Writing in Dialect

[panda]

I've heard that this can really turn off readers...whether it be a slow Southern drawl (Why surely, ma'am ya can't mean that?) or a Cockney accent (Oi! 'ey, guvnor I take bloody offense to that bleeding remark!) or Scottish burr, (Do y'ken?)

Does it annoy you after awhile? Is it ok in a minor character? Is it part of character's voice/personality? Do you write in accents?

[kaitie]

It annoys me to begin with more than later on. I'll eventually get used to it and know how to read it. I'd say in general I hate it. There are very, very few exceptions that I actually think are well done. Wolves of the Calla comes to mind. And trust me, as brilliant as I found that, it also annoyed the heck out of me, especially at first. I swear it took me over fifty pages to figure out what roont was.

I don't mind if it's very limited, however. I never write in it. I'm more likely to describe the accent and let the reader imagine it himself.

[escritora]

whether it be a slow Southern drawl (Why surely, ma'am ya can't mean that?)

This doesn't bother me.

[panda]

Yeah, I think it something to be handled with care.

For instance, I didn't mind it in the Secret Garden (the little yorkshire maid with her 'muns') or in the book, Outlander.

I think it is like salt and pepper, a seasoning, not a main dish. I think it might start to grate if your MC had an accent. But I've read MC's with stutters before, and oddly it didn't detract...

[Jennasis]

It does annoy me. I prefer to be told that the character has "a thick southern drawl" or a "bouncy Irish brogue" than to be clobbered with impossible to decipher phonetic spellings. I find it pulls me right out of the moment and screams "hey...look at this! You are READING stuff."

YMMV.

[Salis]

I don't mind if it's used selectively to convey flavor (i.e, one or two words per sentence), but if every word is garbled, it gets rather less charming.

[scarletpeaches]

Don't do it. Just don't.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to translate a novel before I read it.

[panda]

Don't do it. Just don't.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to translate a novel before I read it.

lol, this reminded me of clockwork orange, he also wrote the narrative in dialect as well, talk about needing a thesaurus on hand. :D

[Judg]

Read Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the Post Office" for a wonderful example of writing in dialect that never uses a single misspelling. Word choice and sentence structure does it all. You get all the joy of dialect with none of the irritation.

[panda]

Read Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the Post Office" for a wonderful example of writing in dialect that never uses a single misspelling. Word choice and sentence structure does it all. You get all the joy of dialect with none of the irritation.

thanks for the rec,:) i was only sort of debating using it one character, who might have 2-3 speaking parts in the whole novel.

[Cranky]

Read Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the Post Office" for a wonderful example of writing in dialect that never uses a single misspelling. Word choice and sentence structure does it all. You get all the joy of dialect with none of the irritation.

I *just* put up a little excerpt of one of my shorts, and the narrator definitely has an accent. One dropped g, the rest is all word choice. So I am trying my best to follow in the esteemed Ms. Welty's footsteps, however short I may fall.

[Mumut]

I was taught to 'type'. There are three types of character in my trilogy. The Lords and Ladies speak very properly. "I should expect him to be hanged." The MC, knights etc (most of the dialogue) is normal. "I think they'll hang him." The peasants drop the 'h' from the start of words, use simpler sentences and more anglo-saxon words. "I think they'll 'ang 'im."

If it's too much, I reconstruct the sentence to cut out a few words starting with 'h'. I read my work out loud and soon see if it's too much. But I believe 'typing' saves a lot of dialogue tags where there has to be a long conversation.

[blacbird]

Don't do it. Just don't.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to translate a novel before I read it.

Your countryman Irvine Welsh would disagree. But then, I find him entirely unreadable.

The occasional word, maybe, but no more than that. Frances Burnett and Mark Twain wrote their dialect works more than a century ago, when such writing was fresh and new. It ain't no more.

caw

[Ruv Draba]

Many authors write accent rather than dialect. Since accent is just a weird way of writing familiar words, its only real use is comedy, so it's only worth using when it's funny.

