Theresa and I both have generations of family history in Chicago, and I expect we both are quite familiar with the "youse guys" Chicago accent. Probably everyone is familiar with a bit of it because of all those SNL skits about the super "Da Bears" fans.
I've always so much associated this with Chicago area, I was quite surprised to hear a very similar accent in Cleveland and Buffalo. It's a Great Lakes accent, really, though I don't think those on the north side of the lakes (Canadians) have much of the accent. To some extent, it crosses the class barrier (that is, a banker might sound that way, as well as a steelworker), but not the race barrier (African-Americans and Hispanics, even those with generations in the region, tend not to have those distinctive vowels). The further you get from the Great Lakes cities, the less you'll hear it. I live 100 miles south of Lake Michigan, and no one around here sounds like that-- we Hoosiers are more likely to flatten out vowels than shift them.
Anyway, here's an article about the Northern Cities Shift ("NCS") or Great Lakes accent which points out the funniest aspect (apart from "youse," which I can tell you from my own experience is actually the possessive pronoun used by the purest speakers) is: If news of this radical linguistic shift hasn’t made it to you yet, you are not alone. Even people who speak this way remain mostly unaware of it. Dennis Preston, a professor of perceptual linguistics at Oklahoma State University—he doesn’t merely study how people speak, he studies how people perceive both their own speech and the speech of others—discovered something peculiar about NCS speakers when he was teaching at Michigan State University. “They don’t perceive their dialect at all,” he says. “The awareness of the NCS in NCS territory is zero.”
Point is, while we tend to mourn the loss of American dialects due to mobility and TV, this accent is actually become MORE distinctive. Interesting!
Alicia
Showing posts with label dialect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dialect. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Dialect
I'm not a fan of non-standard spelling to convey dialect (that's SO 19th Century). It's confusing, and often discriminatory (why spell certain speakers' words phonetically and not others, when English spelling is not phonetic?).
But how then do we convey when a speaker or a POV character have a distinctive way of speaking? Let's say she's Irish, or from Chicago, or he's a 2nd Century Roman warrior?
First, I think, we have to do our research. We have to get enough experience with the rhythm of this speaking culture's sentences and the lingo to convey it accurately. But then, we should cut back (usually). Even without spelling irregularities, "authentic" dialect can put off readers. After all, that Roman warrior spoke Latin. We're already "translating" his speech into English, so we want to give a flavor without choking the reader.
I've been thinking of what constitutes a flavor. First, the rhythm of the sentences can give a flavor of the speaker's culture. There's an old book called English as We Speak It in Ireland which gives examples of sentences only an Irishperson would say:
I went to town yesterday in all of the rain, and if I didn't get a wetting, there's no cottoner in Cork. (That is, he got wet.)
An illigent song he sang, I'll go bail.
The author (PW Joyce) remarks that Irish English uses negation (if I didn't), stock phrases (I'll go bail), and reverse order (putting the object first -- An illigent song he sang) for emphasis. This is not a dialect that honors Struck and White's edict to "use no unnecessary words," or rather, the Irish don't think there are unnecessary words!
Read in the vernacular to pick up the sentence rhythm. Watch films and TV shows =made= (not just set) in the culture. For historical settings, read books written then (you might have to read in translation, of course) or plays that would have been performed then.
(The British filmmakers, you know, are famous for making everyone else, especially Romans, sound English. Not just speak English, but sound it. All the rich Romans sound like Lord Olivier, and all the poor ones sound Cockney, like the Artful Dodger.)
But also, there are certain words or types of words that can be used without confusing the reader or making the character opaque. Here are some I've thought of, but please add!
Variations of "you". This, far more than "I", for some reason, marks a dialect quite precisely. Any linguist who hears "youse" knows the speaker is from the Great Lakes-Midwest (probably Chicago). "You-uns" is Pennsylvanian.
Ye
Thou
You all
Y'all
Ya
What others have you heard? When would you use them? What about our Roman warrior, who doesn't speak English, but must be presented as speaking English?
Curses and other angry expletives: Even if the reader doesn't know what the word means, the placement and the context will make it clear that "glupak!" is a curse word. Spelling can distinguish dialects when you're dealing with English speakers:
Shee-it!
Shite!
Wonder words: These are words that seem to erupt spontaneously, and because they're spontaneous, they're going to give a sense of the character's background. You can do this is the actual language if the character is foreign. Examples:
Blimey!
