# Do you like when people write in accents? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 12, 2007, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151 "2007-11-12T18:12:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/21 "2007-11-12T21:31:12Z")
> [@](#): > > It worked well in Huckleberry Finn. However, I read an English translation of Lysistrata where they gave the Spartan women American southern accents. That was just weird. I’ve got this one, too, and agree it’s weird. (I think it’s the Dudley Fitts translation) But I don’t think it’s what the OP is after. Twain uses something like seven different dialects in **Huckleberry Finn** , and it works without being distracting. Heinlein was able to pull it off with his invented “cluipped” Lunar dialect in **The Moon is a Harsh Mistress** , without it being grating. But in general, I agree with L. Sprague de Camp, who said in his **Science Fiction Writers’ Handbook** that you ought to just give a paragraph or so of dialect to establish it in the reader’s mind, then not try to transliterate any more. I wish Joel Chandler Harris had done so. Twain thought he was a master of Southern dialect, but I find his books unreadable because of it. ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/22 "2007-11-12T21:50:39Z")
Not a big fan of written accents. Didn’t mind Twain. Had major troubles with **Ramona** by Helen Hunt Jackson. (I wasn’t entirely sure that I liked the book, and then I met the two characters who spoke in accents and had a very hard time figuring out what they said). For me, **A Clockwork Orange** was tremendously distracting when I first encountered it(speech team tournaments). When I actually read the book, it was ok. I think part of it is that switching of gears thing–I was reading the book because it was a book I wanted to have read, rather than because it was a book I expected to enjoy. But another part of it is that some accent flavor is ok–especially when it takes the form of endearments, filler, or whole new vocabulary words–I will permit the new vocabulary words to be entirely made up. What’s annoying to me is real words which have been shortened to the point of ambiguouity, or had their vowels altered so that I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be working or walking, stuff like that. ---
**Author:** ![Lunar\_Saltlick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/977dab/32.png) [@Lunar\_Saltlick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lunar_Saltlick)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/23 "2007-11-12T21:51:16Z")
I love it when the author (or the editor) has a great ear. I’m currently reading _Dracula_ and there’s a ton of it in there. The old chap who yammers on about the locals is fairly humorous, although Professor Van Helsing isn’t too convincing. Tom Wolfe usually gets creamed for his use of dialect and accent, but I think they’ve added enormously to his books from _The Right Stuff_ on. The prison scenes in \*A Man in Full \* were well done, though I’m sure they’re probably lacking, accuracy-wise. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/24 "2007-11-12T21:53:25Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] So if we all hate it, why do they continue to do it?? [/QUOTE] **Do** they continue to do it? I think it’s become much less common, and most “advice to writers” I’ve seen says not to do it (or to do it sparingly). I wonder if the practice was more common in the nineteenth century because people did more reading aloud then. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/25 "2007-11-12T21:58:30Z")
Flann O’Brien once wrote a short piece playing with the sounds of peoples’ accents, a Dubliner and a posh Englishman. It was hilarious. I beg your pardon became “I pick up Auden” and the like. I think it can sometimes work well. I’ve heard _Riddley Walker_ is amazing and it’s AFAIK written in a future version of English. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/26 "2007-11-12T21:59:36Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] So if we all hate it, why do they continue to do it?? [/QUOTE] Because we **don’t** all hate it. If the author can do it well, I enjoy it. Terry Pratchett has a wonderful touch with accents, especially that of the Nac Mac Feegle. ---
**Author:** ![Soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soul)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/27 "2007-11-12T22:05:06Z")
I detest it when authors write out an accent. I tolerated it for a while, but I finally snapped the first time I read the word “sumpin.” Sumpin. For God’s sake, that is not a word, that is not a word, _that is not a freaking word!!!_ I think that might have been in Grapes of Wrath, but I’m not sure. “Sumpin” is the most disgusting abortion of linguistics the English language has ever had the misfortune of being burdened with. Die, sumpin, die. ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/28 "2007-11-12T22:13:54Z")
