 |
Fand, Celtic Goddess of the Sea,
soaking up the rays |
Dialect, "a particular form of a language specific to a certain region or group" as one dictionary has it, can be an alluring facet for writing a fictional work. It can lend an air of greater embedment in the unfolding of a tale, an immediacy of being among, or of the characters, instead of hearing a more grammatical narrator speaking in his own voice to give a report of dialog between story characters--which is effectively a translation of their dialect, and perhaps, as translations do, loses some of the native emotive content.
A character in a short story I wrote some years ago was a young, partially-disabled vet, working on a produce farm alongside migrant farm workers from out-of-state. They were black, and he was white. The migrants had a rich, rural southern, dialect, and the vet had a northern, lower working class, dialect. A lot of the story included raucous episodes the migrant workers lied and joked about during their long hours of creeping forward on the soil beds, harvesting the vegetables as they went. I wrote the story using a voice and idioms of other farm migrants I had worked alongside, part-time, for several years as a teenager. I then rewrote the story in a third-person limited POV, using proper, grammatical diction. I thought the dialect version seemed richer, but they're still just drafts.
I was thinking about the pros and cons of using dialect as I read
Foreign Gods, Inc., by Oke Ndibe, a Nigerian-born writer who also teaches African and African Diaspora literatures here in the US. The theme of the story involves a Nigerian immigrant to the US who earned an economics degree here, but had been unsuccessful in landing a job in his field. After hearing more than enough criticisms of his
accent, Ike has given up pursuing that career path, and has been driving a taxi for thirteen years. Reading an article about a dealer in foreign gods in his resident city of NY, he visits the establishment, Foreign Gods, Inc. He proposes to sell them an ancient war deity from his village in Nigeria, but the dealer is reluctant to estimate any potential value until he can inspect the actual piece, and sees some documents or publications attesting to the provenance of the deity. Ike borrows from friends and maxes out his credit card to make the trip back to his village in Nigeria.
A major part of the story following includes a Nigerian dialect, incorporating a sort of local, pidgin English. Often it results in very humorous mashups of Nigerian and American diction. In the story, Ike has neglected for some time, because of a gambling addiction developed back in the US, to send any money for his mother and sister. Now he's come back to rob the village of their deity, Ngene. Wouldn't matter to the mother and sister, since they, with a large portion of the village, have fallen for the new allure of the Christian gospel as promulgated by a slick, duplicitous local minister. He had viewed Ike as a probable easy American mark for $50K to build him a new church. There's a comical, if a little unsettling, bible belt preacher vs. smug religious cynic sort of opera going on here, but it holds together well enough. The tension created by Ike's need to purloin the deity from a sort of Elk's Lodge temple, presided over by Ngene's high priest, Ike's beloved uncle, is almost palpably painful.
I would say that Ndibe has written a pretty good story, but I found his extensive use of such an idiosyncratic dialect wore me down a bit in the reading.
No really. Ask someone from another state. They'll tell you: You have an accent. You might not understand their answer, because they talk funny too, but that’s because people talk funny all over the country.
You talk funny. As a writer, that funny talking is important. Your characters’ speech patterns will inform your setting, time period, and character development. But it's hard to get it right.
A Southern drawl, for example, is easy to hear, so authors erroneously assume it’s easy to reproduce. It’s not. And when you get it wrong, readers start picking apart your dialogue instead of enjoying your story. I've heard similar complaints from folks who live in Maine and Washington. Authors target them for their conveniently foggy and mysterious settings, and ignore the other elements that make the areas unique. People in California don't appreciate characters that talk like valley girls. People on reservations don’t speak pidgin English. People in big cities don’t have one generic accent-- New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Denver are drastically different and thousands of miles apart. Even towns that are close together don’t sound the same. My hometown in northwest Arkansas doesn’t sound like Little Rock, three hours away—but because my folks are from Oklahoma, one state over, I don’t have the same accent as my neighbors anyway.
Leaving the country doesn’t help. Scotland doesn't sound like Wales. Manchester doesn't sound like Oxford. Vancouver doesn't sound like Ottawa, and there are supposedly thirty-two distinct Irish accents in a country the size of Indiana. It's overwhelming. How in the world are you supposed to get all these accents right?
Very carefully.
1) DO SOME ACTIVE RESEARCH. - Always set your stories in places you want to visit. Then write off the travel expense.
Okay, maybe not. But if you get the chance, immersion is the very best way to learn a language, even when it’s a language you already know.
