Dialect Dreck

dialect is tricky and something I'm not that good at. You're right the different cultures shouldn't sound alike, but try to do it in a way that isn't demeaning or makes the reader head hurts, I guess.

Try to avoid stereotyping.

Personally, I wouldn't consider the following stereotypical, because it really is how English is spoken by many Singaporeans: "It's okay, la! No need to worry, la, you have great image." (Singaporean English.)

Writing "He go market, and I thank you you instructioning to him" wouldn't sound stereotypical to me, but it would annoy me. It's Chinese English.

But if you wrote, for example, "Please being not doing that, he is being very reasonable", I'd be tempted to hit you over the head, or at least throw the book in the bin. To me that's stereotypical Indian English.

Also, if I came across something like, "What ho, chaps! A top o' t' mornin' t' yer, guv! And aboot that there urn..." said book would be burned. That's not an attempt at dialect. That's someone trying to write a posh English accent and failing. "What ho, chaps!" could be posh, but "top o' t' mornin' t' yer, guv" is a "working class" accent and "aboot" is stereotypical Scottish.

This sounds fun. I think too many verbal tics should be avoided, personally. The voice can be in the contstruction and vocabulary.

I have a character who speaks AAVE and it's not exactly the way he'd speak irl (I avoided using "nigga" and only have a few flat out slang idioms) it's more just to get the idea across. So make sure to consider practicality and clarity, as well as authenticity.

Actually, the lack of dialect in my new volume of Bre'er Rabbit tales, compared to the volume I grew up with, makes me sad. The dialect was always part of what made them special to me.
But I wouldn't attempt to write in a dialect I wasn't very familiar with. A character's voice can be reflected in their diction, the length of their sentences, their talkativeness, vocabulary, references, etc. A bunch of aboots ain't necessary.

Dialect annoys me, especially when the entire novel is written in it. I like reading English, thank you, not literal interpretations of the way people speak. Don't even get me started on overused slang.

Granted, different cultures shouldn't sound the same, but you can write their dialogue without driving me away. Some people enjoy that kind of thing, though. I do not.

Quick example:

"He dun been a gud man," Sally Mae said.

vs

"He done been a good man," Sally Mae said.

vs

"He was a good man," Sally Mae drawled.

It's a matter of preference, but I'd pick #2 or #3 before #1.

I recently read a book with good dialects in it. The MC was a black kid from the hood in Cleveland. Most of the other characters were upper-class white private school kids, with a handful of black kids from Brooklyn. They all went to school together and I think the author did a really nice job dealing with code switching and different shifting speech patterns, and having really strong dialects without being difficult to read. Black Boy, White School.

Think of it as seasoning. A little goes a long way. A word or two, often near the beginning of a line of dialogue, may be enough to let the reader know the character talks in a certain way.

Just please don't have an AAVE or Southern accent be code for 'stupid'. Not that you would But that gets me so angry, I can't even say.

I love all the great idioms around the world. I've seen them overused in renditions of Southern speech, but I still appreciated the effort. Usually cultures that have a lot of them do enjoy hearing them repeated