Young Writers Society

I'm writing a historical fiction novel about the Newsies Strike of 1899, so obviously most of my main characters have thick New York accents and none of them use good grammar. But is the dialogue too difficult to understand? This is a monologue where the main male character, Spot Conlon is confessing to my protagonist that he likes her. I was trying to go for nervous rambling.

I flinched away from him as he took a long, dragging breath. Finally, he answered. “Well, ta be honest; yea, a little. But I’se more angry at Mush. It don’t seem loike you’se had much choice in kissin him. An you’se been stayin away from him.” There was a beat and I watched as he flushed and kept right on talking, his voice taking on a rambling quality. “Not dat I'se would get in ya way if ya loike Mush. You’se ain’t me goil, an I'se don’t control ya. You’se don’t seem loike da type of goil who would let herself be controlled. An I’m not sayin dat you’se gotta choose between us or anyt’in. You’se could be Blink’s goil if ya wanted ta. An I’se not sayin dat I should be in ya moind or anyt’in.” He caught himself rambling and clamped his mouth shut, rubbing at his eyes as if he had a headache. Finally, he finished what he was saying. “I guess what I’se tryin ta say is; I loikes ya, Kay.”

Oh goodness, I think my eyes are bleeding from all the red and green lines that show up on Microsoft Word.

When it comes to writing accents and language variation, I have a general rule of thumb. It's called the Mark Twain Rule. It goes like this: "Unless you're Mark Twain, don't do it."

This applies mainly to so-called "phonetic representations," or writing things as they sound. The first reason why I advise against it is that it is really, really, really freaking hard to do. English has around 16 vowel sounds; there are 5/6 vowel characters in our alphabet, so that's a complication. Additionally, it takes an incredible ear for sounds. Mark Twain had an ear like that, which is why this is the Mark Twain rule, but most people don't have an ear like that, to hear those different sounds. I'm getting my bachelor's in linguistics and am probably going to do my Master's on language sounds and I don't have that good an ear.

What results from attempting to write accents when the accent isn't fully understood is that it can go horribly wrong and no one but the writer'll be able to hear it. Worse, speakers of the dialect can take high offense because their language just got reduced to keyboard smash, essentially.

On top of that, attempting to represent something phonetically in English is a fool's mission. It's a fool's mission in almost any language, actually, but English is especially bad. Because English has a wretched spelling system. There are no 'g' sounds or 'h' sounds at the end of 'though.' The 'th' at the end of 'broth' is different than the 'th' sound in the middle of 'brother'. The 's' at the end of 'dogs' is actually a 'z'. There aren't two 't's in the middle of 'butter' in the speech of most American English speakers. So actually writing something phonetically would take a phonetic alphabet. Which is no longer Roman characters. Which means your reader is very, very confused.

What actually appears in works that attempt to write accents are phonemic representations. The difference between phonetic and phonemic is a bit complicated, so I won't do into it. If you're interested, Wikipedia can help you.

But back to accents. So far we've established that:

1) Doing them well is really, really, really hard
2) Doing them poorly is an insult to speakers with that particular accent
3) Doing them with full accuracy is impossible

Now we're going to move onto some other reasons why I advise against writing accents. We begin with:

A commitment to writing one accent is a commitment to writing ALL of them. Because, you see, everyone has an accent. Absolutely everyone. This isn't just American vs. British, or South vs. East vs. West vs. North, but person to person. You speak, you pronounce things, slightly different than every over speaker on the planet, so a good way to put the question of accents is actually "Everyone has an accent but me." Fact number one.

Fact number two: no one, absolutely [b]nobody[/i], speaks as English is spelled. That's because of fact number three, which might be painful to put out there on a writing site, but spoken language is the 'real' language. Spoken language came first. People have been speaking language for tens of thousands of years; writing is comparatively new. The vast majority of the 7000-14,000 languages in the world are unwritten. So writing is a systematic attempt at putting down speech. It's different than spoken language. Spoken languages, as far as linguistics are concerned, is the true language.

Finally, linguistic fact number four: all languages are equal. All dialects are equal. All accents are equal. This means, that while one may have more prestige or respect, all are equally valid, equally 'correct', and equally grammatical.

