I was recently recollecting how Bethesda portrayed the Reachmen in TES V: Skryim, specifically how little thought they put into how members of their "Forsworn" faction talked. Take this note for example:
Do not presume we have grown fat and complacent here in the north. Our Matriarch was wise to bring us here. Our camp is secure, and our numbers grow.
We will not skulk in the shadows with you, making petty plots with rabble and sycophants. When we strike, we will do it with cunning and power, and the occupiers will fall before us. That is the way of true Reachmen.
Does it not sound a bit too polished and sophisticated? Would tribal raiders wearing animal skins and skulls, living in hunter-gatherer camps and witches covens, use words like "presume" and "sycophant"? There's a large dissonance there, something we should avoid with our Reachmen. Ideally, they should sound like they've lived apart from the other peoples of Tamriel for some time, with their own manner of talking. To accomplish this, we could take inspiration from Yakum Hairshashishi, an Ashlander living in Pelagiad, who spoke with a somewhat noticeable dialect:
Ah. You understand me a bit, yes? Hello, %PCName. Yakum greet you. Bless and be blessed. Speak Old Elf, yes, so Yakum learn. You know Ashlanders, yes, a little. Yakum is Ashlander.
There's bad magic in the dust from Red Mountain. The Sharmat Dagoth Ur sends bad dreams in the dust. The people can't sleep, act crazy. When the blight storms come, soul sickness comes -- both together. When I lived in the ashlands, I got no sleep, had bad dreams, was all the time tired. Now that I'm here in Pelagiad, I sleep fine.
Any thoughts on how we should approach this? Obviously, we don't want to do something stereotypical like giving them rearranged "Yoda" speech.