I\u2019ve had a couple of emails recently that I think have deserved a wider response. Here\u2019s one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPlease could you possibly say a little more about why the first example is \u2018orrible and the second is OK. When does dialect become patronising? It\u2019s a tricky thing to get right.<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And good: this is a good question, not least because these issues have become excessively fraught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here is an example of transcribing a character\u2019s voice in a patronising way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEet eez \u2019orrible to \u2019ear ze proud Frensh race beleettled in zis stooped manner.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what the character involved has actually said here is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is horrible to hear the proud French race belittled in this stupid manner.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first sentence, by transcribing its pronunciations in a very literal way, makes the speaker come across as ludicrous \u2013 cartoony, a circus clown with a striped jumper, a string of onions and a comical moustache. But what\u2019s actually comical? The sentence itself displays perfect command of English, and what\u2019s being apparently laughed at here is an accent, over which the speaker has very little control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, golly gosh, that\u2019s a slippery slope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most people writing a non-English character in this way will (if English) speak roughly RP, or Received Pronunciation \u2013 in effect, roughly what a BBC newsreader used to sound like. In the US, it\u2019s much the same thing, except that the reference dialect is Standard American English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (And, please note, in RP English, we say \u201cShe placed the glahss<\/em> on the grahss<\/em> next to her great big \u2013 handbag.\u201d But we wouldn\u2019t even conceive of inserting the letter H into the two italicised words to mark the weird pronunciation. Nor do we adjust the spelling to take care of the flat \u201ca\u201d sound in American and North-British versions of those words. So when it comes to our<\/u><\/em> weird pronunciations, we don\u2019t even think of trying to reflect them in spelling.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And of course, as soon as you start to accord any kind of typographic privilege to a particular accent \u2013 whether RP or SAE \u2013 you get into all sorts of bother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s one thing to have a comical Frenchman \u2013 France is a nuclear power and can look after itself \u2013 but do you really want to apply the same diminishing treatment to, say, a black resident of Harlem? Or a Scouser? Or a northern woman of Pakistani heritage? Or a Mexican immigrant?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The answer, if you haven\u2019t already figured it out is, No, certainly not. Don\u2019t go there. Step away from the quirky spellings<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s partly because of a perfectly legitimate anxiety about racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s also just a recognition of modern linguistics. The RP \/ SAE dialects are simply two dialects amongst many, many others. They don\u2019t come with a halo over them that says, \u201cthe king\/President speaks this way, so this version is right and everything else is wrong.\u201d The fact is that we all speak the dialect of our culture and each dialect has no more or less validity than the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s not just true of pronunciation. It\u2019s true of grammar too. Any significant dialect has its own grammar, which may differ from SAE \/ RP grammar (which, by the way, each differ from each other.) So African-American Vernacular English has its own strict rules of grammar, that are just different from SAE \u2013 and not just different, but with subtleties that SAE struggles to cope with. SAE has four basic past tenses: I did buy it, I have bought it, I bought it, I had bought it<\/em>. AAVE has five, but differently structured: I been bought it, I bought it, I done bought it, I did buy it, I do buy it<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What does all this tell us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It tells us (duh!) that other people may speak differently from us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It tells us (duh!) that it\u2019s not respectful or, in fact, linguistically accurate, to privilege one set of accents or grammars over another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that means that the solution for a novelist is quite easy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the only time this is liable to get complicated is in relation to languages that are highly related to English, but aren\u2019t actually English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of you will have encountered the broad Yorkshire speech of Wuthering Heights. This for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘What are ye for?’ he shouted. ‘T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld. Go round by th’ end o’ t’ laith, if ye went to spake to him.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Would that be better with \u201cthe master\u2019s down in the fold\u201d? And well \u2013 I don\u2019t know. You can call it both ways. The modern tendency would be to eliminate some of the non-standard spelling, but in Bronte\u2019s day, the fact was that broad Yorkshire dialect (\u201cTyke\u201d) was pretty much a language to itself, related to English in much the same way as Robert Burns\u2019 Scots is. In which case \u2013 honour the language. Give it leg room. That\u2019s what I chose to do with my Orcadian sailor, Caff, and deliberately wrote a version of Orcadian that was damn close to impenetrable to an ordinary reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you want to do that then, (a) have fun! It\u2019s really entertaining. And (b) get it right. I don\u2019t speak Orcadian, I\u2019m not Scottish, and I\u2019ve never been to the Orkneys. So I did the best that I could with books and online resources \u2026 then wrote to the editor of an Orkney newspaper and asked for her help. She was very happy to give that to me, and I was very happy to receive it, and my readers have the joy of having a little bit more Orcadian in their lives: something we all need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n