However, when Jim speaks, his dialect as a Southern slave is much more distinctive: Twain limits eye dialect in this case, as too much nonstandard phrasing could be distracting in the long term. Huck’s restless, boyish perspective carries the reader through his adventures. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. She said it was wicked to say what I said said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Here, Huck describes a conversation in which he tells Miss Watson he’d prefer “the bad place” (hell) to sitting through a spelling lesson with her.Īll I wanted was to go somewheres all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. In one of the most famous examples of dialect in children’s literature, Twain famously weaves several different dialects throughout the story, as explained in his preface.īut as the narrator, Huck Finn himself carries a distinct dialect throughout the entire story. One of the most enduring examples of a story told in regional dialect is Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Higgins takes on the task of changing Eliza’s speech and therefore her social station, reinforcing the importance of one’s dialect as a character trait. The majority of the play’s characters, including Higgins, speak with standard English to contrast Eliza’s dialect. Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London.Įliza’s dialogue is written in more standard English in subsequent lines, but this line exists to establish how incomprehensible her accent can be. Will you pay me for them?” Shaw notes in his stage direction: It translates to standard English as, “Oh, he’s your son, is he? Well, if you’d done your duty as a mother should, he’d know better than to spoil a poor girl’s flowers, then run away without paying. Will ye-oo py me f'them?Įliza’s dialect makes her line difficult to read. Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. In the first scene, Eliza Doolittle chastises Freddy’s mother in her Cockney accent, which Dr. George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (later adapted into the 1956 stage production and 1964 film My Fair Lady) uses its characters’ dialects as a main plot point.
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