Writing in a language that is not your own

[Bluma Bezbroda]

The title of the thread is a bit pawky, as, being an anarchist, I consider all languages (and countries) to be my own But, jokes aside:

English is not my mother tongue, as you might have noticed in my previous posts. But, of course, I write in English- otherwise I wouldn’t be on this page. Now, one of the comments I got concerning my writing and writing plans was “Why do you do this to yourself?” meaning, that it is difficult/impossible to obtain a decent result when writing in a language that is foreign to you. Generally, at this point I should probably just admit that it’s a stupid choice, and that one should write in a language that they know the best and are most comfortable with. But, that’s the thing- I’m much more comfortable with English. I know it’s quite a lame argument, in the aspect of writing quality at least, but I have a few more solid ones up my sleeve as well.

• I learned English pretty early in life (before I was 10) and used it as much as I could since then
  
  
• Since 5 years I English is my work language
  
  
• I write in English, professionally, for more than 8 years now, it being the accepted language of science
  
  
• Read almost all books in English
  
  
• For God sake, I even talk English with my partner, even though I know Dutch (It’s apparently some psychological quirk- the language in which you “met” the person is most likely to stick between you forever)
  
  
• The setting of the piece I wrote is very international, hence it’s logical that the characters would communicate in that language
  

So, what do you think? Maybe you have experience in “voicing yourselves” (yes, I know, that’s not really idiomatic ) in a language of not your own?

 

[Jason Byrne]

You have no idea the extent of my compulsion for research, and you didn't tell us what your native language is! You say you know Dutch, but you don't say that it's your native language. So... I'm going to risk a different guess... maybe your native language is Polish? Hebrew?

The last book I worked on was about a knight on a quest across the 12th-century world, which involved writing dialogue in German, Hungarian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Danish, Lithuanian, Arabic, Swahili, and dialects of San bushman click language, including Ju|'Hoansi and Khoekhoe. None of which I speak. I got a crash course in Arabic and learned that it's impossible to get a crash course in Arabic, and am trying to get help in checking over as many of the languages as I can for accuracy, but it's very difficult.

 

[KG Christopher]

I write in Spanish and English.

My WIP is english, but it's set in a latin context, so a lot of the place names, characters, turns of phrase are spanish.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Idiom...you hit the nail on the head, Bluma. Your English is excellent but your idiom is foreign, and perhaps that might have editorial implications for the English fiction market.

 

[Bluma Bezbroda]

@Jason Byrne Both your guesses are right, as I am a Polish Jew I don't speak Hebrew, though. But I'm trying to learn some yiddish

 

[Jason Byrne]

@Jason Byrne Both your guesses are right, as I am a Polish Jew I don't speak Hebrew, though. But I'm trying to learn some yiddish

Yiddish is like the most awesome thing ever. That and Gaelic — I love them!

 

[Jason Byrne]

I write in Spanish and English.

My WIP is english, but it's set in a latin context, so a lot of the place names, characters, turns of phrase are spanish.

I did a zombie story set in the 80s, with elements of the drug culture of Little Havana in Miami; there was some Spanish in that. And French, for the parts in Haiti.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I've had a few unforeseen problems with my WIP, which is turning into a Tower of Babel. I'm deliberately not writing a lot of dialogue, but my psychological thriller features a French detective and criminal, illegal immigrants who are being trafficked from Afghanistan (Pashto and Dari speakers), an Algerian truck driver who speaks Berber and to add to the fun, I've just included a plot twist that sees two of the criminal gang in Cornwall speaking the Cornish language to conceal their actions. This is one of the Gallic group of languages, which includes Gaelic and Breton, and though it was revived in the 20th century after almost becoming extinct, only about 500 people speak it fluently.

I'm glad that I thought to include it, as it adds to the atmosphere I'm striving for in creating stories with a strong sense of location. It also has a precedent, which I have my detective hero refer to, of the code talkers used in world wars. These used little-known Native American tribal languages to communicate secretly.

I also have witnesses to one of the crimes from the U.S.A. and Australia. I lived in Atlanta for three years, so am familiar with American speech patterns and colloquialisms. My Austrian character is a surfer, and though I know that world from living near Newquay (the U.K.'s main surfing area), my beta-reader down in Christchurch, New Zealand offered me some useful tips on phrasing.

