True, but that is why Archie did it that at- give a line or two to get the idea then go back to regular english.
One reason to avoid this sort of writing is that the phonetically rendered version of speech will only really make sense to someone who shares a dialect and accent with the writer, and not always then.
For example there are US accents where, if I was to render in writing my phonetic impression of something as simple as the word ‘car’, I might write ko-arr or even kowoarr. That’s going to seem absurd to anyone outside of my own little dialectic bubble - Americans speaking that accent don’t think they are saying ‘kowoarr’ - they (rightly) think they are saying ‘car’; and it’s not even very useful within my dialectic bubble because ‘kowoarr’ is so far removed from ‘car’ that it takes special effort to read it - the effort is not symmetrical between writer and reader.
Currently a hot issue in Yorkshire:
(Apostrophe? We were lucky if we saw a comma in a month!)
Actually, in Germany it’s a regular thing - you will often see adverts and the like using a dialect spellings (present-day Germany is big on regional Identity):
I would never normally presume to explain someone’s culture to them, but in this case I think the people complaining are wrong. The whole debate is badly informed and the Guardian article doesn’t illuminate it in any way.
I have lived in Yorkshire and when there I specifically listened out for how people used the definite article. “The” in standard English is replaced by something between a “t” and a glottal stop, which is what the Dialect Society there want written as " t’ ". You frequently see it written, as it is here as “t’bin” - substitute whichever other noun you’re using.
The thing is, at least in this context, I think that’s wrong. When saying “Gerrit in [glottal stop] bin”, the glottal stop actually goes on the end of “in”, without a gap. There is then an audible gap before “bin”. To pronounce it correctly you’re not far wrong if you say “gerrit int bin”.
You would be wrong though if you try to say it the way these people want it written; “gerrrit in t[schwa]bin”. Which is exactly what most people from outwith the north of England do when trying to read out such sentences. After moving to Yorkshire I became mystified at why, when writing the dialect, no one else seems to notice that the glottal stop goes on the end of the word preceding the noun, not the start of the noun itself*. I take the original North Yorkshire Council sign as being evidence that I am right.
One of the issues is of course the fact that the only symbol usually used for a glottal stop in English is the apostrophe. Another is that people often subconsciously believe glottal stops are a bit uncouth. Since the apostrophe already does so much heavy lifting for other things in both standard and dialect English, it all gets very confused. In representing the glottal stop as " 't ", the council are being a bit inaccurate, but nothing like as inaccurate as the dialect society are making out. Unless a lot of context has been concealed, it is absurd for the man to whine that “a humble apology would be nice”. It’s one of these situations where a public body should actually have had more confidence in itself than to bow to pressure from self-appointed people who might not actually have a coherent argument.
The dialect society might be better putting their energy into admitting that it’s a usually glottal stop, not a ‘t’, and finding a symbol that can unambiguously be used to represent the glottal stop.
*It’s a little different if it’s the start of a sentence like “the bin needs taking out”. It would often be written " T’bin needs taking out " but I don’t think I heard people saying a “t” sound there. It’s not even a glottal stop - people say “Bin needs taking out” but there’s a subtle plosion just before the “B” that shows you the definite article is being used. I do think there’s effectively an audible difference between the subjective case and objective case.
Anyone gonna 'splain what ‘gerrit’ means? Is it a compressed version of ‘get rid of it’?
“Get it…” It just means “get [put] it in the bin”, a bin being what we put rubbish/trash/garbage in.
Not uncommon in other parts of the north for a “t” sound to morph into “r” - as in Cilla Black’s (Liverpool) “Lorra lorra laffs”.
Yes, my German son-in-law is big on teaching his kids the “KIng’s German” as it were. He’s very sensitive to regional accents.
In any case, the real reason to go lightly on accents is for the reader, as Rex Stout obviously knew. My wife reviewed historical fiction for a few years, and books with too much dialog in accents was hard to read and tended to get thrown across the room.
I don’t know - they still seem to be saying “the”. They may be pronouncing “the” in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, but it’s still the same word.
Language should describe what you’re saying, not how you’re saying it.
I don’t know what you’re on about. Have you ever been to the north of England? I don’t think you understand my point at all.
Nothing I’ve written could be construed as advocating any sort of prescriptivist position. Nor could it be construed as suggesting that the Yorkshire definite article is not either cognate with or derived from the standard English word ‘the’.
My beef with the dialect society people is almost entirely about orthography.
I’m saying that whether it’s pronounced as a “t” or as a glottal stop, it should still be written as “the”. English is barely pronounced the same way it’s spelled anyway, so why should this be any different?
So you’re disagreeing with both me and the dialect society, and pretty much everyone who has ever attempted to write a north of England dialect. The pronunciation is nothing like how “the” is pronounced in standard English, or any other dialect of English. I’ve come late to this thread and I haven’t read all the posts yet, but I’m going to say that while it’s never easy to come up with an orthography for a dialect that satisfies everyone, and people who are not from that area should generally avoid trying to do so with a 20 foot barge pole, using standard English to record the speech of people who don’t actually speak it is generally not the answer either.
Saying the Yorkshire definite article should always be written “the” is the same as saying that Scottish equivalents of “haven’t”, which range from “havnae” to “huvnae” to “hinna”, amongst some others, should always be written as “haven’t”. In other words, it is wrong from the point of view of pretty much anyone who has any direct experience of the culture in question.
@Alessan, if I’m correctly interpreting his contributions to this thread, takes the extreme position that spelling should never be altered in an attempt to reflect how the language is pronounced—not just for a north of England dialect, but for any dialect.
Not never, per se, but I think the process should be very, very slow and deliberate.
I mean, look how the word “knight” is still spelled with a k, g and h, 500 years or more after those letters were last pronounced in English. Let that be our guide when it comes to transcribing dialect.
Lord Dorwin in Asimov’s Foundation is an aristocrat of a very high level. Here’s how he talks:
When the lights went on again, Lord Dorwin said: “Mahvelous. Twuly mahvelous. You ah not, by chance, intewested in ahchaeology, ah you, Hahdin?”
“Eh?” Hardin shook himself out of an abstracted reverie. “No, milord, can’t say I am. I’m a psychologist by original intention and a politician by final decision.”
“Ah! No doubt intewesting studies. One, myself, y’know” – he helped himself to a giant pinch of snuff –“dabble in ahchaeology.”
“Indeed?” “His lordship,” interrupted Pirenne, “is most thoroughly acquainted with the field.”
“Well, p’haps I am, p’haps I am,” said his lordship complacently. “I have done an awful amount of wuhk in the science. Extwemely well-read, in fact. I’ve gone thwough all of Jawdun, Obijasi, Kwomwill … oh, all of them, y’know.”
Wrong, I heard the “gh” in “night” and “daughter” being pronounced in everyday chat 30 years ago. Probably still happening in some parts, at least with older people. How would you indicate that in writing?
I saw a play once in which the upper class people used the word “starve” while the lower class people (who were actually hungry) said “sterve” (which as so often is the way it was before standard English changed while the dialect stayed the same). It had lots of dramatic importance - if you were writing the scene in a novel, how could you convey the point without changing the spelling?
How does that sound? I can’t even picture how that would be pronounced.
I’m assuming as an /x/, or “ch” sound as in “loch.” Kind of a guttural “h” sound.
Yes, same as ‘ch’ in ‘loch’. In Scots it’s spelt and pronounced ‘nicht’ with a short i. When I heard people talking about their ‘dochter’ I’d quite often think they were talking about their ‘doctor’, though the words are pronounced differently.
So you’re saying it’s possible for the same word to be pronounced in several different ways, yet be written the same?