Real dialect is more than pronunciation -- it's odd grammar and strange vocabulary. What makes dialect interesting is its window onto foreign thought. Literature is the fiction of ideas and so dialect is entirely appropriate for this medium. But for a writer to present it well, he needs to understand not just the dialect but the thoughts, beliefs and values behind it, and those things need to be relevant to the story. Arguably the most successful example of dialect in English literature are the poems of Robbie Burns (many people sing 'Auld Lang Syne' today without even knowing what the chorus means. :))


Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Our toils obscure, an a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

Kipling is perhaps the other great purveyor of dialect in English. Here in his poem Gunga Din he uses accent for humour and dialect for insight.

YOU may talk o' gin an' beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But if it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them black-faced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.

It was "Din! Din! Din!
You limping lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! slippy hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao!
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din!"

Related to the above is voice -- which we construct by choosing words and grammatical structures carefully. You don't need accent or dialect to create voice -- you can do it from accepted vocabulary and grammatical forms. But dialect and accent do have an impact. Here's Mark Twain catching voice beautifully in Aunt Polly's monologue from Tom Sawyer:


"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, and I'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination of the child."

He changes voice routinely with his different characters, while still creating the feel of place:

"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

"Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing."

"Say -- I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd druther work -- wouldn't you? Course you would!"

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

"What do you call work?"

"Why, ain't that work?"

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer."

"Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?"

The brush continued to move.

"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?"His creation of voice is much more than accent. See how Tom's sentences are constructed, how he uses a different vocabulary to his Aunt Polly... how Aunt Polly draws on Rules to understand her world, while Tom draws on Experiences and Status.

The main reason accent/dialect fail I think, is that authors don't understand how to use them. The other reason it fails is that some readers won't invest in the learning, regardless of how funny or insightful it is. So if you use dense accent or dialect, expect your target readership to shift toward the more literary end of the market, and write accordingly.


My suggestions are:
Get control of voice before shooting for accent or dialect. Without control of voice, it'll just look contrived;
Only use accent for humour. If the line isn't funny then either rewrite it until it is, or rephrase it to keep the accent down;
Use dialect to reveal foreign thought. If you don't understand the thought, don't dabble with dialect. If the thought is irrelevant to your story then the dialect is too.
Recognise that use of dialect and accent tend to push your story toward the literary end of the market -- if you're going to make heavy use of these devices, you'd better be writing literary quality prose too.

[Exir]

The three examples that the OP gave weren't that bad. I could read that without much of a snag, and it reproduces enough of the hard-to-understand-ness-thingy to make it realistic -- but not SO realistic that I want to pull my hair out.

[blacbird]

Real dialect is more than pronunciation -- it's odd grammar and strange vocabulary.

This is a key observation. It applies to individual characters as well as to more regional or national dialect. And carries far more power than phonetic misspelling.

caw

[dpaterso]

I've heard that this can really turn off readers...whether it be a slow Southern drawl (Why surely, ma'am ya can't mean that?) or a Cockney accent (Oi! 'ey, guvnor I take bloody offense to that bleeding remark!) or Scottish burr, (Do y'ken?)
It disnae bother me either, and I write it myself sometimes, but unless I'm hamming it up for comedy reasons I try not to overdo it to the point of irritation, d'ye ken? :)

-Derek

[panda]

It disnae bother me either, and I write it myself sometimes, but unless I'm hamming it up for comedy reasons I try not to overdo it to the point of irritation, d'ye ken? :)

-Derek

Ach, I ken. ;)

[Priene]

A Cockney accent (Oi! 'ey, guvnor I take bloody offense to that bleeding remark!)

Personally, I don't care much for any accent writing, for reasons discussed above. But if you're going to do it, you need to make sure you're writing what's actually spoken, rather than how you think it might be.

