Where's a good halfway point? Do I just find some colloquial terms and throw them in? Do I only write select words in dialect? And if so, which ones? (It grates on my nerves the way in X-Men that Rogue always says "Ah did this" and "Ah did that.")

What things can I do that won't distract the reader?

Ya'll goes in the dialogue...it is quite recognizable and quite readable.

Ah for I...feels quite a bit more distracting. I had to read your example three times before I understood the substitution you were trying to make. Besides, the southern accent doesn't quite make an I into an ah...it's close but not quite there. It's more that northerners put a sort of "e" sound on the end of their I...Ieeeee. Well, it's not exaggerated like that, but we fully pronounce the I whereas southerners touch on the first part of the sound without finishing it. (I dated a southerner for few years and we spent some time talking about things like this.)

Now, the cajun accent is different from southern, of course, but I'm still not sure about the ah. One thing I would consider doing is trying to find a person who speaks the way you intend and study it.

Anyway, dialects are very very difficult to write. Here's another southern example: the word oil is pronounced more like ole. They take out the "oi" sound. Actually, ole doesn't quite cut it either because they pronounce the oi like oh ill...except faster and not so exaggerated. You see the difficulty? How do you even write these words?

And here's the bottome line. If you are writing from the point of view of a southerner, they don't think I is spelle "ah". They don't think oil is spell ohill, they only say it that way. Misspelling words that a point of view character knows how to spell is quite definitely out of POV. And when we hear it, we translate the words corrrectly.

Accents are relative. I think it was Andy Griffith who said something like "If you take one of our Southern boys or girls and send them up north, pretty soon they'll pick themselves up an accent."

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A POV character believes he is saying the words correctly, so you should spell the words correctly.

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But I suppose I should qualify my statement. In a first person narrative, you may want to spell the words the way the character would spell them, as if the character were writing it all down.

But for a third-person POV character, you should spell the words correctly rather than trying to spell them phonetically based on an accent, because those are the words the character believes he is saying.

It may sound to you like someone pronounces "birds" as "boids," but that person thinks he is saying "birds." To spell it "boids" when writing something from that person's point of view would be incorrect.

I have friends as close as family that are from Louisiana (or live there). So I said all Ebony's lines out loud like my friend Ora's Aunt Mae. I tried spelling things out exactly as they sounded, skipping syllables and slurring the words together. It was laughable how illegible it was.

Consider, when was the last time you spelled "I" "e-y-e" or "eye" "I"? But that's what everyone actually says, right? "Yu'l pt yor I aut!"

Basically, you only want to signify that the POV character has an accent when the POV character is actually conscious of that fact for some reason.

Like my brother's experience with a Korean mechanic, who said there was a problem with the "pilter". From his POV, the exchange might have looked like so--

"Yes, the filter needs to be replaced."

"The what?"

"Your filter. It'll be only a minute."

"What's a...pilter?"

Only at that point does our intrepid mechanic remember that he can't reproduce fricatives, having never heard them growing up.

I grew up in the South and there are multiple southern accents. My husband tells me that when I talk to my parents I don't pick up an accent, but my word choice and rhythm changes. For instance: instead of saying "I'm going to Aunt Gen's" I'll say, "I'm going to go on over to Aunt Gen's." What are all those extra words doing? I dunno, it's just the way folks talk. I also have a hard time hearing my parents' accents, even though they are quite pronounced.

For me, the rhythm and word choices are what makes someone belong to a region. I mean, if I write "That's bloody unlikely." No amount of phonetic spelling will convince you that it's someone from the Bronx.

(By the way, if anyone has a story set in Tennessee, North Carolina or Georgia, I would be happy to proof your Southernisms. Outside of those regions, there's a greater chance of error.)

More seriously-- I suspect the dialect level is another matter of personal preference, but for me, reading a story with a lot of painstakenly phonetically rendered dialect drives me crazy. A few carefully placed key words ("ayeh" or "y'all" or "slap that mozzie, mate, and pass me a stubbie") will be enough to key me into which dialect is being used without driving me crazy, and I can read in the rest. (By contrast, I really like reading things written with different cadences to the words, different spoken rhythms and words and emphases. But I suspect that's very hard to pull off if you're not a native speaker of another sort of English. I certainly haven't tried.)

A little paper I wrote on it, and how it hurts To Kill A Mockingbird.

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A degree of realism is demanded in all forms of literature, even in genres such as fantasy and science fiction. After all, no one wants to read a nonsensical story. However, some authors are paranoid about not being realistic enough, and this phobia reveals itself in their works. Harper Lee is one of those writers, and in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, she is obsessed with creating a perfect southern atmosphere. She tries to achieve this goal by imitating southern dialect, but instead of making her novel more enjoyable, this tactic makes it at points near impossible to read.

Lee uses a range of devices in her attempt to recreate the southern tone of speech, including making up words, especially to represent sounds, slurring words together, eliminating vowels, using cliches, and a lot of adverbs. "Nome," she writes, apparently uncomfortable with a simple "no" (21). "Yeb'm," another example of this absurd style of writing, requires great concentration to understand (21). Extremely difficult to read, such words proliferate throughout the entire book, forcing the reader to spend minutes deciphering them.

Even worse are the sounds Lee feels that she has to recreate. "S-ss-ss," she has Miss Maudie cryptically say (48). After a hiatus of several hundred pages, the "s" sounds return, where "S-s-s" appears four times in the same paragraph (266). However, Harper Lee's love of sounds is not restricted to "s." She also likes the "r" sound, as shown by Jem simply saying "Ar-r" (58). No explanation is given, nor are any other words said next to the "Ar-r." Even simple, real onomatopoetic words like "sh" are twisted for Lee's precious southern feel. "Sh" becomes "Sh-h" (59).

