All your characters speak English, since most people read English. Right? Sometimes they speak a little bit of something else, or someone else speaks another language, but for the most part everyone talks in English. sometimes they don't acknowledge it as English, and sometimes it's not, it's the "Common Tongue". In these cases how does one deal with dialect? If it's a fictional place you can't have real dialects, can you? But I want my characters from different places to talk different. Not different languages, just a different style. Sentence structure, pronunciation, that sort of thing. How is it done?

Difficult, to be sure. In my book all of my characters speak English. Though I have languages for them, they are the only ones who speak them. It would be very interesting to you to read,



(That's not a langauge, just some random words). I think it goes without saying that your reader won't enjoy reading that very much. Anyways, it's much more interesting to read,



Even if it's not the best writing, at least it's in a language you understand. So writing must be in English. That being said, there are a lot of ways that you can emphasize dialect in English. We emphasize dialect on this forum. Some (most?) of us say 'y'all' others don't. Some have different sentence structure.

My characters do speak differently. Numaryá, from Véhonas, speaks differently than Zaciré, from the Enclave. Srugóz, who speaks a language in SOV structure, tends to rather strangely speak. He about the market talks. It very confusing is. (And like Yoda sounds ) Anyways, there's oodles of way to emphasize dialects while still writing in English.

Numaryá, who is from Véhonas, speaks rather strangely because she often forgets the tenses of verbs. In Véhonas, tenses are shown by modifying the noun, rather than the verb. Depending on the ending of the noun, that sets the tense of the verb, which only has one tense (Present). So Numaryá will frequently say stuff like. "It is difficult. We run for our lives" when she is telling something that has happened in the past. Other quirks to her speech exist but I won't go into them all.

Zaciré, because he was brought up in the Enclave where tradition and ceremony are common, addresses people very formally in his speech. This distinguishes his speech from others.

Of course, it's not bad to sit down and write out dialects of your languages and say how they differ from the main, root language. But for all your world-building work on languages, your reader won't see any of it except in place names and how your character speaks. So we must come up with ways to distinguish their dialects in the English language.

Phew! Hope some of that was at least (remotely) helpful.

eruheran

Do you mean dialects, or cultural accents?

English speakers are familiar with accents. Our language has lots and lots of them. Chinese speakers, however, are familiar with dialects.

The difference is that accents are simple changes in pronunciation, and a few added or subtracted words and minor spelling changes. All are mutually understandable.

A dialect is quite a bit different. Different words to mean the same thing. Changes in grammar rules. Add a letter or two to the alphabet.

Tolkien's races all spoke dialects of Common Tongue. He demonstrated the difference through accents. Hobbits and Rohirrim both speak English, but there are clear differences. Try that.

Just as an example, here's a quick example of how Numaryá speaks. It's hard to write like this a lot because the reader thinks it is just writing error, but in this example I specifically call out her difficulty in the paragraph above:

Kneeling by his bedside, Numaryá begin to lift up Zaciré to the Creator, her closest friend and companion. Despite her inability to speak the tongue well, she prayed in Zaciré’s native language:
“Oh Father, you know my feelings for Zaciré. You know that he anger me and that he is foolish and inexperienced. Indeed from all human perspective this quest is doom to fail. But I know that you are limitless and you do not act according to our convention.

For this reason I ask for Zaciré. I ask that you heal him from this cursed sleep. I pray that he wake and is a wiser person for it. I also ask myself, Lord. I ask myself how You can send me on such a mission with one who angers me so. I do not pray that you might make Zaciré and I strong friends, Lord, for I do not know if I’d stand that. But I ask that you give me for him tolerance and his personality. Help our friendship to grow, despite our differences.

And I pray lastly for this quest that has been thrust upon us. I pray that we would succeed. For the sake of Zaciré’s father who murdered and for the sake of my father, I pray that we would recover the dagger from Srugoz. Lord, give us victory o’er our enemies!”


---

eruheran

The way I see it, you're writing in English no matter what language the characters speak, since that's the only language your readers will likely understand. However, to make it plain that the characters are speaking in different languages, you can interject phrases, words, or small passages in another tongue (much like Tolkien did).

If your characters are all speaking a "Common Tongue" to be understood to each other, but they come from different linguistic backgrounds then they are going to have different patterns of speech. You just have to be careful not to go overboard and create a stumbling block for the reader through dialogue so convoluted they have to read it ten times to understand it.

I think there are two levels of crafting distinct dialogue--cultural and regional speech patterns and individual speech patterns (idiolect).

There are a few key areas I think that help when considering how cultures might have unique expressions of the same language:
1) Sentence structure. How do they fashion a sentence? Do they have noun/verb constructions different from the norm? And so forth.
2) Unique words and colloquialisms. I saw this in person traveling in Canada, where they have some quirks such as saying "eh?" at the end of sentences (which kind of fits the sentence structure category as well). Nice day, eh? This can take the form of sayings that fit the culture as well.
3) Formality or lack thereof...I think this stands without explanation.
There are other aspects, I'm sure, but this might help give you a starting point (forgive me if I've repeated some, I haven't read every post in this thread).

When looking at making individual speech patterns unique, you can bring in a host of other aspects to craft their speech, which helps also provide the distinction you're looking for.

Good question!

In English, there are many variants that are all commonly understood. Grammar, word choice, even spelling are all highly customizable, giving a powerful range of expression to us to use.

For example, each of us has their own style and voice for writing. We use the variations of English to create our own personal fingerprint that we use in our writing.

So one tactic that you can use for dialects in your world is making your speakers limits themselves to one variant of English that you invent for them. Each character should have their own personality and style written into their speech, of course, but I believe you can also fit dialects in there as well.

So one character would use 'poisonous,' another 'venomous,' another 'venene,' and yet another might use 'virulent,' etcetera.

As for accents (I want to just throw this in), you can alter their speech patterns a bit, but you can also just describe it. A person who is well traveled might comment that he recognizes where a character is from because he used a certain rate of inflection when making a request, or because he used a local word that isn't used elsewhere. Stuff like that is loads of fun to make up on the spot, and creates an illusion of vast depth to your story.

Very true, especially about a local word that isn't used elsewhere...I've never thought about that side of things...

eruheran

Slave girl: You wouldn't happen to be with that Jesus guy, would you? 'Cause you talk like a Galilean.

Peter: *attempts British accent* Of course not, old chap! Pip pip, what?

I know it's an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

Neil.... * shakes head *

Right.

LOL! Thanks, Neil, that was a very...striking example.

eruheran

This is a great topic! I have trouble with this myself...

Nice example, Neil...

That was...hilarious. Thanks, Neil.

Anyway, this thread has been helpful, I'll use some of it.