Accent recognition
 

In a modern setting where characters would have contact with people from all over the world; what skill would one use to recognize someone's accent?

What skill would I use to fake an accent?

What about a skill to recognize if someone is faking an accent?

What about just hiding an accent?

Would certain very common accents (British, Chinese etc) get bonuses to be recognized because of how common they are? Conversely would the Yoruba language of Nigeria which has its own accent be much harder to discern from the Ibibio language (and corresponding accent) then say French from German?

Re: Accent recognition
 

Linguistics should cover identification (a skill that has too few uses for its price). Acting, probably, to fake (though once again Linguistics might help too).

Re: Accent recognition
 

Need a good dose of an appropriate area knowledge too, if you want to pull a Henry Higgins: "I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets."

A lot of accents are going to be indistinguishable. One could tell that a person speaking english as a second language was Chinese, not that they were Mandarin/Cantonese/Fujian/etc., or Indian not Hindi/Punjabi/Urdu/Bengali/etc.

Multiple layers of accents can get weird too. Many people learn english from non-english speakers or thise with strong dialects.

Re: Accent recognition
 

Cultural Familiarity might also help a bit, especially in conjunction with Linguistics. I know that CF is very broad, but it might be worth a +1 bonus in some circumstances.

Re: Accent recognition
 

Not Acting but Mimicry, in the version for human voices. GURPS Social Engineering will expand on that part.

I'd might allow Area Knowledge to be used to recognize accents common in a region. I might allow a Mimicry roll to identify a familiar accent.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Accent recognition
 

"His English was decidedly weak. Indeed, it was not English at all. I do not know what you would call it. It was not altogether his fault; he had learnt English from a Scotch lady. I understand Scotch fairly well—to keep abreast of modern English literature this is necessary,—but to understand broad Scotch talked with a Sclavonic accent, occasionally relieved by German modifications, taxes the intelligence."
Jerome K Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, 1900.

Re: Accent recognition
 

I would allow buying an accent-perk that enables the character to use the selected accent at will (perfectly).
For a character having that perk I'd give a +4 bonus to recognize that accent or fakes of it by others (enough to negate the default -4 from Area Knowledge for instance).
Moreover the character would get a +1 reaction bonus from native speakers of a specific area where that accent is common.

Re: Accent recognition
 

Try this:
Let Language skill= IQ modified by comprehension level
Imitating a specific accent of a language: a Hard technique based on Mimicry(Speech), modified by the IQ penalty for spoken comprehension of the language, and the relevant Area Knowledge modifiers. Each accent is a separate technique.

Spotting a faked accent: Quick contest of the imitating accent roll above vs. the better of the listener's Linguistics (unmodified) or spoken Language skill, with a +2 if the listener has a higher Language skill than the speaker in either the language being spoken, or the language of the accent, with Area knowledge modifiers. e.g. faking English with an Italian accent is harder against someone who actually speaks both Italian and English.

Identifying a genuine accent: Linguistics or the spoken Language skill of the accent language.

The Henry Higgins bit is pure Linguistics. Note, however, that while Higgins was inspired by real linguists, there were strong social forces maintaining London's unique dialects, and that Pygmalion predates the leveling effect of mass audio media by more than a decade.

Re: Accent recognition
 

English regional accents are still distinctive to this day. I was at business meeting with one of my subordinates (who appears to be chinese) and a project manager from another division (who I know was an Oxford don, so should have the "Received Pronounciation" dialect) both had been in Canada in excess of twenty-five years (more than half their lives), not ten minutes into the meeting they both pointed at each other and yelled "Scouser".

Re: Accent recognition
 

To be fair, Scouse is pretty distinctive.

The interesting thing about Received Pronunciation is that it's nobody's "native" accent. Living among Canadians for 25 years as he did, one could forgive the man for letting it slip a little ;)