Phobos and Deimos

You have to imagine that everyone here (except Maida) has an East London accent. After much experimentation with writing this accent I eventually settled on a light touch to spelling changes. My goal was to give you just enough information that you could tell what accent the characters were speaking with, but not so much that it would be illegible or degrading. Any linguist will tell you that it’s politics that determines “standard English” rather than merit or education, and moreover that every English speaker reads text in their home dialect. This creates a problem for comickers, however, working in a medium with no sound component and little room for exposition outside of dialogue.

Is it likely that Estuary English will be the version of the language that prevails in the next 500 years? Maybe not. But it’s no less likely than that any other particular accent will be triumphant. And like with the written form of “Yingish,” I’m more interested in giving you the impression of change and difference than in accurate prophesy.

Maida, if you’re interested, speaks something much closer to Oxford English, which was what English was when Mars was first settled. By the time of our story, Oxfordian is quaint, outdated, and forgotten– a relic of that old “modern” era.