tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post6619564414701794372..comments2023-08-14T10:44:59.007-04:00Comments on Novel Spaces: Putting a Little English on ItKeVin K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14792797517571690942noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-20216095704770171192013-03-05T15:08:00.586-05:002013-03-05T15:08:00.586-05:00Exactly, Jewell. I do understand where you're ...Exactly, Jewell. I do understand where you're coming from and that's why I made the point that Caribbean English can differ from island to island to country. :) Research is key to a believable setting and culture.Eugenia O'Nealhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10387352519341205107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-4734981897780746372013-03-04T21:28:17.511-05:002013-03-04T21:28:17.511-05:00Really beautiful post, KeVin. Like your wife, I de...Really beautiful post, KeVin. Like your wife, I detest too much slang especially if it doesn't complement the character speaking it. I write short stories written totally in Kittitian dialect, but it is meant for a specific insular audience. In my writing meant for a larger audience, I try to keep it minimal because a reader can spend unlimited energy just trying really hard to understand the dialog and end up losing interest. Great post.<br /><br />And Eugenia, just to add to the "dem comin'" phrase, some of us in the Caribbean will say, "Dem a come." :) And that is why I insist if you are going to write about a culture, immerse yourself in it. Jewel Amethysthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14813773386476356666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-52115552074522847692013-03-04T21:22:42.655-05:002013-03-04T21:22:42.655-05:00KeVin, yes, we've got English, and we've g...KeVin, yes, we've got English, and we've got Creole which is very much influenced by French, with traces of Spanish, Taino and West African languages. My mother's family (the older ones who are all dead now) all spoke French patois as well as Creole. <br /><br />Valerie's upbringing sounds a lot like mine. My mother was also a teacher and I found out fairly late in life that Creole was her first language; she did not tolerate 'broken English' in the house. Now that she's old she often lapses into Creole. <br /><br />Now I'm off to find out the difference between rhythm and cadence. Btw, Dr. Hodge might have said cadence, or she might have said syntax. (I'll need to check my notes.) 'Rhythm' was the way I processed what she said.<br /><br />I agree that sometimes the phonetic spelling is best to convey a particular effect. She does too.Liane Spicerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05035607144500219524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-65702795450054597032013-03-04T15:31:54.310-05:002013-03-04T15:31:54.310-05:00Interesting and thoughtful post and a great discus...Interesting and thoughtful post and a great discussion. You've set my brain ticking. I lived in Ghana for ten years and have included some pidgin in some of my stories - I've had big doubts about being authentic or not (I'm originally from Australia) but generally let the story take over, without getting out of my depth. I think accents and dialects are fascinating and one of favourite books is Ken Saro-wiwa's book Sozaboy, written mostly in Nigerian pidgin (even called A Novel in Rotten English!)The Divorced Lady's Companion to Living in Italyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15202093107784073194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-26800713769923133892013-03-03T17:14:40.988-05:002013-03-03T17:14:40.988-05:00Charles - Oh, yes. I learned from my one spectacul...Charles - Oh, yes. I learned from my one spectacular failure; my black characters have better diction than my white. Louisiana has so many rich and textured accents that you could explore. I've only been there once, in the early 70s following the coast along from Florida then up to New Orleans before taking to the highways to complete my journey to California. My sense was there were some fundamentally different assumptions underlying the language I was hearing.<br /><br />William - Right. What drives folk like my brother (who teaches English at Catholic University of America and has worked very hard to perfect his mid-Atlantic accent these past 40 years) crazy is the chameleon core of English. Half our words are changelings and none of them will hold still. English is not the language of choice for folk who like order.<br /><br />Liane - Your comment inspired a quick Google of anglophone creole. Found a preview of the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Lost about 20 minutes (would have lost more if there'd been more to the available preview). I'll bet you already knew Trinidad and Tobago speak two distinctly different brands of English. As nearly as I can tell dialects have the same source and share 95+% of their linguistic DNA; subsets have spent more time away from home and picked up DNA from other languages. I'm going to have to get a copy of this dictionary. Two; I'll send one to my brother.<br />Geechee is a language I believe is a type of creole that's spoken along the coast and islands where my wife grew up. Her mother was a school teacher, so she and her brother were forbidden to speak other than 'proper' English. She understands it somewhat, but wouldn't dare try to converse in it.<br />I take Dr. Hodge's point. I think the reason dictionaries use all those symbols to denote pronunciation is phonetic spelling would make all the words look silly. Also, so much of a language's voice is in its rhythm and cadence (two different things often conflated) that sentence structure would do more to convey nuance than spelling. At the same time, I also think a bit of phonetics can help with characterization - especially if the characterization involves a person's response to the fact another pronounces words in a way she's not used to hearing.