I wonder how others tackle this: in a recent story I wanted my lower class turn of the century (i.e.19th - 20th) characters to speak with 'south London' and - what's called these days - 'estuary' accents. The trouble is - after translating those phonemes into graphemes it looks kind of false, especially as the narrative is written in a literary style. I'm now wondering if it would be better to use standard written English and not try to ape the actual spoken language?
Thanks for your suggestions - all.
Really surprised that a Yorkshireman could hear a Yorkshire accent in what I had written.The issue is much clearer to me now. Ernest's voice? Yes, it's in the phraseology and, of course, the imagination of the reader.
Lorraine - thanks for the correction (King's). Always amazed at how these mistakes creep in no matter how much I revise. Did manage in the end to upload the story (with things in red!) under 'shared works, but have deleted it again: I'll get rid of all those apostophes (at least most of them!), then perhaps upload a corrected version, but there again, not so sure there's much interest - in general there really seems a dearth of critical comment under 'shared works' (which is another issue).
Robin
Ernest was holding forth on a new topic: "You hear about that woman throwing herself under the King's horse last week? What'd she want to do something like that for? Throwing away her life like that."
"All about votes for women. Suffragettes," she countered.
"What they want votes for?"
I've taken out all your apostrophes, Robin, and I still hear the piece in Ernest's voice; it's in the phraseology, which is all you need. All those apostrophes are irritating on the page. You've told us that Ernest is 'holding forth' which gives us his tone of voice; I think that's enough information.
King's, not Kings'.
You can't put things in red on here - it's not that sophisticated!
Lorraine
Hi Robin.
I haven't used foreign accents, slang words, or regional accents in my novel.
I have used plain English throughout my novel, because slang and accents slows the pace for the reader.
Besides, when I read a novel, I use my imagination to develop a different voice for each character.
I hope that helps.
Good luck.