assuming the vowel sound where you have "mi" is closer to a long "e" than to a long "i"

It's like a short "e," and I can't make my brain read "me" as having that short a vowel sound. Because I know I know that word, and it's different. I'd think that to someone who hasn't seen "mi" much, it'd be easy to separate it from "me" -- is that of value to the foreign reader?

"De" is closer in spelling to "the" than is "di".

Well, yeah, but as I noted, not much. And it's pronounced differently (in fact, I think that we use "de" or "dey" for the patois for "there"). Is it still worth it then?

That said, do Patois speakers consider Patois to be an English dialect, or its own language?

It's a creole. It has its own vocabulary ("nyam" is just going to be "nyam", for instance) and grammar (you'll see "good good" where you might expect "better" for instance) grabbed from other languages, as well as pronounciations (lack of "th," for one).

I am not going to spell the word "pen" as "pin" just because the Southerner pronounces P-E-N as though it were a homophone to P-I-N

And that's pretty much why I'd be hesitant to use "me" for "mi."

Bear in mind -- .05% of your readers might have the slightest fucking clue about how patois is supposed to look. The line though, of accuracy and respect -- well, it's going to vary with a million factors.

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Reading anything that's not super close to standard English is tricky for the non-speaker. I mean, I pretty much had to read all of Trainspotting out loud, and even then, there was stuff I didn't get, with the combination of accents and vocabulary.

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Yeah. It's just that,if I'm letting people into my life, then I'm letting them in there too because it affects the way I live. The thing the 'net gives me is more of a choice than I get at the mall because I don't have to be obvious until you know me. It was just a lucky thing I asked, Allyson, because multi-level housing is a very rare thing around here...it wasn't my first thought either, but an instinct or maybe a plastic lion, prompted me to ask. And yes, most definitely on the head thing. That is why I've asked one person to come in here in four years. He said he was too busy. The other Buffy fans I know are too Lame. In one instance, in both senses.

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And that's pretty much why I'd be hesitant to use "me" for "mi."

Which word is a Patois speaker saying--do you know? A person in the British Isles is saying "me coat" or whatever. If a Jamaican is saying "my" and just pronounces it differently, then I might even go with "my". I still sort of like Hil's suggestion of m'.

Bear in mind -- .05% of your readers might have the slightest fucking clue about how patois is supposed to look. The line though, of accuracy and respect -- well, it's going to vary with a million factors.

This is why I wouldn't write it. And you know this means I'm going to get bitten by some plot bunny heavily featuring native Jamaicans who speak Patois exclusively. *shaky fist*

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Which word is a Patois speaker saying--do you know?

I've never thought about it. I don't know if that's because I'm thinking of Patois as a separate entity, but "mi" means "I," "me," and "my." And that's as far as I'd taken it. Not that they're saying "me" in a Jamaican accent instead of "I."

That's also the reason that spelling them differently is greeted with blankness on my part -- I mean, they're the same word to me.

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FTR, I would not be confused by reading "mi" like that.

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I would not be confused by reading "mi" like that.

Yes, but you eat patties. Therefore you are tainted by The Yard.

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Yes, but you eat patties. Therefore you are tainted by The Yard.

Well, sure.

Thinking about writing accents and stuff, I was just reading a book where this young "street" black kid's accent is written out all the time, but I think at least part of that is because he talks differently in different situations, and the author wants it to be clear when he's actually saying, "Where are you going?" as opposed to, "Where you goin'?"

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I think I'm just projecting too much irrelevant knowledge into the scenario, because of my knowledge gap. To me, "mi" is a Spanish word (for "my"), and I am thinking of the Brit usage of "me" and this is because I have no experience with Jamaican Patois.

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In his dialogue passages, I will probably spell "forgetting" as "forgettin'", but I won't spell it as "forgittin'".

FWIW, the "forgettin'" would drive this ex-Southerner crazy--partly because it distracts my eye and slows down the reading process, and partly because I still drop about 50% of my G's, but no one would ever write me with misspelled dialogue because my accent and diction code to Well-Educated Coastal-Dwelling Urban White American.

If I was writing one of my Georgia or Alabama relatives, I'd use Southern distinctives like "y'all," "might could," and "fixing to," but I'm not going to misspell anything--that'd feel like a claim that I speak better English than they do, and I don't.

Your accent/dialect preference may vary--I've just seen enough written dialect that felt insulting, especially as a Southerner, to be very wary of using it.

(And I recognize that this is tangential to ita's question--a patois and an accent are two distinct things. It's just that few things grate on me more as a reader than botched or insulting attempts at Southern dialect.)

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