It's important to get things right with foreign languages, and though characters ought to sound like a reader expects of someone coming from that country, one shouldn't stray into writing clichéd representations. This potentially includes the problem of conveying foreigners' pronunciation of English words, through the use of phonetic nonstandard spelling to convey their accents and dialect words. One could be accused of stereotyping, racism and presenting flimsy caricatures by doing this.

It's a thorny problem, more pronounced with political correctness in the modern era. It wasn't always this way, and Margaret Mitchell used nonstandard spellings for the speech of her black characters in Gone With The Wind, while her white characters language was rendered in standard spelling. From having lived in Georgia, I know that phonetically white and black pronunciation of words is similar enough not to be remarked upon.

 

[Bluma Bezbroda]

I've had a few unforeseen problems with my WIP, which is turning into a Tower of Babel. I'm deliberately not writing a lot of dialogue, but my psychological thriller features a French detective and criminal, illegal immigrants who are being trafficked from Afghanistan (Pashto and Dari speakers), an Algerian truck driver who speaks Berber and to add to the fun, I've just included a plot twist that sees two of the criminal gang in Cornwall speaking the Cornish language to conceal their actions. This is one of the Gallic group of languages, which includes Gaelic and Breton, and though it was revived in the 20th century after almost becoming extinct, only about 500 people speak it fluently.

I'm glad that I thought to include it, as it adds to the atmosphere I'm striving for in creating stories with a strong sense of location. It also has a precedent, which I have my detective hero refer to, of the code talkers used in world wars. These used little-known Native American tribal languages to communicate secretly.

I also have witnesses to one of the crimes from the U.S.A. and Australia. I lived in Atlanta for three years, so am familiar with American speech patterns and colloquialisms. My Austrian character is a surfer, and though I know that world from living near Newquay (the U.K.'s main surfing area), my beta-reader down in Christchurch, New Zealand offered me some useful tips on phrasing.

It's important to get things right with foreign languages, and though characters ought to sound like a reader expects of someone coming from that country, one shouldn't stray into writing clichéd representations. This potentially includes the problem of conveying foreigners' pronunciation of English words, through the use of phonetic nonstandard spelling to convey their accents and dialect words. One could be accused of stereotyping, racism and presenting flimsy caricatures by doing this.

It's a thorny problem, more pronounced with political correctness in the modern era. It wasn't always this way, and Margaret Mitchell used nonstandard spellings for the speech of her black characters in Gone With The Wind, while her white characters language was rendered in standard spelling. From having lived in Georgia, I know that phonetically white and black pronunciation of words is similar enough not to be remarked upon.

I actually play around a bit with these clichés. One of my characters is Dutch, so I didn't spare him a name that no non-Dutch person could ever pronounce properly, made a bit of fun of language peculiarities ("The time? It's ten-after-thirty-to-eleven"), and of course how here you say "Yay-zus" when you invoke the son of God To my defense, I treat all my characters in a similar way

I remember reading a review of J.S. Foer's "Everything is Illuminated", in The Guardian I think, where the reviewer was shocked by the way how Foer presented his Ukrainian hero's English skills. I don't know if you read the book- Alex, the character in question, is using "illuminated" instead of "clarified", "famous discotheque" for "night club" and so on, putting all kinds of bizarre and old-fashioned words into his narrative. The author of the article thought it disgustingly condescending and xenophobic. I, on my part, was laughing my guts out and admiring Foer's skill, because this is exactly what you can expect from a Eastern-European who doesn't have a lot of practice in English. We learn (or at least used to) from outdated text books. We get very little conversation practice and a lot of grammar exercise. So, in the end, you get people who, if the want to speak/write English, have to rely on dictionaries or google translate, without knowing that a word is not appropriate in some context or that it is simply out of use.