Mon Dieu!
Wow!
Other thoughts?
Alicia
But how then do we convey when a speaker or a POV character have a distinctive way of speaking? Let's say she's Irish, or from Chicago, or he's a 2nd Century Roman warrior?
First, I think, we have to do our research. We have to get enough experience with the rhythm of this speaking culture's sentences and the lingo to convey it accurately. But then, we should cut back (usually). Even without spelling irregularities, "authentic" dialect can put off readers. After all, that Roman warrior spoke Latin. We're already "translating" his speech into English, so we want to give a flavor without choking the reader.
I've been thinking of what constitutes a flavor. First, the rhythm of the sentences can give a flavor of the speaker's culture. There's an old book called English as We Speak It in Ireland which gives examples of sentences only an Irishperson would say:
I went to town yesterday in all of the rain, and if I didn't get a wetting, there's no cottoner in Cork. (That is, he got wet.)
An illigent song he sang, I'll go bail.
The author (PW Joyce) remarks that Irish English uses negation (if I didn't), stock phrases (I'll go bail), and reverse order (putting the object first -- An illigent song he sang) for emphasis. This is not a dialect that honors Struck and White's edict to "use no unnecessary words," or rather, the Irish don't think there are unnecessary words!
Read in the vernacular to pick up the sentence rhythm. Watch films and TV shows =made= (not just set) in the culture. For historical settings, read books written then (you might have to read in translation, of course) or plays that would have been performed then.
(The British filmmakers, you know, are famous for making everyone else, especially Romans, sound English. Not just speak English, but sound it. All the rich Romans sound like Lord Olivier, and all the poor ones sound Cockney, like the Artful Dodger.)
But also, there are certain words or types of words that can be used without confusing the reader or making the character opaque. Here are some I've thought of, but please add!
Variations of "you". This, far more than "I", for some reason, marks a dialect quite precisely. Any linguist who hears "youse" knows the speaker is from the Great Lakes-Midwest (probably Chicago). "You-uns" is Pennsylvanian.
Ye
Thou
You all
Y'all
Ya
What others have you heard? When would you use them? What about our Roman warrior, who doesn't speak English, but must be presented as speaking English?
Curses and other angry expletives: Even if the reader doesn't know what the word means, the placement and the context will make it clear that "glupak!" is a curse word. Spelling can distinguish dialects when you're dealing with English speakers:
Shee-it!
Shite!
Wonder words: These are words that seem to erupt spontaneously, and because they're spontaneous, they're going to give a sense of the character's background. You can do this is the actual language if the character is foreign. Examples:
Blimey!
Mon Dieu!
Wow!
Other thoughts?
Alicia
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Responses to Comments on Dialect
I'm always so impressed by the thoughtful comments people leave on this blog, but the comments in response to the post On Dialect deserve a post of their own.
Ian says,
I wrote a scene set in Australia and limited most dialect-specifics to "Oy" (Hey) and "Yer" (Your/You're).
Ian, though there may be some debating this point, I think "Oy" or "Oi" might count as a word in its own right. I'm curious about something. I understand that "Oy" is used in places other than Australia, but whenever I hear or read it, I connect it to Australia. Am I alone in this?
This leads to another point. When you're using a phonetic like "yer," you may find that it is too broad or common to indicate any particular dialect. We also say "yer" in Chicago, as in, Yer gotta coupla to-tree hoses in yer gratch? To those spared the hideousness of my local dialect, that would translate to, Do you have any extra hoses in your garage?
What's the strong written dialect in that sentence, and what is the weak? The weak is yer and gratch. That may be precisely how we pronounce those words around here, but we ought to be too ashamed to commit it to paper.
And the strong dialect is coupla to-tree, or, couple of two-three, which is Chicagoese for some number greater than one and which usually indicates there are items to spare. See, e.g., coupla to-tree beers in da fritch, which we all know is what one offers a guest on a hot summer day. Anybody who knows the Chicago dialect will recognize that phrase and pin it to this area. I don't think any non-Chicagoans run around saying coupla to-tree in place of extra or plenty.
One of the most commonly used phonetic indicators is an apostrophe in place of the g in a present participle. Walkin'. Talkin'. Thinkin'. Sleepin'. But can anyone pinpoint a specific dialect which can claim this speech mannerism as its own? It belongs to just about anyone and probably signals informality more than dialect.
