Looking for some advice re:language

[MelissaBaby]

In The Adventures of Ranger Ramona, I introduced a character, Isabel, who is French Canadian, but summers at a lake house in Maine.

Like most French Canadians, she is fluent in both French and English. In Ranger Ramona, virtually all the other characters are English speaking Americans, so her dialogue is nearly all in English. However, her speech is sprinkled with "Frenchisms". She says oui and non, rather than yes and no. She often refers to Ramona as "Mon cherie" or "ma belle". She routinely says bon jour, s'il vous plait, etc. It's an intrinsic part of her character.

Now, I am writing her own spinoff story (hopefully to be included in the Pink Orchid event), which will be set primarily in Montreal and in which most of the speakers will also be bilingual.

I would be interested in any advice on handling these language quirks. Presumably, some of the time she would be speaking French, other times, English. My feeling is that the best thing to do is ignore that and just write all the dialogue in English. I have a little French, but I am not trying to write a bilingual story.

But, it feels like the character loses a little something in that.I wonder if it would work to still have her use those French words and expressions. If I did, would it be best if all the French speaking characters used them? Or would that seem awkward, having them speak their native language sometimes, and not others?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I’m editing stories for an Indian lady. Her latest is where a couple of escaped criminals break into a house where a woman is alone for a week.

In India, most middle/upper class people know English reasonably well, but the crooks wouldn’t. She wrote the story with the dialogue in Hindi, but the rest in English. She tested it on another site, posting a few paragraphs at a time.

It didn’t go down well. She’s converted it back to English with the occasional Hindi swear.

 

[TadOverdon]

I'd continue writing her as you've established her, and have the other characters speak in the same way. As a second choice, have them all speak completely in English. Mixing and matching from character to character seems to me like a bad idea.

 

[Handley_Page]

I suggest you contact
Tio or Dianthus,
they being Canadian.

 

[windar]

In The Adventures of Ranger Ramona, I introduced a character, Isabel, who is French Canadian, but summers at a lake house in Maine.

Like most French Canadians, she is fluent in both French and English. In Ranger Ramona, virtually all the other characters are English speaking Americans, so her dialogue is nearly all in English. However, her speech is sprinkled with "Frenchisms". She says oui and non, rather than yes and no. She often refers to Ramona as "Mon cherie" or "ma belle". She routinely says bon jour, s'il vous plait, etc. It's an intrinsic part of her character.

Now, I am writing her own spinoff story (hopefully to be included in the Pink Orchid event), which will be set primarily in Montreal and in which most of the speakers will also be bilingual.

I would be interested in any advice on handling these language quirks. Presumably, some of the time she would be speaking French, other times, English. My feeling is that the best thing to do is ignore that and just write all the dialogue in English. I have a little French, but I am not trying to write a bilingual story.

But, it feels like the character loses a little something in that.I wonder if it would work to still have her use those French words and expressions. If I did, would it be best if all the French speaking characters used them? Or would that seem awkward, having them speak their native language sometimes, and not others?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I'm a proud native of that fair city and if you would like to send me your chapter, I would be happy to have a look. Quebec idioms are often different from those used in France, just as American are different from British.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Scatter little bits of French, so you establish the flavour and character, would be my advice This is one of those occasions where a light touch works well. Trust your readers to follow the signs.

If some readers can't figure it out, that's on them, not you. Don't write to the lowest common denominator, don't spoon feed.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

I have created a quite a few French characters and always include some French phrases in there for authenticity. To me it adds to the story if not overdone.

In one instance I had a French tutor speaking to her pupil and included the translation in italics afterwards where there was a certain tension in the tale, but then when the conversation returned to a normal level, the pupil then said, "we continued on in French."

Never had any complaints other than a silly typo of a Paris railway station!

 

[NotWise]

I've used Spanish, but not French. I live in an area were Spanish is a common first language. Most people speak English, but sometimes not at all fluently.

I varied the use of Spanish words and phrases, using Spanish largely for exclamations and terms of endearment, and a few other things that readers are likely to recognize.

The main female character spoke Spanglish in her mother's presence, but otherwise spoke English salted with Spanish. Her grandmother refused to speak Spanglish. She spoke English to English speakers and Spanish to Spanish speakers. Her mother spoke mostly Spanglish (and so her mother wasn't in much dialog). Her father spoke English only.

It was fairly important to me that I shouldn't be sending readers to the Spanish-English dictionary.

In public, you find yourself in English-speaking venues or Spanish-speaking venues.

 

[SimonDoom]

Have her speak in English. Ignore the language aspect.

If the story involves a significant amount of dialogue or interaction between French-speaking and English-speaking characters, that's different. But if it's set in Quebec and the story is mostly among French-speaking residents of that province, just write it in English and ignore the language issue. That's the way it's usually done in fiction.

