Slingin' Slang.

[jaF0]

So many of these threads talk about proper spelling, proper grammar, proper punctuation, proper this, proper that. What if you want to be properly improper? What if you want your characters to be real people and not uptight hoitey-toities? And I don't mean limiting to dialog. I mean the whole story set up, to set the mood.

Even if it isn't normally considered slang. Something like: 'I worked all week for a measly couple-three hundred bucks.'

Do spell and grammar checkers or editors or Lit Submissions account for any of that?

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

 

[Handley_Page]

So many of these threads talk about proper spelling, proper grammar, proper punctuation, proper this, proper that. What if you want to be properly improper? What if you want your characters to be real people and not uptight hoitey-toities? And I don't mean limiting to dialog. I mean the whole story set up, to set the mood.

Even if it consider slang. Something like: 'I worked all week for a measly couple-three hundred bucks.'

Do spell and grammar checkers or editors or Lit Submissions account for any of that?

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

A lot may depend upon what part of the World is the story ?
My version of slang would not work, in, say, New York or LA.

God knows, we've heard of complaints when the language is real English, complete with in-country references and slang.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

So many of these threads talk about proper spelling, proper grammar, proper punctuation, proper this, proper that. What if you want to be properly improper? What if you want your characters to be real people and not uptight hoitey-toities? And I don't mean limiting to dialog. I mean the whole story set up, to set the mood.

Even if it consider slang. Something like: 'I worked all week for a measly couple-three hundred bucks.'

Do spell and grammar checkers or editors or Lit Submissions account for any of that?

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

I'm writing a first person present tense story narrated by the MC. I don't plan on a lot of dialogue, and it's being written as if she's talking to someone. Lot's of ain'ts and gotta and gonna and double negatives and the like.

I plan on leaving a note to the mod explaining that this was all intentional. Hope that get's it past muster.

 

[jaF0]

Ha!! Y'all got in before the edit and didn't even pick up on the error.



Cool.

 

[KeithD]

So many of these threads talk about proper spelling, proper grammar, proper punctuation, proper this, proper that. What if you want to be properly improper? What if you want your characters to be real people and not uptight hoitey-toities? And I don't mean limiting to dialog. I mean the whole story set up, to set the mood.

Even if it isn't normally considered slang. Something like: 'I worked all week for a measly couple-three hundred bucks.'

Do spell and grammar checkers or editors or Lit Submissions account for any of that?

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

No, grammar and spell checkers don't account for that. Yes, if you want to flavor your stories that way, fine. The only thing to keep in mind is the need to maintain clarity with readers (or most of them), if you want them to complete the read.

 

[jaF0]

A lot may depend upon what part of the World is the story ?
My version of slang would not work, in, say, New York or LA.

Part of what prompted this thread is that I was listening to this old WWII jazz/Big Band tune:

http://www.songlyrics.com/louis-jordan/you-can-t-get-that-no-more-lyrics/

I was going to quote part of it, but it has the 'J' word that was common then, but not fit for use now. Not that one, the other one.

 

[MelissaBaby]

So many of these threads talk about proper spelling, proper grammar, proper punctuation, proper this, proper that. What if you want to be properly improper? What if you want your characters to be real people and not uptight hoitey-toities? And I don't mean limiting to dialog. I mean the whole story set up, to set the mood.

Even if it isn't normally considered slang. Something like: 'I worked all week for a measly couple-three hundred bucks.'

Do spell and grammar checkers or editors or Lit Submissions account for any of that?

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

A reader who knows English as a second language messaged me while reading My Fall and Rise, asking me to explain some slang expressions. His English was very good, but apparently, "eightball", "on the rag", "road head" and a number of other expressions had never come up in his language classes.

I am writing my first period piece right now for the Summer Lovin' contest. It's set in the 1950s. I've found a number of websites that list slang from that era, but I will go pretty lightly on it, on the theory that it's better to not use it than to get it wrong.

 

[NotWise]

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

"Love is Enough" is set in the present, but the two female main characters are flappers -- or the ghosts of flappers. I did a lot of research into slang of the 1920's, and was careful that the words were in use by 1926, when they died.

