Ellie is so cute! And I'm so jealous of people whose babies will sleep on them.

I'm reading a non-fiction, autobiographical book wherein the white British author records his conversations in pidgin with Cameroonians, and I'm finding it a little off-putting. I have no problem understanding "You go come long time" or "Me likee dat too much!" but if they were speaking in a completely other language, he'd just report what was meant ("I really like that!") rather than what was phonetically said.

My personal take on dialects in writing is to avoid tricky spellings and try to show differences in word choice. Trying to read something and sound it out then try to figure out what it means is a lot more work than I care to go to.

white British author records his conversations in pidgin with Cameroonians,

Gerald Durrell, by any chance?

For the record, Susan, I wasn't talking about you.

Thanks, ita, I wasn't sure given the context.

I know I err on the side of caution in this area because I've been so annoyed and insulted as a reader by writers' botched attempts at Southern accents. Not to mention driven batshit by romance-novel Scot dinna-speak. And then there's my vivid recollection of trying to talk a writing class participant out of Gone With the Wind-style speak for his African-American characters by getting him to say he'd never write a character like me with misspelled words or sloppy diction, then pointing out exactly how many things I say "wrong," from changing little to liddle to retaining distinctly Southern vowels after all these years away--my "gets" still "git" and when I'm speaking quickly enough, my "I" slips into an "Ah." He still didn't get it, and it pissed me off. Racist bastard.

So I just use near-standard English all around to avoid those pitfalls.

Gotta run--PT in 45 minutes and I still haven't showered. Annabel's 5:00 a.m. wakefulness has me all off-schedule.

And I'm so jealous of people whose babies will sleep on them.

That's the only way Emmett would sleep at that age. You'd be surprised at how quickly the pleasure of warm babylump on you gets balanced by the desire to roll over on your side.

Happy Birthday, La Princessa Empressa!

My personal take on dialects in writing is to avoid tricky spellings and try to show differences in word choice.

My problem is that there's this little bit about which I know too much, I suspect.

I mean, if they were Bajan, I wouldn't be so responsive to the difference between saying "work" and "wuk" in an otherwise identical sentence.

I wish I could pin down what Nalo and others of her success did right, because it was so effortless.

What would you (larger) you do about grammatical differences, such as word order? Do you translate or report?

That's the only way Emmett would sleep at that age. You'd be surprised at how quickly the pleasure of warm babylump on you gets balanced by the desire to roll over on your side.

My warm babylump often traps me on my side (post-boobie curling against mama and napping time), and I just as often would really like to move off it and into a more comfortable position.

it's "ita," not "Ita," Windsparrow.

Oops, sorry, ita.

Also I think historical dialog is different than contemporary. Yorkshire dialect may still use "'thine" but I'll bet 21st Yorkshire dialect differs substantially from 18th century Yorkshire dialect.

And John Dickson Carr made a point in writing an introduction to one bit he set in the 18th century. I wish I could find copy so as to quote since he put it really well, but the basic idea was that an 18th century character may have been speaking an 18th century dialect - but what the listeners heard was contemporary to them. Using an authentic 18th century dialect in a modern novel makes the character sound quaint and archaic to the reader -which is not how the character would have sounded to someone listening at time. (Obviously - there are exceptions for characters who are supposed to be quaint and archaic in their own time.) So, depending on the story of course, writing in something close to contemporary language (with perhaps minor varietions for flavor) can actually be truer to the story than authentic dialog. I can think of stories where that would not be true - for example where you are trying to give a feel for how different the time you are writing about is from are own - if you are trying to make the people you are writing about feel "other" and alien and unlike us.

There was a suggestion yesterday that I feed the annoying Client from Hell to the critters yesterday. I put the call off until this morning, figured it couldn't be all that bad and decided against making Client Chow. I was so wrong.

Happy Birthday, Aimee!