- Have an online conversation. Most large forums have a section broken down by geography, so kill two birds with one stone: Learn more about martial arts or photography or football while making contacts in the real life version of your setting. There are also forums dedicated solely to regional differences, like
City-data.com, and writing forums like
Verla Kay and
Absolute Write have entire sections dedicated to story research, not to mention sections where you can
request beta readers and specify your needs.
- Have a real life conversation. If you're using a social network, chances are you know someone who knows someone in the region you need. Ask if any online friends are willing to do a phone interview. Look up libraries and universities in the area and see what kind of oral history resources they offer.
2) DO SOME PASSIVE RESEARCH.- Watch television. As much as I hate to promote reality TV, its contestants come from all over the place. Some of them are good examples of their local dialect, even if they're not good examples of anything else.
- Watch the news. Regional anchors usually sound like the folks around them, and for good reason: It makes them more trustworthy to their audience. Politicians do the same thing. If you can stomach it, try watching CSPAN. Want an exaggerated version to help you pick apart the sounds? Saturday Night Live has made a killing
doing just that.
- Listen to the radio. Regional talk show hosts have accents, as do their callers.
- Use the magical Google machine. This
That map is awesome. Like mind-bogglingly awesome. Thanks for sharing!
This is a great post, Kate!
Having been born and raised in MidCoast Maine, I used to have a right wicked bad accent. Then I moved "away" for 16 years, then came back home. I don't talk like a Downeast fisherman now, but in the heat of an argument, I start dropping my R's like crazy! My husband thinks it's hilarious.
One thing in movies and books that I cannot stand is when they make people from Maine sound like idiots. Inserting 'Ayuh' after every sentence is so not going to work. Tim Sample drives me crazy. That is NOT how most of us talk up heaya! ;)
Great post Kate!
I loved reading this post, Kate. I'm a fellow Arkansan with a drawl. I've been asked on the phone if I'm from Georgia. I say, "Really? My accent sounds Georgian?" My recently published YA fantasy is set in the fictional location, Whispering Woods, Arkansas. I had no problem writing for the characters native to Whispering Woods. I had to work a little harder for those who hail from another dimension. :)
What I find hilarious is how many people from my home town (in Connecticut) have said to me, "I notice you have a slight accent. Do you mind if I ask where you're from?" The answer, of course, is a laughing "Here." But a lot of them think I'm Irish (which I'm sure my face contributes to). It mostly comes out when I'm saying something I've said a million times before or reading aloud: I speak more carefully and with a bit more rhythm than usual, and apparently that scans as an accent. So I always find dialect conversations interesting!
Excellent! One to bookmark for sure.
Wow, that map is insane! Wonderful, wonderful blog post. I read a book not too long ago (YA, not historical) that made Virginia sound like it was full of Scarlett O'Haras. I suspected the author had never been here.
Lee: my backwoods-Maine soccer coach (a very smart, very highly educated lawyer-man who'd never lost his accent) used to crack me up with his Rs. It's like he had an R quota, and since he dropped them from where they belonged, he had to make them up in other places. I wasn't really thrown when he added an R to the end of my name, but my sister's called Mairead. Which ends in a consonant. He still found a way to end it with R!
Haha! This is great.
I was born in Florida and my first language is actually not English. Because of it I have a really hard time pronouncing a lot of words so you'll hear me say 'em phonetically regardless if that's corrrect. Then when I was about oh, five or six we moved to Virgina and I spent my impressionable years in Virginia and my high school years in Maryland. Now I've lived in upstate New York for the last five years and everyone still insists I sound like a Southern because of the way I say my vowels. Although I've been told, the way I arrange my words in a sentence also stamps me as a Southerner too even though, I haven't the slightest of what they're talking about.
Very cool points and linkies here! Great summary. For some reason, people always thought my daughters had accents as they were growing up. Go figure! Sometimes my elder daughter goes to clubs in Portland (Oregon) and fakes a British accent; no one seems to realize she's faking one. LOL
Great post Kate!
Really great post, Kate. One of the phrases we use in PNW is "These ones." or "Those ones." and I'm told by my East Coast besties that those phrases are indicative of here.
And I hate it when writers get facts about my state wrong, like putting fireflies in a Seattle marsh. Trust me, there are no fireflies in the Northwest or if there are they've been hiding from me and everyone I know.
It's great stuff. Above all the points are explained clear mind. It's fresh content. I like above your excellent written skills.
website hosting
Great post. Lots of helpful information. Thanks!
Great post!
I'm from Australia as is hubby... he's 5th generation country aussie but is constantly asked where in England he's from. At university he gave up and invented a whloe english life. He always hates having to explain he's local...