All of which is to say, phonetic dialect is slippery. For Australian dialect, Oy may work better than yer. But as a general proposition for any dialect, it's a good idea to pick just one or two phonetic representations (if any) and stick with them. Pick ones that are easy on the eyes so that they won't slow the reader. Ian picked Oy and yer, and left the rest of the text in standard English, and that's probably not a bad thing.
About Gwine
Two commenters mentioned reading gwine in books as a phonetic Southernism for going to, and being uncertain what gwine meant. This perfectly illustrates the danger in this kind of writing. It's confusing. It's non-standard. And it's probably best not to attempt phonetic dialect at all.
Green Knight says,
Where do you stand on use of language in historical novels? Few people will attempt to write dialogue in the language of Chaucer, but once we get to the 16th century onwards, where we have a lot of examples of colloquial as well as formal language, and readers will be familiar with them - how do you evoke the language of Shakespeare without actually borrowing from him?
It's a very tricky business to write historicals that sound authentic but still appeal to readers. There are so many factors to take into consideration. First, who is your audience? Genre novels probably have less room for writerly acrobatics than do litfic or genfic. Consider for example Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, which was written in an approximation of the dialect of the Revolutionary War period:
Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,--the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among the rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.
Yeah. It goes on like that for about eight hundred pages. I'm told the dialect becomes more transparent once you get through the first hundred or so pages. I wouldn't know. I've never read past page 6. This is one of those books I intend to read "someday," because it must surely be brilliant. All the scholars say so.
So if your name is Thomas Pynchon, you have a lot more leeway in historical dialect. If your name is J.P. Crimewriter or Melisandra LaRomantique, probably not so much leeway. Aim for hints of dialect rather than outright imitations. You wouldn't want to imitate Shakespeare, for example, because he wrote verse. Not prose. Dude was all about iambic pentameter.
But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
You can practically hear the drumbeat in that line. Yeah, okay, he threw in an extra downbeat here and there, but I think we can let him slide on it.
So be careful what you're imitating. You might be able to toss in an occasional anon, thee or knave with far less risk than outright imitations of historical speech. And those kinds of things will feel more natural to modern readers if they're used during more formal moments. It would be one thing for a man to say, "I beg thee, madam, for but a moment's consideration," during an evening ball to his dancing partner. It would be quite another thing for him to say it as he's ravishing her in the coat closet.
Ian says,
I wrote a scene set in Australia and limited most dialect-specifics to "Oy" (Hey) and "Yer" (Your/You're).
Ian, though there may be some debating this point, I think "Oy" or "Oi" might count as a word in its own right. I'm curious about something. I understand that "Oy" is used in places other than Australia, but whenever I hear or read it, I connect it to Australia. Am I alone in this?
This leads to another point. When you're using a phonetic like "yer," you may find that it is too broad or common to indicate any particular dialect. We also say "yer" in Chicago, as in, Yer gotta coupla to-tree hoses in yer gratch? To those spared the hideousness of my local dialect, that would translate to, Do you have any extra hoses in your garage?
What's the strong written dialect in that sentence, and what is the weak? The weak is yer and gratch. That may be precisely how we pronounce those words around here, but we ought to be too ashamed to commit it to paper.
And the strong dialect is coupla to-tree, or, couple of two-three, which is Chicagoese for some number greater than one and which usually indicates there are items to spare. See, e.g., coupla to-tree beers in da fritch, which we all know is what one offers a guest on a hot summer day. Anybody who knows the Chicago dialect will recognize that phrase and pin it to this area. I don't think any non-Chicagoans run around saying coupla to-tree in place of extra or plenty.
One of the most commonly used phonetic indicators is an apostrophe in place of the g in a present participle. Walkin'. Talkin'. Thinkin'. Sleepin'. But can anyone pinpoint a specific dialect which can claim this speech mannerism as its own? It belongs to just about anyone and probably signals informality more than dialect.
All of which is to say, phonetic dialect is slippery. For Australian dialect, Oy may work better than yer. But as a general proposition for any dialect, it's a good idea to pick just one or two phonetic representations (if any) and stick with them. Pick ones that are easy on the eyes so that they won't slow the reader. Ian picked Oy and yer, and left the rest of the text in standard English, and that's probably not a bad thing.
