Broken English?

[ronde]

So there's a lovely older Vietnamese woman who cleans our workshop at work. She speaks English poorly. I'd love to do a story featuring her without changing much but I'm imagining writing her broken English would come off as racist. Thoughts?

I've worked with several people from France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Brasil, and Korea who spoke English as a second language, and what I've found is that "broken English" tends to be made up of several different things.

The English language has no standard syntax like most languages do. It's not uncommon for people to put verbs and nouns in the sequence of their native language and that's not always the same as in English.

Vocabulary is usually a problem for people speaking English as a second language. They'll often stop in mid-sentence to try to remember the right word. Sometimes the word they "translate" in their head means something completely different in English. Also, some languages don't really have the tenses English does. The tense is assumed by the context of the sentence. That can also make speaking English difficult for someone using English as their secondary language.

Accent is the third section of problems people face when speaking English as a second language. There's the old joke about Asian's singing "Lollin' on the liver." That's not what they're actually singing. In the Korean language, the two sounds for "r" and "l" are extremely close, close enough that most people who didn't grow up speaking Korean can't tell the difference. That's what they're trying to do, but the "r" sound comes out more like an "l" because that's what English speakers hear.

There's also a fourth section that I've found to be relatively common among some Japanese speakers. They're somewhat embarrassed when speaking English because they know they have some problems. Sometimes, their speech will be part speech and part laughter. It's their way of trying to put people at ease, I suppose.

If your "broken English" is to sound believable while also being easy to read, just use small samples of the things above. Trying to duplicate the sounds of broken English exactly will be very difficult to read. Just a touch here and there will get the point across.