: Re: Writing accented dialog guides? I was wondering if anyone was aware of a quality guide or text translator that would allow for realistic accented dialog speech? Say I wanted to write a character

@Correia211

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Focus on

words
phrasing

Most readers find reading dialog that contains accent very annoying.
There are many words that are regional.
For example, if I read one sentence like the following, I figure it is a British person speaking.
"I'm going to go to the pub, whilst you finish up your work."
This makes for much better reading.
Just read a couple of sentences from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and I'm sure you'll agree that reading accented dialog gets old quick.

But it didn’t budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says:
“De man ain’t asleep—he’s dead. You hold still—I’ll go en see.”
He went, and
bent down and looked, and says:
“It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy;
naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I reck’n he’s ben dead two er
three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face—it’s too
gashly.”

However, there is also, an example of phrasing and word use in Huckleberry Finn that shows how that can be employed while still allowing the reading to be smooth.

I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the
island that I’d found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got
to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a
mile wide. This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about
forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was
so steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all
over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to
the top on the side towards Illinois.

That's much more readable (makes the reader stop and work things out much less) but still provides the reader with the regional feel of Huck's dialog.
If you concentrate on the words used and creating phrasing -- sentence length etc. you'll see that your dialog will be very readable and enjoyable for the reader and yet still convey the regional flare.

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