From: julie@pascal.org   
      
   On Friday, May 16, 2014 8:59:54 AM UTC-6, John W Kennedy wrote:   
   > On 2014-05-16 14:45:15 +0000, mumble said:   
   >    
   >    
   >    
   > > On 05/15/2014 04:19 PM, Brenda Clough wrote:   
   >    
   > >    
   >    
   > >> I can do it -- shift voices between speakers. And vocabulary, and   
   >    
   > >> cadence, and slang, yes, it all ccan be done.   
   >    
   > >    
   >    
   > > You really, really, really, *want* people to read your books, but based    
   >    
   > > solely on that, I'd avoid them.   
   >    
   >    
   >    
   > You'd rather have Frodo and Sam talk just alike? Narnians and    
   >    
   > Calormenes? (I suppose "Pygmalion" must be as feeble as last year's    
   >    
   > autumn leaves to you.)   
   >    
      
   Ought not Frodo and Sam talk just alike?   
      
   Well, okay, they ought not, but why not?   
      
   This is my *thing* with all of this,(and I'll soon go back to saying that it   
   doesn't matter at all if everyone talks just exactly alike so long as you've   
   got clear speech tags for everyone), that half the time we're talking about   
   speech identifying    
   people groups (Hobbits) from other people groups (Dwarfs) and how *this* guy   
   who lives in a city by the sea would have "sea" colloquialisms and *that* gal   
   who lives in the mountains would have "mountain" colloquialisms and while   
   that's all true... Frodo    
   and Sam don't talk just alike.  So why not?  Didn't they grow up in the same   
   town around the same people?  Can't you tell by listening to someone if they   
   grew up in Texas or Minnesota?  (Minne-soh-da)   
      
   I think it's got nothing to do with how they talk, but everything to do with   
   what they talk about and their mindset as they talk about it.   
      
   If someone asks me for advice on cover art (to pick an example from this week)   
   my speech is going to be distinctly mine because I can be counted upon to say   
   the same thing each time, "I like people better than symbolic illustrations,   
   usually, and the    
   most boring font you can find." or "You did ask, and this is my opinion, but I   
   really hate that font." or "Well, that new font is better than the old one."   
   or... well, what I say is probably going to have the word "font" in it, good   
   or bad, if someone    
   asks me about cover art.   
      
   If me and three buddies are loading up for an expedition, a *quest*, and we're   
   talking as we load the horses I'm going to say, "Are we sure our route has   
   good water?" or "What about water?" or...  And maybe the leader will be all,   
   "We have to get over    
   the pass before cold weather sets in." or "The clouds look threatening."   
   or...  and maybe it's because I spend some time in a desert and forgot the   
   cold, or maybe the leader got snowed in once, and maybe the third guy will be   
   saying, "We can't count on    
   hunting for food along the way." because he went on a quest once and ran out   
   of beans.   
      
   But that doesn't mean that any one of us speaks in any way different than   
   every other person who grew up in our little hamlet, all the way down to word   
   choice and cadence.   
      
   The reluctant participant will express reluctance, the gung-ho guy will   
   express enthusiasm, the quiet guy will do a fair amount of secretive smiling   
   or frowning, and when we run out of beans, the hungry guy will never let us   
   forget it.   
      
   And for any one of us, our genders could be swapped out, or our species   
   changed, and other than the now shorter Dwarf complaining of the silly notion   
   that short people can't ride tall horses... the dialog could probably remain   
   entirely unchanged.   
      
   -Julie   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)