On Feb 9, 2012, writeforfun wrote, I’m from Indiana. I’ve read a tiny bit of “the Hoosier Schoolmaster,” which is supposedly written with Hoosier dialect, and it doesn’t seem all that abnormal to me. I’ve read other books, even modern ones, that are a little harder to understand because I’m not used to the expressions they use.
I write my characters’ dialogue as though they’re ordinary people, so I use ordinary words, like “pretty big,” “you guys,” “gonna,” “anyhow,” etc., in their conversations even though they aren’t standard.
The problem: Most of my characters aren’t from Indiana, or even the Midwest! Is any of that considered “dialect,” and am I using too much of it? I’ve never noticed if I talk any different from people anywhere else in the country, but I must, right? I want the dialogue to seem real, but I don’t want to be unclear. Should I stop using substandard expressions in their dialogue, or do you think there isn’t any difference? Or should I try to figure out what words are used in other areas of the country – and the world?
Later writeforfun added, I think I’m just a little paranoid because I’ve never left the state, so I have to go on what other people say, and those I’ve talked to who have traveled always insist that we’re very different from other areas of the country. And I remember reading a book series that was written by a British person, and I was baffled by some of the expressions he used.
And the next day E. S. Ivy posted this comment: @ writeforfun – I’m from Texas and we use all those expressions too. But, we do have a few that are different. I started thinking about this when I wanted to write a character with a Southern accent; I found it’s very tricky to do! So one thing I’ve started doing is keeping a list of things we say that I think others don’t. Things such as we say “fixin’ to..” instead of “about to” as in “I’m fixin’ to go to the store.”
Even if you have never gone out of the state, the fact that you read a lot (and likely watch tv!) probably means you have a pretty good idea of how people talk all over.
If you want to write a dialect on purpose, one of the best tips I’ve heard… is that it’s not necessarily writing how the words are pronounced, but in the order your words are said. Writing a different spelling can be distracting, such as I just wrote “fixin'” instead of “fixing.” You might consider using words like “gonna” for only one distinct character.
I’m with E. S. Ivy on word order, a great tip, and also on non-standard spelling, which I’m not crazy about. I see gonna and the like routinely in screenplays, where I think it’s fine because the spelling is meant to inform an actor about pronunciation and the audience will never see it.
Going to may seem formal as opposed to gonna, likewise fixing rather than fixin’. But if you establish the tone of a character’s speech, the reader will infer the colloquial form, as in this snippet of dialogue:
“Little Piggy, what ever are you doing?”
“Why, I’m fixing to head on over to the Hair of Your Chinny Chin Chin barber shop, and once I get there, I’m going to fetch my brother home.”
I’m not Southern, and a genuine Southerner might do better, but I hope you get the feel of this. Without the regionalism, Little Piggy might say, “I’m about to leave for the Hair of Your Chinny Chin Chin barber shop to bring my brother home.” Or a different kind of character might answer, “My intention is to sally forth to the quaintly named Hair of Your Chinny Chin Chin barber shop to persuade my brother to return to the family domicile.”
English is marvelous in the choices it offers! I picked family domicile after considering ancestral abode. But there are other possibilities for each word. For family I could have gone with clan or hereditary or, my desktop thesaurus says, patrimonial, and I’m sure you can think of other options. Same with domicile. They’re not all direct synonyms for one another; shades of meaning differ, and the shades you select will color your prose.
It’s all in the writer’s voice and the character’s voice, which I wrote about in a post in September of 2010 and in a chapter in Writing Magic, both of which you might like to look at.
As for representing a region, naturally not everyone in a certain place sounds the same. I often listen to talk shows that beam out of New York City. Some people who call in sound like caricatures of a Noo Yawka or a Long Gislander (hard G, if you haven’t experienced this). In others the accent is faint. I like to think my own is faint but I hear it loud and clear when I’m traveling.
I’m not sure what expressions, as opposed to accent, signify New York. Well, here’s one: if you don’t live in Manhattan but you do live in one of the outer boroughs, going to Manhattan is called going to “the city,” even though these residents are already in the city. And I just googled “New York dialect,” and Wikipedia reminded me that people in the city stand “on line” rather than “in line,” which is absolutely true. There were other New York dialect sites that I didn’t investigate.
And I googled “Hoosier dialect,” and found an interesting blog that said that Hoosiers say they’re “half-tempted” to do something. Writeforfun, or anyone else, is this true?
So if you want to represent a region, I suggest you google it. But don’t believe everything you read. Go through a few entries for confirmation.
