I'm wondering about accents

[LadyCass]

I have a character who is Irish.... hundreds of years old from Ireland Irish.

My question is do I write the character with an accent? It's seem a bit of debate on if you should write in an accent or let the reader create their own.

Then of course comes the question any good tips for writing an Irish accent if I decide to?

 

[Addison]

Well Hagrid has an accent and was written with one.

But I think, unless you know how Irish accent sounds and hence how to write it, you should just write, "She spoke with an Irish accent" and write the dialogue in full english.

 

[CupofJoe]

Just a comment...
I've read a book written in phonetic Glaswegian*
It was great fun for a page or two and then got really tiring for the next fifty or so...then I gave up.
* Glasgow, Scotland - for those that don't know, it is often thought of as the most impenetrable "English" accent. You can even hire interpreters when you go there to help you interact with the locals...

 

[Svrtnsse]

Instead of writing in an accent, perhaps let the character use phrases or wordings that are commonly associated with Irish.
Instead of saying "That's great." they'd go "That's grand, like." Instead of "Thank you." they'd say "Thanks a million."

Little things like that could perhaps give the character some local flavor without having to do the actual full-blown accent.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Language experiences linguistic shifts periodically, so I would advise against getting too specific. For example, in my WIP I have the line,

She spoke English, but strangely, her consonants more guttural, truer to their Germanic roots, each sound tongued in full. He loved the way she spoke. He had not spoken English like that in centuries.

This is because the character speaking is hundreds of years old, before Early Modern English became commonly spoken. So, I would just make a brief reference to the accent, then move on with the story, unless the linguistics plays a huge role.

 

[LadyCass]

Thanks for the feedback. I don't think I'll try and write the accent but I need to do some intense research to make sure I get the 'flavor' right.

 

[kayd_mon]

Writing in dialect is good, if that's the way you want your character to be represented. When I hear people complain about reading dialect or accents, it just makes me think they are lazy readers (unless, of course, the dialect is written poorly).

 

[Ophiucha]

Hints of the linguistic flavour are lovely, but I find many writers who try it tend to... overdo it with the phonetics. Imagine, for a moment, that someone from Ulster wrote a book with an American character and used phonetic spellings for everything. After all, standard American English is not written as it is pronounced. Or should I say, "eevin standahrd Ahmericahn Inglish is nawt ritin ahs it is pronowncd." That is an exaggeration (mostly; I've seen some bad ones), but even the little bits of flavour, when done poorly, can be bloody annoying. I think a few things are okay, and changing the slang and structure works well to convey things, with a bit of research (don't end every Canadian character's sentence with an eh, eh?), but the phonetics should be limited to the real tells and little else. 'Ello instead of Hello, for some accents. Switching out the -er for an -a. Little things that only come up occasionally, not three words to a sentence. That's my personal preference, anyway.

I saw a writer once who used British/American spellings for characters from each respective country. A line of dialogue would go like this:

"What is your favourite colour?"
"My favorite color? I'd say it is gray."
"Grey? How boring. I like green."

Which is an editor's nightmare, but given how rare it was within the context of the book (as there were few Americans who had any dialogue to deliver), it was rather clever.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

"What is your favourite colour?"
"My favorite color? I'd say it is gray."
"Grey? How boring. I like green."

Which is funny. I have an English character (Elizabethan) named Katherine Grey, whose eyes are gray.

 

[wordwalker]

I saw a writer once who used British/American spellings for characters from each respective country. A line of dialogue would go like this:

"What is your favourite colour?"
"My favorite color? I'd say it is gray."
"Grey? How boring. I like green."

I suppose it could work if you called attention to it as a stylistic trick:

"What is your favourite colour?" With his British tone you could hear the 'u' in the words.

 

[skip.knox]

Dialect can be effective, but you must be familiar with it. Let me repeat that: you absolutely must be familiar with the dialect. Either you grew up with it, or are currently living in it, or have made a deep study of it (in the case of archaic dialects).

If you are not confident in that, I suggest what the others have suggested: note the accent and write in ordinary English. I would add one wrinkle, though. You could drop in a dialect-specific verbal tic. Don't overuse it, but a simple turn of phrase, still rendered in ordinary English, can help remind the reader that the speaker has a different cadence. Think here of the different vocabulary and speech patterns between the High Elves and the hobbits in LOTR. There's very little dialect involved, except for a couple of turns of phrase from Samwise, but the differences are immediately evident.

 

[SineNomine]

Writing in dialect is good, if that's the way you want your character to be represented. When I hear people complain about reading dialect or accents, it just makes me think they are lazy readers (unless, of course, the dialect is written poorly).

I disagree strongly. Unless it works PERFECTLY you are just slowing down the reader and, even worse, drawing them out of the story by forcing them to pay attention to the text itself.

My policy on accents is generally "Don't have a major character who is going to be sticking around and talking a long time have them represented in text" and "The less changes you can make to the text while still having the accent be distinguishable, the better. Less is more." Both of them, like all writing rules, have exceptions depending on what you need to do. They make good rules of thumb though.

 

[The Dark One]

As I've probably said on these boards before, one of my favourite writers is Irvine Welsh who frequently writes in phonetic/dialectic Edinburgh English. It is a little bit of work to get used to it but, once you're in, it is a deeply immersive reading experience that opens up his world in a rich and powerful way.

The caveat is, Welsh is a master. Anyone with less than a perfect command of both the accent and the way it is expressed would make an incomprehensible mess that will never see the light of day.

My most successful book (to date) was set in the UK with an Australian main character, and it made sense to me to evoke the sounds of his world by writing regional UK accents (including Irish, Scottish, cockney and northern) phonetically and using many figures of speech appropriate to the various speakers. This was a risk, so I spent literally hundreds of hours reading the text aloud to make sure I had the cadence right, and I tried not to overdo it - just the odd word or phrase here and there. I'm no Irvine Welsh but several poms have said to me that they couldn't believe the book was written by an Australian.

Result.

 

[Weaver]

I saw a writer once who used British/American spellings for characters from each respective country. A line of dialogue would go like this:

"What is your favourite colour?"
"My favorite color? I'd say it is gray."
"Grey? How boring. I like green."

Which is an editor's nightmare, but given how rare it was within the context of the book (as there were few Americans who had any dialogue to deliver), it was rather clever.

Yes, a nightmare, unless the author made sure the editor knew what he/she was up to... And there are a few people who actually hear the difference in pronunciation (when it's there) between grey and gray, so I suppose it could work, if the author made a point of that.

(Personally, I dislike gray -- it IS boring, and cold and barren -- but grey is full of secret nuances. )

I agree with the people who say to use a smattering of 'dialect words' and expressions rather than try to convey accent through phonetic spellings. (THAT is an editor's nightmare.)