<br />Also for effect: <i>"Riiight"</i> reads differently than <i>"Right," he drawled.</i><br /><br />Eugenia - I always taught my ESL students to speak English more precisely than the locals. Didn't want to add a southern accent to their difficulties. <br />I remember reading a British detective cozy from the forties or fifties in which the visitor from I think Georgia spoke like ... I'm not sure what. But "Geee-aw" was his standard interjection.<br />I think your last sentence reflects back to Hurston's purpose in both her academic works and her fiction. Unfortunately, when one group regards the other's culture as inferior, any difference is regarded as proof of that inferiority - so the accurate depiction of that difference, that uniqueness, can be perceived as a deficit. Perhaps standard usage in the novel but include a scholarly appendix?KeVin K.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14792797517571690942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-11782474306462019332013-03-03T13:05:35.808-05:002013-03-03T13:05:35.808-05:00Interesting topic, Kevin. It's something I st...Interesting topic, Kevin. It's something I struggle with but,I've come to the same conclusion as Merle Hodge, and decided to let it be more about the rhythm. One thing, Spanish was actually my first language as it was my mother's language (she never did become too good at English) and my father grew up in Cuba. English became something I learned in the classroom and from books primarily and then, later, from my friends. This means I tended to speak "proper" English and my efforts to speak creole or patois sometimes made my friends laugh.<br />That said, your post ties in with what Carol said earlier and reminds me of a book I read recently by an American who used various islands of the Caribbean as his setting but he used phraseology associated with African-Americans. For example, "they be coming." While Caribbean English differs from island to island to country, we would more likely say "them coming." In fact, he had his black Caribbean characters sounding like southern blacks (or, like how we have been condition to think Southern blacks talk).<br />People who haven't been too exposed to anything but standard English would, presumably, also have a problem with Irish or Scottish writers who use phonetic spelling. On another, but related note, it's a bit sad to think that some languages have died out altogether. When that happens to the rich dialects of different regions, English itself will be poorer. Eugenia O'Nealhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10387352519341205107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-28509123001967241062013-03-03T12:36:14.344-05:002013-03-03T12:36:14.344-05:00Fascinating article, KeVin. English was my first l...Fascinating article, KeVin. English was my first language, partly because of my parents' determination and partly because of the schools to which they chose to send me. Many of my characters, however, speak what the linguists call Trinidadian Creole, which is a subset of the anglophone Caribbean Creole. (I used to call it a dialect. Still not too clear on the nuances of the various labels.) <br /><br />My method of dealing with this issue was to use the phonetic spelling in dialogue, but Merle Hodge, a Caribbean literary icon and university lecturer with whom I was privileged to do a creative writing course last year, challenged me on that. <br /><br />Why distort the words, she asked. It makes the characters appear cartoonish, especially to anyone who is not a native speaker of Creole. It diminishes them. Why not use the standard spelling in most instances and include idiomatic words for authenticity? According to her, it's more important to capture the <i>rhythm</i> of the Creole. Creole speakers will then automatically read the dialogue in Creole, and non-Creole speakers will not find the text incomprehensible. <br /><br />So, I've mostly stopped writing 'chirren' for 'children', 'talkin' for 'talking' and 'gorn' for 'gone' in dialogue. I've challenged Dr. Hodge on several issues, but not this one. We all want to reach as wide an audience as possible with our stories.Liane Spicerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05035607144500219524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-2968722906480076782013-03-03T12:02:12.052-05:002013-03-03T12:02:12.052-05:00Wonderful post, KeVin. I just finished talking ab...Wonderful post, KeVin. I just finished talking about this last week in my cultural anthropology class. A message I tried to hammer home - all languages are perfect. Some may be more closely associated with the rivers of wealth that flow on our planet, but that doesn't make them any more perfect.William Doonanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07540517192121681243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5594341074652821017.post-10565510669290424532013-03-03T10:17:30.988-05:002013-03-03T10:17:30.988-05:00I really love the line, "There is no one righ...I really love the line, "There is no one right way to speak English." As a southern, I speak in the same general accent as you use and I have seen that condescension on other faces at times. As for black characters, I have generally not had the courage to write them. Given where I teach, an accusation of racism could be fatal. I did use a man of mixed race, a Creole, as the main character in Cold in the Light. He was educated and from a very educated family and so spoke rather precisely. That was one way of getting around it.Charles Gramlichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02052592247572253641noreply@blogger.com