Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/33837
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm from Ireland, most of my stories take place in Ireland, and many of my characters will speak with Irish accents and/or dialects to varying degrees. For the most part I think this is OK, and can often be endearing to non-Irish readers. However I know from experience that certain phrases and colloquialisms can be quite jarring for someone who is not familiar with them. Usually this occurs when messing with grammar, for example:

> amn’t (am not)
> 
> yous (you plural)
> 
> usen’t to (used to not, i.e. didn’t used to)

These are just some examples from my own life where a non-Irish person was downright offended when I’ve said one of the above. In my writing, I had one reviewer comment “_yous_ is not a word you absolute nutcase”!

In some cases I think the Irishness of the story or character allows for this sort of thing, and it’s stylistically important. Other times it’s completely irrelevant but it’s just what comes naturally to me as I’m writing. In the latter cases, is there a benefit to leaving these sorts of things out and trying to neutralise the language (mostly for dialogue and first person narration)? Or is there any reason I should leave them in?

Original score: 27