Around the World in 80 Books discussion

Hi All...I'm interested to know how authors treat, and readers interpret dialogue of international characters.

In my debut novel the protagonist is American, but most of the other key characters are Hungarian and/or Russian. In an attempt to create realism, I purposely wrote the grammar incorrectly in a percentage of the dialogue associated with these characters.

I assume readers understand the point behind the incorrect grammar and not interpret it as an author screw up? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Maurice

Maurice wrote: "Hi All...I'm interested to know how authors treat, and readers interpret dialogue of international characters.

In my debut novel the protagonist is American, but most of the other key characters ..."

I don't know if unsolicited advice from a language teacher will help you but I can offer you some insight. People uconscious of how language learning works and how challanging it is at times can perceive speakers' mistakes and inarticularity as signs of stupidity. I think that you should stress the linguistic and cultural barriers between characters of your book as long and as much as they matter unless you do it for comic purposes.

There are a lot of examples of conversations between people of different nationalities and linguistic backgrounds in books. A lot of it is colonialist literature which shows patronising (and at times racist) attitudes. I believe you should be careful not to walk into this trap. Alexandria in "Alexandria Quartet" by Lawrence Durrell is a very good example of a multi-cultural society on paper. In the novel you can see that all the European characters speak as if their speech was completely flawless with an exception of some Italians who are funny speaking. Author's attitude to Arabs is very orientalist.

A lot also depends on how linguistically conscious you want your novel to be. If you find the whole issue to be an obstacle don't bother to make their speech look like that of native speakers of Russian/Hungarian. It's important that all the characters that matter are taken seriously by readers (again except for those characters/situations designed for comic purposes).
I hope my comment was somewhat useful or at least not entirely boring.

Good luck with your debut novel!
Olga.

Thanks so much Olga for your thoughtful and well made comments. The protagonist in the novel often voices his amazement at how well Hungarians knew and spoke the English language. The setting takes place in Budapest in 1991. I don't believe the tone of the dialogue I wrote portrayed any of the characters in a derogatory way, but this is a great point to consider.

If you have time to take a look, I have posted an excerpt from the book on my website. There are two scenes with this kind of dialogue. One with a cab driver and the other with a maid. As you get further in the book, the majority of the intl characters are more educated and sophisticated. I am still tweaking my site and haven't promoted it yet. Most of the social media links are not functional(only Pinterest on home page and Goodreads links). I hope to have this all cleaned up by Monday. So here is the link:

http://www.mauricegmiller.com/#!excer...

Thanks Again!
Maurice

Thanks Kate for taking a look and your feedback. I did use the phonetics once for the word Utca, which is "street" in Hungarian. It is pronounced oot-sa , which is not as obvious as most of the other Hungarian words I use.

I kind of take the same POV as you do with regard to "what one would really hear."

Best,
Maurice

I chose "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by, Zora Neale Hurston as my selection for our local book club. I had already read the book, therefore, I was so sure that the group would be as captivated by the rich complexity of the characters and writing. Unfortunately, not a single person read past the first few chapters. Some folks get it, some just don't. Best wishes to you.

I personally think it's unrealistic when characters speak a second language perfectly, especially when they're just learning it. In movies, people often have thick accents but perfect grammar and vast vocabulary. It's unrealistic.

On the other hand, there's always that danger of making characters look stupid. I lived for a while in the Czech Republic, and my sort-of landlords didn't speak any English. My Czech is sometimes quite functional, but simplistic and ALWAYS grammatically incorrect because of the nature of Czech grammar. I probably sound like an idiot to them, since they have little experience with foreigners. And I really do think it's influenced their opinion of my intelligence, because the sweet old man is always so surprised and complimentary when he learns I can do things like shoveling snow and cooking beans and catching buses. So I understand not wanting to make your characters seem like idiots.

Not sure what the best solution is.

I generally insert some errors into my non-native speakers' speech, or include times when they have to fish around for a word or circumlocute ("you know, the thing for killing flies"). Sometimes, with beginning speakers, it might work better to narrate some of the conversation, even though that's generally a no-no.