin in the distant past.

Khuzdul (Dwarvish) is also somewhat semitic, and more specifically it is close-ish to some elements of Hebrew due to its triconsonantal word roots. We don't know much about the Dwarvish language due to its secrecy. It is thought that early Mannish languages were influenced by Dwarvish, and that this is the reason for the semitic similarity.

Sindarin is functionally the common language of the Elves. It was developed originally by the Elves that never went to the West. Sindarin is very similar to Welsh, so we might guess that the Welsh accent is a very rough approximation.

Quenya is originally the language the elves that came back from the West. It gets used alot for official royal things. Numenorean kings also liked to give themselves names in Quenya. Quenya is rather similar to Finnish. So again, we might say that Finnish and Quenya speakers sound kinda similar.

So depending on which language was your first one, you'd have an accent from it. For example, Aragorn probably grew up speaking Sindarin, because he was under the care of Elrond. His Westron would have a vague Elvish accent. Most Dwarves speak Westron on a day to day basis, so their accent is probably quite slight when compared to Men. But Gimli's accent would be influenced by the Men in Dale who have their own Westron accent. So he would still sound strange to the Fellowship.