----- Original Message ----- From: <
Scatalogic@aol.com>
> One gripe I had, and something that might be worth
discussion was the
phoenetic spelling of dialect/heavily accented speech In
Christopher Brookmyre's, otherwise excellent story. I found
it really interrupted the flow. At what stage is it
necessary/acceptable to render speech like this? Is it not
enough to tell us that the characters have strong Scottish
accents?
I don't know which story you're referring to, Colin, but I
have read a lot of Brookmyre, so I know what you mean. For
anyone who wants an example, the following link has the story
that kick-started Brookmyre's career, "Bampot Central", in
full. Every year during August the population of Edinburgh
trebles as tourists arrive for the Festival. Against this
festive backdrop Brookmyre relates the story of a pair of
grossly incompetent armed robbers trying to rob a post
office. I suspect, although I hope I'm wrong, that most of
you will find the dialogue difficult. I've compiled a list
of
(hopefully) helpful explanations of some of the words/phrase
in the order in which they appear. http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/bampot.htm
bampot: lunatic dowt: cigarette butt Morningside: area of
Edinburgh traditionally inhabited by posh, Tory-voting, old
ladies numpties: idiots tube: idiot cawin': calling (in
Glaswegian, "ll" becomes "w". Ball=baw, all=aw) Billy McNeil:
Member of the Celtic football team which won the European Cup
in 1967 - the only Scottish team to have done so.
Subsequently became manager of Celtic, among others and is
now an occasional TV football pundit. polis: police plods:
policemen ken: know fae: from don't gie's it (literally,
don't give us it): you're talking rubbish hen: term of
endearment appended to the end of a sentence yous: the plural
of you, as I believe Hammett once pointed out gaunny: going
to nawrat: and all that ower: over staun: stand shoap: shop
naw: no nane: none heid-the-baws (literally, head the balls):
idiots baith: both (often, long O is pronounced ai: other
examples most=maist, floor=flair, more=mair) wan: one n'arse:
fucking arse burd : bird, used as derogatory term for woman
dug: dog wur: our eejit: idiot mobile phone: cell phone
Colin's two questions. The first was: is it (phonetically
transcripted speech) necessary? That's hard to answer, so
I'll come back to it. The second was, is it not enough to
tell us that the characters have strong Scottish accents?
That's much easier to answer. No. There's no such thing as a
strong Scottish accent. For me, at least, such a statement
would make the story instantly unbelievable and obviously
written by a non-Scot
(imagine a novel set in Liverpool where the author stated
that the characters had strong English accents, or in Texas
with characters speaking with strong American accents) For
others, I suspect, such a statement
(strong Scottish accent) would create a "Scotty" from Star
Trek or Mel Gibson from Braveheart accent that only exists in
television and the movies. Even if the author were more
specific, it still wouldn't work. For instance, describing
the characters as having strong Glaswegian accents is
unlikely to convey anything at all to most of the people on
this list. During the course of "Bampot Central" Brookmyre
never mentions the robbers are from Glasgow, but he doesn't
have to. The phonetic spelling gives it away pretty
quickly.
Joy mentioned that phonetically-wrtten speech has a
"demeaning effect on the speaker." This is Broomyre's intent.
Parlabane, the character who observes and relates "Bampot
Central" is intelligent. His speech is written in standard
English. The robbers are "clowns" and their speech is written
phonetically. It's unsubtle, but so is Brookmyre. Which is
one of the reasons that I like him. When I want subtlety I
read Jane Austen.
Back to the first question: is it necessary? In "Sanctuary",
William Faulkner spells dog, "dawg" early on. I don't think
anyone would question him doing this, perhaps because more
people can recognise a Southern drawl than can recognise a
Glaswegian gibber (dog would be "dug"). Should Brookmyre's
writing style be limited by his ethnicity? I think it's a sad
day if the answer is yes. Still, it's a brave choice he
makes. He must be aware that he is alienating a large chunk
of his potential readership. On the other hand, his ear for
accents might be the reason why his Scottish sales are
colossal. Whatever, the end result is that he has written
some very entertaining, very funny, very black, very Scottish
books. Even if only a few of us can understand them.
Al Guthrie
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 18 Jun 2002 EDT