"Oscar's Place" posed a similar problem, but in that case the characters were from the 1940's, and only one of them spoke. I didn't put nearly as much research into it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My narrators use plenty of slang, sentence fragments, swear words, etc. The site has no problem, though I get some complaints about not speaking proper English, ie American. I then get more comments apologising for the previous commenter.

For my most recent story which has one character from Northern Ireland and one from Birmingham, I looked up internet pages on dialect and slang for each place and then used phrases from them if I've heard them in real life. I then go through my stories looking to clarify things that may be totally incomprehensible to foreigners, and add a subtle bit of context or make the grammar a little more mainstream. For example I tried to make clear who was getting or losing points in a snooker game for those unfamiliar with rules.

Though in the future I want to write a story where a Londoner and a Glaswegian meet in an American hotel and pull a woman who can't understand anything they say...

 

[MelissaBaby]

"Love is Enough" is set in the present, but the two female main characters are flappers -- or the ghosts of flappers. I did a lot of research into slang of the 1920's, and was careful that the words were in use by 1926, when they died.

"Oscar's Place" posed a similar problem, but in that case the characters were from the 1940's, and only one of them spoke. I didn't put nearly as much research into it.

Having not done this before, I would imagine the real trick is to capture the period with accurate slang, while keeping it comprehensible to modern readers.

 

[NotWise]

Having not done this before, I would imagine the real trick is to capture the period with accurate slang, while keeping it comprehensible to modern readers.

There's probably some dialog in "Love is Enough" that some people would find hard to follow. Context helps, and some of the 1920's slang is familiar from movies. Slang of the 1940's didn't seem that hard to me, since that's how my parents, aunts and uncles would have talked.

 

[SimonDoom]

There's no one, inflexible rule about the use of slang in stories. The over-arching concern, though, should be, why? Why do you want to use slang? What is its purpose in the story?

In dialogue, it makes sense to make your characters talk the way people like them would really talk. That might mean the use of slang. There's no reason to maintain perfect grammar in dialogue.

In first-person narration, there's some sense in having the narrator use slang so the story feels like it's really being narrated by that sort of person. A perfect example is Huckleberry Finn, where Mark Twain very meticulously sought to have his protagonist/narrator tell the story the way a poor, uneducated white boy from Missouri would.

Third-person narrative is different. My own personal view is that third-person narrative should, most of the time, be told in good, grammatical English, unless there's a particular reason to call attention to the narrator. Most of the time, there isn't. The narrator is not a character, and the idea is for the narrator to narrate without being obtrusive.

 

[lovecraft68]

So many of these threads talk about proper spelling, proper grammar, proper punctuation, proper this, proper that. What if you want to be properly improper? What if you want your characters to be real people and not uptight hoitey-toities? And I don't mean limiting to dialog. I mean the whole story set up, to set the mood.

Even if it isn't normally considered slang. Something like: 'I worked all week for a measly couple-three hundred bucks.'

Do spell and grammar checkers or editors or Lit Submissions account for any of that?

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

It'll go through fine. What's hard to do sometimes is maintain consistency. If your character is going to say "gonna, gotta nothin'" then they need to do it throughout...a person who speaks like that can't suddenly turn into a professional speaker part way through the story then revert back.

 

[Voboy]

A reader who knows English as a second language messaged me while reading My Fall and Rise, asking me to explain some slang expressions. His English was very good, but apparently, "eightball", "on the rag", "road head" and a number of other expressions had never come up in his language classes.

I am writing my first period piece right now for the Summer Lovin' contest. It's set in the 1950s. I've found a number of websites that list slang from that era, but I will go pretty lightly on it, on the theory that it's better to not use it than to get it wrong.

I had a similar problem when Chloe ran her Australia writer event a couple years back. I contacted a couple of Litsters from Oz, downloaded an "Australian Slang Dictionary" that seemed reputable, and set to work... but to be honest, I toned it down because some of the expressions just seemed too damn bizarre.

