Do accents alter the way you write?

[Erin99]

I would say and write 'I was sat on the chair' which is passive.

Gah! You do what I did! I'd grown up hearing people say "I was sat...", and John Jarrold was the one who pointed out that it's not grammatical. It's either "I was sitting", "I sat", "I am sitting", "I will/might be sitting", or "I had/have been sitting", etc. "Sat" = past tense; "sitting" = continuous (present participle).

And again, "affect" is primarily a verb, whilst "effect" is primarily a noun: "The accident had a profound effect on him -- affected him more than people realise."

And don't be too quick to dismiss "I was sitting". It's a valid form of expressing the time the character's action takes place; i.e., "She was going to the cinema" implies that she was going but whether or not she got there is in doubt at the present time until further clarification -- maybe she got waylaid. "She went to the cinema" implies that the lady did get there. Different, no? Both are relevant to what you're trying to say.

Whereas passive voice is bad when used in the form of lengthening your prose unnecessarily or confusing the reader into wondering who's doing what. Consider:

Jim was always tortured by Bill.
Bill always tortured Jim.

Our car was red and shiny, and we liked to speed up the road in it.
We liked to speed up the road in our shiny red car.

Of course, passive can be good to emphasise a point or heighten tension:

"We were being pursued" -- Here, the pursuers are unnamed, adding tension, rather than "The men/women/cyborgs/goats pursued us".

"It was a look I dreaded..." -- In some circumstances, this can sound better than "I dreaded the look", because putting the "a look I dreaded" after the "was" makes the reader unconsciously drawn to it -- the point of tension, the important thing you want emphasised -- rather than drawn to the "I" as in the second example. I hope that sounds clear...





Oh, and yes, Mouse, it would have been "affect" in the title, because you could substitute it with the verb "to alter".

Hope this helps!

 

[Mouse]

I thought it was, but changed it to 'alter' just so I didn't look silly in case it was wrong.

Thanks, I'm getting the hang of the whole passive sentence thing now. I think.

 

[J Riff]

Yup. It's harder for new writers to do the old west characters, for example. Since we watched a thousand westerns and even read Zane Grey or some such.
But there are accents which the bulk of readers may not understand if they are regional. Street slang can be this way, or weird juvey or jazz novels from the 40s. Total jive speech patterns of the day, great to read, hard to pull off unless you live and breath it. Or watch it on TV enough. )

 

[chrispenycate]

But even if everything is spelt and parsed correctly (except dialogue, which is written proper like, innit?) there are regional rhythms, which are set, not only into your verbalisation, but conceptualisation, the very way you formulate ideas, and this is bound to bleed over into your writing somewhat, even if you're one of those chameleon types who blends into any background.

 

[Mouse]

Old thread now but was just doing some writing and described the smell of a room as 'fousty.' It's a pretty common word here and I didn't even think that it wasn't a 'real' world until my spellchecker red-wiggly lined it!

I know what it means, but would my readers?! So Googled 'fousty' as I didn't believe that it wasn't a word. fousty - Wiktionary

Seriously. Fusty?! Who says fusty?

Should I stick with 'fousty' which sounds right to me. Or change it to 'fusty.' Or pick another word. It's not used in dialogue.

 

[The Judge]

Never seen or heard "fousty" myself, but I think I would have guessed it as a dialect pronounciation. If it was dialogue, and the character came from Bristol or Zummerzet, then you might have got away with it, but since it's not dialogue, then if you're planning to sell the story to non-Bristolians, I think it'll have to be changed. Fusty is fine, but it's a distinctly old fashioned word itself nowadays. Depending on your narrator, it might be best to find an alternative. Musty? Stale? Stuffy? Damp-smelling?

 

[Mouse]

Stale! Thanks, might use that. I don't like the word 'musty.'

Worrying that when I followed some of the other words that were supposedly Bristolian, 'pitch' came up. As in when snow pitches.

Is that seriously not used anywhere else in the world/country? Because if I was to write about snow I would almost definitely say that the snow was pitching. Spellchecker wouldn't pick up on that either.

 

[The Judge]

Snow doesn't pitch unless he plays for a baseball team...

Just checked possible uses of it as a verb Dictionary - Definition of pitch -- the only one that comes close is to alight. I think you need a non-Bristolian to de-dialect your work!

 

[Mouse]

Blimey! I think I do too! I'm not even Bristolian, live an hour south. I'm going to start wondering if every word I use now is a real word or a dialect word.

 

[Null_Zone]

Tell me the character has an accent and then put it in Queens English, I'll provide the accent in my head thanks. Whilst I love Chris Brookmyre his writing chunks in heavy scottish accents including slang is a major turnoff.

I grew up on the Devon/Cornwall border and can have fully understandable conversation with my Yorkshire relatives with no misunderstandings. Until the subject of curries or afternoon tea comes up. Reading it shouldn't be more effort.

 

[J Riff]

Well, I say fusty whenever I feel like it. It's a good word. Fuss Tea.
Snow pitching though... that twigs a distant memory but can't seem to recall...
Anyway I wouldn't change a word of your stuff unless people complain they can't understand something.

 

[Wiglaf]

You know, your location just might affect your word choice.
Around here (the part of California south of the Southland or SoCal) the local accent and word choices will change around you. My word choices (but not my accent that I'm accused of having) have changed to adapt to where I live; the city I have lived in since birth.
ex. sofa to couch, supper to dinner, heck I've caught myself using spell'd and learnd not spelt and learnt (Both are of course spelled with -ed, in the States, under penalty of low grades and after school dentention.)
We need a spelling/grammer checker that is better than Word's. It simply leaves out too many words that are acceptable to be effective at detecting extremely localized colloquialisms.

Of course, I now can't find any examples.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

I think accent can be a useful way to highlight differences between characters, but it can go wrong. The most notable I can think of is in Wheel of Time, when people from Ebou Dar (I think), use a lot of 'Here there do be problems', and 'Do you be wanting passage?', etc. Bayle Domon is the main one, I suppose.

I always found this to be jarring. It meant that often I had to re-read a piece of dialoge to make sure I had it straight, and it got annoying after a while. It just seemed unnecessary. Personally, I tend to describe accents rather than put it across in text. Unless I specifically want to highlight a g-dropping hick or someone not speaking in their native language, that is.