Accents...

[raphy]

Just something that occured to me as I was writing another section of one of the stories I'm working on..

I have an American girl, living and working in the south of France, and a Frenchman says to her, "You speak the language flawlessly, but your accent is unmistakable, cherie"..

And it got me to thinking about the characters in my stories and what accents/voices they all have...

Do any of you think about that stuff too, or is it just me and my movie-centric brain?

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

raphy,

Accents and dialects are easy to overuse and abuse. Unless you've got Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes) level skills, I strongly recommend you keep their use to a minimum. An "oddly" pronounced word or phrase, used sparingly, will usually be enough to give readers the impression you're after.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[destinie21]

raphy,

Accents and dialects are easy to overuse and abuse. Unless you've got Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes) level skills, I strongly recommend you keep their use to a minimum. An "oddly" pronounced word or phrase, used sparingly, will usually be enough to give readers the impression you're after.

Rumple Foreskin

Have you read the divine miss blue pens Bayou stories?
The dialect is damn near perfect.

Raph don't worry poppit we all hear voices

 

[Guest]

Raff, I hear my characters' voices distinctly, but I don't transliterate them, don't need to for my purposes. I like your expression 'movie-centric'. I go into 35mm mode all the time, always widescreen.

cinematographically, 'dita

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Have you read the divine miss blue pens Bayou stories?
The dialect is damn near perfect.

I have, and it is good, except I was never sure if the setting was south Louisiana or maybe coastal Georgia or South Carolina. To my ear, the accents are pre-TV, hill country rural south. However, terms and phrases such as bayou, cypress, and brackish water, plus the main character being named Marie, all made me think south Louisiana.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[raphy]

Rumple, I wasn't necessarily talking about writing in an accent. I only ever do that if it's strongly warranted by the character in question.

I was more talking about 'hearing' your characters' voices as you read through your story..

One of my cyberpunk stories features a British secret service agent that was relocated to the US. He underwent severe US-acclimatization training that gave him a soft southern drawl and eradicated his British accent during normal day-to-day speech.

However, at one point during the story, he drops the drawl and the clipped upper-class saville row tones come back, for 2 lines, before disappearing again.

Whenever I re-read that story, I always hear his dialogue with the correct accent (Southern for most of it, then upper class English for those two lines)

p.s. - There's no difference in the writing style of the dialogue, or at least no real differences of any magnitude.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Ah, so.

As usual, Perdita was on the right wavelenght. Meanwhile, I was receiving AM while you were transmitting in FM.

I'm in the same boat as you when it comes to writing dialogue. If I want to crank out something that's even passably fair, I've got to "hear" the voices of my characters.

RF

 

[Guest]

As usual, Perdita was on the right wavelenght.

Thank you, Rumply. If I were gauche I would put that in my sig line.

Perdita

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Thank you, Rumply. If I were gauche I would put that in my sig line.

Perdita

Hey, don't let a case of mistaken identity inhibit you.

Just between you and me, the only reason I put KM's quote on my sig line is because both she and I know it was intended as a put-down. It's kind of a reminder.

Rumple

 

[snooper]

I find that dialect, rather than accent, is the key to this.

Compare:

"Be sensible. You won't ever get what you want."

"Wise up. No way will you get it."

Edited because I couldn't spell dailect!

 

[Angusthe bull]

Very tricky things accents. VERY.

In my part of the world accents can and do change totally within three miles.
I ignore accents as mainly Americans read my work, on the basis of numbers, and they have a very hard time with the concept of my point above.
I think any foreinger will stand out to a native no matter how flawless their mastery of the language.
I have yet to hear Edinburgh prounced correctly by a North American and for that matter most of the English for the life of them cannot say loch properly.
It's such a dangerous topic I leave it well alone. When I read if the author had told me the girl is from Iowa or NY then my head gives me her accent. Films you see..

I hope this computes for you,

Angus

 

[Why]

Rumple, I wasn't necessarily talking about writing in an accent. I only ever do that if it's strongly warranted by the character in question.

I was more talking about 'hearing' your characters' voices as you read through your story..


p.s. - There's no difference in the writing style of the dialogue, or at least no real differences of any magnitude.

Hear: yes each has a voice and it is damn annoying when they pull up a chair and read over your shoulder and say" Errrrr.... wouldn't do that dearie... nope not me.."

As to the use of accents etc... I haven't used such in my work much because unless you are very good. Rumple Foreskin mentioned Frank McCourt. (I also think Terry Pratchett catches a lot of "british" phrases and speech very well.) It takes away from the story not adding to it.

I have though used the "words and manner" of speech of my father's generation of "working class men" the words used by men who worked in the heavy industries of coal and steel, a race of men now sadly gone lost along with the industries they worked in. It has given flavour to my work implied accent without using such.