Also, and this is fun, try reading whatever you’ve written in a fake accent. If you’re not British, read a paragraph in a British accent. Then try Irish, Australian, Jamaican, Southern, New York, whatever you can. You may discover that the authenticity will be strengthened if you add a word or change the word order. See what happens.
Here are the week’s prompts:
∙ In my fantasies I’ve given characters accents but I’ve never tried an entire dialect. It’s a great idea, and I want to do it, so look for it in a future book. You can try it now. Your main character, Wendlyn, is behind enemy lines, a spy in the land of the Ruille people. She’s been taught their dialect, but she’s not comfortable with it. Write her conversation with two suspicious natives.
∙ Pick a paragraph in a favorite book and rewrite it at least three ways using different word choice. Change the tone of the passage with your revisions.
∙ Find a section of dialogue in a favorite book or in one of your stories and regionalize it. Turn it Texan or Canadian or Californian or more than one. Use Google or some other search engine for help.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Q says:
Another thing to watch out for is that sometimes people talk differently when they are talking about different things. For example, I went far away from home to go to college. When I went home for Christmas the first time, my mom said I had developed an accent, but only when I told stories about things that had happened at school. And paying more attention to myself, I realized she was right!
Julie says:
I am from PA, and I hear the phrase "half-tempted" all the time! It's so funny how some things carry over to different regions, and others don't.
Q, that is a really funny story! I know a couple of friends who developed accents at school just from being around people who weren't locals. Another thing to remember might be that sometimes people talk differently when they are talking to different people. For instance, my dad uses a lot of colloquial speech and grammar around his friends ("It ain't gonna happen!"). But when he is in a formal situation or around people he doesn't know, he uses impeccable grammar. It's interesting, because many of our speech patterns are a conscious choice; we can flip back and forth depending on the situation and what we think is appropriate.
writeforfun says:
Sorry, just a typo;)
Thanks so much for answering my question! I do feel a lot better now, just knowing that dialect isn't as obvious as I was afraid it was!
Oh, and we say half-tempted around here all the time. I had no idea that that, of all things, was dialect! Go figure:)
I tried your second prompt, after being inspired by the TV show my brother was watching. It was Lilo and Stitch, and if you've ever seen it, there is a character with a Russian accent who uses as many gerunds and infinitives as possible. The result is VERY distinct!
I think I was just being over-sensitive because the only person I know who is an extensive traveler is always telling me how different we are from everywhere else in the country. I think I just got self-conscious:)
carpelibris says:
I say "half-tempted," and I'm from Upstate NY.
Accents/dialects depend on who's listening, too. When I was in college, a NYC roommate commented on my "hick accent." A week or so later, one of my farm cousins said "I love your accent. It's so slangy and citified."
(And Albany, NY isn't generally considered to have a distinct accent!)
carpelibris says:
This looks interesting: http://aschmann.net/AmEng/
capng says:
This is completely unrelated, but…
I'm my WIP is told from the view of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. She's pretty evil at the beginning of the book (and conceited, too!) but gets better as the book continues. How do I make readers dislike her but still worry for her? Or is that even possible?
capng says:
Whoops, I meant my WIP is told from…
Not sure how the I'm got in there. 🙂
gailcarsonlevine says:
capng–Interesting question! I'm adding it to my list. In the meanwhile, suggestions, anyone?
Also, lots of interesting comments on dialect. Coincidentally, I listened last night to this podcast, which is related. Seems that researchers have discovered what Elizabethan English would have sounded like, and there are audio clips of bits of Shakespeare as the bard might have expected his lines to sound. It's fascinating! Here's the link: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/jul/18/patricia-t-oconner-shakespeares-english/.
Caitlyn says:
I love dialects! I got to take a whole class on the dialects of English while I was in college, and it was awesome! In fact, I actually studied linguistics for my undergrad, and the final paper of my capstone class was on the usage of pop/soda/coke.
I grew up in Illinois (the Chicago area) and Ohio and now I live in Utah. What I find interesting is that people from Chicago have a more pronounced accent than people from Ohio or Utah (the Midwestern dialect is considered standard for American English). I moved there when I was 13 and people pointed out how nasal my accent was, mostly because when there was an "a" sound, I would pronounce it more like the "a" in "ashes" but people from OH pronounced it like the "a" in "all."
There's a greater difference in word usage here in Utah. People say things like "for cute!" (cute) and "Oh my heck!" (OMG) and "tend the kids" (babysit the kids). The most pronounced part of a Utah accent is that people are turning their tense vowels into lax ones, so that "hill" and "heal" are both pronounced "hill" and "sell" and "sale" are both pronounced "sell." It's weird, especially for someone from Chicago, where the word "sale" is going in the opposite direction, the vowel is becoming so tense it's turning into a diphthong that sounds like "sayul."
