posted
I have recently began work on a new story in a fantasy setting, one that I was struck with today at work and had to actually write down, and as a part of beginning to write it out I have created a race of toadlike creatures, which cannot speak what I call the "Mans" tongue properly. For every S sound I have one of them speak, I put a H afterwards, making it appear that they have a problem as a race to pronounce a S sound properly eg
"He ish new leader, no?"
The example is just a direct quote from what I've written so far, so I was just wondering if anyone here is repulsed by it or can offer some help with refining it or whatnot.
Thanks beforehand for any help.
Edit: Didn't quite make myself clear enough.
[This message has been edited by Leigh (edited March 27, 2007).]
posted
Mmm...depends on how pronounced this "sibalent S" speech impediment is. I suppose a longer version with a few more letters, "...isshh...", might do the trick.
Do these toad creatures spit any when they pronounce an "S"?
posted
I'd be careful with it, and might ignore it almost completely. You'll end up saying things like "The shircumshtanshesh have changed shinsh we lasht shaw each other..."
My opinion? Tell us that there's an issue with sibilance, maybe spell it out once or twice if it's important, and then use normal spellings otherwise.
posted
Hungarians pronounce their 's' like that. They all have the 'sh' sound. Many languages pronounce things slightly different. If it's necessary, tell us when they start speaking that that's the way they speak. If necessary, you can remind us once or twice. After that, it will get annoying.
In the prologue of OSC's Speaker of the Dead he goes through a lesson on how Portuguese words and letters are pronounced. For the most part I ignored the rules while reading and just gave the words and names my own pronunciation. I don't want to have to flip back to the front of the book every time I want to know how a name is pronounced. It takes too much time from the book.
Mark Twain used to spell all his dialog the way it would be sound by the speaker. This gets real old real fast. It's one thing to tell us a character speaks a certain way, it's another to change all the spellings. Then we have to slow down and try to figure out what is being said.
posted
And here's another point: I was in a workshop with Tracy Hickman and I had a certain race which spoke oddly, he told me that he was doing the same thing in The Bronze Canticles with his dwarfs and he told me that by the third book he was absolutely sick of writing dwarfs speaking. (And I was sick of reading them as well.) I think you can describe how they say things without obscuring the clarity of the words. (My rule of thumb, if you have to say it outloud, in mad gab fashion, to figure out what they're talking about, reevaluate.)
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posted
Thanks everyone, I think I'll just stick to explaining why they speak that way, as it would be pretty obvious as I've said they're a toad-like race and not able to speak the language of man properly.
posted
Keith Laumer had an alien race that spoke "standard" oddly. But generally it was grammer problems. Those aren't as distracting and can even be cute if not overdone.
In a novella I'm working on currently I do mention in the opening that the aliens...well, it's from the aliens' pov so it's backward. They have the alien (human) word, "disease" and the narrative goes on to say that you can tell it's an alien word because of the hiss at the end. I feel that sets the stage enough for their language being different.
I hope it actually works!
[This message has been edited by arriki (edited March 29, 2007).]
posted
I think a character's accent could also be shown through how they speak. A person from the south could still use words that clue the reader in, without brutalizing the actual dialogue. If English is their second language, it can be even easier. I'm referring mostly to earth languages here. It gets harder with alien languages. You could even have sprinklings of their native tongue in the dialogue. So, our friend from the south might use an "I Reckon" (but not Reckin') or even a "Y'all" might not slow the reader down.
When a person learns English, they retain both the accent as well as some speech patterns for a native tongue. The only example I can think of right now is from the Simpsons, when Apu says, "Please to be removing your thumb from the picture now." I suppose if you really wanted to reflect alien speech, you could (in addition to describing the accent) use a bit of this. Make up something distinct, but not severe enough to annoy anyone, for them to do with the language.
Other than that, I do agree it is better to describe it in the text than butcher the words.
I don't have the book here. But I keep thinking OSC had a much better example of this in Characters and Viewpoints. I wish I could look it up.
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I think if it's an accent or speech impediment that's common and that we can conceptualize easily then it's totally fine to do, i.e. "Vhat do you vant?" or "I reckin' he done got hisself in trouble." ot "I weally want that..." make sense?
In the Alvin Maker series, there is characters from all over the world and OSC writes the accents in to the dialog. There's the parts where Alvin switches from speaking like a country-bumpkin to speaking properly depending on who he was with. The difference in his speaking is written in to the dialog and I could notice it without any other notations made about the way he was talking.
I definitely noticed it, but I really liked it. I would get really excited every time his speech changed.
If you haven't read that series, it would be good to read to see all the different accents in the dialog. It's just a great series anyways
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An "h" doesn't really affect an "s". The thing we write as "sh" is actually as different from s as d is from j. Sort of. Such shifts have a tendency to affect more than one thing. But it will probably fly for your average reader. Even your average sf/f reader. I don't mean to make you paranoid. I mean, I could go on all day about linguistic mistakes OSC made in the Homecoming series, and yet I still enjoyed it.
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posted
I wouldn't really call it a linguistic mistake. Although the sound <s> followed by the sound <h> is simply two sequential sounds, the letter "s" followed the letter "h" is by far the most common way to write the sound <sh>. (And we don't have any one-letter method, unlike the case of "j" representing the sounds <d><zh>.)
But in any case, I'd agree with the advice to go light on it. In any story much longer than a joke (where using the technique works fine) it gets really wearing.
These comments don't refer to changes in diction, by the way, but only to pronunciation issues. "I reckon he done got hisself in trouble" is all right, whereas "I weckon he done got hisself in twouble [twubble?]" is not.
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