Medival and Deep South accents

[Bomber D Rufi]

I was wondering if someone could help me out with those? I have characters who speak in both coming up in my story...and i'd like to be able to convey them properly. Thanks!

 

[Wiglaf]

Personally, I don't like it when they mangle the writing to convey a dialect. I'd stick with an occaissional y'all, contractions, and maybe a few colloquialisms. For South Missouri, for example, it would be you all, crick(for creek), nekkid(ain't got no clothes on), and Missoura. Spelling every word phoenetically is too much. It actually makes the dialog hard to comprehend.

 

[Bomber D Rufi]

Personally, I don't like it when they mangle the writing to convey a dialect. I'd stick with an occaissional y'all, contractions, and maybe a few colloquialisms. For South Missouri, for example, it would be you all, crick(for creek), nekkid(ain't got no clothes on), and Missoura. Spelling every word phoenetically is too much. It actually makes the dialog hard to comprehend.

Hmm a good point. I want it to be readable, but i also want readers to understand that the characters aren't speaking as normally as the others. So how much would you consider to be 'too much'?

 

[Wiglaf]

I would focus on their choice of words. Then just change the spelling on the most characteristic pronounciations. For a 19th century Cockney replace the initial H's with a '. For a New Englander add or remove R's. (worsh, caw). I'm not sure about Southerners or Medieval speech, but you can still use word choice. Just don't change the spelling of every word in a sentence unless absolutely necessary. Just an occaissional "wot", "dis", -in', or -a (for -er). For a short exclamation, its different. Its easier for the reader to translate a short sentence and accents come out more when you are surprised (or drunk).

 

[Bomber D Rufi]

I would focus on their choice of words. Then just change the spelling on the most characteristic pronounciations. For a 19th century Cockney replace the initial H's with a '. For a New Englander add or remove R's. (worsh, caw). I'm not sure about Southerners or Medieval speech, but you can still use word choice. Just don't change the spelling of every word in a sentence unless absolutely necessary. Just an occaissional "wot", "dis", -in', or -a (for -er). For a short exclamation, its different. Its easier for the reader to translate a short sentence and accents come out more when you are surprised (or drunk).

Hah i see, thanks a lot. I wouldn't even worry about it if the character didn't appear often. (She and They are more secondary characters if anything.) So i felt it was important to try to make sure i did things right. I didn't want to overdo it though so i decided to ask just in case. If only i could find someone that knew more about medival...Southern isn't so hard to look up....

 

[Wiglaf]

I just thought of something else.
If the character is a foreigner or has a speech impediment and the other characters can't understand him, you could probably get away with more.
Some books I've read have six characters each with a unique Britsh accent: Scotland, London, Wales, York. For one, in some cases, I can't really appreciate the differences. Secondly, if there is two pages of nothing but dialog, I get lost. So how many accents and if every character does a monologue comes into play.
Good luck on the midieval accent. I wish I had something for you.

 

[Bomber D Rufi]

I just thought of something else.
If the character is a foreigner or has a speech impediment and the other characters can't understand him, you could probably get away with more.
Some books I've read have six characters each with a unique Britsh accent: Scotland, London, Wales, York. For one, in some cases, I can't really appreciate the differences. Secondly, if there is two pages of nothing but dialog, I get lost. So how many accents and if every character does a monologue comes into play.
Good luck on the midieval accent. I wish I had something for you.

Thanks for wishing me luck...i'll need it. But you've been a big help though! At least the two characters with southern accents will be a bit easier to write for. Now the girl with the midieval accent...she'll be tough, especially since she appears before the other two.

 

[Dragonlady]

I'm not a big fan normally, but try reading some agatha christie. She doesn't write poirot's belgian accent, but she uses a lot of continental syntax (word order) for his dialogue, giving the reader the impression of his accent withouth compromising intelligibility. That could certainly be your best bet for the mediaeval one.

 

[Bomber D Rufi]

I'm not a big fan normally, but try reading some agatha christie. She doesn't write poirot's belgian accent, but she uses a lot of continental syntax (word order) for his dialogue, giving the reader the impression of his accent withouth compromising intelligibility. That could certainly be your best bet for the mediaeval one.

A good suggestion. I'll give that a try too. Thanks a lot for the quick response.

 

[Wiglaf]

Look up thou on wikipedia. I was going to post my own explanation, but my computer keeps acting up.
I hate gremlins!
ps. it includes ye, the fact that thou was rude, and his was used for it's.

