How do you write an Irish accent?

[Xitra_Blud]

I have a character with an Irish accent. Because I don't really know how to write an Irish accent, I just mentioned that "he spoke with an Irish brogue", but I want to do more than that. I want to show that he is speaking with an Irish accent rather than just saying it. Does anyone have any tips on how I can do that? Can anyone lend me an example of how you would do it?

 

[Ireth]

I've heard that it's incorrect to call an Irish accent a brogue, though I could be wrong. Sorry I can't be much help with actually writing the accent; I tend to just say "he spoke like this" and make his speech look 'normal'.

 

[CupofJoe]

Writing in dialect can get very tiring to read... if it's done too heavily.
It might be just enough to drop in a few regional words or even just their spellings. Just as one example, if someone asks for "Whiskey", that will tell you that they could have an Irish influence. They'd probably swear in Gaelic to.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I agree with Joe. There are two issues at play here.

First, you don't want your reader to work just to understand the dialogue. This leads to the second issue. You don't want your reader to notice the writing. When your reader is noticing the writing, you're pulling them out of the story.

At most, I'd recommend just throwing in one or two, easy to pronounce dialect changes. For example, using "em" instead of "them" when the character speaks that word. You'll just have to think of ones that sound Irish.

"Good prose is like a pane of glass."
- George Orwell

 

[Svrtnsse]

You can try using the words an Irish person would use. You can probably find a good resource for that kind of thing via google but here are a few examples to get you started:

Lad - Boy (havn't heard anyone actually using lass for girls here)
Lads - Guys
"Will I" - Should I / Do you want me to : Will I wrap it for you? = Do you want me to wrap it?
Thanks a million - Thanks a lot
Your man - That guy (reference to a person you're talking about): "Your man walks into a bar" - "A man walks into a bar"

Those are just a few examples, to get the idea across.

 

[Guy]

I have to say writing in dialect is one of my pet peeves. I read a novel with Scottish characters and the writer insisted on writing the dialogue in Scottish dialect. It was almost as bad as trying to read a foreign language. I know what a Scottish accent sounds like. I don't need the writer to spell it out and end up writing something that requires me to decode a whole new set of phonetic rules.

 

[Xitra_Blud]

Thanks guys. I like the idea of having only one or two dialect changes. Would Irish people pronounce the "ing" at the end of their words or would they just leave it as "in'" such as "workin', goin', runnin'" instead of "working, going, running"?

 

[Svrtnsse]

Thanks guys. I like the idea of having only one or two dialect changes. Would Irish people pronounce the "ing" at the end of their words or would they just leave it as "in'" such as "workin', goin', runnin'" instead of "working, going, running"?

In my experience they don't follow a specific rule about that. Some do, some don't, pretty much like anywhere else in the world. I don't think that'd be a typical Irish thing.

 

[Scribble]

I think there is a sweet spot to hit between consistency and giving enough touches that the accent is heard in the mind of the reader. There is a difference between dialect and accent. When you combine both, it can get very thick.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is full of dialect but it is wonderfully readable.

“Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”

Just to highlight all the dialect elements separately:

“Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”

Then, take Irving Welsh's Trainspotting that shows a Scottish accent.

“Ah walk doon Hammersmith Broadway, London seeming strange and alien, after only a three-month absence, as familiar places do when you’ve been away. It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the wey things are in a dream. They say you have to live in a place to know it, but you have to come fresh tae really see it.”

 

[wordwalker]

There's a well-known rule about this: write what someone means, more than how the sound comes out. Which mostly means, work through word choices (like Svrtnsse's) rather than pronunciations.

It's usually considered the best balance. You don't risk straining or confusing the reader, and if you have anything more than a trivial understanding of the dialect you can make your point more solidly with actual words. By all means have an apostrophe or something here or there, but figure you're only showing the most conspicuous samples. (The Steinbeck example has more, but that was a different time, and he's Steinbeck.)

Of course the more someone's an exotic brief visitor, or meant to be incomprehensible, the thicker you can write them.

Somewhat related story: John Wayne's first test for a script was to throw out anything that wrote "I'm goin' to stop you" or such, because a screenwriter choosing where the actor dropped the g's was micromanaging. There's no exact match to our stories, but it's the same process, this time giving the reader enough to fill in the details of the sounds.

 

[Trick]

I have to agree on word choice being the better option. I've struggled with this in the past and there's a thread or two I started somewhere around here. I've noticed in a few books I read recently that, when the accented character is not POV, the POV character can notice the accent and even mentally or verbally comment on it. This has gotten it across to me as the reader very well. Also, sentence structure is huge! Less so with the Irish as they have spoken English primarily for a very long time but it is still there. What might be a grammar error in writing often ends up conveying an accent very well. A Russian character in a book I'm reading came through very clearly after the narrator states 'he had a thick Russian accent...' and then proceeds to have his dialogue stand out via word choice and sentence structure alone. I noticed the dropped articles: Something like, "I am telling story, not you. As my father crested hill, he sees big dog running at him." I was reading the book aloud to my wife and immediately fell into a Russian accent. Couldn't help myself. Listen to Irish radio online and watch a few Irish movies, taking notes on sentence structure and word choice and you'll get there before you know it.