Conrad managed it with word order and syntax alone. See Stein in Lord Jim.
A suggestion goes a long way to stir the reader's memory of a familiar
dialect.
Lallans or Glasgow orthography is another matter--a challange to the
primacy of the south as much as a representation of dialect.
At 07:56 AM 1/5/2001 +0800, Andrew Burke wrote:
>Robin - I certainly preferred the first version. I read it without
>stumbling, and then found the second version too much a mixture of the
>plain and the dialect - Go for broke, and trust your reader.
>
>In my own case, I have unfortunately tried to change an Anglo-Australian
>into a mid-European immigrant in a short story, and ended with a laughable
>parody of their accent. Robert Penn Warren had a really good way with this:
>I think a lot of it goes into the careful listening first, then the
>integrity of the portrayal. I am listening closely these days to Vietnamese
>English, Chinese English, and Indian English. Very different, I can assure
>you! But writing it down successfully escapes me.
>
>Andrew
>
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