Australian Dialect in the Book
When writing Chased Across Australia, I inserted the colorful Australian dialect into the story.
In a previous post, I told how this book was inspired by our trip to Australia. When we arrived in Sydney, I did not expect to be writing a book, but my wife and I were interested in the local dialect so we began collecting examples. Our son also had two guide books with glossaries of Australian slang. I eventually compiled our observations along with the two glossaries onto my laptop. Thus when I started writing, I had a good source of genuine slang words.
I hope that my insertion of Australian slang into the dialogue made the story richer. I did not attempt, however, to spell words phonetically as pronounced by Ausis. I gave a few hints to the reader how words like mate are pronounced with the a sounding more like a long I.
The other thing I did was use the British spelling any time an Australian was speaking, but American spellings for dialogue by Americans. Thus the American would say, "He seems to have troubles skidding on curves. Perhaps he has a low tire." On the other hand, an Australian is saying, "Take a shot at their tyre."
Writing Chased Across Australia was fun, and incorporating the Australian dialect into the story increased the pleasure.
In a previous post, I told how this book was inspired by our trip to Australia. When we arrived in Sydney, I did not expect to be writing a book, but my wife and I were interested in the local dialect so we began collecting examples. Our son also had two guide books with glossaries of Australian slang. I eventually compiled our observations along with the two glossaries onto my laptop. Thus when I started writing, I had a good source of genuine slang words.
I hope that my insertion of Australian slang into the dialogue made the story richer. I did not attempt, however, to spell words phonetically as pronounced by Ausis. I gave a few hints to the reader how words like mate are pronounced with the a sounding more like a long I.
The other thing I did was use the British spelling any time an Australian was speaking, but American spellings for dialogue by Americans. Thus the American would say, "He seems to have troubles skidding on curves. Perhaps he has a low tire." On the other hand, an Australian is saying, "Take a shot at their tyre."
Writing Chased Across Australia was fun, and incorporating the Australian dialect into the story increased the pleasure.
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