#dialect

Anonymous asks:

I believe my question revolves around linguistics, but please correct me if there’s something I didn’t take into account. I’m an Egyptian girl who speaks Arabic (the Egyptian dialect specifically), and I am currently writing an urban fantasy set in modern day Egypt. Naturally, the characters would be speaking Egyptian arabic (i even have a scene where my character converses with a tourist and struggles to speak to them ‘in english’)  But as the story is written in english, I found this is really hard to convey, especially with the entirely different alphabet, and the words that simply cannot be transcribed (sometimes in definition, and sometimes in letters that don’t have an equivalent). What would be a good way to send the message that these characters are by no means speaking English (unless stated) without having to hold the reader's hand through lengthy descriptions of how a word is pronounced at every corner?

Hi Anon! This is a tough spot. I’m no expert, just a mod and fellow writer trying to support your fantastic ask. Any bilingual readers, especially other Arabic speakers, feel free to chime in.

1- Disclose they’re speaking Arabic, even though you’re writing in English:

Example A: “Hey, Noor! Wait up,” he said in Arabic. 

Example B: “Habibti, I haven’t seen you in a while,” she reminded me. It was true - I had missed the lilt of her Darija-Moroccan dialect-so different from the Mesri, the Egyptian twang, that rolled off my tongue.

2- Consider using Arabic semantic structure or phrases and idioms used mostly in Arabic.

Example A: She reddened with embarrassment. // They whitened at the sight of it. ((English would probably say she ‘turned red’ rather than reddened, or ‘paled’ rather than whitened. Since Arabic has this natural and fun ability to let color be a verb, which English can but doesn't have naturally - make use of it! It will read differently in English because it’s an Arabic construct. Use other examples like this that you’d know better than me.))

Example B: Consider using “May the Gods smite her house!,” instead of the classic English ‘Fuck You.’ Or use “On my eyes” rather than ‘min ayooni’ or its English translation of ‘of course.’ Since Arabic language is beautifully expressive, you could lean into that when you can rather than using common English alternatives.

 Example C: Consider interspersing Arabic transliterations of common words/phrases like; habibti/habibi; yani; mashallah casually through the story.  

3- When speaking with English speakers, consider using informal text/chat speak (Arabizi?) to communicate the Arabic, since it’s already transliterated to the Roman alphabet. [disclaimer - I am atrocious at this, and will be surprised if anyone can read it… but for science!]: 

Example A: Instead of (انت طالب بالجامعة) or “are you a student?” it becomes; 

“Ente 6albeh bel jam3a?” I asked, staring at the textbook in his arms. 

He looked at me confused. “I don't understand,” he said. “I can’t speak Arabic.” 

“Wain 3m tedrus? Where do you… y3ni… where do you study?” I tried again in slow, awkward English.

These examples may or may not work for you. It’s important to remember that there’s no single "right" way to do this, but it’s mostly about finding a balance that reads well, and feels good to you. Subtle cues like sentence structure, idioms, the occasional untranslated word, and natural context can help to show the language shift. Good luck and happy writing!

~ Melanie 🌻  

I'm very curious to see how the ROs will react and to read the angst when MC voices the truth, especially for a MC who feels incredibility guilty about misleading them. :D

On another note, I did several playthroughs for the ROs, and I appreciate the flavor text, and I love how you write tender moments. One of my favorite scenes is when Calliope says she wishes to kiss MC, but MC knows they aren't supposed to have heard her desire—that tension and remorse was 👏

Additionally, the scenes you wrote of MC and Tellus disclosing their trauma and feelings and calling each other "dear one" were beautiful and poignant. Thank you for the option to cradle his face... I'm curious if we could kiss his scar and call him "my dear one" for maximum fluff.

Thank you for this lovely ask! I love hearing about the moments that stood out, the ones you enjoyed. ❤️ And you are most welcome for that option!

"We're cooking!" and "We're cooked" have opposite meanings.

"That's cool" and "That's hot" mean similar things.

"Fired up" and "Got fired" have wildly different meanings, and so do "Knocked out" and "Knocked up."

I actually wrote about two fifths of a draft for this topic but it literally ended up becoming so outrageously detailed to the point it became a half-assed 2000 word essay since I really focused on the language side rather than the I.N side. sooo I restarted and made this much more simplified post that is actually centered around I.N and is (hopefully) more interesting to read as stays.

