Thread: Finnegan's Wake, Wuthering Heights, Trainspotting...

And other books that use dialect.

Do you reckon these books suffer from not using proper English or do you think the use of dialect helps the reader understand the characters or book in any way?

Can't find your way to the lounge at this time of day! Amber Leaf, what are you drinking?

I think the answer is Yes to the second part. The dialect/vernacular is essential to the story.

Wuthering bored me stupid back in high school. Never read Finnegan. I've enjoyed all of Welsh's I've read, but his dialect and c-bomb every 4th or 5th word makes them slow reading. Strong phonetically spelled dialect forces me to translate everything to hearing it and then again to understand, so even slower than listening to prose being read aloud. Most good writing has a strong voice, and so some dialect of sorts. Read Wallace's Infinite Jest. Tons of dialect.

Amber Leaf, what are you drinking?

Hehe... probably more to do with what I was smoking.

Chris - you're right about it taking longer to translate dialect within a story.

In a way, I think it is a shame that dialect can't be used as much in places that require standard English. It would be nice to hear/read the dialect of English speaking people around the world rather than them all having to conform to 'proper' English.

It's a lot easier to communicate in standard, of course, but as an avid reader I would like the challenge of getting a deeper understanding of dialectical differences around the world.

Afterall, not many people speak 'proper' English all the time. Language is addapted to certain interactions with other people. It is a blend of several languages to start with and I find it interesting how it has changed over the years to become how it is now and also, where it could potentially go in the future.

I kind of really hope that we'll not all start speaking the same standard English without reginal differences. It's the differences that keep us going I reckon.

The first book which I remember seeing non-standard English in, at least partly, was D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. The way the father talked, as if it could be called that, was highly irritating at times, though it did really hammer home how stupid, callous and ignorant he was, especially when juxtaposed to their well-read sons, and higher station wife.

I like it when a writer writes dialogue that involves little to no "misspellings." It's possible to capture language without having to twisting it around to accommodate the words as they're pronounced. For example, I can picture one of my neighbors saying, "She ain't never said nothin like that. Where you get that from? I swear if you go 'round sayin stuff like that there, somebody's gon have to kick your *ss." A person who speaks or is familiar with USA/black English will catch the flavor easily, and the other readers aren't forced to sound out the unfamiliar-sounding dialogue while trying to figure out what the character is saying.

I can imagine someone else writing the dialogue this way: "She ain't nevah said nuthin' like dat. Where you git dat from? I swear if you go 'roun' sayin' stuff like dat dere, sumbody's gon' hafta kick yo' *ss." Taken too far, dialogue like this can get very minstrelsy, in my opinion.

When I was a little kid, I was given some really old kiddy books, one of which was a Bobbsey Twins book from the 1930s. The dialogue for the black cook was so bad that I couldn't figure what she was saying. I thought something was seriously wrong with her and didn't realize until many years later that the writer had been trying to write black dialect. I'm familiar with many black dialects, but not with the one depicted in the Bobbsey Twins books, LOL!

Finnegan's Wake just suffers, or rather, the reader does...