[Nakhlasmoke]

I say do it if you want to. If it works, then it works. Writers are too quick to jump on the OMG DON'T DO THAT BECAUSE I HATE IT bandwagon.


*shrug*

Then again, I like doing stuff that I'm told not to do. (And yes, I've written a novel in which half of it is written in dialect, in first person present. I'm basically a fuck you kinda person.)

[scarletpeaches]

Your countryman Irvine Welsh would disagree. But then, I find him entirely unreadable.

The occasional word, maybe, but no more than that. Frances Burnett and Mark Twain wrote their dialect works more than a century ago, when such writing was fresh and new. It ain't no more.

cawOh I'd agree with you on Welsh. I've never been able to finish any of his works.The three examples that the OP gave weren't that bad. I could read that without much of a snag, and it reproduces enough of the hard-to-understand-ness-thingy to make it realistic -- but not SO realistic that I want to pull my hair out.Oh, they were. As a Scot I find attempts to represent 'realistic' Scots dialogue/dialect patronising. Nine times out of ten it's not realistic at all, it's an outsider's view of how Scots speak.

It reminds me of the number of times I've told people I used to live in Birmingham and they've said, "Ooh! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHMINGHUMMMM!" like they're the first person ever to take the piss out of the accent.

"That's not how Brummies speak."
"Yes it is."
"Oh really, and when did you last even visit Birmingham, let alone live there for four years? Hmm?"

[scarletpeaches]

Arguably the most successful example of dialect in English literature are the poems of Robbie BurnsPardon?

[Priene]

The three examples that the OP gave weren't that bad.

The Cockney was so bad it was from the Dick Van Dyke school. Go into an East End pub saying stuff like Oi! 'ey, guvnor I take bloody offense to that bleeding remark and you'd be... Oh, try it. I dare you.

[IdiotsRUs]

The Cockney was so bad it was from the Dick Van Dyke school. Go into an East End pub saying stuff like Oi! 'ey, guvnor I take bloody offense to that bleeding remark and you'd be... Oh, try it. I dare you.


Camera and ambulance on standby.

If you can add in a 'cooor, luv a duck!' we could go for the hat trick and try for the riot police.

As said above, word choice and word order convey so much more than a missed letter.

I was very worried
I were that worried

I'm not going there!
I ain't going nowhere!

[Tara Stone]

It really bothers me. I recognize words by sight rather than hearing them in my head, so when I have to start sounding words out in order to understand them, it slows me down and pulls me out of the story.

[RJK]

Danger! Will Robinson, danger! misspelling words to make them sound like accented speech draws attention to the words. This draws the reader out of the story - a big no-no.

[scarletpeaches]

Camera and ambulance on standby.

If you can add in a 'cooor, luv a duck!' we could go for the hat trick and try for the riot police.

As said above, word choice and word order convey so much more than a missed letter.

I was very worried
I were that worried

I'm not going there!
I ain't going nowhere!Stroike a loight; Oi'm gunna put on me whistle 'n' flute and climb the apples 'n' pears to comb me bleedin' barnet, ain't I, Murray Poppans?

[lute]

Hmm. Interesting thread. I have a character with the equivalent of a Southern drawl, and I decided that the best way to show how he spoke was to only bring emphasis to it in dialogue for about three sentences. After that, I switched to regular, complete words, and I can hope that drawl is still within the readers' minds after that with use of that era's use of slang and whatnot, with casual mention of it from the otherwise proper main character.

Is that not a good way to go about things? Even then, the words aren't unrecognizable due to the dropped word endings, and I was always kind of fond of the idea. No good? Should I stick with merely describing it? I'm being led to believe that no one likes the idea of writing in dialects even the slightest 'round these parts :D (see what I did there?)

[Lifelongdagger]

My whole book is written in dialect. Narration, dialogue, everything. Think it works okay, though. If the characters are well defined and the plot is strong, I think there is a fair amount of leeway for creativity. Just my opinion, of course.

