The Valley of Fear, Pt 3, Ch. 1-4: Accentuating the Positive

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Title: The Valley of Fear, Pt 3, Ch. 1-4: Accentuating the Positive
Author: gardnerhill                        
Word Count: 60
Rating: G
Warning: None.
Summary: What better way to establish a 1915 tale set in America than a melting-pot of dialects?
                                                                                       
***

“Golly, that fellow’s playing me for a sucker!”

“Zo, you vant to court mein Ettie?”

“Sure and begorrah, your father’s after giving me notice.”

“Kuso! Wakarimasen!”

The boarding-house went still. Everyone stared at the last speaker, a dark-haired man in black cotton robes holding chopsticks over his stew-plate.

Shafter addressed the issei. “I tink maybe you in der vrong story.”

###

Translation:
The badly-out-of-place immigrant from Japan (issei) says “Dammit! I don’t understand!”            

Comments

[debriswoman]

Neatly picked up on:-)

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Almost made the fellow Italian, too.

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

That all makes perfect sense.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

There's a scene in the Kipling novel Captains Courageous (1897) where a group of sailors are talking and there's about 12 different dialects in the mix. Must have been a thing at the time.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Oh, very good ^___^

From my small bit of research it seems ACD missed a trick not slipping a Welsh accent in too ^^

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Welsh coal-miners? Talk about coals to Newcastle.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Neat. And don't forget the Aberdeen man in the first half of the tale.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Och, how could I forget Auld MacDonald?

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

Good idea, and I love the last line.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

There were Japanese immigrants to America, but most would have been in California and Oregon, not Pennsylvania.

[godsdaisiechain.livejournal.com]

*snorfle* I hate it when my characters infiltrate the wrong story...

Beautiful dialect writing.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Thanks. There's an opening scene in Captains Courageous that's essentially every freakin' dialect you could expect to find on a steamer in the 1890s.