@ KaTrian : that sounds like an exciting concept! but, which part got heatedly hated: swear words in other languages or broken english parts? @ Ed : I missed to put quotation marks on "good advice" - ment to be an ironic statement, you know - which is, actually, the point of this silly argument.
Broken English. We still struggle with implementing that to the story, though. For an English speaker her mistakes still look random even though we have tried to tie them to the grammar rules and vocabulary of Swedish (don't ask why Swedish..) The challenge is: mistakes tend to be somewhat random in real life -- so how close to real life should our fiction be? I love to listen to non-natives speak English. Last Sunday I heard a priest say something like "let's happen" when he probably meant "let's do/let's make", one woman said "it was so free" when she meant "it was relaxed" when referring to an atmosphere. At work I pick these up all the time, e.g. "export clearance dept did not knew about this until now." Another topic related thing: in the WIP we have a character who struggles to pronounce/speak French, so we've been racking our brains over how to show that in writing (one may argue, "how relevant is that? No one cares!" Whatevs.), a garbled short dialogue/utterance in another language? 'Cause that's gonna look messy.
I was just about to ask I always thought that Scandinavians have less problem with English structure (and prononciation) compared to Slavic-language-speakers (personally, I struggle with structure more than prononciation) or German-speakers // of course Greeks are out of any category But then, I may have met wrong Swedes in my life I think being consistent is the key to doing it right - being consistent in inconsistencies - especially when you play around too much with language. It is still a work of fiction, and it gets organized by itself, so to speak - to create narratives is almost an inherent human characteristics - so I guess a reader will recognize a complete randomness as somehow being out of place. But if you methodically "make mistakes" and try to de-randomize the random stuff, they stop being mistakes and randomness, and become a part/building material for the structure... maybe Maybe you could try to go the opposite of writing the struggling Swede: write French in English - google.translate is a great tool for making a really messy translation, keeping English syntax, mixing up gram. genders and randomly generating synonyms
Thing is, not every English learner is a language wizard, and our character just isn't. It didn't feel right in her case. Due to her occupation, her English can't be too broken though, so we need to find a happy medium. One Swedish linguist threw a hissy 'cause our character's English isn't perfect. She was a friggin' linguist and a writer to boot. Yeah, if we wrote her, then our leading lady would pass as a native speaker. Gee, in the same story we have a Belgian character who works as an English translator so naturally his English isn't broken, but our sweet Swede has to "sound" different. It is risky and even difficult to take nuances like this into consideration, but it's fun too If a story's setting requires multilingualism, I'd encourage authors to go for it, even if it annoyed some readers. Yeah, that sounds about right. De-randomizing... I know we still have to work to make the character's mistakes more consistent. One is that she struggles to remember irregular verbs and, of course, certain words and terms. Hah, good idea
I don't think it's silly at all. Seems like a valid question. There are any number of ways by which to label an 'era' and, based on the context or subject, an era can encompass any number of time frames. In the present context, however, that of a 'sociological era', Ed has courteously taken the effort to explain the context of the statement: In this case, the fact that the era encompassed by the statement is a prior period of time in which certain phrases, labels, references are so far out of common usage that they are likely not to be readily understood by the average reader. And Burlbird's observation that there is nothing "...obvious in the claim that all books and literary techniques necessarily [sic] become 'dated' or '...from another age' is equally valid but one must accept the truth that, as society changes, so do the trappings of that society. We no longer have dial phones (though some people do still refer to dialing a phone) and phones don't necessarily 'ring' anymore. They chirp, beep, ripple, chime, and even hip hop or sing or scream like a profane squirrel if that so pleases the owner. In fact, corded phones, along with the trappings thereof, are quickly becoming a thing of the past, as are the terms used for their support mechanisms. People don't use answering machines anymore, they have voice mail, and, as often as not, they don't even make long distance calls, they Skype. People don't catch a trolley to go to town (or wherever) they take the subway/metro/tube/taxi/etc. In fact, the original taxicab was actually a horse-drawn carriage - a hansom cab. And we no longer 'light the (oil) lamps' at night, we merely flip a switch (or push a remote control button) and we have light! And in language norms? Once upon a time, that old saw about "You can't say ain't because ain't ain't in the dictionary" would not have held true. The word ain't was a perfectly acceptable multi-purpose contraction for 'is not', 'am not', and 'are not'. America eschewed many British pronunciations such as an "H" sound at the beginning of words beginning with a vowel and omitting that sound with words beginning with the "H". Even dictionaries (abridged) are regularly updated to eliminate words no longer in general usage. There are countless words and concepts that have fallen by the wayside and, although perfectly nice and serviceable words, they simply are no longer in the common vernacular and many people would be forced to reach for a dictionary to figure out what they mean. (Even the "English Language" is nothing like it was in the time of Richard I or Charles Martel. To illustrate: If I were to call you a fustilarian would you be pleased at the compliment or angered by an insult?(Quick! Run to your dictionary, I'll wait.) I, myself, used to get wholly agitated at the use of the word 'impact' as a verb for it was never thus. But I quickly reconciled myself to the knowledge that language is a living thing. It grows, it metamorphoses, it changes to suit the demands of its society. If it did not, it would go the way of Latin as a common language. In fact, Latin is a perfect illustration. There are a number of languages which are rooted in Latin but Latin itself is no longer in everyday usage. It is, I suppose, from another time... Dare I say, "another era"? So ... I guess you are both wrong ... or right ... or ...
i am wondering why everyone seems to be giving advice about writing fiction with other languages included, when the op clearly stated his piece is a 'personal essay'! and the op has still not been back to tell me why he'd have foreign language dialog in a personal essay, in the first place...
"Thus"? Please, no Turkish words Very well elaborated wordsmith - especially the growing, living thing that language is, fact that is sometimes forgotten (most of the time, by most people, actually)... Still, isn't it great that a well-read guy can sometimes call someone a "rampallian" in his face without fear of repercussions?
It seems like threads sometimes take on a life of their own *cough* The Bechdel Test! *cough* and sometimes it leads to some happy "accidents," i.e. informative/interesting discussions that aren't really in the exact vein of the opening post. To continue this semi-OT: Me and KaTrian wrote a dystopian sci-fi ages ago where one character is half-Russian. She has a short conversation with a Russian inn keeper, but it's no longer than "Hello, may I help you?" "Yes, do you have free rooms?" "Sure, how many people are in your group?" "I'm sorry, my Russian is pretty rusty, do you speak English?" I've chosen to leave it in Russian, but I wrote out the words using the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic just so the reader gets an idea what the discussion sounds like, kinda like listening to a language you don't understand. Personally, I like it (be it in my writing or in a book I bought) as long as it's not overdone, and at the moment my preferences/enjoyment is a bigger priority to me than the possibility of annoying some readers. In fact, no matter what any author does, they'll always end up annoying some readers, so why worry over the inevitable especially since it's not deliberate?
Maybe have something like: Mais, je ne peux pas parler anglais! he cried. But, I can't speak English!