[MrWrite]

The only book that comes to mind regarding dialect was Loch Ness, I forget who wrote it but almost all the dialogue was written in dialect. Was tough to work through sometimes but I did enjoy the story!

[Bufty]

Phonetic spelling is an absolute pain in the arse to read - unless it's done extremely well, usually for comedic effect. Usually, by all beginners -including yours truly- it simply mutilates the dialogue.

Regional newspapers may get away with it to amuse local readers.

I read the opening to a self-published Southern based novel and it was totally incomprehensible because every other word was phonetically spelled to convey the southern dialect.

Careful attention to word choice and sentence structure are far more effective ways of conveying dialect.

[Dicentra P]

As a Scot I find attempts to represent 'realistic' Scots dialogue/dialect patronising.

Personally this is where I stand. If the writer is someone who knows the accent well and is reproducing it can work. With fantasy or sci fi there is more leeway and I stick to the "does the language distract from the story or illustrate it?" rule.

[Shakesbear]

or a Cockney accent (Oi! 'ey, guvnor I take bloody offense to that bleeding remark!)


So Pete Tong!

[Kitty Pryde]

Oh I'd agree with you on Welsh. I've never been able to finish any of his works.Oh, they were. As a Scot I find attempts to represent 'realistic' Scots dialogue/dialect patronising. Nine times out of ten it's not realistic at all, it's an outsider's view of how Scots speak.



I has a question for you. The (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Broonsmarch0892.jpg) Broons (http://www.davidsonart.com/broons.htm): realistic dialogue, yay or nay? I know there are a lot of different Scottish accents/dialects depending on class and location and stuff, right? I've read it and I know it's been around forever, so someone must like it, but I dunno if it's supposed to be real sounding or not. Reality aside, it's really hard (for the non-Scot) to read.

[scarletpeaches]

Jings, crivvens, help m'boab!

Uh...certain phrases are true to life. For instance, I say "Jings!" all the time, but not the whole shebang. It's more a matter of bits and pieces being realistic, but I have never, ever met someone who used all the speech the Broons (or Oor Wullie) use.

Interestingly, both cartoons are published in my home city.

[Lady Ice]

It can work well but often comes off as too funny (a la Lady Chatterley's Lover).

[seun]

I think it's rarely neccessary. If I know a character is from a certain area or country, I can usually fill in the rest to work out their accent/dialect. I don't need it hammered home.

[panda]

Let me clarify.

The examples were jokes.

;)

The Cockney was so bad it was from the Dick Van Dyke school. Go into an East End pub saying stuff like Oi! 'ey, guvnor I take bloody offense to that bleeding remark and you'd be... Oh, try it. I dare you.

Hey, you know wat I do what I likes, and I likes what I do. :D


I say do it if you want to. If it works, then it works. Writers are too quick to jump on the OMG DON'T DO THAT BECAUSE I HATE IT bandwagon.

Well, people in general are quick to hate, but yeah definitely holds true. Good advice nonetheless. I don't know if it's worth all the debat though, since it would add up to about three lines in the whole novel. My brother's actually a speech path so he knows all about phonemes and dialect. But I do think dialect is an interesting study in linguistics why we aspirate certain letters or drop others. And of course, there's all the colloquialisms, and language does of course reflect culture, for instance, Inuits have thirty different words for snow. I think it's a good thing though to want to get into the character's head, that you take on their dialect, sort of like role-playing in a way, we should all be so deeply connected to our characters, whether we use dialect or not.

[Priene]

Let me clarify.

The examples were jokes.

Fair enough, guv. But my point was that it's incredibly hard to write convincingly in a dialect that isn't your own. You might think you have an ear for it, but it'll probably sound terrible to a local.

[panda]

Fair enough, guv. But my point was that it's incredibly hard to write convincingly in a dialect that isn't your own. You might think you have an ear for it, but it'll probably sound terrible to a local.