About Gwine
Two commenters mentioned reading gwine in books as a phonetic Southernism for going to, and being uncertain what gwine meant. This perfectly illustrates the danger in this kind of writing. It's confusing. It's non-standard. And it's probably best not to attempt phonetic dialect at all.
Green Knight says,
Where do you stand on use of language in historical novels? Few people will attempt to write dialogue in the language of Chaucer, but once we get to the 16th century onwards, where we have a lot of examples of colloquial as well as formal language, and readers will be familiar with them - how do you evoke the language of Shakespeare without actually borrowing from him?
It's a very tricky business to write historicals that sound authentic but still appeal to readers. There are so many factors to take into consideration. First, who is your audience? Genre novels probably have less room for writerly acrobatics than do litfic or genfic. Consider for example Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, which was written in an approximation of the dialect of the Revolutionary War period:
Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,--the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among the rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.
Yeah. It goes on like that for about eight hundred pages. I'm told the dialect becomes more transparent once you get through the first hundred or so pages. I wouldn't know. I've never read past page 6. This is one of those books I intend to read "someday," because it must surely be brilliant. All the scholars say so.
So if your name is Thomas Pynchon, you have a lot more leeway in historical dialect. If your name is J.P. Crimewriter or Melisandra LaRomantique, probably not so much leeway. Aim for hints of dialect rather than outright imitations. You wouldn't want to imitate Shakespeare, for example, because he wrote verse. Not prose. Dude was all about iambic pentameter.
But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
You can practically hear the drumbeat in that line. Yeah, okay, he threw in an extra downbeat here and there, but I think we can let him slide on it.
So be careful what you're imitating. You might be able to toss in an occasional anon, thee or knave with far less risk than outright imitations of historical speech. And those kinds of things will feel more natural to modern readers if they're used during more formal moments. It would be one thing for a man to say, "I beg thee, madam, for but a moment's consideration," during an evening ball to his dancing partner. It would be quite another thing for him to say it as he's ravishing her in the coat closet.
Monday, February 25, 2008
On Dialect
I've been dealing with two different projects today -- very different projects. Different settings, subgenres, themes. Different target readers, different experience levels from two different writers.
But they have one thing in common.
They both rely heavily on dialect. And they tend to get the dialect right and wrong in much the same ways. So I thought it might be useful to give a quick overview on dialect.
First thing to remember is that when we're talking about dialect, we're talking about spoken language. Spoken language = dialogue. Right? So this means that your dialect is best confined to what comes between the quotation marks. On occasion, you might want to include some dialect in other parts of the narrative -- in interior monologue, for example. But as a general principle, it's best kept between the quotes.
There are three basic aspects to dialect: pronunciation, slang, and sentence structure. The first of these, pronunciation, is the weakest way to convey dialect in writing.
Let's look at an example. Let's take the word pen. Depending on where you live and your personal regional dialect, when you read that word, you'll "hear" it in different ways. Some folks will hear it as pin, some as pen, and some will hear something approximating an Italian demi-vowel: peh-un.
And that's okay. There's no reason in the world that a typical writer working with typical prose would need to worry about how the reader would pronounce a particular word. As long as meaning and context are clear, pronunciation doesn't matter. In fact, that's the beauty of written language. It allows us to comprehend each other without having to puzzle out accents.
Writers sometimes reach for dialectic spellings of words in order to signal something about the cadence of a character's speech. Caribbean pirate? Shiver me timbers, yer pirate might be a-sayin'. Got a Nazi headmistress? Ve haf vays off making you shmarter, she says vit a shmack off de rular.
If you're like most readers, your reading pace slowed while reading the italicized portions of the previous paragraph. This is because pronunciation cues like odd spellings or punctuation need to be translated out of that dialect as we read the words.
Let that sink in for a moment.
You put all that work into getting your spelling to signal a particular accent, and the reader will automatically translate it into their own personal dialect as they read. That translation process slows them down.
Do I need to elaborate any further than this? Perhaps I should instead refer to John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, in which he classifies these "oddities of imitation or spelling" as "amateur sins" which are "matters so obvious to the experienced reader or writer that they seem at first glance to have no place in a book for serious writers.... [C]lumsy errors of the kind I've been treating help show clearly what we mean when we speak of 'things that distract the reader's mind from the fictional dream,' and nothing in what I'm saying is more fundamental than the concept of the uninterrupted fictional dream."
