Hi! I thought i would try dialogue now using different accents.
As I stepped out of the airport and onto the dusty, brown, foreign land, I was welcomed with open arms, "Awlrayt mayt ow was yowr floite?" It took me a second or two to realise what she was asking me. "Aye it wiz really good, dead relaxin'!" I replied as i noticed the look on her face it seemed as though she did not quite understand me either.
"Roite then 'op in the ca' and ai'l show you where you'll be stayin'!" she said as she gestured towards the car door. As i climbed inside, i wondered how long it would take to finally understand her without having to think about it.
L.P
6 comments:
You've done a good job on the accent - which I'm hearing in my head as Irish - right?
However, I'm wondering what an Irish person is doing in a "dusty, brown land" - 'cos Ireland's green and damp, just like home! So if we're in further off parts, you would want to make some comment on that, I think.
Watch your typos - a lot of lower-case "i"s for the first person singular.
There should be a full stop after "arms" - it's the end of a sentence. You need a new line when the narrator starts speaking - new line for a new speaker, and another full stop or a dash after "face".
Read what SS and I have been saying about split infinitives. You have one in the last sentence. Can you see it?
Now that's interesting. In my head I didn't hear Irish, I got a Dick Van Dyke style cockney... but London is hardly "dusty, brown" either.
On reading it again, after seeing Chris' comments, I've decided it's Australian.
On the upside, you have avoided stereotypes that would give it away and make it sound false at the same time. A "begorra" or a "cobber" in a sentence would have done the trick. :-)
I also like the way you try to show the effect of the Scottish speaker's accent on the other person. (Sheila or Coleen?)
Now, I have to boldly go and get back to preparing an online questionnaire. -- Did you see what I did there? :-)
I agree with David that it's Aussie. The dusty brown land was the clue I picked up on, plus the lack of rolled 'r'.
And speaking of clues, I liked the way you used the person's facial expression to indicate her lack of comprehension. Good one.
A good trick to use if you want to give the impression of a really impenetrable accent is to run all the words together. Stanley Baxter used to do it wonderfully in his 'Parliamo Glesca' sketches. Just a thought.
David, the Teens may not know a split infinitive when they see one, but I do! and they give me a pain - just *here*!
Thanks for your comments although I am not sure what is meant by a split infinitive. Yes it was meant to be an australian accent, glad that you were able to pick up on that.
"To boldly go" is possibly the best known split infinitive in the modern (fairly modern) world. The infinitive verb "to go" has been split by inserting the adverb "boldly" in between its two component parts. It is possible in English because infinitives *have* two words; in other languages - french, latin - there is only one word and you can't split it (French "aller"; Latin "ire") Dinosaurs like me prefer to put the adverb elsewhere.
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