Of course, this was based on the assumption of those who write accents are familiar with them (whether they lived in the area for years or they are from that area themselves)

[extortionist]

Careful attention to word choice and sentence structure are far more effective ways of conveying dialect.
I'll throw in another vote for this.

And beyond the phonetic writing being slow and difficult to read, consider also that writing really can't replicate sound at all. To make an extreme example, no matter how you write out the lyrics to a song you won't ever be able to derive the melody from the words. Same way with speech--if the reader doesn't already know how an accent sounds, no style of writing dialogue will create the accent's sound in his head. And if he does know how the accent sounds, why make the text more difficult to read?

[job]

To some extent, all authentic voice is 'dialect'.
(Dialect is what other people speak. Good English is what I speak.)

In dialog and internals, use the words your characters actually speak. Put them in the order they would actually say them. Just spell the bloody words. Don't go all phonetic.

This is an Englishman and a French-origin woman speaking English.

********
"You are very much like him, did you know?"

The flames made his eyes glitter. "Am I?"

"It is that your bodies are alike. A little, anyway. He is even larger than you, I would say, and immensely strong. Though you are strong too, of course. But you are different in spirit. He had no softness in him at all, not truly, not anywhere inside him, which is as it should be in a person in his position. He is older than you too."

"Older?" Robert stared at her, fascinated.

"He is very senior in his work. He must be eight or ten years older than you, I would think. He is fiercely determined, as well, though you are that yourself, a little, except that he does not go about it so nicely. Also he does not smell of fishes. That is from your sweater, you comprehend, which is a beautiful sweater and skillfully knitted, but in need of washing ..."
***********

and some Cockney

************
That made her sound like a pocket watch. But it weren't like that. Hours, they used to spend talking. He taught her everything. How to pick locks. How to rope her way down a building. How to plan a caper. That last time, when she fell so bad and got herself trapped in the dark, it'd been Lazarus who come in for her. Crawled in the whole way and pulled her out, with the building collapsing around their ears and bricks and timbers hitting them. Risked his neck, he did. She hadn't been a bloody pocket watch. He was goading the Captain, pure and simple.
*********

[Carlene]

Ever try to read, "The Bean of Egypt Maine?" Nuf said.

Carlene

[Carlene]

Every try to read "The Beans of Egypt Maine?" Nuf said.

Carlene ( whoops sorry for the dupe!)

[panda]

I find zees thread vary interesteeng.

Signed,
Fleur Delacour

(that's my veela accent lol)

Ever try to read, "The Bean of Egypt Maine?" Nuf said.

See,the dialect in this didn't bother me, very subtle, practically not there, from first few pages that I could tell.


In dialog and internals, use the words your characters actually speak.
I meant using dialect in dialogue of a minor character, not dialect in the narrative voice, but I think dialect does come through whatever narrative you're writing. If you're writing a historical, your language is going to be much different than that of say, a mystery. Interesting point you've raised, dialect (or manner of speech) affects our writing on almost an unconscious level I'd say.


That made her sound like a pocket watch. But it weren't like that. Hours, they used to spend talking. He taught her everything. How to pick locks. How to rope her way down a building. How to plan a caper. That last time, when she fell so bad and got herself trapped in the dark, it'd been Lazarus who come in for her. Crawled in the whole way and pulled her out, with the building collapsing around their ears and bricks and timbers hitting them. Risked his neck, he did. She hadn't been a bloody pocket watch. He was goading the Captain, pure and simple.
*********

I like this cockney example, it remind me of a paperbook I read a long time ago, Poor Cow, I think it was called very much in this vein.

Also, off-topic, you're the author Joanna Bourne? I've read your books. That feels very surreal saying that. I very much enjoyed them. :)

[Wonderlander]

In the SF one that's out at the moment, I wanted the characters to have a Cockney tone but not a modern, realistic one - it was to be informed by a kind of 18th century sensibility and liberally peppered with thieves cant. Being in third person, the characters would only speak it in dialogue.