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I'll start by laying out some background information that I think would be useful to not cause any misinformation/misconceptions lol (but feel free to skip if it's too much reading)

i.n was born and raised in the city of Busan, which is in the South Gyeongsang Province in the veryyyy southeastern part of South Korea (so quite far from Seoul). Busan is also the second most populated city in Korea after Seoul so there's a lot of korean celebrities in general from the city (which means this post can apply to other Busan-born kpop idols such as bts' jimin and jungkook and seventeen's woozi). therefore the Busan/Gyeongsang dialect in general is BY FAR the most well-known and famous dialect outside of standard korean, not just within korea but also internationally.

each province in korea has its own unique dialect (eg. Gyeongsang dialect) but you'll usually hear Koreans refer to dialects by individual cities/towns rather than the entire province. this is because even within a single province there tends to be key differences in the dialect between different cities that Koreans find very important to distinguish.

so for example, Busan and Daegu are both major cities in the South Gyeongsang province but it's not very common to hear anyone refer to their dialect as the "Gyeongsang dialect" even though both cities obviously use that dialect. instead, people specify and say "Busan dialect" and "Daegu dialect".

also, different individuals will have varying levels of dialect, with some people having stronger accents than others. Jeongin's Busan dialect isn't super strong as it seems like he got used to speaking in the Seoul dialect quite adeptly. (which also means there isn't a whole lot of content I can go off of for this post..)

people outside of the Gyeonggi province (the province that Seoul is located in) are expected to and in many cases forced to lose their hometown's dialect and assimilate into the Standard Korean Seoul dialect if they want to be able to work/live there which explains why many non-Gyeonggi idols' dialects tend to become weaker.

I.N is the only Korean-born member of skz that wasn't born in or around the Seoul area which means the rest of the members all naturally speak the Seoul dialect only.

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the main characteristics of the busan dialect

1. it is a heavily pitch-accented dialect: whereas the seoul dialect is more soft and flat the busan dialect moves up and down a lot tonally. overall, the dialect is very fast-paced and aggressive sounding which is what gives people from Gyeongsang an image among Koreans of being always angry/scary/strict. specifically, men from the area are seen as really manly, cool, and sexy lol. this is why sometimes when jeongin says something in the busan dialect the other members lose their minds - it makes him sound more "alpha male" i guess lmaoooo. on the other hand, I think busan girls are generally perceived as being fierce but cute??

in this clip and this clip you can see the other members lose their shit when i.n pops out his dialect lmao

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if i recall correctly, seungmin has mentioned in his and jeongin's interview with kkon daehee that his father is actually from busan and therefore he knows a little bit of the busan dialect. i like how the host (who speaks in a veryy strong busan dialect) was able to tell that Seungmin may have some Gyeongsang influence from the tiniest difference in how he pitches his accent at the 3:19 mark.

I think Seungmin's dialect became more noticeable during the interview since he was being spoken to by someone with a strong busan dialect so his half-busan side naturally came out even though he was born and raised in Seoul and therefore speaks in the Seoul dialect most of the time. other than that both i.n and seungmin speak more in the Seoul dialect during the interview.

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THIS ENTIRE VIDEO is just i.n and seungmin talking about the pitch accent of the busan dialect and how it differs from the seoul dialect. the video is only in korean but literally just from listening and looking at the arrows edited on the screen you can clearly hear that they're repeating the same sentences with different intonations to differentiate between the seoul and busan dialect.

it starts at 0:38 when they keep repeating the sentence "where does this go up to?"

and at 1:45 they start saying the phrase "blueberry smoothie"

2:24 they say "mister, where does the bus go?"

I really wish I could translate the whole thing properly but i'm definitely not tech savvy enough for that lol

2. different vocabulary/usage of vocabulary/way of speaking: like all dialects, the busan dialect has different vocabulary from the other korean dialects. so theres often times where a non-busan person won't understand what a busan person is saying since they're using completely different words. i think there are a few tiny clips of jeongin where he translates words from busan dialect to seoul dialect during his lives but im too lazy to find/compile them. but for example, "hey" in seoul dialect is "ya" but in busan dialect it's "ma" which you can hear i.n use in some clips of him speaking in dialect - i remember theres a clip of Lee Know saying this but i can't find itttt 😭

just like other places in the world there are also many variations to how certain dishes/games/etc are called. for example, the dalgona candy from squid game is called dalgona/ppoggi in Seoul but in Busan it's called jjokja.

the usage of certain words is also different. one example i can think of is that in the seoul dialect the word "you" is often interchangeable between "nee" and "nuh" whereas in the Gyeongsang dialect the word "you" is almost exclusively just "nee". not skz but i remember other Gyeongsang idols mentioning how using "nuh" in Gyeongsang sounds super cheesy and romantic so the first time they went to Seoul they hated how people always used "nuh" instead of "nee".

I think Busan people are also known to speak in a very out of pocket way while also having the tendency to joke around in a threatening manner?? lmaoo i remember talking to a person from Seoul before and he said that Busan people sound very threatening when they joke around.

