Blogger: Etta Wilson
Location: Books & Such Nashville Office
Weather: Still hot
At a recent writers conference, I was surprised to see that two of popular tween author Nancy Rue’s books in the Lily Series are set outside the U.S.—one in Paris and one in Rome. I bought the one about Lily in Paris and noted the text contained easy-to-understand words and phrases like mademoiselle and gendarme, tres magnifique and petite dejeuner in this fast-paced story for middle-grade girls. Along with the mention of famous French sites and French character names, these words did a lot to maintain the feel of the story without being a distraction.
Whether you’re writing for kids or adults, I’d like to know how much play you give to a different language when it’s appropriate. Here are some questions for evaluation:
- Have you ever set a book in a foreign country? What opportunities and what obstacles did it present?
- Has an editor or reader ever questioned your use of a non-English word in a manuscript?
- Have you ever tried reading a portion of your manuscript to an ESL American citizen?
- In writing fiction, do you tend to see your characters act rather than hear the tone and timbre of their voices in dialog?
- What non-English ancestors do you have, and how many generations back were they? Are there still family practices you can trace to that heritage?
We are truly a melting pot—and the richer for it I think. At least our characters can be.
I write historicals and even though we may share a common language with our ancestors, a bygone era is a different country in many respects. It’s certainly not the same country we live in today, even if the location is the same. Language is so fluid it has changed just as much as our landscape and mores.
I love more exotic settings and I have a book that moves from England to the Seychelles to India. And it’s set in 1802 so the challenges are significant. Hopefully the language conveys the time and the characters without seeming too antique. But it’s not an easy balance to strike.
Writers of fantasy and science fiction also deal with foreign words (usually made up for the world in which the story takes place). Thank you for your blogs this week. Using words from the country, culture, or world the story takes place in can transport the reader even more.
On a funnier note, I have Norwegian ancestors (I’m third generation on my grandmother’s side). We still carry on many Norwegian customs including making lefse at Christmas (the lutefisk went when my grandfather died, whew!). But one custom I gave up was a certain word my grandmother always used. One day I used it as a little girl and my grandmother caught me. She explained it wasn’t a word for little girls (later I learned it was a strong cuss word in Norwegian lol).
I could hear my grandmother’s voice in the dialogue of my Texas historical novel. I also read scores of old letters from that period to get a feel for the words and phrases people of that day used in communication. A few readers noted that the word choices felt formal. Well, yes…they would. People spoke with a characteristic dignity back then. It may not be a foreign language, exactly, but it is foreign to our casual modern ears.
My family’s roots were in the British Isles. Most immigrated in the 1700s, but the formality and emotional reserve are still evident. I did not realize until I married my German-heritage husband that even traditions like when you open the Christmas presents can be traced back hundreds of years. But there are more substantial things handed down as well. The men in his family, for example, have chosen service professions for generations, and our Christian faith can also be traced back through those generations.
Since I am writing serious non-fiction, I am not using foreign wording at all (although I’m hoping that my manuscript will turn into a book that will be translated into many languages). But, I have taught English to hight school ESL students. I’m thinking that if a writer uses non-English wording, it would probably be a good idea to have an ESL reader check the usage especially if it involves any idioms. Idioms in any language, including English, are tricky things.
I’m bona fide half Italian. I regret my Italian immigrant grandparents died before I was born. My dad traveled back to the province of Lucca in his late 70s in hopes of locating some Petrino family but to no avail. My dad allowed his Italian language knowledge to lapse because contrary to many immigrants today, their family wanted to be real Americans.
The tradition we kept from my dad’s family was almost every Sunday we had his family’s recipe for spaghetti for our dinner. Never have I eaten anything as good as his spaghetti. I rarely make it because it just doesn’t taste as good as his. :[ It’s cooked almost all day around a rump roast stuffed with parsley and garlic. Sooo good. I miss him and it.
My mom’s family is Scotch-Irish. So I’m half and half.
Lisa, you’ve touched on one of the thorniest problems in writing historicals–how much do we portray the language as it would have been spoken and how much do we make it accessible for today’s readers. The problem is even tougher for the young reader who may not have the exposure and education of adults.
Morgan, I thought sci-fi and fantasy writers just made up any combination of consonants and vowels they wanted for those books! Seriously, I am often jarred by some of the words, especially nouns, I find in those genres.
