That example isn't trying to say that Kennedy pronounced it wrong. It's saying he SPELLED it wrong when he wrote it down on his note so that he (as an English-speaker) would remember roughly how to pronounce it, which is exactly what this trope is about.
But is he a CUTE evil overlord?
Why?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I have a character who has an accent, but I don't particularly like using this trope (it is always a pain to read this kind of dialogue, which is confusing and tedious to figure out). I don't want to make her speaking lines unbearable, but I don't want to fall into an Informed Attribute. Any suggestions?
There's no question that "Gone with the Wind" is condescending to blacks and poor whites, but the accent of the educated white slave owners would have been quite different and much closer to that of Margaret Mitchell's readers, hence it is not reproduced phonetically.
I want to add Sam Shepard to the Theatre section but I'm having trouble discerning just what kind of accent his plays are written in.
Edited by IantheGecko
There maybe should be a distinction between Funetik Aksent and dialect. Someone can be portrayed with an accent by using that dialect's standard spelling rules; this is not the same as just spelling everything phonetically. For example, in Scots dialect the word "head" is spelled "heid" and pronounced "heed".
Burns' poetry is written in standard Scots spelling and is not a Funetik Aksent. Some modern writers such as Iain Banks and Irvine Welsh prefer to write using a Funetik Aksent (or so says wikipedia).
Of course the line is a blurry one, and standard Scots spelling is not as set in stone as standard English spelling. Nevertheless, it's a Funetik Aksent is more than just somebody who talks funny.
Heavy reader, but I've never edited a page, so I'd be keen on discussing a suggestion rather than adding it outright.
I think we need to add "Lady Chatterley's Lover" to the Literature section of the examples in this page. Oliver Mellors, the main love interest specifically, has an accent acknowledged by Constance Chatterly constantly as a symbol of his lower blood. It also SERIOUSLY reduces the reading comprehension of the audience. Here's a quote to demonstrate, though it'd obviously have to be cut down in order to list as an example...
" 'Tha mun come to the cottage one time,' he said, 'shall ta? We might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.'
It puzzled her, his queer, persistent wanting her, when there was nothing between them, when he never really spoke to her, and in spite of herself she resented the dialect. His "tha mun come" seemed not addressed to her, but some common woman. She recognized the foxglove leaves of the riding and knew, more or less, where they were. "
Edited by wrenny Hide / Show Replies
"When John F. Kennedy held his speech at the Berlin Wall, he had a note with the foreign language sentences: "Ish bin ein Bearleener" and "kiwis Romanus sum". Correct German and Latin spelling is "Ich bin ein Berliner" and "Civis Romanus sum"."
Whoever wrote this knows little to nothing about Latin. The Latin letter "c" is NEVER EVER pronounced as "s". EVER. So he pronounced it correctly.
Edited by aartbastiaan Hide / Show Replies