A Conversation for Writing Right with Dmitri: Talking the (Local) Talk
Tricky
aka Bel - A87832164 Started conversation Feb 20, 2012
>>Do the people in this town always use a certain slang? Work it into the dialogue.<<
It's impossible, I could never ever work any of that into a story, I had a hard time to understand it in the first place.
Tricky
minorvogonpoet Posted Feb 20, 2012
I agree that slang is difficult, because it varies with class and age as well as place. And people move around so much these days. You couldn't do what Henry Higgins did in 'Pygmalion', and place people within a street or two in London by listening to their accents. You could come across Bangladeshis, Poles, Afghans...
But there are dictionaries of slang available. The internet might be a good source.
Tricky
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Feb 20, 2012
Try this one for Scotland:
http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/index.asp
And this one (with sound samples) for the US South:
http://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_southern.html
Tricky
Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor Posted Feb 21, 2012
This is true.
I had an idea: what if AWW writers took on the project of writing a piece in an unfamiliar dialect? Being prepared, of course, for the 'native speakers' to critique it?
Key: Complain about this post
Tricky
More Conversations for Writing Right with Dmitri: Talking the (Local) Talk
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."