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Killian Mancera
I seriously just skip over all of the Joseph passages. I can't decipher it.
Rekha
I got help here while reading: http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/jo...
Hope it might help.. :)
Hope it might help.. :)
Teresa
There is an edition that I bought from Barnes and Noble a few years ago that actually has Joseph's lines in a modern English Dialect footnoted at the bottom. It was very nice to have the original, as well as to be able to really understand what he was saying.
Ha Med
I read it and then listen to my own reading simultaneously
Its strange but I do it anyway and it works!
well 80 percent of the times actually!
Its strange but I do it anyway and it works!
well 80 percent of the times actually!
Gemma
Eventually skipped most of it because I could guess what he was going on about!
Jessica
Most of it. Only because I'm from Yorkshire though and I could recognise some dialect features Bronte was trying to represent!
Seth Steele
I had to read it out loud and sound out what he was saying. It usually works but still some of his dialog is lost in translation.
Kayla
hahaha this cracked me up.
Lisa
I could understand a good bit of it, because I've lived in England and heard some of that, but really what I had to keep doing was referring to the footnotes. Fascinating to those of us who love language and its origins.
Martha Hughes
As a Yorkshire lass, I can still only decipher it when I read aloud
Bárbara
Thanks to you I know the problem is not me :) I'm not an english speaker and I'm reading while listening to the librivox audio of the book. It helps but I can't understand everything though.
Esther Kruman
Ooh, I guess this is an advantage of listening to the audiobook! If you have Audible (this is unfortunately one of their exclusives), Joanne Froggatt of Dowton Abbey fame does a fantastic job narrating!
Robin
The Holt, Rinehart, Winston edition I read includes useful translations for Joseph's dialog. It would certainly be a different story if Joseph was the narrator. Joseph doesn't seem particularly sensitive to human emotion and relationships, so the novel would probably much shorter!
Mouna Ben jazia
omg i just skip them. it's so annoying trying to guess what he is saying, but i managed to hate his character more than any other without reading any of his passages .lol what a cruel hypocrite human being
Marianne Husbands
I loved Joseph's dialect. I am from Lincolnshire myself but we often slip into similar since there are so many Yorkshire folk in our area. It was a nostalgic challenge for me given that I now live in Dorset and I wondered when reading it whether peope from other areas would struggle with it.
Margarita
Yo lo lei en español ... se entiende perfecto :D
Kaveri BibliophileRants
I found this site that has the dialogues in conventional English!
https://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/j...
https://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/j...
Brodie Vickers
Most of it yeah, some of it was a struggle
Sharalynne Pasztor
I started out trying to figure it out but then gave up and basically just skimmed over it.
Israel Fernández
I had this problem and I thought it only happened to me because English is not my first language. I skipped all his lines.
Lace
audiobook - it's a lifesaver
Kitty Kat
True, I wasn't able to understand any speeches that he made. It was quite annoying but love the novel.
Angela
This is a brilliant idea - but not because I would want it to happen but because I find the idea hilarious.
Michael Ibarra
Nope. I just read it as nonsensical mumblings (which is about how it sounds). It makes his character's presence in the book slightly less unbearable (though not by much).
avely.reading
Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a nightmare 😂
Ava
If you have Audible, try the version narrated by Aimee Lou Wood. She is fantastic! I was able to understand most of what he said when pronounced out loud, and her tone helps significantly with context.
Bree
I skipped over everything he said and just hoped it wasn't important
Nat Neptune
The barnes and noble paperback has footnotes that translate most of what he says
Maxine
I hated reading Joseph's blathering. I could decipher it well enough to get his meaning, but I only forced myself to read the Joseph dialogue because I was afraid I might miss something vital. I considered Joseph himself even more vile than his speech.
d
hey! hope this helps https://wuthering-heights.co.uk/josep...
Chrissy
I tried but gave up trying, I wish that it had translations, surely they must have seen we couldn't understand it, some words were just 1 letter, or 2 that had no vowels. He was an important character it would have been needed to understand what was going on, you couldn't tell if it was positive or negative.
George
Honestly? Yes, rather easily. I just went and looked at the first four entries at http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/jo... (thanks ever so, Rekha) and while I'd have been hard put to gloss some words out of context, I had absolutely no difficulty with the paragraphs as wholes.
However, I've been reading such stuff off and on for decades, often with the help of glossaries and translations, so I'm not claiming it ought to be clear to everyone. Nevertheless, it will amaze you how well Ha Med's method here works: Read it aloud as well as you can while listening for meaning. After all, don't you occasionally pronounce "to" as t' yourself--even though you don't pronounce "the" the same way?
However, I've been reading such stuff off and on for decades, often with the help of glossaries and translations, so I'm not claiming it ought to be clear to everyone. Nevertheless, it will amaze you how well Ha Med's method here works: Read it aloud as well as you can while listening for meaning. After all, don't you occasionally pronounce "to" as t' yourself--even though you don't pronounce "the" the same way?
Charlie
This is so funny to me as a person from Yorkshire as I found that as long as I sounded out what he was saying, most of it made sense! I doubt I would have understood it if I wasn’t a Yorkshire lass tho!
David Yohalem
Funny! My edition came with end-noted translation of all the Yorkshireisms of the time, which included nearly every speech of Joseph's.
