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Topic : Re: Is it confusing for the reader to encounter in a novel the same language written with two different letters? Tamazight language as an example I'm writing a fictional novel in English and I - selfpublishingguru.com

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I’d be very wary of using non-Latin script in an English-language book. Just having non-English words or phrases can be offputting to readers (I'm guilty of this a lot, I must admit. My novel for my MFA included snippets of dialog in three languages besides English and my current novel has four). I've had readers indicate that whenever they come across non-English they just skip over it—and that was with readers in Los Angeles and text in Spanish which is ubiquitous there. I have a feeling that if they came across something as relatively non-exotic as Greek or Cyrillic, they would just stop reading entirely.
I think for your purposes, what you propose is workable, the hard part is making sure you don't lose your readers. I would recommend having a first reader who doesn't know a word of Tamazight read the manuscript and make sure that it's manageable.
For models of what you're trying to do, I would suggest looking at Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for cases where authors managed to mix languages well. On the Burgess, I would add the note that the glossary which appears in the back of most editions was added by Burgess's publisher and was not originally part of the book.


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