In contrast to **CalMeacham** , I’ve always thought that Joel Chandler Harris’s use of dialect was a great addition to the stories. On the whole, though, I don’t much like it. The worst offender, to me, is Thomas Hardy. His writing is unreadable gibberish, to me. True, the accent he’s portraying is so bizarre as to be scarcely recognizable as English, but I don’t think he needed to torture the reader with it. Of course, sometimes you just have to go with it. Robert Burns without dialect is unthinkable, even if I need a glossary to read him. ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/29 "2007-11-12T22:15:55Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Because we don’t all hate it. If the author can do it well, I enjoy it. Terry Pratchett has a wonderful touch with accents, especially that of the Nac Mac Feegle. But the Igors drive me nuts. Not that their lisp is an accent, but, just sayin’… ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/30 "2007-11-12T22:17:00Z")
Margaret Mitchell did this in **Gone With the Wind** , with the slaves’ dialogue. It was very hard going and slowed me down considerably. I read **Dolores Claiborne** , and I found the dialogue not overly accented. A few words now and then, but not whole sentences. Much easier to read…you got the flavor, but weren’t hit over the head with it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/31 "2007-11-12T22:23:31Z")
There’s a difference between writing in an accent and writing in a dialect, which I think some people are actually referring to here (eg Wuthering Heights). If your characters are from Britain then there’s a good chance they don’t speak standard English. It would therefore appear unnatural to have words, phrases and pronounciations come out of their mouths that such a person would not use in real life. A writer is going to face a lot of criticism from locals if they set a book in a particular area and don’t make the speech realistic. Also, accent and pronounciation are a class issue in Britain - you’re going to miss a huge amount of nuance if you have every character speaking the same way. In a Scottish story, some characters will say ‘house’ and others will say ‘hoose’ - it matters a lot. Having said all this, if the characters are from an area where people do speak standard English but with a strong accent, such as in Inverness or parts of Wales, then a skilled writer can make you imagine the accent, the intonation and the melody by phrasing sentences the right way rather than changing the spelling of words. I haven’t any great examples at hand but I think sentence structure does vary a lot, people will use a form of words in Wales that would not be used in Ireland etc, and when a writer picks that up you hear the accent in your head. A character from Inverness might say “right enough” a lot, and if you’ve been to Inverness you’ll hear the unusual way they say the first word without having it spelt out. One thing I don’t like is when someone from a completely different area tries to transcribe an accent using their own ideas of spelling. For example, it really gets on my tits when English writers put an “r” after a vowel to lengthen it; they do this because English people don’t actually pronounce 'r’s so they will read it how the writer has imagined it. However no one else will. This problem arises when they try to write a Scottish pronounciation of “you”; more than once I’ve seen it written as “yer”. In my opinion this is utterly parochial and indefensible; if a Scot (or an American) reads that it the ‘r’ will be pronounced so it approximates more to ‘your’, which in the context makes no sense. ---
**Author:** ![stucco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@stucco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stucco)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/32 "2007-11-12T22:54:29Z")
[QUOTE=G. Odoreida] Having said all this, if the characters are from an area where people do speak standard English but with a strong accent, such as in Inverness or parts of Wales, then a skilled writer can make you imagine the accent, the intonation and the melody by phrasing sentences the right way rather than changing the spelling of words. I haven’t any great examples at hand but I think sentence structure does vary a lot, people will use a form of words in Wales that would not be used in Ireland etc, and when a writer picks that up you hear the accent in your head. . [/QUOTE] I think Lewis Grassic Gibbon does a good job of this in _A Scot’s Quair_. Or maybe it just seemed that way because he came right after MacDiarmid in my Scottish Lit class. (Now he was someone I needed to read outloud in my best drunken Scot impression). ---
**Author:** ![pprgrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f6c823/32.png) [@pprgrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pprgrl)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151/33 "2007-11-13T00:19:51Z")
I like dialect when it’s well written, hate it when it’s bad. _Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Color Purple_ and _Huckleberry Finn_ are my favorites and IMO the best-written dialect-heavy books out there. That being said, I do have to know how the dialect is supposed to sound first or else it can be distracting. One of the best things my Women’s Lit teacher ever did was play a video of Alice Walker reading from _The Color Purple_ in dialect. Walker had me in tears by the end of it. The only thing I really dislike about the film version of _A Clockwork Orange_ is that Malcolm McDowell’s nadsat sounded nothing like what I’d imagined from reading the book. And I hate D.H. Lawrence’s dialect. But I hate D.H. Lawrence anyway, so I probably consider the dialect to be the least of his many offenses. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-like-when-people-write-in-accents/426151.md?page=1)