Storyssentials: Dialect

“De man ain’t asleep — he’s dead. You hold still — I’ll go en see.”

He went, and bent down and looked, and says:

“It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I reck’n he’s ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face — it’s too gashly.”

That confusing bit of prose comes from the famous Huckleberry Finn and it probably couldn’t be published today because of a new unwritten rule: In written stories, dialect isn’t about accents. Dialect is grammar. Thank goodness Twain was published, but let’s take a look at this new rule…

Whether you’re writing a screenplay or a novel, you could say that dialect seldom breaks down into umlauts and gutturals, vowel points and dropped Gs, all slathered with a nice layer of contractions and apostrophes. Though phonetics factor into identifying various regions of speech, the words used and the order in which they are used creates any given dialect. In his Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (here on Amazon), Dave King shares this little nugget in his chapter devoted reading your manuscript aloud:

“When you use an unusual spelling, you are bound to draw the reader’s attention away from the dialogue and onto the means of getting it across. If the dialect gets thick enough, it isn’t read so much as translated… So how do you get a character’s geographical or education or social background across? The best way is through word choice, cadence, and grammar.”

We could just call this regional syntax. When we split hairs over the minute details in grammar, we can discover the country of origin, education, income level, and social circles of the speaker. Is it hard work on the side of the writer? Yes, up front, and it takes more guts than much of writing, but the payoffs end up as great as All the Pretty HorsesThe Secret Pilgrim, and The Price of Milk and Honey.

Let’s take the sentence:

American: Jack feels ill at school today. He ate too much.

And see how it looks in six other regions:

England: Jack feels ill at school today. He’s eaten too much.

Germany: Jack faces sickness today from eating too much at school.

Greek:  Ill today at school, Jack. He eats plenty more than others.

Spanish: It is from eating too much at school that Jack feels unwell.

Arabic: Indeed Jack feels ill today at school. Ate he did too much.

Chinese: At school today Jack feel sick. He eat too much.

That last one sounds as if I’m mocking Chinese, but if you look up Chinese syntax, you’ll see that this reads close to proper when translated back into the native tongue. Technically, it should read “school-at,” but that would only get us back to the typical confusion when we starta writin’ weirdin’m’out linga. Dialect in your dialog should disappear like the rest of the prose, leaving nothing but the story in the reader’s heart.

Am I some pro at dialect? No, I’m an amateur, but I’m certain that my most recent short story rejection came because I over-complicated my dialect and so distracted my readers… who happened to be editors of a magazine I want on my writing credits. Hopefully the answers I unearthed will help your next stories and mine.

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  1. logankstewart

    Dialect (and therefore Voice) is often of the utmost important to me whenever I’m writing a character that should have a dialect. I’m a fan of dialect speaking for itself so long as it doesn’t get in the way of the story (I’m thinking of Suzanne Clarke’s “On Lickerish Hill” in The Ladies of Grace Adieu collection). Though I cannot help but wonder if forcing readers to work through the dialect is part of the experience. I understand and definitely appreciate the effort it takes in creating dialect, and it’s even more enhanced with grammar, but completely abandoning “umlauts and gutturals, vowel points and dropped Gs, all slathered with a nice layer of contractions and apostrophes” seems almost like a cop out to me.

    Perhaps there’s a fine line between translating a story with dialect and with grammar?

    Interesting post, Lance.

    1. lanceschaubert

      Good to have you back, brother-brother!

      So glad that you care about this. Few others think through it along with me–it’s hard to do dialect well and, as stated in the post, I obviously failed this year. Maybe I should clarify a few points that I overstated (imagine that…)

      When I said “contractions” I didn’t mean words like didn’t, can’t, couldn’t, and ain’t. Most of these are used so frequently that we would actually have more trouble if we parsed them. Like “ain’t,” for instance. The word means “are not,” but fairly smart people say, “I ain’t gonna” now and again while it sounds borderline brain dead to say “I are not gonna”–on par with Lenny from Of Mice and Men.

      So yeah, if it’s colloquial and widely accepted it’s fine of course. But I’ve read passages this year that used copious apostrophes in an attempt at Scottish. I mistook the attempt for New Mexico Hillbilly. I only noticed the mistake at the mention of a kilt. This sort of thing happens when we start with contractions rather than basic syntax and word usage. Asking whether or not the character calls the machine a “hoover” or a “vacuum,” and discovering where that device fits into the sentence clues us into region more than the modified “hoova” or “vacc’m.”

