Writing a book with British characters? Want to be sure your Glaswegian detective doesn’t sound like an Edinburgh pubkeeper? Wondering how Miss Marple would have pronounced “scone”? Then check out this feature from the British Library: Accents and Dialects of the UK. It’s brill!
Check that accent
Posted on March 29, 2007 by Elizabeth
Gawd!! I so wish there were something like this for British authors who were writing American dialogue. I listened to Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty” from audible.com and I had to CRINGE every time she had an inner city Boston character say “meant to” instead of “supposed to”, as in “well, what am I meant to do?” instead of “what am I supposed to do?” There was some dialogue that sounded so British that I was just waiting for a hip-hop poet to start calling everyone “bloke”. Honestly, she has lived in the US. Why did she have such a tin ear about the way people talk here?
I love it when people try to write out our Maine Yankee accent. There should be one for anyone writing Maine speak who’s not from here.
I think some authors have used the recordings at the American Folklife Center to authenticate their characters’ accents: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/