Hi everyone. Just wondering if anyone can help me. In the novel I mentioned earlier, I need to know, One of my characters has a very thick English accent (because my Dad is from Bristol) I love his accent! This character, Bernard, is a giant tree, it sounds strange but just go with it please, it is a book like nothing I have ever read before. Anyway, I got my Dad to read some of my novel and he kept looking from the page to me a few times, as though I was crazy and the worst speller in the world! Finally he said "you can't spell for s..." I laughed so much at the look on his face, then told him to Read it as it sounds. For example: "Well don' jus' stand thar! Get yer feet off' er me root youngun!" An shut yer mouth ye look like a carnival clown! I need to work on how to write it. Do you write it like this? Properly of course. I created this story and many of it's characters in 1991. I have begun working on it again as I want to finish it and get it published. Would love to hear any comments. Please be honest but I don't have much self - confidence, I don't want to give up on it. My Mum made me promise before she passed away 6yrs ago to finish it. I want to do it for her and me. Thanks, CBK.
I can't think of any way to properly convey a strong accent or dialect other than to write/spell it as it sounds to you. But the "visual accent" (for lack of a better term) would be used only for parts that are spoken (within quotation marks), unless you write the entire book in the first person from the view of a character who not only speaks like that but also thinks in that accent or dialogue (and why wouldn't someone who has always spoken like that also think that way?). In your example, you have two sentences in the dialect within the quotation marks, and then one that's not in quotation marks. IMHO, that makes no sense.
I only write like this when I want to draw particular attention to the character's accent. And that's usually to highlight how different he/she sounds to the other characters.
Two observations I'd make. First, it sounds like your Dad didn't get the point of the character having the accent. Which may be because it's his own accent it's supposed to emulate, not sure. Second, using this too much, like every line of dialogue, can be taxing for the reader. I'd introduce it in the first scene, (maybe the first few lines of dialogue only) and then use it in moderation the rest of the story. At least that's what's I've seen recommended elsewhere.
@CBK I’m not sure if you are English, but there is no such thing as a very thick English accent. We maybe a small island, but within a short 50miles in any direction the accent will change dramatically. Now I’m going to assume (due to Dad) that the distinct accent is from Bristol for your tree. If so its perfect for a speaking tree... Your dialogue however doesn’t resonate Bristolian. Watch the tv show Wurzel Gummidge. This is cider country and the folk tend to roll their ‘r’s or any other last letter of a sentence. So, for your example ‘Well doni jushhh stand tharrr! Get yerrr feet off’ errr me rrroot youngunnn’ I apologize if it sounds nothing like Dad. They speak in a slow high low labored roll, with a Oh-arrrh. Every word is elongated and never clipped... the carnival clown bit is way too cut in my opinion. It’s really hard writing accented dialogue. The Scottish crime author Ian Rankin does a great job of writing an accent in small doses. But personally, I struggle reading something that’s phonetically written which goes on too long. So, I’d say the initial introduction from an outsider coming in then accented dialogue is needed. However, later with regular characters interacting no. Add a description every now and again... he said rolling off the sentence in his contemplating manner. Hope this helps MartinM
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback you are right, Bernards character is an important part of the story but he doesn't have a huge amount of dialogue, only here and there. I don't want the readers to get overwhelmed by his accent, sometimes I get confused writing it! lol Thanks, CBK
Hi, thanks MartinM. Yes, the carnival bit didn't work. Bernard is an important part of the story, but he doesn't have alot of dialogue so I hope potential readers won't get tired of it. I hope I haven't offended you or anyone else. My novel isn't set in England or anywhere, real, everything is fictitious, places, languages, everything. I know I have alot to learn about writing and I appreciate the feedback, thanks CBK. Oh, I was born in Australia and still here.
It's unusual to be reading about Bristol being given an eye dialect but there has been lots of debate about this in recent years e.g. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_dialect I believe the most future-proof approach is to not do it. At least not to the spellings of words - all English dialects use the same dictionary underneath and (with a few famous exceptions) we spell the words the same. When someone from South West England reads "there" on the page, what they mentally hear might be "thar" (to the ear of another dialect), but when they write down what we hear as "thar" they spell it t-h-e-r-e. The part of a dialect that matters and that should be conveyed in the writing is the subtle underlying difference in how thoughts are organised. Word order and choice of words absolutely should be brought to the forefront by the writing, based on the best research possible (lived experience of a relative who speaks the dialect is nearly as good as research gets.) The spelling is best left alone - unless the dialect really does spell the word differently. e.g. it's normally ee-bah-gum, not ee by gum (even though bah is a phonetic variation of by). I have some relatives in Bristol but not close enough to be categorical on this - I'd suggest Well don' jus' stand thar! Get yer feet off' er me root youngun! might be fine as Well don't just stand there! Get your feet off of me root young'un! Weirdly this is my second post today with an English dialect pronunciation of the word "of." Where I am it's normally stressed (ov). I'm not sure if it's normally unstressed in Bristol, but I think here it's safe to say it's contracting into a schwa (ə) because off-of is becoming a distinct preposition from off. I like to imagine that might be an old preposition from the West Saxon dialect re-emerging. I think "off of" in written English is marked enough to show there's a dialect in play. "Me" for "my" I usually keep in case it's a grammar difference not just pronunciation. And young'un is another contraction - it doesn't mean the same thing anymore as "young one."