      Perhaps it might be more abstract (and thus precise) to say that though we write for the ear, we don’t write to the ear. We write to the eye which translates to the ear. Confused eyes in the read, confused minds in the translation. Confused minds in the translation, confused ears in the comprehension. Phonetics, then, become helpful only insofar as they clear up the prose. Otherwise, it would be pro͞odnt to͞o rīt ēCH sentns līk T͟His, and so accomplish precision of dialect.

      That example’s an exaggeration, of course, and could be considered an ad hoc argument, but I think to a lesser degree that we do exactly that sort of phonetic writing when we try to clarify our character’s dialect through too much punctuation. If we can learn something from McCarthy, it’s that sometimes punctuation really does get in the way of the prose. Should are prose look that naked? Maybe or maybe not, but we can all agree that McCarthy in All The Pretty Horses flows seamlessly in and out of Spanish giving us a feel for living Spanglish in a way no living author has rivaled.

      Of course, there are phonetic exceptions. If you’re translating straight from Spanish, there’s no substitute for the ñ found in niño or the æ in the Middle English fæger, but I think the exceptions prove the rule: In writing dialect for stories, phonetics defer to grammar, for grammar defines a region’s words and patterns of thought while phonetics defines merely her sounds.

      Sorry so verbose, but any thoughts?

    2. lanceschaubert

      Also, thanks for the interest.

  2. neilcrabtree

    Australian – Jack was crook in class today. Stuffed himself full of tucker.

    1. lanceschaubert

      Hahahahahaha. That’s great. I love your word “Ta.”

      So Ta.

  3. Doberman

    One contraction people in the U.S. often say that is rarely (I have never seen it) written down…is one that has baffled people from other countries or who speak English as a second language.

    I am going to= AHmuhnuh. Ahmuhnuh go to the store…Ahmuhnuh go to school.

    So common, so ingrained and so perplexing.

    1. lanceschaubert

      That’s a better example than my own, one that Logan would appreciate if I didn’t scare him off… I’m’onna go’n get myself a cuppa coffee. I’m’onna flip my friggin lid.

      Yeah, I like that one.

    2. lanceschaubert

      Or in the words of that famous Philologist, Eminem:

      “I’mo blow this ____in’ roof off like two dogs chained.”

  4. Doberman

    Have you read The Help?

    1. lanceschaubert

      Enough to have ALMOST used it as an example of this, but not enough to be sure if it was in favor or against the point I made, so I left it out. Saw the film. Kiddo read it and loved it the first time we went to Indiana Beach together.

Quick note from Lance about this post: when you choose to comment (or share this post with your friends) you help other readers just like you.

How?

Well, see, your comments & sharing whisper a few things to those who come after you:

The first is that this site is a safe place to speak up & stay curious. That it's civil. That discussion is encouraged. That there's no such thing as a stupid question (being a student of Socrates, I really and truly believe this). That talking to one another and growing together is more important than anything we could possibly publish. That the point is growing in virtue and growing together and growing wise. That discovery is invention, deference is originality, that we all can rise together. The only folks I'm going to take comments down from are obvious jerks who argue in bad faith, don't stay curious, or actively make personal attacks. And, frankly, I'd rather we talk here than on some social media farm — I will never show ads and the only thing I'm selling anywhere on the site or my mailing list is just the stuff I make.

You're also helping folks realize that anything you & they build together is far more important than anything you come to me to read. I take the things I write about seriously, but I don't take myself seriously: I play the fool, I hate cults of personality, and I also don't really like being the center of attention (believe it or not). I would much rather folks connect because of an introduction I've made or because they commented with one another back and forth and then build something beautiful together. My favorite contributions have been lifelong business and love partnerships from two people who have forgotten I introduced them. Some of my closest friends NOW I literally met on another blog's comment section fifteen years ago. I would love for that to happen here — let two of you meet and let me fade into the background.

Last, you help me revise. I'm wrong. Often. I'm not embarrassed to admit it or worried about being cancelled or publicly shamed. I make a fool out of myself (that's sort of the point). So as I get feedback, I can say, "I was wrong about that" and set a model for curious, consistent learning, and growing in wisdom. I'm blind to what I don't know and as grows the island of my knowledge so grows the shoreline of my ignorance. It's the recovery of innocence on the far end of experience: a child is in a permanent state of wonder. So are the wise: they aren't afraid of saying, "I don't know. That's new: please teach me." That's my goal, comments help. And I read all reviews: my skin's tough, but that's not license to be needlessly cruel. We teach one another our habits and there's a way to civilly demolish an idea without demolishing another person: just because I personally can take the world's meanest 1-star review doesn't mean we should teach one another how to be crueler on the internet.

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