 

[Jason Byrne]

I actually play around a bit with these clichés. One of my characters is Dutch, so I didn't spare him a name that no non-Dutch person could ever pronounce properly, made a bit of fun of language peculiarities ("The time? It's ten-after-thirty-to-eleven"), and of course how here you say "Yay-zus" when you invoke the son of God To my defense, I treat all my characters in a similar way

I remember reading a review of J.S. Foer's "Everything is Illuminated", in The Guardian I think, where the reviewer was shocked by the way how Foer presented his Ukrainian hero's English skills. I don't know if you read the book- Alex, the character in question, is using "illuminated" instead of "clarified", "famous discotheque" for "night club" and so on, putting all kinds of bizarre and old-fashioned words into his narrative. The author of the article thought it disgustingly condescending and xenophobic. I, on my part, was laughing my guts out and admiring Foer's skill, because this is exactly what you can expect from a Eastern-European who doesn't have a lot of practice in English. We learn (or at least used to) from outdated text books. We get very little conversation practice and a lot of grammar exercise. So, in the end, you get people who, if the want to speak/write English, have to rely on dictionaries or google translate, without knowing that a word is not appropriate in some context or that it is simply out of use.

Haha, "we loves the Shakweel O'Neil!"

 

[Amber Zade]

What is, 'Something I would not do'!

This is a jeopardy question right?

P.S. I don't speak two languages, you obviously do ... and speak/write English very well.

 

[Bluma Bezbroda]

@Amber Zade and @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine Thank you I speak well, I think, but with a tremenddous accent, which, in English, is immidiatelly noticable. In my Dutch what saves me is that Holland has a ridiculous amount of dialects, for such a small country anyway. So people just assume I'm from some village in Zeeland (at this point I can easily pass for Flemmish).

I have a strong suspicion that different languages work better for different things. Dutch is a truely beautiful language to listen to, but in writing it strikes me as a bit dull. Polish is extreamly expressive (that's why we always seem angry when we're talking). And English I find fantastic for dialougues, esspecially casual ones- because its easy, it just flows, and there is a wide choice of slang/jargon to be used that will be easily recognized by everyone.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Yer talking of slang, I caught myself yesterday. Stopped at a set of lights, I knew the car on the right waiting to do a left turn would soon get the green arrow. He did, and sat there! Three times the car behind him tooted, before he (or she) realised. I said, "Goose head." I've since written that down for future use

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I sometimes write in Spanish, as I'm fluent (or was...not much call to use it in NZ, though I do my best to keep it fresh). I think that once you're fluent in more than one language, it becomes difficult to stick to just one. There are some things that are just better expressed in Spanish than in English. I enjoy setting stories in places where I can use both languages.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

My psychological thrillers are set in Cornwall, which has its own language as well as lots of strong local expressions. When I first moved to the county back in 1988, I thought that strangers were unusually forthcoming in their praise of my appearance, as I was called 'my handsome' a lot.

I later found out that this is just a salutation, in the same way that 'my bird' is used to show friendliness—with no proprietorial or stuck in the 1960s vibe intended. I've wrestled a bit with how much to include such quaint colloquialisms in my novel. It adds to the sense of place, but too much of it would entail footnotes or hyperlinks to explain what the hell the character is trying to say.

My beta reader, down in Christchurch, New Zealand knows the U.K. well, having worked here for many years, and she commented that my narrative would benefit from having greater diversity of speech patterns for my various characters. She thought that they all sounded a bit like they were university educated posh and polite, and that a few rough and ready and tongue-tied oafs might add to the realism.

I agreed with her, so took the plunge at the weekend, editing how a low-life, junkie police informant spoke, and also introducing a couple of elderly witnesses who are proper Cornish and say things like:

"Wasson my 'andsome?" (What's happening kind stranger?)
"I'll do that dreckly." (I'll do that directly—though with more of an edge to it, as in 'when I feel like it'.)
"They'm be tupping one another." (They've been making love—from tup used as an old name for a ram.)

Not so much lost in translation, more immersed in dialect I write on....

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Do they call you THIS too, Paul....

Listen here:

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Do they call you THIS too, Paul....

Listen here:

What good fun! Dunno if I'm Good, Bad or Ugly—though I have been known as The Man With No Brain....

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Do they call you 'my lover,' like she does in that?

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Do they call you 'my lover,' like she does in that?

It's been known—what with my lover, my bird and my handsome, Cornwall comes across as an affectionate place. On the other hand, there's insults such as tuss, which actually means 'erection', and is used when someone is being a silly prick!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I'll remember that one. Heh.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

I have done this once, when my characters went to France. Luckily I knew someone in Canada who spoke French so I had him check my google translation, and it was about 90% correct.