If I was going to put my Dutch SiL on the page, I would try to capture the flavor of the way she speaks English. She will say something like "We were most happy to see the Mother on her visit." Which is a combination of translating from Dutch in her head and learning English from schoolbooks. Cleaning up the grammar on her sentences would not be accurate.
Fair, because it captures the rhythm. But I'd be tearing my hair out if it were written as, "Ve vere most happy to see die Mutter on her fisit." Which is what I think of as "written dialect."
Also, I have remembered two valuable lessons from my Nana
Good to hear this. It sounds like your doctor is at least responding. I am so glad you were not some new inexperienced mother too.
When she played (or at least seemed to be playing) obtuse when I requested that they submit a Vaccine Adverse Event Report through VAERS.org, I got specific, and detailed, and extra haughty and righteously incensed.
Good.
I am writing out an email to a client (a good one, one I actually like working with quite a lot) that not every single element of a page can be the most important. Please sir, don't make me write a Web site with flashing yellow text.
Which is what I think of as "written dialect."
I know there is at least one effort underway to standardise Jamaican Patois spelling. I just don't know what they went with. But the difference between "Him not go work like that" and "Im naa go wuk like dat" is big enough that maybe standardisation ...
Oh, fuck if I know. I just know you can't write it without the accent and not have it look supremely alien.
Hippity Happity Birthday, Aimee!!!
She will say something like "We were most happy to see the Mother on her visit."
Shows the word choice usage of a non-native English speaker without going overboard, perfect. In a page of un-attributed dialogue, you'd know instantly who was speaking.
Gerald Durrell, by any chance?
And Betsy gets it in one.
Ha! I guessed right too. Gerald Durrell does tend to do the superior Englishman thing, but he's so funny that I tend to forgive him. It's hard to know if I would be so forgiving if I were one of his native bearers.
Ellie is so cute, but looks a bit dubious about the swimming experience.
Emeline is a feminist. My Beety Crocker catalog came yesterday and within 30 seconds it was completley torn to shreds.
I wonder what she'd do to the Moosewood cookbooks?
If they weren't spendy, I'd almost test that theory.