It was (I hope, and that's the feedback I got) entirely possible to render it without phonetic spellings. The only strange words were the cant itself and also the characters used "ain't", much to the horror of spellcheck.

That said, I love Irvine Welsh, love Iain Banks' use of dialect, and love challenging dialects and vocabularies in novels, such as Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" or "A Dead Man in Deptford".

[panda]

That said, I love use of dialect, and love challenging dialects and vocabularies in novels, such as Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" .

I need my Droog thesaurus handy, lol. As hard as that was to read, I have to award points for creativity. Its like Tolkien who developed Elvish, an entire language. I think dialect can be really fascinating if done well, which is the caveat to everything lol.

[job]

Also, off-topic, you're the author Joanna Bourne? I've read your books. That feels very surreal saying that. I very much enjoyed them. :)

Oooh. Oooh. Yes. That's me. Thank you so very much.

I loved zee <g> Freeench accenn.

I have a friend who speaks Southron, who points out that people phoneticize marginal and disenfranchised dialects but use standard spelling to represent the dominant dialect.

[job]

I need my Droog thesaurus handy, lol. As hard as that was to read, I have to award points for creativity. Its like Tolkien who developed Elvish, an entire language.

This is probably not true, but I've heard Tolkien invented the Elvish language first, then wrote the books to have a place to use it.

[C.M. Daniels]

It makes me wild. I've begun reading books with too much accent going on and quit them, even when I've been really interested in the story.

[Rarri]

I has a question for you. The (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Broonsmarch0892.jpg) Broons (http://www.davidsonart.com/broons.htm): realistic dialogue, yay or nay? I know there are a lot of different Scottish accents/dialects depending on class and location and stuff, right? I've read it and I know it's been around forever, so someone must like it, but I dunno if it's supposed to be real sounding or not. Reality aside, it's really hard (for the non-Scot) to read.

Oddly, given that The Broons (and Oor Wullie, i think?) are printed on the east coast, the comic is actually more representative of the Glasgow area. Language has changed over the years from when The Broons originally came out but a lot of the dialect could still be found there.

And yes, accents and dialects vary heaps depending on where you are in the country. The Outer Hebrides will usually harbour a stronger accent than the Inner Hebrides; both of which are different to what you'd find on the mainland. The Glaswegian accent can be strong and - in my experience - is the accent most people think of as Scottish. Come over to the east coast and unless you run into local dialects (like Doric) the accents tend to become more diluted. Those are generalisations in part, i admit, but there are huge differences across the country.

But then, y'know, the east coast is just that much better than the west coast. Well, unless you run into the feechy towns ;)

Personally this is where I stand. If the writer is someone who knows the accent well and is reproducing it can work. With fantasy or sci fi there is more leeway and I stick to the "does the language distract from the story or illustrate it?" rule.

This is making me terribly curious because i know the town your WIP is named after... :)

Sigh. I need to get some porridge on. Breakfast is calling.

[panda]

This is probably not true, but I've heard Tolkien invented the Elvish language first, then wrote the books to have a place to use it.

Inventing another language, that to me is insane or genius or both lol.

[darkpowers]

How about South Wales valleys dialect or Wenglish, which is mostly English but spoken in a Welsh way?

I've been using it in my work, and don't overdo it, but feel some is needed to add colour and flavour.

When asked how he is, a minor character responds "nosso bard" which means not so bad.

The word mun is often used here for emphasis, i.e. "You're talking bloody rubbish, mun!"

The word like is sometimes used to indicate a pause or break: "I was up by the station, like, and saw thousands of them!"

The infamous I do: "I do go to Tescos, every evening, to see what I can have off the bargain shelf."

Reverse possessive nouns: "Dave's car that is."

Would any of these be offputting or distracting, even if used sparingly?

[Nakhlasmoke]

How about South Wales valleys dialect or Wenglish, which is mostly English but spoken in a Welsh way?

I've been using it in my work, and don't overdo it, but feel some is needed to add colour and flavour.