 

[PennameWombat]

I'm a proud native of that fair city and if you would like to send me your chapter, I would be happy to have a look. Quebec idioms are often different from those used in France, just as American are different from British.

I can only go by what I've experienced, as I have only a bit of 'restaurant' French. About 15 years ago, I was at a conference in Paris. A local had led about a dozen of us to a nice restaurant for dinner. Given we had multiple nationalities, the language around the table was the only common one, English.

One of the party was a Quebecker (or, Québécois.) He started to speak in his French to our Parisian native host. After a very few sentences, the Parisian said in English in a firm voice "I can't understand a word! Speak English!" Not exactly diplomatic.

So, Quebec French and Parisian French are not... similar, based on my (incredibly) limited experience.

In The Adventures of Ranger Ramona, I introduced a character, Isabel, who is French Canadian, but summers at a lake house in Maine.

<snip>

But, it feels like the character loses a little something in that.I wonder if it would work to still have her use those French words and expressions. If I did, would it be best if all the French speaking characters used them? Or would that seem awkward, having them speak their native language sometimes, and not others?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I've seen authors here mention they use the non-English language in dialogue, then enclose the [English translation in brackets]. That would... cause me to immediately quit reading. Are you writing a text book?

In one of my stories, my main F character was a young Mexican-American woman. She tended to drop in lots of slang, but it wasn't specifically Spanish, nor was it exactly Mexican Spanish, but had additional specifics to Mexican-American usage. But, my Anglo M (POV) character had grown up around such kids and although he wasn't fluent, he understood enough I could let his reactions provide context to my English readers as to what she or her mother or other acquaintances said. I established this early by having him react to a comment she made in her dialect of Spanish and she joked "I can't talk to my friends about you behind your back!" Her mother also spoke Spanish to 'test' him.

But I didn't have long strings of non-English dialogue.

In other stories, I have characters kidnapped by aliens. When the aliens are speaking their native language, the POV is one or the other of my Earthlings. They simply relate what they're hearing as incomprehensible, so I didn't try to render it in the text. Mostly I dodged it with the old universal translator tech. Using the translator, Earthlings heard the aliens (Sylvans) speaking perfect English. Outside of the translator, the English dialogue from the Sylvans ranged from very good to very poor, rendered with lots of 'errors' (I fought the grammar checker bitterly .)

(Edited to make this point clearer. I hope.)
Again, doesn't seem to fit what you're doing. The reality is we're writing for an English audience. If your characters are all native French speakers talking to each other, I think you'll just have to render it in English, with context making clear what they're speaking. If you have English speakers mixed in and want to show them as lost and confused, you can use French, like my example above. Or, do it all in English, but describe what different characters can or can't understand, where they get lost, or angry, if that's a case.

You can also render it all in English, but use tags like 'she switched to English and said...'

 

[MelissaBaby]

A couple of things I picked up while editing the French in a story I wrote: Ma=feminine and mon=masculine and it matters who you are speaking to which is used, always put a space between ! or ? and the last word of the sentence (ignore this because Lit removes those spaces by default), just write it in English because people who don't speak French will largely ignore any/all dialogue they have to translate. (I did not provide translations, there were only like a dozen French phrases or so in my story.), and if you do write the French double check with someone who speaks French. Some innocent sounding words are actually insults while others are extremely personal/sexual and not appropriate for general use among friends or familial relationships.

Yeah, I made that mon/ma mistake and will have to go back and edit it sometime.

There is lots of good advice here, thanks everyone.

 

[Trionyx]

On occasion, I will use foreign terms within a story but I make sure they are understandable within the context of the story.

“Ich liebe dich,” he whispered.
“I love you, too,” I replied.

On rare occasions I’ll provide a translation after the end of the story but only to satisfy the curious. I agree that putting in a translation in the middle of the story is distracting.

 

[Omenainen]

just write it in English because people who don't speak French will largely ignore any/all dialogue they have to translate. (I did not provide translations, there were only like a dozen French phrases or so in my story.), and if you do write the French double check with someone who speaks French.

(emphasis mine)

This. Google Translate is not your friend. If you're going to have lines in language you don't know, find someone who does, or don't do it. There's no point in doing it wrong, it just makes you look stupid to those who actually speak the language, and to those who don't it adds nothing at all.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Pretty good advice above.

Québecois French is noticeably different from Parisian French. (I won't do more than mention the still-different Acadien French spoken in the Maritime provinces. That can be even more odd, with a lot of 17th Century words and such still strong in rural areas.) Will those differences matter to anybody who doesn't speak enough French to notice? Probably not, but there's sure to be somebody who will comment. And, yes, Google Translate is a gong show.

