Writing dialogue with accents

I think that if you say the character has an accent, you should write their dialogue in that accent. If it's not important/not mentioned, don't do it. It's like in The Hunger Games, Effie's Capitol accent is mentioned a lot but never actually written and that annoys me. I think Brian Jacques does a good job with writing accents, but sometimes the mole accents and the highland accents are a little hard to figure out. You can't say "'These horses are magnificent,' she said in her heavy French accent." I think it would be better in that case to say "'Zese 'orses are très magnifique,' she said." That's just my opinion that not everyone agrees with.

 

Your example isn't all accent, though--it's half accent and half word choice. So I would write it as "These horses are très magnifique."

The problem with writing the dialogue in an accent is that you're declaring which pronunciation is "right", and which pronunciation is "wrong" and therefore should be written phonetically. So a book written by someone raised in Georgia would phonetically depict the accent of characters from New York. One written in New York would phonetically depict the accent of characters from Georgia. A British author would phonetically depict all of the American characters' words, and in fact the words of every British character that didn't speak in the normal way for the author's region and class. Even if you're depicting the accent of a non-native speaker, as in your French character's example, the way that their words would vary from the standard would depend on which standard you're using.

How do you phonetically depict the words of a speaker from Southern France, who was taught English by an Australian, as heard by someone who grew up in Georgia until age 10, and then moved to Brooklyn until age 30?

And if we choose a single standard, we're making an elitist declaration that THIS version of our language is the one and only standard, and all the others are wrong.

Also, reading phonetic words annoys me intensely.

 

Yeah, my view is the complete opposite to this.

 

I used accents, but sparingly, in my book
1. The centurion speaks a fractured Latin "Sir, with all respect, yer goin' ter git yersel' kilt doin' that" No, it 's not Latin, but conveys the idea that his speech ignores accepted rules of pronunciation and grammar. He actually can, and on a few occasions does, speak Latin quite well, but coming up through the ranks, that is a side he has chosen to keep hidden. His Greek, on the other hand, is flawless. With a last name of Aristides, one would expect so.
2. The Chinese man speaking Latin speaks in sort of a pidgin: "Time we go now." Not stereotypical, but due to the fact that Chinese has no articles nor grammar. Latin has no articles either, but plenty of grammar. Also Chinese more freely allows a word to take on an identity (noun, adjective, verb, adverb) by its position in the sentence, something English is developing. "It's a go," "It's a go mission" are examples.
3. When the Romans perforce must learn Chinese to make good their escape, their Chinese is likewise fractured, stilted with a few ... to indicate the words are not coming quickly to them. Ditto later when they are mastering Bactrian. I keep these transitions short because that can get tiring fast.
4. Although not an accent per se, I rendered Aramaic speech as old English, King Jamesish, "Thou sayest," to distinguish it from other languages. The Aramaic speakers in the group gain a measure of privacy by this, since only the centurion speaks the language well enough to hold even a simple conversation.

The accents I think here support the story. The centurion's fractured Latin and profanity are part of his voice, separate and distinct from his upper class sidekick Gaius and the Senator, who speak perfectly, and rarely swear. The Chinese speaking Latin is struggling with the language, and occasionally misunderstand and are misunderstood. Fearing loss of face, he prefers to remain largely silent. Ditto with Romans initially speaking Chinese. The Chinese emperor, on the other hand, has had many years to prepare for this meeting with a native Latin speaker, and speaks it quite well. His main intent was to make sure his translator did a good job, but now gains a moment of privacy in the court with them, just before all hell breaks loose.

And anyone who has learned a foreign language will identify with the heroine who proudly greets her riding partner with "Lurdh pi tao" (Peace be to you), her newly-mastered Bactrian phrase. This elicits a burst of Bactrian from Ferhad, too fast and complex for her to catch so much as a word. Embarrassed, she reverts to Chinese, their lingua franca. She does get good enough to go out drinking with them and exchange ribald jokes by the time they get to Kashgar, though still not fluent. Much better when she gets to Bactria (Afghanistan).

 

I think accents can really bring out the character in a...uhm...character, and it can really make them stand out.
If they have a unique accent, impediment or just a special way of putting words together, you know in an instant when someone's talking...it can be something as simple as whether or not they're using contractions.

One of my favorites to both read and write are the Orks from Warhammer 40k, mainly because as soon as you see it, you know it's an Ork talking, "an deyz talkin like diz wen deyz ain' stompin' da weedy 'umies".
This is of course a bit of a unique case as most of the people who read 40k novels already play the game and so know about the Orks, their culture (or rather "kultur'") but to other it might just look like the writer had a fit.

 

My daughter (born and raised in the UK) emigrated to Australia, where she was told by a native that she had the worst fake English accent he'd ever heard...

My son moved dahn Sahff, and got mocked by the locals that he didn't say grarss when he was talking about green stuff on the lawn, and he didn't say barff when he was trying to clean himself all over. Now, he gets mocked when he comes home and DOES...

 

I wanted to return to this to say that most of your examples sound like word choice, not accent. I'm in favor of depicting word choice.