Here's my suggestion: Why not replace the word 'the' with an apostrophe? That's a punctuation mark which is conventionally used to denote missing letters, so why not a complete missing word? So instead of writing something like:

"I was on my way to the shop when I saw Margaret."

You could write:

"I was on my way to ' shop when I saw Margaret."

This might be enough to hint at the glottal nature of 'the' in the accent, and I reckon most readers would get it eventually (especially if you found a way of saying that it's a Yorkshire accent, when this character is first introduced). It would certainly avoid the stereotyped dialect, and would also avoid letting readers think the person was Russian or something.

(I, too, dislike the use of dialect spellings in books. Dickens went to town a bit with it, in Hard Times, and the accent didn't even read like a genuine one. Who says 'mun' to mean 'must'?)


Alex

Could you not do "ont bus" and "tut pub" ?

I'm from S.Y. " Went out wi a girl from Donnie years back. She were rait posh though and didn't speak owt like that. F*cking gorgeous she were an all."

Don't get me rambling or reminiscing , but I am happy to translate for a bit until you get the hang of it.

Who says 'mun' to mean 'must'?

It was very common where I grew up a hundred years ago. As was thee and thou.

where I grew up a hundred years ago

Happy birthday. Shall I phone Buckingham Palace?

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Therein lies another danger of trying to write dialect phonetically. If accents/conventions change, the writing becomes dated and possibly unconvincing. I'd never heard anyone say 'mun', so Dickens' rendition of the accent was unconvincing when I read it.

No, they do still in East Lancs, I promise you.

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and the negative is 'munt'.

'Old' people still "thee" and "thou" here as well.

I'm sure Dickin in The Secret Garden says Thee and Mun a lot.

"Tha mun turn tha soil Miss Mary, if tha want te see t'plants graw"

and all that malarky.

Wuthering Heights is a good lesson how NOT to do dialect in my opinion. I'm sure it's phonetically very good and all, but I skipped all of Nelly's sections when I first read it. Totally impenetrable for a 12 year old. Story didn't suffer much without those bits in my opinion

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I made that "quote" up by the way so please don't blame Frances Hodgson Burnett. Is there an opposite of plagiarism, ie falsely attributing crap to an unsuspecting author?

Actually, I think Terry Pratchett handles dialect pretty well, on the occasions when his characters seem to have accents. For example, I always think of Granny Weatherwax as having a Hampshire/West Country accent, simply because she uses phrases that my first wife's Mum (from Southampton) used to use (e.g. using the third person form of a verb - 'likes' - for a first person subject).

Ross Raisin pulls it off to marvellous effect in God's Own Country.

Just to add my vote to not writing phonetically. Unless the reader is in the habit of reading aloud it slows down reading time as you try to work out what the character is actually saying.
I was reading an historical novel recently, set in the Appalacians, USA, and the characters just used one word colloquially (don't have the book to hand so can't give an example) but it was very effective.
Unless you're doing another Trainspotting, less is more.

Unless you're doing another Trainspotting, less is more.

I quite agree - I think I'll take Flora's advice and try omitting some but not all and see how it flows. I also like the apostrophe idea Alex - might try that too. I'll end up with a hundred different versions at this rate, but at least it'll give the Bodleian Library something to catalogue when I leave them all my papers
PS - when i worked in a bookshop, someone came into one of the other branches and asked if we had 'the English edition' of Trainspotting...

That reminds me of the story I heard in the media, a year or so ago, about a translation company offering interpreters for Glaswegian English. It put me in mind of those two black guys in Airplane!, whose dialogue had subtitles.

Stanley Baxter, of course, has been offering a similar service for a number of years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0rgETg2Hoo

A quick delve into Stan Barstow's 'A Kind of Loving' turned up no 't or similar. He does use a smattering of 'aye's, the odd 'allus' for always and I noted the use of 'skinny' for mean with money.

But, does he fail to convey the Yorkshire manner of style and speech? Does 'e 'eck as like.

I did once see a photo of a roadside sign that read 'Tek Care Sheep On't Road', but that may have been the farmer taking the piss.

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Ah, have just found a section that is written in dialect. Here's a sample:

'Because we believe in having t'best there is,' the Old Feller says.
'But is there no typically Yorkshire architecture?'
'Aye, Collinson's mill,' the Old Man says, grinning. He points. 'That one wi' t'biggest chimney o' t'lot.
David smiles. 'Well, I must admit that the West Riding isn't as bad as it's painted. I've been pleasantly surprised since living here.'
'It's not everybody's cup o' tea, the Old Man admits. Some fowk like summat a bit . . . well, softer, if you know what I mean . . .'

But this is reserved for an old Yorkshireman, I guess to mark him out as kind of 'old school' Yorkshire.

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The underline was supposed to be for 'softer' only. Sigh.

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God, this is like trying to get chewing gum off your shoe. And, actually it was supposed to be italicised. More sigh.