I had a period piece once too, set in the '50s, and I limited myself to slang I'd already heard before rather than digging into the research. My theory was that sometimes things can be TOO authentic, and that the 2010s/20s reader can get plenty of '50s flavor just by using "swell" and referencing Bill Haley and his Comets. Basically, if it showed up in the movie "Clue," that's probably good enough.

How sad, on an unrelated note, to encounter a reader who knows enough English to enjoy "My Fall and Rise," but not enough to know about road head.

OP, on your point, sure. I use informal English all the damn time, both in dialogue and in exposition. As long as the meaning is clear when I read it over, I couldn't care less what a piece of proofreading software thinks of it.

 

[MelissaBaby]

How sad, on an unrelated note, to encounter a reader who knows enough English to enjoy "My Fall and Rise," but not enough to know about road head.

He may have understood the concept, but not the term. We can hope, anyway.

I've had a lot of fun with Maine slang in Mary and Alvin, but as one of the two primary characters was not a Mainer, I was able to use her as a sort of translator for the reader.

Good thing, because too many dubbers don't know the difference between puckerbrush and the williwacks.

 

[jaF0]

Nobody that lives in a region ever uses all of the slang from that region. Any given individual may use some of the phrases some of the time. You can't just look up a bunch of phrases and slap them in all willy nilly. There has to be some reasonable flow.

I don't know about anybody else, but I slip in and out of slang use quite often based on the people around me. I'll be much less formal with people I know than store clerks for example. There's no reason a story character can't do the same.

 

[PennameWombat]

So many of these threads talk about proper spelling, proper grammar, proper punctuation, proper this, proper that. What if you want to be properly improper? What if you want your characters to be real people and not uptight hoitey-toities? And I don't mean limiting to dialog. I mean the whole story set up, to set the mood.

Even if it isn't normally considered slang. Something like: 'I worked all week for a measly couple-three hundred bucks.'

Do spell and grammar checkers or editors or Lit Submissions account for any of that?

If you're doing a period piece, in whatever other research you do, are you looking for HOW people talked to each other and what slang they might have used?

As others have said, you differentiate between dialogue and narration, although first-person narration can be a poser.

I have aliens who’ve been secretly spying on Earth from space. Older aliens speak with strongly-accented English but younger ones (born on the starship so grew up w/Earth languages) are smoother but lack use of contractions. I fight a war with the spell+grammar checkers for dialogue. All 3rd-person so narration is grammatically correct.

My Summer Lovin 2020 entry has an autobiographical element and is set in 1978 in an American city in a neighborhood with a large Mexican immigrant population. I aimed to include a kind of Mexican slang, not traditional Spanish, in dialogue. My first-person narrator isn’t Mexican-American and where his narration captures his thoughts it follows the flow of his not-perfectly-grammatical dialogue, other narration is meant to be grammatical.

I did a 2019 story set in Sydney and mentioned things like the Super League war (even many Australians will miss my narrator’s musing about Wests Magpies) but generally wasn’t as far out there as RustyOzNail’s latest

I sometimes look for intentional errors reported by grammar checkers in dialogue, then I decide to keep it that way if it’s ‘natural’ speech flow.

But Lit seems to pay attention to things like punctuation but so long as that’s good the actual language gets passed. I’ve never had an issue.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

As others have said, you differentiate between dialogue and narration, although first-person narration can be a poser...

I think Mark Twain did a great job writing the first-person narration in dialect complete with slang. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a good example.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Though in the future I want to write a story where a Londoner and a Glaswegian meet in an American hotel and pull a woman who can't understand anything they say...

XConfessions has a video "Scotch Egg" along those lines. The Glaswegian guy is subtitled for the benefit of those of us who struggle with that dialect. It was highly entertaining, not just for the language issues.

I had a similar problem when Chloe ran her Australia writer event a couple years back. I contacted a couple of Litsters from Oz, downloaded an "Australian Slang Dictionary" that seemed reputable, and set to work... but to be honest, I toned it down because some of the expressions just seemed too damn bizarre.

