From: john@jfeldredge.com   
      
   On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 17:26:51 -0400, Michelle Bottorff wrote:   
      
   > William Vetter  wrote:   
   >   
   >> >> I ask because other people are talking about spellings that   
   >> >> supposedly express English dialects.   
   >> >   
   >> > I'm not attempting to duplicate any particular English dialect, and I   
   >> > hadn't planned to use variant spellings.   
   >>   
   >> "Out of the pan and into the far."   
   >> I told him that he spelled _fire_ wrong.  He wrote back to me and said   
   >> this was how people spoke it in rural Kentucky.   
   >   
   > I think it's pretty silly to expect every reader of English everywhere   
   > will a) be familiar with a Kentucky dialect, and would therefore b)   
   > recognize that far was therefore not a typo for fire.   
   >   
   > But at the same time, not being very good at figuring out what the   
   > reader won't know is one of my biggest weaknesses, so I feel like I'm   
   > the pot calling the kettle black when i say that.   
   >   
   >   
   > Out of curiousity...   
   >   
   > Would seein' words like bein', doin' and hearin' throw you?  :)   
   >   
   > I used those back in the second and third books I wrote.  Although I've   
   > mostly avoided phonetic spelling since then (I'm currently on book 14),   
   > I haven't given up on someday revisiting those two books.   
   >   
   > I don't currently see any reason for editing those out.  I don't think   
   > they're particularly confusing or difficult to read.   
   >   
   > But I read a fair number of Westerns growing up, so I might be biased.   
   > :)   
      
   Having gone to high school in rural Appalachian Kentucky, I can say that   
   the actual pronunciation of "fire" is closer to "faar".  "Far" doesn't   
   adequately convey the drawl.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)