The Great Write Way, Chapter Two: Twice upon a time...
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
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*
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.
FTR, I would not be confused by reading "mi" like that.
I would not be confused by reading "mi" like that.
Yes, but you eat patties. Therefore you are tainted by The Yard.
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'?"
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.
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.)
I use a particular style for my English characters, but that doesn't really qualify as patois; it's more the way individual characters use the King's (or, in Ringan's case, John Knox's) English.
Ringan, a Scot, would never come out with "Gordon Bennett!", which is pure southern slang, total London in origin. JP Kinkaid, a Londoner by birth, does.
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.
Is this true, even if the writer uses other um...I don't know what to call it...
In dialogue, I would totally have a character (any character--not just Southern) say, "Gonna" for "going to", because that's what people say. I would use contractions like "should've" which, in narration, I would only render as "should have".
eta...
I would also have a Northerner use "forgettin'" if it was a word he would say. That wasn't exclusive to Southerners--I just couldn't think of another analogous example.
I run into that all the time writing Wire fic because half the characters are dealers and speak street slang, like a lot. And I'm a white girl that grew up in the suburbs, and used to get embarrassed typing "motherfucker"(NSM, anymore)
But I like those guys and like how they talk. I want them to sound like them, but I know that some of the choices I might make might look like they have negative racial overtones. I don't want to make fun of them.