Good call. Even Australians trip up on Australian slang sometimes.

Our fourth-/sixth-last Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had a background in diplomacy and the public service. He had a reputation for using jargon like "programmatic specificity" and in trying to shake that, he started using ocker expressions like "fair suck of the sauce bottle". He got laughed at, because coming from him it felt fake.

Slang is very place- and class-specific, and if you don't understand those nuances it just rings false.

 

[Rustyoznail]

XConfessions has a video "Scotch Egg" along those lines. The Glaswegian guy is subtitled for the benefit of those of us who struggle with that dialect. It was highly entertaining, not just for the language issues.

Slang is very place- and class-specific, and if you don't understand those nuances it just rings false.

I wish I could remember where I saw it, but there was a comedy show (actually it was Monty Python) that was subtitled with “I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I’m going to chat about fjords...

Yeah, it’s actually difficult to write how a normal person speaks and making it sound natural. Grammar checkers just get confused.

Plug for my summer lovin’ story - it plays on an Indian lady arriving in Melbourne and not really understanding what people are saying.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

I wish I could remember where I saw it, but there was a comedy show (actually it was Monty Python) that was subtitled with “I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I’m going to chat about fjords...

Yeah, it’s actually difficult to write how a normal person speaks and making it sound natural. Grammar checkers just get confused.

Plug for my summer lovin’ story - it plays on an Indian lady arriving in Melbourne and not really understanding what people are saying.

Some of the people I floolw on Twitter love Scottish twitter. not one of them understands WTF is going on, but it's funny as hell.

 

[PennameWombat]

I think Mark Twain did a great job writing the first-person narration in dialect complete with slang. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a good example.

I went for a long walk along the Cooks River and had the thought “this was the example I should’ve used in my posting.”

You stole my thunder

 

[SisterJezabel]

Good call. Even Australians trip up on Australian slang sometimes.

Our fourth-/sixth-last Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had a background in diplomacy and the public service. He had a reputation for using jargon like "programmatic specificity" and in trying to shake that, he started using ocker expressions like "fair suck of the sauce bottle". He got laughed at, because coming from him it felt fake.

We laughed because it's 'fair suck of the sav/saveloy' and 'fair shake of the sauce bottle' ;-) My father used to say fair shake of the sauce bottle to indicate having a wank! Both could be written into erotic contexts with ease one might think! Cue RustyOzNail!

I tend to think most localisms used in context can make sense to most readers.

 

[Rustyoznail]

You rang?

We laughed because it's 'fair suck of the sav/saveloy' and 'fair shake of the sauce bottle' ;-) My father used to say fair shake of the sauce bottle to indicate having a wank! Both could be written into erotic contexts with ease one might think! Cue RustyOzNail!

 

[jaF0]

Plug for my summer lovin’ story - it plays on an Indian lady arriving in Melbourne and not really understanding what people are saying.

Accents are another thing really hard to convey in print. And you have to try to avoid ethnic stereotypes to make it work.

I remember a joke from many, many years ago that wouldn't generally go over well today.

-------
International traveler shows up at a hotel with an English speaking staff. Orders breakfast and asks for two pieces of toast, but only gets one. Complains to clerk in a very heavy accent, "I want two piece, two piece (sounds like 'to peess')". Clerk says "down the hall on the left".

Later the traveler discovers there is only on sheet on the bed. Complains to the same clerk, "I want two sheet, two sheet (sounds like 'to sheeet')". Clerk says "Like I told you earlier, down the hall on the left".

Dinner time comes and the traveler is used to two forks beside the dinner plate but only sees one. Complains to the clerk, "I want two fork, two fork (sounds like 'to fawhk')." Clerk says, "Awright, now look Pal !!!"

------------------


Way back then, the nationality of the traveler was said to be Italian, but it would fit with others too. How do you covey overly heavy, hard to understand accents without being offensive?

I don't speak any other languages and have never traveled to any country that speaks anything else, but I'd imagine we do the same sort of thing when trying to speak a language we only know a few words of.