Post History
Strike a balance. Your character who speaks in dialect uses different vocabulary, word order, grammar than the person who speaks in the Received Standard version of the language. Non-Dialect Amer...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-13T12:00:33Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20473 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T04:56:45Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20473 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Strike a balance. Your character who speaks in dialect uses different vocabulary, word order, grammar than the person who speaks in the Received Standard version of the language. - Non-Dialect American English: "Can I come see you tomorrow?" - British English: "Shall I knock you up?" - Brooklynese: "I'll come call f'you." Only in the third one would I change the spelling, and that's to indicate the contraction of _for you_ to the reader's ear. Focus more on the content than every slurred syllable or swallowed dipthong. Using "Oi!" instead of "Hey!" immediately indicates _British_, which primes your reader at least to assume that the character has some kind of British accent. You can drop a few Gs (callin', sayin') because that's not too tiresome to read. A broad Southern accent can be represented with _Boy, Ah say, boy, you're about as subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel'a oatmeal._ I would only use the _um_s and _uh_s when it's important to indicate stammering and stuttering, like your anxious character.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-01-15T22:51:40Z (almost 9 years ago)
Original score: 5