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Q&A My story is written in English, but is set in my home country. What language should I use for the dialogue?

Who is your audience? What languages do they know? If it's an international contest, are there language guidelines? If it says English Only, then be at least 99% English! Are you planning on a fe...

posted 5y ago by April Salutes Monica C.‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-02-10T14:22:55Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43370
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:17:18Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43370
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T11:17:18Z (almost 5 years ago)
Who is your audience? What languages do they know? If it's an international contest, are there language guidelines? If it says English Only, then be at least 99% English!

Are you planning on a few loanwords from Tagalog that are really hard to easily phrase in English? That sounds fine, especially if a reader can gather enough about them from context. (Example: perhaps a word describing a particular kind of flavor/texture that your grandmother's version of the dessert has, that this restaurant version does not have sufficiently.)

Often, if you're doing it to indicate private dialog, it may just be easier to use tags/description to state that.

> "Jan and her father spoke quietly, in their native language, so no one else understood. They seemed to come to a decision."

or

> "The parents talked. Jan heard a few words, like [whatever] and [whatever]. No matter how angry they were, when they spoke in [language], the language's [tonality? rhythms? some quality] sounded perfectly pleasant to outsiders."

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-03-12T15:05:21Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 21