Anyway, sorry, I don't get to talk about this stuff often and I love it, so I tend to carry on when I have an excuse.
This website: http://web.ku.edu/~idea/ has a huge list of English dialects spoken all over the world and sound clips you can listen to.
This website: http://robertspage.com/dialects.html has a dialectal map of the US with their "official" names, which might make it easier for you to google.
Good luck!
Oh, and I also say "half-tempted." 🙂
Kim says:
There is a wonderful article on this subject in the May/June issue of the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) bulletin. You do have to have a membership to access the bulletin, but membership is so worth it, for many reasons, not the least of which are the great articles (and no, I'm not being paid to promote the SCBWI–I just love it.).
What stuck with me most, in regards to the aforementioned article, is the idea that when speakers speak, they believe they're saying "proper" words. For example, when Aunt Millie says, "He's fixin' ter buy that hog," she thinks she's saying, "He's fixing to buy that hog." True, reading things that are written in the vernacular gives us an immediate idea of how the speaker speaks, but it can be overdone. The article suggested that you don't want to draw attention to the writing of the words, but to the conversation itself. Too many contractions or strangely-spelled words can draw a reader out of the book. Anyhow, it's a great article, and worth reading (though many of the ideas in it are expressed in this blog post and in the comments).
writeforfun says:
Wow, Gail, what an interesting link! Thanks for sharing!
angelgeekh says:
I'm from Iowa, and I go to college in Indiana. I haven't noticed much difference in regional expressions, and "half-tempted" would be normal in Iowa, though not terribly common. One thing I've noticed in more rural areas is the switching of "went" for "gone" — "I had went to the store…" Also, "to be" is sometimes removed. "The cat needs fed," etc. I remember once hearing that leaving out "to be" is a Wyoming thing, but I hear it in Iowa, too.
Kim says:
I'm from Wyoming, and while it's a huge state, in my home valley, we often said things like, "The cat needs fed" (see above comment from angelgeekh)–or even more frequently, "the cat needs feeding." However, I've also been told that I speak like a person from rural northern England–which makes sense, because many of the people who settled my home valley were from there, and their descendants still live there. We use many expressions that are particular to our little valley, but also particular to northern England. Fun and bizarre and wonderful, this language stuff!
Sophia says:
“My intention is to sally forth to the quaintly named Hair of Your Chinny Chin Chin barber shop to persuade my brother to return to the family domicile.”
Hahahaha that made me laugh, Gail! I love it!
Inkling says:
I love this post!!! I'm a "Su-thur-nur" and definitely have an accent!!! I had a teacher who would start to talk like the people he was around!!! It was hilarious!!! One of my friends is from Florida, and when she had just moved here her mom was asked to bring a six pack of "pops" to something, and when she got to the store, she told her daughter that she didn't think lollypops came in six packs, but "soda's" did and asked if they had mention that!!! If anyone needs tips on southern dialect, I saw a book that was called something like Southerner by the Grace of God that had a list of southern words like "yall," "dawg," and "tawlk" in the back of it! I've also noticed that people 'round here will mash words together so "It is a" turns into "Itsa" and Os at the end of words turn into As (into-inta).
Chicory says:
Emotions color word choices, too. I know someone who only uses ain't when they're upset -so if I hear that word from them, I know things are serious.
gailcarsonlevine says:
From the website:
Adding to the narrative posts, I'm British, and I call my mum 'Mum'. I have never been out of Britian and don't know many Americans so I'm not sure exactly what I sound like but people here do say things like 'spot' instead of 'a little bit', and yes, sometimes we do say 'wot' a fair bit. 🙂
PS: Brits do try to copy American accents as much and you Americans try to copy ours 😉
Nataly R
gailcarsonlevine says:
Also from the website:
A word of caution for dialects: don't make the Hagrid or Foremole mistake. Their words (Hagrid is from Harry Potter and Foremole and the other moles are from Redwall, which also applies to Basil Stag Hare) are like traffic jams. An exerpt from Mattiemo, a mole's dialogue: "Hurr, bless ee, marm, it wurr a nuthin', glad to be o' serven'"
Be careful, because readers tend to skip past dialogue they can't understand or have to readout loud!
Kittie
Heather Ostler says:
Great post, and an interesting look into different dialects. I'm from Utah and "half-temped" is a well used phrase.
Clare says:
I find dialect fascinating, and I love making up dialect of my own for my characters to use!