#mmmmmmaybe

look, accents are hard to write. people who are obviously ESL even more so. i don't want to throw shade on people who are over-exaggerating ilya's accent in fic, just... maybe give some pointers as someone who is a hobby linguist and fan of writing characters with specific vocabulary quirks.

so here's some facts and things that may help if you're gonna write a lot of ilya dialogue!

1. ilya is not actually bad at english.

he's actually really good at english, he just doesn't always feel comfortable himself with the language. but given a situation where he feels comfortable and/or has time to think and process, his english is a+. especially in writing. in ep 2, dude is making puns.

2. the times his english falters are very specific.

either he's flustered, tired, or it's a vulnerable moment. and even then, he's a very clear communicator, he's just more prone to dropping things like articles and contractions. see: "is still okay?" in the show when he's fucking shane for the first time, or "is on the water, hollander. [...] will be beautiful, you will love it," at the cottage in the HR book.

but when he's comfortable, he's near-fluent. look at his speech pre-stanley cup in ep 2. there's basically no weird grammar there at all and he's using contractions all over the place. in the moments where they're not talking feelings at the cottage, it's the same kind of thing.

when he is struggling with english, he's more apt to just be silent. if he can't be, these are the times when his sentences get shorter and he tends to speak in fragmented sentences ("yes. is nice view. the lake.") and this is when he stops using contractions as much. ("no i did not answer your boring text. now will you go?")

3. the ways ilya shows he's ESL are very specific.

there's four main ones. to be verbs, contractions, specific objects, and the word yes. and the first three are kind of intertwined.

the most obvious way ilya's dialogue differs from that of a native english speaker is the way he talks around to be verbs. these are the verbs he typically doesn't contract ("i am", "we will", "it is", etc.) and it's with these verbs that he most often drops the subject of a sentence. this is mostly when he starts sentences with "is" instead of "it is"; if he's going to reference something directly he'll usually keep the subject of a sentence in the sentence, e.g. "she is" or "[thing] is."

he uses contractions a lot otherwise. don't, can't, shouldn't. sometimes, when he's comfortable, he'll even use contractions like you've, i'll, and how's but he's definitely more likely to not use a contraction if it's a to be verb.

the other thing he does is he never uses any of the many ways to say "yes" in english other than, well, yes and okay. he never says "yeah" and if he's asking a question, he's more likely to end it with "yes?" instead of something like "right?"

and, while he does use yes and okay interchangeably sometimes, he's more apt to just use the word yes than anything else.

the tl;dr--

when you're writing ilya dialogue, you really don't have to make it that much different from how you'd write a native english speaker. just watch out for your to be verbs, how he uses the word "yes", and give him shorter, more fragmented and stiff sentences (more technically grammatically correct with fewer contractions) when he's feeling vulnerable or tired.

why are you so expensive