Lee utilizes a rich combination of cliches, in dialog, as well: "High and mighty," Scout accuses Jem of being (51). "Easy does it," Atticus advises his children (115). To understand someone, you have to "climb into his skin and walk around in it" (33). Snow, according to Jem, is "so cold it burns" (73). The list goes on, approximately one cliché every twenty pages.

Another area where Lee's obsession with realism can be seen is in clauses modifying dialog. "I screamed" is an example of this author intrusion, because the phrase does nothing to alter the overall phrase, "Why don't you get it?" which is obviously being screamed when looked at contextually (53). These clauses especially saturate page 180: "Atticus conceded," "I affirmed," "Atticus said flatly," "he announced."

Lee also likes to eliminate syllables, perhaps trying to create a rushed, slurred style of speech. However, again this trick serves to annoy. "'You c'n push," is just begging for a vowel (41). But at least with "c'n" the word's meaning is still intact. "Chillun" may have only two syllables, an entire one less than "children," but it unfortunately makes much less sense (220).

At points, all these tricks combine together to form spectacular, albeit unreadable, sentences, such as "'Nome thank you ma'am,' he drawled softly," and "'Yeb'm,' he finally mumbled" (21).

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Shrug

Don't know. I have an accent speaking group in the novel I am working on right now. I use a small amount of words they would use but limit the use -- hoping the reader will assume and fill in the rest.

But you know what they say about assume.

Most of the time, you don't really notice your own nose...you just don't really see it most of the time. And you don't usually notice other people's noses much either, unless they are really outrageous.

But boy, when you see some guy that has a second head growing out of the middle of his face...you can't not notice it, you can hardly see anything else. Only a supreme act of will allows you to pretend you're looking at anything else.

Several years ago I took an Australian to a Mexican restaurant. She'd never had Mexican food before, so she asked me what it was like.

I'm no gourmet, so the best description I could come up with was "It's somewhat spicy."

She got a puzzled look. "Spicy?"

"Yes. You know, with lots of spices in it."

She looked at me like I was crazy. Finally we figured out that from her point of view, the conversation sounded like this:

"It's somewhat spacey."

"Spacey?"

My brain sometimes translate things out of Southern accents even when the person isn't speaking with one. For instance, this actual conversation, the way I heard it.

Me: "How do you have such neat handwriting?
Friend: I studied topography.
Me: Really? They do handwriting stuff in mapmaking?
Friend: No. Not topography, typography.

The friend in question is from NYC.

It's a difficult question to answer because even though it's a small island Irish people have different accents depending on which part of it they're from. I can't give much help on the specifics I'm afraid but I believe generally, those in the south tend to speak with a thicker, more stereotypical accent than those from the north.

There's a certain phraseology to the way people speak. In Ireland particularly it's related to a certain extent to the actual Irish language. The more urbanized the area, the less it impacts the way people speak. Also, nowadays, the impact of TV, radio, cinema and world media in general has also changed what is in effect a 'patios'.

My take would be to use the phrases without the spelling changes. Things like "That's grand", "Sure you did", "I'm after telling you", But please please please no "Yes indeed and begorrah". There are some words (particularly swear words for some reason) which have a distinctive Irishness and I've seen them spelled differently which works. But in these cases the meaning is generally softened. "Jaysus" is a lot milder that using Jesus. Its more often said in a joking manner.

If you try and indicate accent phonetically you end up with dialogue that's initially very hard to read. There's one exception to this that I know of. I remember reading a book years ago called Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban which was set in a post-apocalyptic world where language had evolved and is narrated by a 12 year old. The whole book was written in this style and it was done brilliantly. It's the only time I can remember reading this sort of thing and seriously getting into it. After a few pages your mind did the translation:

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What ben makes tracks for what wil be. Words in the air pirnt foot steps on the groun for us to put our feet in to

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or one of my favourites

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I dont have nothing only words to put down on paper. Its so hard. Some times theres mor in the emty paper nor there is when you get the writing down on it. You try to word the big things and they tern ther backs on you. Yet youwl see stanning stoans and ther backs wil talk to you.

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Says quite a bit about the writing process.

But this only worked because the whole book was written this way. There was no "normal" phraseology used at all.

I've been in America and had people pinpoint me as Irish when I used a word like "Grand". I've been in the UK and had people think I must be Australian because they can't place my accent - it isn't particularly Irish. I had a linguistics teacher in college who could tell me what part of Devon my mother came from. I suppose its all relative.

First, I once heard a man giving a short, memorized speech, and could tell that he was a native German speaker. What puzzled me was how I knew. His pronunciation was correct for proper English, and the words he was saying were proper English syntax (it was a speech written by someone else, so he had no input on the syntax or word choices), and all I could figure was that his "music" as he spoke was pure German.

Since then, I've noticed what I call "music" in other accents, and I think that until you learn the "music" of another language, the native speakers of that language will know you are not a native speaker, no matter how good your pronunciation or vocabulary or syntax is.

Of course, that won't help with written dialects, but it may help you think about how to describe an accent.

Second, the word choices, the phrase choices, the figures of speech, and the syntax a speaker uses can all indicate an accent without you ever having to mess with how the words are spelled. The hard part is finding out what those things are so that your readers will "get it" about the accent.

The suggestion to read work by Irish writers is a good one, especially if you look at the dialog. I'd recommend that you look for plays by Irish writers who are depicting Irish speakers. A good one for that is PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD by J M Synge. Some of James Joyce's stuff (like "The Dead" but not FINNEGAN'S WAKE) might also help. If you could find them on tape, with a native Irish reader, that would be really helpful.

Movies of those works would be good too. WAKING NED DEVINE is also a good one, as is THE QUIET MAN. You'll probably want to listen to them instead of watch them, and do it several times, so you really get a feel for the way they choose their words.