 

[raphy]

That's a good tip snoop, and a trick I myself use - Although really that's part of characterization of your characters, rather than solely a function of their accent.. A more street-smart person is going to use your second phrase, regardless of her or her accent.

Either way, it's Rumple that was talking about how to write accents, not me. I was talking about hearing them.

If you're writing a story and one of your characters is from Brisbane, for example - And he says "Hi, I'd like a milkshake with those fries" .. Do you hear him in your head with an Australian accent? (Actually, the same question applies to you reading a story, but since we're authors I thought I'd ask it from the authoring perspective)

Do all of your characters without specific accents sound like you?

Do they have their own voices?

I hear all my characters in my head complete with their accents, and I was just wondering if any other authors do too.

I think it's related to the amount of movies that I watch, and how influenced by the existence of Hollywood that I am - When writing a story, I can't help but picture it on-screen, filling in the lead roles with my favorite actors/actresses.

 

[oggbashan]

Kipling wrote some dreadful examples of how NOT to do accents.

Much of the accent and dialect was accurate but unreadable. Now it is so dated that some of it is very obscure.

I think it is better to imply the accent subtly and let the reader provide the voice to the character. If the reader doesn't know Lowland Scots from Yorkshire, what does it matter? The reader can provide their own local equivalents and still understand the story.

If the accent is actually written in phonetic symbols most readers
would switch off even if they understood phonetics.

Og

 

[raphy]

I agree, Og. I don't think you should write in an accent. But do you read in one?

 

[Alex De Kok]

Dialect pieces

I wrote one in the English Geordie dialect, mainly for the exercise in doing so. I very much doubt if I'll do another one. Feedback was favourable from fellow Geordies but I think the fact that it is one of my lower-scoring pieces rather sums it up.

If anyone is interested, you'll find it here. I had to torture the English language in order to try to convey the sounds.

Alex

 

[raphy]

Actually, Alex, that was pretty fuckin' cool =)

Kudos to you =)

 

[MathGirl]

Frieda

Dear r,
You might find this to be of interest concerning accents and dialects. Then again, maybe not.

http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=70222
Helpfully,
MG

 

[English Lady]

Oh yes i do hear my characters voices!

Before i get my fingers typing the chracters and storyline have laready played through my mind in daydreams and so I have an idea of their accent and Dialect.


Like snooper i think Dialect is the important thing and i think i use dialects quite a bit,though to be honest it is usually my own northern english dialect that gets used!


SOmetimes the female character will have my voice,because I am writing about me even if the character name is different.


I do hear distict variations in voice and tone and accent in all my characters. The Physiotherapist in my last tale had a distinctly upperclass voice,smooth and slightly arrogent.


The only bit of real accent i remeber using was in my invisibility rub story and that was used to make the shop keeper sound like an old grandad type of figure.

I wonder how where you live effects the accent and dialect of your characters? Are you more likely to have your own accent and dialect in mind when you're writing?

 

[raphy]

I wonder how where you live effects the accent and dialect of your characters? Are you more likely to have your own accent and dialect in mind when you're writing?

My characters voices/dialect/accent are very hightly influenced by the movies I like. A lot of the main protagonists in my sci-fi shorts are dangerous quiet men, with soft voices that have more effect than the loudest shout. Think Bruce Willis in 'The Last Boy Scout' and you're about there.

 

[Guest]

Just to say publicly that I thoroughly enjoyed Alex's Geordie piece. Yep, it was difficult for me but worth it, and the language added to my liking and enjoying his very sweet characters.

Perdita (who has developed an awful California accent I'm told)

 

[raphy]

Re: Frieda

Dear r,
You might find this to be of interest concerning accents and dialects. Then again, maybe not.

http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=70222
Helpfully,
MG

MG,

You might want to direct Rumple towards that story, since he was the one who started talking about how to write dialect in literature..

That said, that was a damn funny story. I liked, a lot =)

Raph, still grinning.

 

[Alex De Kok]

Thank you, Perdita

for your approbation of my dialect piece. Muchas gracias, mi amiga.

Alex

 

[MathGirl]

Re: Re: Frieda

Originally posted by raphy That said, that was a damn funny story. I liked, a lot =)Raph, still grinning.

Dear r,
Glad you liked it. It's my favorite story, for some weird reason.
MG

 

[FlyontheWall99]

Only occasionally do I actually dream up a character who has an accent or speaks another language, other than English. I do have one story "The Sex Express Ch. 02" where one of the characters is of Eastern European descent and speaks broken English. So in that case it was important to add that into the story, it also explained the poor grammar and sentence structure while that character spoke ....

Back to writing ....

Fly .....