In other words, your job is to lull the reader into forgetting that they're reading, and you can't do that if you continually call attention to the arrangement of the letters and punctuation marks on the page.
Enough about pronunciation, then.
If you want to use dialect to signal something about a character's background, much better to use vocabulary or sentence structure to do so. It's almost become a cliche to have a Scottish warlord talk about wee bairns and bonny lasses, but that's because it works: these terms are strongly associated with Scottish speech.
Ditto for the guru using Yoda-esque inversions, the Wooster-like Englishman with his "I say" and "By Jove," and the Frenchwoman who asks, "This hat is pretty, is it not?" Phrasings and word choices can signal as much about a character's dialect as any attempt to convey an accent.
I'm not advocating for cliches. Not at all. Instead I'm advocating that you listen to dialect for something more than pronunciation. Listen for different usages or slang terms, for different ways of organizing the parts of speech into coherent concepts. You can get away with a little bit of dialect-specific spelling here and there, but your writing will be much stronger if you avoid that in favor of other techniques.
Theresa
But they have one thing in common.
They both rely heavily on dialect. And they tend to get the dialect right and wrong in much the same ways. So I thought it might be useful to give a quick overview on dialect.
First thing to remember is that when we're talking about dialect, we're talking about spoken language. Spoken language = dialogue. Right? So this means that your dialect is best confined to what comes between the quotation marks. On occasion, you might want to include some dialect in other parts of the narrative -- in interior monologue, for example. But as a general principle, it's best kept between the quotes.
There are three basic aspects to dialect: pronunciation, slang, and sentence structure. The first of these, pronunciation, is the weakest way to convey dialect in writing.
Let's look at an example. Let's take the word pen. Depending on where you live and your personal regional dialect, when you read that word, you'll "hear" it in different ways. Some folks will hear it as pin, some as pen, and some will hear something approximating an Italian demi-vowel: peh-un.
And that's okay. There's no reason in the world that a typical writer working with typical prose would need to worry about how the reader would pronounce a particular word. As long as meaning and context are clear, pronunciation doesn't matter. In fact, that's the beauty of written language. It allows us to comprehend each other without having to puzzle out accents.
Writers sometimes reach for dialectic spellings of words in order to signal something about the cadence of a character's speech. Caribbean pirate? Shiver me timbers, yer pirate might be a-sayin'. Got a Nazi headmistress? Ve haf vays off making you shmarter, she says vit a shmack off de rular.
If you're like most readers, your reading pace slowed while reading the italicized portions of the previous paragraph. This is because pronunciation cues like odd spellings or punctuation need to be translated out of that dialect as we read the words.
Let that sink in for a moment.
You put all that work into getting your spelling to signal a particular accent, and the reader will automatically translate it into their own personal dialect as they read. That translation process slows them down.
Do I need to elaborate any further than this? Perhaps I should instead refer to John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, in which he classifies these "oddities of imitation or spelling" as "amateur sins" which are "matters so obvious to the experienced reader or writer that they seem at first glance to have no place in a book for serious writers.... [C]lumsy errors of the kind I've been treating help show clearly what we mean when we speak of 'things that distract the reader's mind from the fictional dream,' and nothing in what I'm saying is more fundamental than the concept of the uninterrupted fictional dream."
In other words, your job is to lull the reader into forgetting that they're reading, and you can't do that if you continually call attention to the arrangement of the letters and punctuation marks on the page.
Enough about pronunciation, then.
If you want to use dialect to signal something about a character's background, much better to use vocabulary or sentence structure to do so. It's almost become a cliche to have a Scottish warlord talk about wee bairns and bonny lasses, but that's because it works: these terms are strongly associated with Scottish speech.
Ditto for the guru using Yoda-esque inversions, the Wooster-like Englishman with his "I say" and "By Jove," and the Frenchwoman who asks, "This hat is pretty, is it not?" Phrasings and word choices can signal as much about a character's dialect as any attempt to convey an accent.
I'm not advocating for cliches. Not at all. Instead I'm advocating that you listen to dialect for something more than pronunciation. Listen for different usages or slang terms, for different ways of organizing the parts of speech into coherent concepts. You can get away with a little bit of dialect-specific spelling here and there, but your writing will be much stronger if you avoid that in favor of other techniques.
Theresa
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