My story is set in an alternate reality version of Australia and there is a large emphasis on Indigenous culture within the story. My main character is white, but at least two of the main characters are Indigenous. I want the characters to speak in respective Indigenous accents to distinguish them from the main character. The first one comes from a world where Indigenous culture has been preserved from the effects of colonization, so I want her to have a raw Indigenous accent, that makes it sound like she hasn't had much experience with the English language. As an example, this scene from Rabbit Proof Fence is what I mean by a 'thick Indigenous accent'. Rabbit-Proof Fence (Australia 2002) - YouTube Accents vary from person to person. The Jigalong mob that is mentioned in the clip comes from the Northern Territory, but I want my character to have the same kind of accent. The second character is someone who is a bit closer to the main character. I want this character to sound like she has a grasp of the English language. I want her to sound like the people in this clip here. Wellbeing - what Aboriginal people know?- CULTURE - YouTube And lastly, I have gone through some threads on this site and some people have said 'Don't write the phonetics. Just say that they are speaking a certain accent'. The only problem with that is that none of my potential readers would know what a 'Indigenous accent' sounds like, so I want to make it clear to the reader that these characters are speaking with an accent even if they don't know what a 'Indigenous accent' is. I would appreciate any advice, especially from Indigenous Australians.
So you've read the advice as previously given, but don't like it so want some different advice? OK - write the phonetics. It will suck, and it will read as if it were written by a 1920s white supremacist, but, yeah, go ahead... (c: You can add a sprinkling of phonetics, but less is very much more; ask yourself how important it is that your readers know the exact accent. Will that affect the plot? The story? Your character's hopes, ambitions, or tragedies? The whole joy of reading is that it happens in our heads, that's why it is often a disappointment when a movie is made of your favourite book - it's somebody else's version of what you have been enjoying all these years. You can insert pauses, wrong words, pet names for things, all manner of tricks to bring dialogue to life, but trying to replicate an accent phonetically is - in my humble opinion - doomed to failure. Dialogue is one of the easiest things to write... and one of the hardest to write well. May I suggest that you get involved in the workshop area of the forum - find some dialogue-heavy pieces, get a feel for what you think works well, let the writer know your thoughts, and eventually start putting some of your own work up for critique and get some actual feedback on whether your approach works for other readers?
This is a question I've struggled with myself where I wanted accent to be conveyed. I do think it is possible to strike a balance between pure telling, and something horrible and embarrassing. I suggest a few tricks I've worked that I think are less cringey and convey the most relevant and interests of an accent: 1. Find the phonetics that are the most distinctive, most obvious, and easiest to convey in writing. Elisions and contractions can be slipped without being too awkward if you avoid doing too many of them. They are something that is sometimes expressed in writing anyway. They look less unnatural. As is often said, avoid too much phonetic transcription, especially seeing as such transcription attempts are somewhat foolhardy just from an accuracy point without IPA, writing English words in different ways would still be pronounced differently by different dialects. 2. Is there any grammatical element? The grammatical qualities of a dialect are the easiest part to convey. The grammar of a character, if you have any idea of a distinctive speech at all, is hard to avoid even. If a character uses double negatives, or uses the word "proper" in a certain, as you see with certain Black American dialects and with Cockney respectively, then that will be in the dialogue even if you do no phonetics. 3. Slang and distinctive dialect words are also a great way to carry across that sense of distinctive speech. In much the same way that a high-class academic character might be written as verbose and using various formal and academic terms, a character with a distinctive dialect may have various examples of slang or dialect words that indicate their background. Beyond the more obvious slang sort of thing, this could include in your case, depending on whether any traditional language survives among their people, little sprinkling of Aboriginal language words in their speech. There are many ways that dialects end up with different words, just look at some of the UK's regional words that have emerged from its historic language diversity (remembering that there was a huge diversity of Old English in pre-Norman times), for example "goosegogs" as a word in certain country areas for gooseberries. In conclusion, subtly doing this is absolutely critical. By default, you shouldn't try too hard. It's not that important to capture in any detail. But there are some things you can do to give a flavour of it, enough of a hint for people to generally infer and imagine what it is like.
IN that case it wouldn't do much good to accurately portray it. Though it's safe to say most people have probably seen Crocodile Dundee and maybe a few other movies featuring Aboriginal people. Before movies came along stories served part of the purpose movies would come to serve much better—in the same way that before the camera people got their visual information about strange animals in faraway lands (and many other things) from drawings, paintings and etchings. The arts served a largely journalistic purpose. But now that we have movies, TV and YouTube, those do a much better and more accurate job of portraying the actual speech patterns, delivered by the people themselves, so there's no need to try to do it in a story—a very imperfect way to get accent and dialect across. Back when for instance Mark Twain was writing, it was important to try to get down the way regional groups talked before it all faded away and the world simply forgot or never discovered certain peoples. It was about recording not only how they talked, but their way of life. And it was best done by somebody with a lot of experience living in and among the particular group. Twain was deeply familiar with the southern accents of both black and white people in his region, and was a very gifted writer, so he could do it well. In the hands of someone less talented or less familiar with the subject matter, it would come across terribly. Plus of course in today's hyper-sensitive social environment, no matter how well-intended it might be, the writer would be targeted for cancelation.
What I've read is to not to overdo it. Include enough to indicate the character speaks differently but not every line of dialogue. This may be harder to do in practice though. What I would do is occasionally include words or phrases that indicate the character has the Aboriginal upbringing, (but this may not be easy for the character that has little knowledge of English) by using Aboriginal Kriol. Of course, this may not be accurate depending on where the Aboriginal characters are from. You should probably try and find some expert/sensitivity reader. I was going to compare the NIV of Genesis 1:1-2 to an Aboriginal Kriol version, but decided not to post it for fear of butchering it or appearing insensitive. But you could include some words like longtaim = long time (ago) ebrijing = everything woda= water etc.