I protest - the italics and the "then" on the end are too much. We don't have to define young'un and young one before we can tell they're different. Look at their vocative cases:- "You should listen to your elders, young'un." "You should listen to your elders, young one." The first of these is native to the wild west and wears dungarees and chews a straw. The young'un is aged 5-10 and has entered a character conflict with the elder. The second inhabits the far east and has an initiate's robes and a shaved head. The young one is aged anything below 99 and is meeting the elder for the first time to begin training. (In British English there is an important secondary register of Rik Mayall sewing Adrian Edmondson's legs on backwards) So two substantives for two very different types of young person. The first has contracted already, the second hasn't. Perhaps it will become "young-one" with a hyphen, and finally "yungwan", following the pattern of Yoda's "padawan". We don't see "young pair" being used when there's two young people in a scene - so the one in "young one" isn't really a numerator anymore. And we don't see "younger one" or "older one", so "young" isn't operating as a natural-speech adjective. We do get "old one" and (rarely) "old'un" but never "teen'un", "mature'un" or "senior'un" - so there isn't a free choice of age-adjective. Lastly, "ancient one" is common but there is no corresponding "ancient'un" usage - which I would argue is evidence that the 'un on the end of "young'un" is logically distinct from the one on the end of "young one". What does it mean? is a fair question. But don't ask me: I'm sceptical of lexicography. EDIT: there are wrong'uns but never wrong ones, which is the opposite case from ancient ones but never ancient'uns.
So they're different in the way "We should not... " is different from "We shouldn't... "—formal versus informal.
Briefly, I don't think that's how should not and shouldn't differ. It's not that the latter is an abbreviated and colloquial form - it's contracting to express a different mood. In some dialects as well as 'not' contracting to n't, the whole thing contracts down to one syllable: the pretty ˈʃʊnʔ - 'shoont'. (and this alongside a 'should not' that is still pronounced as 2 syllables with the l stressed). Maybe we're regaining an optative. Formal English I think is really a hidden elite dialect (perhaps like Mandarin or Brahmin Tamil) - and in context of English as an Imperial language, where lexicographers keep ancient dialect groups in thrall, optatives might be very exciting. Optatives give you options. We ˈʃʊnʔ let Macron push us around. Boris ˈʃʊnʔ listen to Biden. It is a rebellious syllable. Yoda though, if he travelled far, far toward us and waited a long, long time (but not too long), to meet Tom Sawyer, and called him "young one", he'd be wrong. Because Tom Sawyer is a young'un. It's conceivable Yoda might train Tom Sawyer as a Jedi - then he'd be a young'un young one. We might dislike the repetition of similar sounds - but sometimes ma'am is a madam. We know the two words must mean different things, because they sound different.
Yoda has a lot to learn. Tom Sawyer might well be a "young'un" and not young one. The latter is more correctly pronounced yung wan and the title also assigns gender. Tom, in these parts, would be a yung fella. Similarly, auld wan is preserved for mothers or women at a certain stage of life. Dad, he's the auld fella. Regarding the OP, writing the dialect can add flavour. If it's too dense or impenetrable, it can put the reader off. The piece you've quoted above seems fine to me but I have, to my shame, abandoned books because I just didn't have the energy to decipher the meaning from the colloquial form. Butcher Boy, methinks,was written in that manner. At least that's how I remember it but that dialect was familiar to me. Cormac McCarthy had one that I couldn't get past the first page.
I like your presentation of the accent. I'd be careful about trying to write the accent too accurately. It seems to me the accuracy of the accent will be dependent on the different perceptions of each individual reader. Put another way, each person will process the written accent based on accents they have heard and are familiar with. Take Long John Silver in Treasure Island. The dialogue suggests an accent, but I find myself applying a much thicker accent than the words suggest. My perception is that Long John talks with a very thick pirate voice I've become familiar with watching old B movies about swashbucklers. I'd consider suggesting the accent and letting each reader's imagination do the rest.
Less is more with accents. I suggest reading this blog post on the issue: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/most-common-mistakes-dos-and-donts-of/
You have the advantage of being around the accent you could use. I would write what you hear and not worry about the authenticity being challenged. When people tell me I have a southern accent, I bark back that I sound like the man on the six o'clock news. I wouldn't worry too much about overdoing it, as some have said in the past. Just take some time and read 'Of Mice and Men' by Steinbeck.
Wi'll go' t'pub at quar' past fooer fir us dinner. Ee, it's coold oop noorth. Translation: We shall sojourn to the public drinking establishment for our afternoon repast at fifteen minutes past the hour. By gosh, the temperature is inclement at higher latitudes.
The other danger with writing accents in this way is that you might end up reducing the character to a caricature, at least in the reader's mind. You need to have a strong characterisation to overcome this.
When I lived in the mountains in Colorado, we got one tv station. We ended up watching shows like the East Enders. At first, I couldn't understand any of the characters, but I slowly picked up the jargon. For me, it was the same as reading about George and Lenny. I guess you could overdo it, but if it passes your beta readers and you're happy with it, then write what you think.
