on accents and spelling

[beccaelizabeth]

Dear Fandom(s):
Please don't try to write Scottish.

if you happen to be from Scotland and speak in the same manner as your characters, you get a pass. can't argue with that one.

But for the rest of the world: Please, please, stop mangling the English language to make it look like it has a funny accent. Your accent looks funny from here. (Unless you're in Norfolk too, in which case you already know all the jokes as suggest your accent looks funny from everywhere else.) The thing about written English is, it's all written pretty much the same way. Wherever you are. Seriously.

Dialect words are a different thing, use them if you know what they mean and where they belong. Being actual words they have their own actual spelling.

But words that everyone uses, for instance 'you', only need to be spelt the dictionary way.

And, if you really seriously feel the need to mangle the language, for goodness sakes, couldn't you just pick the one alternate spelling and stick with it? I just read a paragraph that contained Yer, Ye, and Ya, without detouring through You, all said by the same guy in two sentences. Really? That's what you hear?

Plus, when you use the funny spelling for the Scotsman but not for the whole rest of the world, what's up with that? All the states of America, Canada, Australia, and actual English as a second language speakers from around the world are sitting there looking like they had a spellcheck, and then there's one Scots bloke dropping his gs and mangling his pronouns every which way. What thought process goes into that?

Not, and I wish to be clear on this, not for an instant am I advocating being consistent by trying to spell everyone funny. That way, madness lies. Or medieval lit.

Just, really, readers can fill the accent in. We don't need the visual cues.



... I know, if I ruled the world pronouncements, not actually helpful.
... *big sigh*...

Comments

[minim_calibre]

I promise to only ever use it if I am attempting a transliteration of my mother imitating her father.

Because that's really the only way to get it across. (Imagine, if you will, an elderly Canadian woman doing a very broad impersonation of an elderly man from Mauchline who was rarely sober, complete with a smattering of Scots and a hell of a lot of cursing.)

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

I tend to indicate accents by word choices, rather than dropped letters, although that still tends to lead to interesting discussions with betas and editors.

Misuse of 'ye' tends to irritate too: it has a specific role in certain dialects, but you really have to know the specifics before trying to switch it for 'you'.