Lynn, thanks for mentioning letters as a reference source for historical word usage. I sometimes wonder how much record we’ll have as more and more of us write electronically.
Like Nicole, I’m half Italian and we’ve eaten pasta for Sunday dinner for at least 160 years. (I make the sauce the day before and my kids and husband all expect it.)
I’m just back from two weeks in Italy, which was great fun and a stretch of my limited Italian, but perfect because my latest novel involves an Italian family and I needed to be reminded of the “sound” of home. 🙂
Hello everyone,
This is a wonderful topic that was recently on my mind…
When I submitted a revised draft of my novel to my editor, I had to think long and hard about the main character’s last name which was of French origin. Having lived in New Orleans, the pronunciation was very clear to me, but I soon realized that it may have caused someone outside of New Orleans to stumble a bit–NOT something I wanted to subject a reader to, of course, so I changed it to something still of French descent but common enough that I believed it would be instantly recognizable (and pronounceable!) to a reader.
So cool, Michelle. Northern or southern Italy? Apparently we “northerners” use more oil in our cooking than the southern Italians. Go figure. I thought it would be the other way around although why I don’t know.
I sure miss those pasta Sundays. Mom could fix it as good as my dad because she learned from his dad, but it was fun for my dad to cook it, and it was the only thing he cooked.
Nicole, our daughter married a wonderful Italian man whose father cooks Christmas dinner based on–you guessed it–pasta, rump roast and garlic!
Etta, a great topic, even though I was distracted most of the week (grandson born in Brazil) and had to catch up at the end. I hope it won’t be too long if I answer all five of your questions:
1. I have one trilogy in the planning stage that moves from Japan to China in book one, spends all of book two in California, and goes to Italy, Greece, and Turkey in book three. The major opportunity it gives me is to deal with some really big themes, and to present those very deep thoughts in a story that will also move at an acceptable clip. The obstacle is the mountains of research and the travel that will put me in a position to make it believable.
2. Yes. An MFA-level workshop expressed distraction with my early use of italics for all foreign phrases. I’ve backed away from that now, and 1) only use it the first time I introduce the word(s), 2) try to construct the passage in such a way that I can get away with no italics at all, or 3) for longer snatches of dialogue in the foreign language where I can’t seem to avoid an English translation or explanation, I save the italics for the English recap.
3. I always try to find a native speaker to proof-read anything I’ve written containing another language. As far as having ESL students read my English, I bump up against that every day writing history tests and worksheets for my mostly-Hispanic students.
4. I hear the poetry of their voices.
5. I have just a wee bit of Irish brogue I can slip into for St. Patty’s Day, but I married into an Italian-Mexican combination of more recent extraction and then spent nine years on a Bible translation center in Colombia (where we worked on our Spanish, added a smattering of some indigenous languages, and acquired hobbies in linguistics). We have traveled in Europe and Asia, and raised children who have given us foreign-born (Brazilian & Chinese) sons-and-daughters-in-law and bilingual grandchildren. We have picked up new vocabulary and family practices with each new adventure and each new member. My challenge is remembering that my readers may not share or even feel comfortable with such a variety of cultures and languages.
Wow, Etta. That’s fantastic. Sigh. Memories . . . It’s funny about Christmas. Dad had to have turkey dinner for Christmas. No ham or anything else. I’m the same way. Mom always made turkey on Christmas.
Hahaha, I think spagetti beats out lutefisk 🙂
Etta, you’re right about the words many times found in those genres. That is why I try to make my world and the names I use familiar to the reader yet with an otherworldly feel (many times I use baby name sites for real names).
I know many of these people who actually invent their own language have a method to the madness. They research old Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or some some of the Scandinavian languages for a basis for their invented language.
But I’m more with you, I don’t want to be trying to figure out how to pronounce an eight syllable word or look it up in the back of the book 🙂
When we truly know our character, their actions and voice come naturally in our heads. Getting that on paper is the challenge.
I hear them speaking very clearly. But will the reader catch that subtle tone of anger or humor?
I write contemporary love stories. Getting that voice across to children would be harder since they lack the experience of words and their usage. Body language and tone convey so much.
Hi everyone,
For my novel about a young man who faces war between the two nations linked to his past, I tried to create a European feel for one of the countries and a Middle Eastern feel for the other one. To create character names, I looked up lists of names from those different cultures and then combined several into original names. I hope I captured some of the sound of the languages of the different cultures.