Quick Q about accents

[C. A. Mitchell]

Need to pick your brains. One of my characters pronounces 'th' as 'f'. Some words are easy, but how would everyone go about writing:

"I thought you said something."

"I fought you said something" looks like a typo!

Fawt? Phought?!

Any ideas?

Fanks

 

[The Judge]

I'd try and re-phrase it to avoid "thought"! You're right -- "fought" is going to confuse people, particularly if this is early on before people have got used to his f-ing, so if you must have it, I'd probably go with "fawt" and keep my fingers crossed he doesn't say any other "-ought" words which would need the same doing to them!

But it'd be "sumfing" not "something" surely.

 

[Abernovo]

Mention it once, but don't go overboard, or it'll be a club beating the readers over the head with repeated mentions. You wouldn't mention their hair colour/length all the time, or it would become similar to a Timotei ad.

Just my thoughts, but then I have a slight problem with the theta sound myself.

 

[Montero]

I remember reading dialogue of someone pronouncing "r" as "w" - and another character who disliked the speaker saying "oh weally" just to wind him up.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Just be careful about the legibility of the dialogue, adding accent to it is fine, and many authors do it, but some get a bit carried away. I remember this character in Steven Erikson's Malazan books where, whenever he spoke, I had no idea at all what he was saying. I'm sure I wasn't the only one. How the editor let that pass I'll never understand.

 

[Tecdavid]

I agree with TJ. Words that become different words when accented (like 'thought' becomes 'fought') should probably be spelled differently so there isn't any confusion. 'Fawt' would do it fine, methinks.
Abernovo's right too -- mention nice and clearly that your character pronounces things that way, so that your readers will understand in a heartbeat, but don't make an appointment of reminding them too often.

I suppose another solution would be to put the accented letters in italics ("fought", "weffer", "aftermaff") but... well, would that look a bit jarring?

 

[Gary Compton]

You could have another POV character explain the way he speaks.

"I fawt it is allrite to go doon the club," Gary said in his Geordie accent.

"It's thought, not fawt you idiot." the elocution teacher yelled.

"Fawt you'd say that," he replied annoyingly.

"Oh f..." the elocution instructor swallowed nervously in case a mod was listening. "Thought off."

Mind in an early edit carried out by John Harrold on my WIP I had a German say. "Ve vill have to kill you."

JJ laughed and commented. Sounded like a comic book (£500 wasted there then!!)

 

[JunkMonkey]

Personally I hate it when character's ethnicity is written into their speaking voices. Like the OP I live in Scotland and cringe that comes with reading 'Scottish' characters doing the full 'Och well, ye ken the noo, lassie' crap is painful. Anything that stops the reader from hearing what the character is saying should be avoided. Tell the reader the character has an accent and let them speak without making the reader have to decipher their every utterance.

(Unless of course the whole plot hinges on the character being incomprehensible.)

Apart from anything else - there's always the risk of making it seem like you are mocking the ethnic group. No one in their right minds these days would write a black character who spoke with one of the nigger minstrel type 'rubber lipped' "Well hello dere!" type accents that were mainstream TV acceptable in my youth.

I had a rush of brains to the head for a moment and found this: I know it's got nothing much to do with the OP's original question but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiyJGpHLTr0

In 1978 this sort of thing was peak time TV in Britain. (I was 20) White guys in blackface make-up doing a Latin American number followed by a ventriloquist whose dummy has a 'Tick Oirish' accent. Start writing accents for your characters and this is where you end up.

 

[C. A. Mitchell]

Thanks for all the advice folks - invaluable as ever. I might need to rethink... The character just popped out as I was bashing out words for nanowrimo. I don't want annoying dialogue, and I don't want to offend a whole group of people.

Eek. I think a change is in order! I hate reading badly accented speech. Maybe the odd colloquial term thrown in will do the trick...

Cheers again