How many times do people have to do this?

[barbarienne]

Dear writers

Comments

[dr_phil_physics]

I read a book once where dialect was done for a main character -- but it was done well and added immensely to the story.

But like I said, "once".

Dr. Phil

[barbarienne]

This was done for the main character and several secondary characters. It was done...badly. I had to stop and translate from Eyedialect Scots to English if I tried to read the thing.

I'll post an example of it later (I'm not home at the moment). I was reading/spelling some of it for swimtech last night and I might have accidentally killed her.

[dorianegray]

Hear, hear!

Also, Ireland does not have one single accent, any more than England or America has, so kindly refrain from inflicting the same eye-watering eye-dialect on characters from Dublin and Cork. Especially if, insofar as it can be pronounced at all, it appears to be mimicking a Galway accent.

Grrrrr.

[barbarienne]

I was particularly thrown by the use of "A" for the pronoun "I". It bugs me because I still don't know if it's intended to be pronounced as a long A or a short A (or some other in-between thing--vowels are highly flexible).

English has a lot of legitimate variations of the pronunciation of I, with strong distinctions in the various corners of the British Isles. I suppose it's supposed to be whatever is the common sound in Highland Scots, but if someone's not already familiar with it already, I don't see how they're supposed to interpret the written version.

[dorianegray]

Eye-dialect is usually "phonetically" spelled according to the native dialect of the author - and this type of author rarely considers the fact that a proportion (probably a large proportion) of her readers will not share her native dialect. Yet another reason to not do it.

[barbarienne]

This author is most likely American, or possibly Australian. Either way, "A" can sound like a lot of things, but I suspect most Americans would read it as the letter A, that is, a long A.