When asked how he is, a minor character responds "nosso bard" which means not so bad.

The word mun is often used here for emphasis, i.e. "You're talking bloody rubbish, mun!"

The word like is sometimes used to indicate a pause or break: "I was up by the station, like, and saw thousands of them!"

The infamous I do: "I do go to Tescos, every evening, to see what I can have off the bargain shelf."

Reverse possessive nouns: "Dave's car that is."

Would any of these be offputting or distracting, even if used sparingly?


I think nosso bard would throw me a bit - mainly because of the word bard, and then I'd start wondering if this was someone's name and if I'd missed something. :D

The rest wouldn't bother me at all.

[darkpowers]

Thank you. I'll take that on board and alter it.

[Charlie Horse]

Anyone considering this should sit down with the Complete Uncle Remus and see how far they get. Go ahead, I dare you.

[Lady Ice]

I don't mind if it's to give atmosphere. American Literature is guilty of dialect but it can work very effectively- particularly in American Drama.

[job]

Would any of these be offputting or distracting, even if used sparingly?

I wouldn't have any problem with this at all.
I don't know the accent, though, so I wouldn't 'hear it'.

[Judg]

How about South Wales valleys dialect or Wenglish, which is mostly English but spoken in a Welsh way?

I've been using it in my work, and don't overdo it, but feel some is needed to add colour and flavour.

When asked how he is, a minor character responds "nosso bard" which means not so bad.

The word mun is often used here for emphasis, i.e. "You're talking bloody rubbish, mun!"

The word like is sometimes used to indicate a pause or break: "I was up by the station, like, and saw thousands of them!"

The infamous I do: "I do go to Tescos, every evening, to see what I can have off the bargain shelf."

Reverse possessive nouns: "Dave's car that is."

Would any of these be offputting or distracting, even if used sparingly?
Anything incomprehensible is offputting, so the nosso bard is stretching it. Unless, of course, you define it for the reader, perhaps through someone in the story who doesn't understand. Really thick dialect is like a strong spice: in most cases it's best if you use it sparingly. If it's a very localized dialect, the chances are that the rest of the world won't understand. Idiosyncratic word order or easily understood things like "mun" are not a problem at all, as I see it. But sprinkling "like" all over the place just sounds like standard teenage girl to my ears, so you should be aware of how it will play in other places. "Like" is, like, just so, like, Valley Girl... At least to North American ears. Might not be the flavour you're trying to serve.

All of the above comments are assuming that dialect is being used in dialogue, not in the narrative itself. An entire text written in dialogue would be very wearing. Yes, I know it's been done, but that was a long time ago, and the few surviving examples were done by masters of the craft. It's like children's books in poetry: very, very few people are good enough to pull it off. They make it look so easy and the results are so wonderful that everybody else keeps trying, much to the despair of slush-pile readers.

[Prit]

I like dialect when the author manages to convey it without a bunch of incorrect spellings (yes, this is possible), but I hate it with misspellings. I think the bad spellings are both hard to read and condescending. No one pronounces all English words the way that they are spelled, so why misspell words from only certain dialects?

But I think that dialect conveyed by things like word order, word choice, odd turns of phrase, etc., can be really brilliant. I generally think that dialogue should read in a way that mirrors how people actually speak, not like a speech and people from different areas of the world speak differently.

[Charissa]

J.K. Rowling did a good job with Fleur Delacour and Hagrid... It was nice to imagine someone speaking in an accent other than the stardard Britsh.
...
To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favourite books and the dialect didn't bother me in the least, it was used in modesty and added to the characters personalities.
In fact, if used properly, accents can make a book so much more realistic.

MIND you I go beserk when you get the over done:
'Aw, well yer that somethin' of yours is out yonder ov'r 'em hills back there ... Say, how'd y'all think I got here so quick without me own pops worryin' to death ... Yessum, it ain't far, oughta take y'all less then 5 miles to get there.'

