I think the Aye spelling was more for the english version of agreement or affirmation, so that others would understand why the point was being made. ;) I'm also almost certain that ail in french has the same(or almost) pronunciation and means garlic. Sounds are fun. 

But I've noticed a tendency in this thread for people talking about the words used as well as the sounds used to create the words to call both things accents. I might be wrong, but I think those are two separate things. One is dialect, with word choice and phrasing, and the other is accent, which is much harder to create using text, because spelling an accent phonetically requires that anyone who then reads your created accent would need to have the same accent as you to understand how you're shaping the sounds you're writing.

I've found that, when writing English speaking characters, at least, the easiest way to avoid insulting anyone when trying to write the dialogue of a character with a different accent than those around them is to use dialect. A lot of stereotypical phrases that many people will recognise, if used sparingly or thoughtfully(and properly, do research these things), can have the same effect of creating an accent in the reader's minds simply by association, whereas writing out the accent can just make it hard to read. 

On the other hand, when writing an ESL character's dialogue, it can be more iffy to write using phrasing stereotypes simply because some of those stereotypes are meant to be insulting, in which case, looking up the syllabic sounds that might cause difficulties for different language speakers, as well as the different word orders and combining the two so that the dialogue is still understandable but also not over the top, can be a good idea.