 

[Omphalos]

Personally, I don't like it when they mangle the writing to convey a dialect. I'd stick with an occaissional y'all, contractions, and maybe a few colloquialisms. For South Missouri, for example, it would be you all, crick(for creek), nekkid(ain't got no clothes on), and Missoura. Spelling every word phoenetically is too much. It actually makes the dialog hard to comprehend.

You can do it to interesting effect though. In trainspotting I hated it, but the average buyer at the Borders I worked at then loved it. I think it was pretty well done in Davy, by Edgar Pangborn too.

 

[Wiglaf]

It can work, if done right. The trick is doing it right.

 

[Jarshen]

I think the trick is to describe how the character speaks, slowly, with a drawl, breathy, excited and then choose the vocabulary like Wiglaf suggests and the syntax like Dragonlady.
You can always have another character commenting on their slightly archaic way of speaking.
I think accents are really hard to put down convincingy on the page, go with how you think your character speaks, ie if it is medieval what is that you want to suggest about him/her that makes medieval appropriate.

 

[Omphalos]

One of the problems is that you cannot use objective phonetics. Everyone who reads the phoneticized words you use puts their own local accent to them, and winds up butchering them in their minds. The two books I suggested above both did a pretty good job communicating objectively, so to do it right, something like that is in order.

 

[Flavia]

Someone who did a good job with dialect was T. H. Lawrence in his characterisation of Mellor, the gamekeeper. Derby dialect, if memory serves.

 

[Toby Frost]

Is your medieval person out of normal context (Ie in the present day or visiting somewhere where his accent is not normal)? If not, I'd be inclined to give him pretty modern speech, leaving out obvious anachronisms and/or Americanisms etc. After all, if you met Chaucer now, he'd be pretty hard to understand, but amongst his neighbours he'd sound like a normal, well-educated man.

Personally, I think it comes across as false more often than not when fantasy writers use deliberately archaic speech. Meaning often gets lost under a lot of "thees" and "thines". Not sure how helpful this is, but I hope it's of some use!

 

[Lord_Rahl]

Hey, I was just reading and noticed your thread.

When you say medieval, do you mean old English? If so, I think you could get away with sayings like 'M'lord' and ' Aye, 'tis true' that kind of thing- maybe. (sounds authentic to me!)

If not, I found a website that has some recordings(that i couldn't open as they were .RAM files(whatevere they are)).


www(dot)bbc(dot)co(dot)uk(/)radio4(/)routesofenglish(/)storysofar(/)programme1(underscore)2(dot)shtml

(sorry about the URL, can't post a proper one until I hit 15 posts )

Hope it helps.

 

[Lord_Rahl]

I can post links now.

BBC - Radio 4 - Routes of English - Accents and Dialects

 

[Xelebes]

I was wondering if someone could help me out with those? I have characters who speak in both coming up in my story...and i'd like to be able to convey them properly. Thanks!

Deep South sounds very similar to West Country Medieval. You can get away with having both characters speaking the same.

 

[chrispenycate]

In what I consider "mediaeval", English did not yet exist as a language. It was coming into being, but was essentially two streams. the Romance-based upper-class Norman, and the germanic, peasant Anglo-Saxon (plus all the church Latin, educated Greek, invading Scandinavian et cetera that went to produce the modern unwieldy ******* we know and love) Thus, what you'd get as word order and even speech rhythms would depend on the social stratum from which she originated. Read some Chaucer in the original. But, if thou art minded to use the second person singular, recall that it was used to inferiors, family members and close friends, with the plural "you" for those whom thou respecteth, or towards whom thou wouldst seem polite.
Moreover, without travel, nor radio, nor contact much twixt any save the rich, regional differences were more marked than now – a tinker would effectively speak several different tongues within a day, close relatives but differing in all, vocabulary, vowel stress, nor vowel colour would not pass across, and oft would speaking Latin with the priest be simpler than comprehending simple folk. (Swiss german, swiitzeteuch, between the isolated valleys shows much the same fragmentation today)
The nobles visit, they exchange their kin across the county lines, and thus their speech is more homogenous, but even then the travel's hardships mean they ofttimes bide at home. Still, they can write, and learnèd tutors can be brought to set their tongue to courtly usage.
Would I could thee further aid, but whilst I dabble in the art of tongues, I am no specialist to criticise nor guide.