I also think 'divvent know' is silly. Either go with all dialect like Irvine Welsh, or none at all.

Maybe you're right. Just local words, expressions and rhythms then, perhaps?

Deb

I think if you have to write it, then "divvent knaa" would be okay, but an even more phonetic "divvent naah" might read easier. And sometimes it's worth trailing through the phonetics to figure out the puzzle - I think it must come down to how familiar the accent is to the person, so they realise the phonetic sounds they are reading are turning magically into an accent, mainly because it worked superbly for me as a reader in The Bridge by Iain Banks, where the accent was Glaswegian, but didn't work at all in The Book of Dave by Will Self, where the accent was cockney.

I'd certainly recommend a look at the bridge for how this can be used to the extreme - only a few chapters mind, but you'll spot them immediately. And oddly enough, some of the strongest scenes in the novel - and the parrot being one of his most memorable characters

I've come back to straight English, with just rhythms to faintly suggest dialect. How far do you take it though? When I grew up no one ever referred to a cigarette as a fag it was a tab. Standardising everything loses the flavour of the place which is one of the prompts for setting it there.

Dee I'm from Newcastle and I've never said divvent either. But none of the lads I was at school with ever said don't. it was more a gender thing.

Not sure Colin that Geordies don't write divvent etc. I think there's quite a broad use of dialect where the language is distinctively different form standard english. I've seen haddaway and stuff like that in print. Might take a look at the script of Our Friends in the North. I know it wasn't written to be read on the page, but it might be a good guide... I haven't read The Bridge but will take a look - thanks for the tip - I was thinking of looking at Crow Road to see how Banks handles it.

But it still puzzles me why it is so very intrusive in some authors but not in others. I was once in a production of Pygmalion and we had to rewrite all the cockney in straight English to decode it and make it performable as the accent has shifted so much since Shaw's day.

How come Irvine Shaw succeeds? And James Kelman?

I once heard Finnegan's Wake read by someone with the precise Irish accent in which Joyce wrote it and it was like a veil being lifted from the prose. it was suddenly understandable. Extraordinary. I know the extreme example I gave is unreadable. Would love to find the balance though...

Cherys, I would definitely advise you use 'tab' not 'fag' if that's what they'd say. Regional colloqualisms are what can give such a flavour without being hard to read. Like 'mardy'. If some readers aren't familiar with the words then they'll pick them up, as you do if you meet someone who uses words you don't use yourself.

Deb

You could use 'tab' in dialogue, so long as in the prose you say, eg, 'she passed the pack of cigarettes', so those readers of non-geordie extraction can understand what's going on. Some readers would assume she'd placed an 'Extacy tab' in her mouth.

- NaomiM

I think heavy dialect only really works well when it pervades the whole book - the narrator's voice as well as the dialogue itself - to the extent that the reader is completely immersed in that voice & forced to interpret the world the book inhabits through it. E.g. in Trainspotting the dialect is used from the very start without distinction between Renton's inner voice and the voices that come through in dialogue. It's totally pervasive and, although initially difficult, becomes much easier as you get deeper into the characters' world.

Dialect is harder to accept when the narrative is in standard English & the dialect only used in dialogue - that way the reader is constantly being asked to switch between the two & is never fully immersed in an idiosyncratic voice.

That's an excellent point RJH.

Has anyone read Buddha Da by Anne Donovan? That appears to be written entirely in dialect. I opened it, and put it down straight away – too scary!

Dee