Celya
At the start, I try to read it aloud exactly as it appears in the text and after I get the hang of it, I am able to make sense of it. There was one passage where it was very long and he was retelling what Catherine and Heathcliff had done, and that is one that I did skim over.
Medea
I try sounding it out loud, it's a lot easier to understand that way.
Danielle Sanders
Thank goodness I'm not alone!!! Was about to download the audio book and listen to see if that would help.
Elizabeth
Yes. I fell in love with the Yorkshire dialect when I read and watched Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. That is one reason I wanted to read Wuthering Heights, to get more of the Yorkshire language.
Adrienne
BARELY. Unfortunately listening to the audiobook didn't help.
Elaine
I just skipped it honestly.
Lyn
Yes, easily.
However, it's probably better read aloud, and possibly easier for me because I have spent a couple of years living in and around Haworth as a child.
You have to not only take into account the heavy dialect but also the slang of the times as well.
Just as you would reading Shakespeare or Chaucer.
I enjoy it because it really captures a time far better than the recieved pronunciation and speech of the 'upper classes' of that time.
However, it's probably better read aloud, and possibly easier for me because I have spent a couple of years living in and around Haworth as a child.
You have to not only take into account the heavy dialect but also the slang of the times as well.
Just as you would reading Shakespeare or Chaucer.
I enjoy it because it really captures a time far better than the recieved pronunciation and speech of the 'upper classes' of that time.
Billy Blake
https://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/w...
I found this after I had read the book, and would have been glad to have had these translations to refer to as I read the book.
I found this after I had read the book, and would have been glad to have had these translations to refer to as I read the book.
CatDefender
Try listening to an audio version. I am currently listening to the Tantor Media recording from audible and I was thinking his dialogue must be hard to read. But I can understand the narrator.
Edgar
thank god. I thought I was the only one who had this problem.
Dan
Don't think it critical but try and sound it out. You get more and more as things go along.
Caroline Wibberley
Yes.But that's probably because I,m from Yorkshire and some older people speak that way.He had to speak with a regional accent to stay in character.
David Dunagan
Dittos here. Maybe on the Bronte Web site someone can
S
I found it helped if you said his dialogue aloud.
Priti R
That's the reason why it took me many attempts to proceed with this book.
june ✧˖*°
It was waaay easier to listen to the whole book on CD. The way the reader talks makes it easy to read, but only about 80% of the time. The rest you get the gist of it.
Kiya
I'm from Yorkshire and it's impossible!!
Veruska
I got the general gist of what he was saying but I mostly skipped over it.
Kritika
I succeeded in deciphering it to some extent...though it was very weird.
Kendra
Let me be honest: it wasn't until about 3/4 through the books that I realized that his accent was Yorkshire! I thought up until that point that he was Scottish, lol. After that, his dialogue became MUCH easier to understand for me. You just have to "hear" his voice in your head and really form the words. But when it really got tough, I just looked up an internet translation.
Him narrating the story? I dunno, it's a pretty interesting idea, but Nellie narrating the story, in my opinion, is no doubt the better option because Joseph would have been hanging around Heathcliff the entire time, and quite frankly, Heathcliff is the type of character who is MUCH better when there is a certain distance between him and the reader (please!!!). That way when he's "on-screen", it has a much bigger impact on how you view him, whereas with Joseph it would have been just one huge evil bus.
Him narrating the story? I dunno, it's a pretty interesting idea, but Nellie narrating the story, in my opinion, is no doubt the better option because Joseph would have been hanging around Heathcliff the entire time, and quite frankly, Heathcliff is the type of character who is MUCH better when there is a certain distance between him and the reader (please!!!). That way when he's "on-screen", it has a much bigger impact on how you view him, whereas with Joseph it would have been just one huge evil bus.
Christeena
I completely agree. I had to read and re-read his passages but honestly I am not sure much would be lost if we skipped his input all together.
Jen
I skip it too I try to decipher it and give up
aNorthernSoul Lightbown
I'm from Northern England myself, albeit not from Yorkshire, and I could understand very little of it. I doubt if even if Emily Bronte's time it was easy to understand. I love diverse dialects, but I'll admit to skipping Joseph's parts and reading modern translations throughout.
LibraryGirl2008
I think the key to understanding Joseph's lines are like understanding Middle English: you only understand it if you read it aloud.
Allie B
I can understand it but then I'm English and quite good with various English dialects - I imagine it would be difficult for others though.
Leona
My book has a "translation" at the end. I read it slowly and understood most of it.
Melissa
I got about half of what he said whenever be spoke, but I found I was okay with skipping over his longer rants. Even Hareton had a couple words I couldn't quite decipher.
Elizabeth Brandon
Luckily I had the Norton Critical edition, so they had footnotes. I didn't even bother to read most of his original dialogue...
Fer Urquiza
in the barnes & noble classics edition comes translation i was just as confused as you
Madison Leffler
I just sorta skimmed over his parts. Or try saying it out aloud and then laughing at how ridiculous I sounded. :)
Ivy
Amazing suggestion for those interested in spending an hour trying to understand whats going on from one page of Joseph's speech.
Christine Choi
ah, I had the same problem, too, then my English teacher said it's much easier if you read it aloud... and I found that to be helpful. Hope that helps :)
Perrie Danielle
Nope, not a clue...
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