I remember reading some Kstays talk about how it's interesting that Jeongin doesn't speak as cutely/softly as people expect him to even though he has the role of the maknae in the group. BUT at the same time kstays understand that since he's from Busan it's natural for him to have a sense of "roughness" when he speaks that doesn't fit the stereotypical kpop maknae image.

3. different grammar: the grammar of the seoul dialect and busan dialect are quite different but I won't get too into it since that would also mean explaining the entirety of korean grammar in general lmao. but for those who actually learn korean, here's a super basic explanation of just one part of the grammar:

interrogative endings are characterized by -노, -나, -고, -가

-나 (not -냐) and -가 are used for yes/no questions

-노 and -고 are used for who/what/where/when/how questions

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now to finally put all three of these characteristics together, here is a video of jeongin trying a gyeongsang dialect quiz. it's only in korean but it does show the pitch-accent, vocab, and grammar of the busan dialect.

i'll try to briefly explain the questions:

at 0:27 the first question asks which sentence correctly fills the blank and all the answers are just different amounts of "uh" with different tones.

the second question is the same thing but with "ga" in different tones and asks which question is incorrect. by the way, "gagaga ga gaga" (the 5th option) is a very real and actual sentence in the Busan dialect which translates to "the person with the surname Ga took it". so he got the first question right but the second one wrong.

the third question with the 2ᵉ e² is another tone question with the number two (which is pronounced "ee" in korean) and the letter E.

the fourth question is a long ass paragraph that's entirelyyyy in Gyeongsang dialect and asks what the occupation of the girl mentioned in the paragraph is. Jeongin had no clue wtf the answer was (but he got it correct anyway yayy)

the fifth question is yet another tone question but the answers are all in musical notes (do re mi fa so la ti do) which is crazy like who's supposed to know that???

question 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, and 15 asks for the correct translation of the gyeongsang dialect to standard korean (so a lot of vocabulary/grammatical stuff)

10 is another tone question

11 asks which phrase does not have gyeongsang dialect vocabulary in it

in the end he got 10/15 on the quiz which I thought is pretty good considering how insane some of those questions were but he was slightly disappointed lol. he jokingly says that he shouldn't consider himself a Gyeongsang person anymore and that his father was right about how his dialect sounds awkward after living in Seoul for so long.

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there are times where other members try to speak in the busan dialect by copying i.n which is always fun to see. most of the time it's very clear to a busan-native that the other members aren't from Gyeongsang cuz the intonation and stuff are wrong/off but other times they actually do a pretty good job at it lol.

like this particular clip of hyunjin speaking in busan dialect is pretty good in my opinion (but maybe my standards are just low lmao)

on the topic of Hyunjin: I remember reading somewhere that Hyunjin has a particularly strong Seoul accent (which now that I think about it it's kinda true lol)

most people assume that the Seoul/Gyeonggi dialect is the standard dialect, but in reality the Seoul dialect actually still has some differences from the Standard Korean dialect (but it is true that the standard dialect is based off of the Seoul dialect though)

so Hyunjin (and maybe the other Seoul members??) actually has an accent unique to Seoul (but maybe I can focus on that another day..)

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theres also a lot of clips of skz impersonating other korean dialects as well (it's like how americans do british or australian accents for fun). so I just wanted to clarify that just because a video says that they're speaking in dialect it doesn't automatically mean they're playing around with the Gyeongsang dialect as there are a handful of other provincial dialects in Korea (I remember there's a lot of very old clips of Changbin speaking in the Chungcheong province dialect and Han speaking in the Jeolla province dialect that were definitely very interesting to listen to..)

this video of Han, Hyunjin, Lee Know, and Changbin is them trying to sing stray kids songs in all the main korean dialects and as you can see they were really struggling lmaoo. I think them singing in the Gyeongsang dialect at 6:03 probably sounds the most decent since they learned some Busan dialect from Jeongin (and they keep mentioning him during that part of the video lol). the video is really chaotic to follow along if you don't know korean but all the korean comments really love how ridiculous they sound attempting to sing in different dialects.

for example, at 6:57 Hyunjin's iconic "ne sonim" got turned into "ye myeot bun-ye" in the busan dialect

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I think that's all I'll do for now but if I can find enough content I could definitely make a part 2 someday that expands more on how the other members speak and stuff like that if the demand is high enough lol

but first I should focus on the 2 Kids Room and song lyrics people were wanting posts on~

also if anybody would like more clips of skz using dialect for whatever purposes then pls just message me and I could probably find more (cuz I know this post is kinda lacking in skz content and I apologize for that..)

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links to my other posts in this series:

skz family

skz family part 2

bremen music club