That's just my own crap version of the type of dialect I hate....
Anyway, it's O-Kay if maybe one character speaks like that, but if they're all speaking like hillbillies then it gets on my nerves...

[darkpowers]

Anything incomprehensible is offputting, so the nosso bard is stretching it. Unless, of course, you define it for the reader, perhaps through someone in the story who doesn't understand. Really thick dialect is like a strong spice: in most cases it's best if you use it sparingly. If it's a very localized dialect, the chances are that the rest of the world won't understand. Idiosyncratic word order or easily understood things like "mun" are not a problem at all, as I see it. But sprinkling "like" all over the place just sounds like standard teenage girl to my ears, so you should be aware of how it will play in other places. "Like" is, like, just so, like, Valley Girl... At least to North American ears. Might not be the flavour you're trying to serve.

All of the above comments are assuming that dialect is being used in dialogue, not in the narrative itself. An entire text written in dialogue would be very wearing. Yes, I know it's been done, but that was a long time ago, and the few surviving examples were done by masters of the craft. It's like children's books in poetry: very, very few people are good enough to pull it off. They make it look so easy and the results are so wonderful that everybody else keeps trying, much to the despair of slush-pile readers.

Thank you for those helpful observations.

I would only use the dialect terms sparingly in dialogue and certaintly not in narrative. Good point about like. So far I haven't used it, but if I did, it would be no more than once or twice.

I like the spice analogy: use it sparingly to flavour and don't overload the dish with it.

[scarletpeaches]

J.K. Rowling did a good job with Fleur Delacour and Hagrid... It was nice to imagine someone speaking in an accent other than the stardard Britsh.Good god, they were two of the worst accented characters I've ever read.

[panda]

Good god, they were two of the worst accented characters I've ever read.

I thought Fleur's was pretty spot on, but then I'm half-veela. :D

[megan_d]

Yeah Fleur's accent I could deal with, but Hagrid's.... If those books hadn't already been building up a following when I started the first one, what with Hagrid making his first appearance so early in, I really don't think I would have finished the thing.

[panda]

Well, the book was written for kids, so I think that should be kept in mind
and the dialect obviously didn't hurt her in terms of millions of dollars from book sales or from her billion dollar movie franchise. Oh, how I wish I'd thought up hogwarts, but i'm just a poor unpublished muggle lol

[TereLiz]

Dialect is a touchy subject for me, since the novel I'm currently querying takes place in New Orleans, where the accents are as varied as the people. I want to be able to convey the rhythm of the dialect without sounding demeaning or classist.

But the voiced dental frictive "TH" is conspicuously absent from the "yat" accent, so yes, I'm guilty of writing "that" as "dat". The unvoiced dental frictive is usually pronounced "ff", so that "south' becomes "sowf", which is more or less unreadable and not a dialect choice I'd make.

I certainly wouldn't write every word phoenetically to avoid taking the reader out of the story and to keep readability high, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a smattering of dialect. IF you understand it well enough to write it, as in, you hear it daily, and can pinpoint what makes the dialect so interesting, rhythmic and unique.

[squibnocket]

I'm generally not a huge fan of dialect. There's a big assumption that your readers will know how the dialect sounds and that the way you write the dialect will be they way they expect it to be conveyed.

I just read a novel that included some colonial-era Massachusetts dialect. I had to keep stopping my reading to actually sound out the words. Totally pulled me out of the story each time and made the book less enjoyable.

[Judg]

The other danger of spelling phonetically is that English is too international a language. My phonetics and SP's phonetics are almost certainly different. No matter how you spell it, you're going to be getting it wrong for a large number of readers.

This is a matter of practicality. In real life, I don't object to a smattering of creative spelling. Just keep in mind if you want to use it that you're running a number of risks. The more you use it, the greater the risk.

[Rarri]

This thread has gained a new dimension for me, i've just started reading Forrest Gump and i'm surprised at how well the book reads given how it's been written.