And that's why, if you write one thing in accent, you are committed to writing them ALL in accents. Otherwise you're just promoting elitism.

The most famous case of this I know is with George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. In the screenplay, Eliza Doolittle's speech is peppered with apostrophes and missing letters and strange vowels attempting to capture her Cockney accent. Meanwhile, though, the Dr. and his pals have their text in standardly written English. Despite the fact that no one speaks as English is spelled.

What does this say? It says that a Cockney accent is inferior, unacceptable, improper, while the accent of the elite is no accent at all, even though that goes against the facts.

To be fair, Mark Twain does the same thing. Despite the fact that Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer would be speaking in perhaps Mississippian accents, their dialogue is in standard spelling, while Jim's dialogue is modified all over the place. See the problem?

Now, I could see how it would work for first person, perhaps, as most people have the preconception that their English is the best English and that everyone else speaks weird, but if you want to be fair and not promote language elitism that leads to all sorts of marginalization, then you'd have to do them all.

So our reasons against accents are now:
1) Doing them well is really, really, really hard
2) Doing them poorly is an insult to speakers with that particular accent
3) Doing them with full accuracy is impossible
4) Doing them for one character or one group necessitates doing them for ALL characters in most circumstances.

And, of course, the good ole fashioned reason of

5) They can be incredibly annoying to read. Even if done well.

So, yes, not a lot in favor of writing accents.

HOWEVER. This does not mean you can't represent different varieties of language. At your disposal are much more reader-friendly and author-friendly methods of portraying something called dialect. Accent refers to pronunciation, you see, but with dialect, everything else that goes into language is included. Word choice. Words in general. Grammar. Syntax.

By writing dialect minus most attempts to write the actual sounds, you can get the effect of characters speaking differently, without annoying readers, without stressing yourself out, without me wanting to scream. Best of all, readers will be able to infer an accent from the dialect, and here that in their heads.

In your case here, Crm, what I'd do a few items in Newsie sounds, but mainly focus on replicating the grammar and syntax and other speech that patterns. And I must say, you're doing that fabulously here. In fact, your representation of the accent is actually pretty good (I groaned when I saw the topic title and feared the worst, you see). Still, if I were in your shoes, I'd probably have it like this:

I flinched away from him as he took a long, dragging breath. Finally, he answered. “Well, to be honest; yeah, a little. But I’s more angry at Mush. It don’t seem like you’s had much choice in kissin him. An you’s been stayin away from him.” There was a beat and I watched as he flushed and kept right on talking, his voice taking on a rambling quality. “Not dat I's would get in ya way if ya like Mush. You’s ain’t me goil(?), an I's don’t control ya. You’s don’t seem like da type of goil (ah, girl... hrm) who would let herself be controlled. An I’m not sayin dat you’s gotta choose between us or anythin. You’s could be Blink’s goil if ya wanted to. An I’se not sayin dat I should be in ya mind or anythin.” He caught himself rambling and clamped his mouth shut, rubbing at his eyes as if he had a headache. Finally, he finished what he was saying. “I guess what I’s tryin to say is; I likes ya, Kay.”

I was being generous there, because if you haven't guessed, i'm fairly against trying to represent accents. I'd say to trim more (and focus on the grammar, the syntax, the word choice, etc.) if you don't plan on representing all the dialects. In the end, it's all your decision, but...

Well, there you have it. In answer to your question, it's not too difficult to understand, and the nervous rambling comes off really well because of the content not so much of the accent. My hesitations are in the listed reasons against accent above.

This rant, by the way, wasn't directed at you so much as anyone thinking about writing accents, so I hope the huge text wall didn't freak you out too much.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Rach

Sorry

please don't do that. I couldn't understand a single thing of what that guy was saying in your writing.

I recall, I believe it was in Writing With Power by Peter Elbow, that a writer needs only to let the reader know that the character has an accent and let their imagination do the rest. You do not need to write all your dialogue in the accent. All you need to do is drop a few hints at the beginning of the story and some reminders throughout. A word here, a short sentence there. Once the reader has it in their head that this is how the character talks their brain will naturally make that translation.