writing with an accent

[venavino]

I'm writing a book which is based in Africa. The first person narrator is an African woman. I purposely did not write in dialect because 1) I think it's tiring to read a whole book in dialect, 2) I don't want the people to sound stupid-- they are just as intelligent in their language and we are in English and dialect can dumb people down and 3) I've never written in dialect before. My writer's group is split, but the people I consider to be better writers think I should make the speech sound more African.

I guess I'd like to play around with dialect and see if I can use it just enough to give the book a bit more of an African flavor without being obnoxious about it. Does anyone know any resources for learning to write in dialect?

--Venavino (mother of twins)

[michaelsnyder]

I know of know resources for writing dialect, but I think the best tool at your disposal is your ear. If you can find movies or interviews or documentaries with people from the same region, you can probably pick up a more "authentic" sound that way.

The first thing that comes to mind is Hotel Rwhanda. However, Africa probably has as many dialects as golfers do excuses. Obviously, other factors enter in as well: education level, idioms and lingo, time periods, etc.

I have a character who THINKS he can fake a brilliant British accent. After checking out a few books on cd from the local library with British narrarators, I had plenty of ammo for the task.

Hope that helps.

[venavino]

That does help, I think. I have Hotel Rwanda sitting on my shelf (I've been scared to watch it) and countless hours of home video of African friends. I've given my narrator story, emotion, and drive. Now she needs a voice.

I think I was looking for a shortcut like "The Top Ten Idiosincricies of African Speech" but I might have to do this the old fashioned way-- work :rolleyes:

[mwfree]

Writing with accents is alway so difficult. I find that even just deciding whether to write "going to" or "gonna" can get really complicated when it comes to speech and consistency with the writing.
It seems that in African English writing and speech, it's not only a matter of accent, but certain words are used differently or more than they are in North America. I would suggest checking out the online editions of African newspapers. Maybe check out the papers from the country your character is from. If you type in the country's name and "newspaper" in Google you'll get plenty of hits. That might help your research. Have fun researching!

MW

[DrRita]

A while back I read a book called No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith which was written about a woman in Africa who starts a detective agency. It's a really good book (the first of a series) which is written is a way that there is little or no dialect but it's definately African. I suggest you check it out of the library and go over how he does it. I think it will help.

[venavino]

I LOVE those books! Amazing that a Scottish man can sound like an African woman. I might be getting too caught up in trying to be uniquely Togolese since most readers wouldn't know the difference between Botswana speech patterns and Togolese. I need to re-read the #1 Ladies Detective Agency book with accent in mind.

Does anyone know of any good literature set in West Africa (preferably Ghana, Togo or Benin?)

[michaelsnyder]

Let me first say that I've not read any of these titles. But a quick amazon search netted the following:

Hustling Is Not Stealing by John Chernoff

No Sweetnes Here (and other stories)
Changes
(several other titles) All by Ama Ata Aidoo

12 Days In Ghana by James Gaines

You may want to noodle around on amazon for a more extensive list. Then, if it were me, I'd head off to the library (cuz I'm cheap...unless I know the author!)

Mike