When Chloe Tzang did a contest set in Australia, I researched Aussie slang online and tried to use it, only to have my attempts politely snickered at by real Aussies. My takeaway from that was to either avoid using slang or foreign languages unless I can find an fluent editor or beta reader.

I did one story set in Québec, in a setting where everybody would have been speaking French. I kept the dialogue in English throughout and used but one phrase in French, let it ride for the entire story and explained it only at the very end, per Trionyx above. It worked pretty well.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you need to be careful and consider if using that second language is really going to help.

 

[XerXesXu]

I’m working on a story involving English and Chinese characters, half the action’s in the UK and half in China. The Chinese characters may be speaking English as a second language to an English person, or they may be speaking to a Chinese person in Cantonese, Fujianese or Mandarin. I give a brief description of most Chinese characters speech at an appropriate point and after that leave it to the reader to infer what language they’re using from the location and person being addressed.

There’re only a few continuous cues I use. Where a Chinese character speaks in English as a second language I use the slightly stilted and overcorrect English that second language speakers often acquire, but when they speak Chinese to a Chinese person I render it in fluent English. It’s often easy to find a Chinese idiom to replace an English idiom to reinforce to the reader that the speech is in Chinese. Sometimes it’s possible to insert Chinese where the meaning’s obvious; ‘Ouch’, ‘Down the hatch’ etc, but otherwise it's all in English.

 

[Omenainen]

I want to add that I think different languages could and should be used to spice up stories on this site. When done right, it's like a nice inside joke for those who understand it, and it is very possible to do it in a way that doesn't require readers to translate it and still get the meaning from the context. And using just a few simple words like "yes" and "no", like given as an example earlier, is relatively safe even if the author doesn't know the language. My point is simply that it should be done right or then not at all.

 

[jehoram]

Québecois French is noticeably different from Parisian French. (I won't do more than mention the still-different Acadien French spoken in the Maritime provinces. That can be even more odd, with a lot of 17th Century words and such still strong in rural areas.)

True dat. I had a friend who was a salesman. He was from France, so he was assigned a sales territory that included Quebec since he could speak both languages. He told me that the Quebec version of French was almost medieval sometimes, kind of like having Chaucer-isms on our own speech. (In fact, we do have them in America, where "fall" continues to be used to describe a season of the year although "autumn" has largely replaced it in the UK, and "guess" continued in the US while Brits look down on it as an American variant of "suppose" even though Chaucer himself used it.)

My only advice is to consider what Agatha Christie did with Hercule Poirot. He used French idioms from time to time, and even used French syntax when he spoke English. I presume that Melissa's character speaks English far more fluently, but expressions like "Mon Dieu!" might spring naturally from her lips when she's surprised. And, yes, she might use those other common expressions as a mark of her heritage, but I doubt if she'd use in in any context where she might not be understood.

 

[Moon Glade]

An interesting dilemma. Most simple French phrases are accessible to an English speaker since the language has many cognates. Keeping that in mind and also that it's better to not underestimate your reader's abilities I would refrain from putting the translated version in brackets. Language confusion is often a main theme of much of my writing and often can be developed into some amusing episodes. Right now I'm trying to turn a book dealing with language and cultural confusion into a screenplay format and I find that to be mind boggling difficult.

 

[Moon Glade]

Tarnished Penny had some excellent advice and made me realize that French word order when translated into English would also be a useful tool to achieve what you are striving for. Word order in a French sentence is something that, when translated into English, would clearly show that your character while bilingual was a French speaker.

 

[Moon Glade]

Sorry, that advice came from Jehoram
My only advice is to consider what Agatha Christie did with Hercule Poirot. He used French idioms from time to time, and even used French syntax when he spoke English. I presume that Melissa's character speaks English far more fluently, but expressions like "Mon Dieu!" might spring naturally from her lips when she's surprised. And, yes, she might use those other common expressions as a mark of her heritage, but I doubt if she'd use in in any context where she might not be understood.

And often his word order is the most telling trait of his Wallon origins (the Wallons are the French speaking Belgiums).

 

[MelissaBaby]

An interesting dilemma. Most simple French phrases are accessible to an English speaker since the language has many cognates. Keeping that in mind and also that it's better to not underestimate your reader's abilities I would refrain from putting the translated version in brackets. Language confusion is often a main theme of much of my writing and often can be developed into some amusing episodes. Right now I'm trying to turn a book dealing with language and cultural confusion into a screenplay format and I find that to be mind boggling difficult.

Thank you (and everyone) for your thoughts. It was never my intent to write anything substantial in French, only to, as EB put it, scatter some French ( a Oui here, a Bonjour or Merde there) for color and character.

At present, I am writing it in straight English and will decide if I want to make any changes later.

 

[NotWise]

Did you know that "merde" is the traditional way of telling a ballet dancer "good luck?"

Odd bit of trivia.