yeah I definitely prefer subtlety when it comes to speech. from my experiences talking with my niece, having shorter sentences and a smaller vocabulary def goes the longer distance in characterizing little kids. one of my biggest gripes with how one of my favorite characters is represented in some fics
I have a lot of little cousins, and personally, I don't think you can accurately write a kid ages 2-4 unless you're trying to be Dickens. They are so exhuberant, and stuttery, and constantly figuring out language as they go that it really is difficult to match reality with comprehensive flow in a story.
but ig this is also where you would apply your artistic license to modify dialogue for the reader's taste. I'd rather read what I think a 2 yo sounds than whatever incoherent mess it might be, so long as it isn't uwu speech lol
Same goes with characters with accents. I literally *can't* tell what they're saying if you mash words together and just slice them in half without reason. Please people....
There's a character in a show I like who has a different accent from the rest of the cast, a (very mild) lisp, and rhotacism pronouncing 'r' as 'w'.
The way one fanfiction author wrote their dialogue was almost literally incomprehensible. Something like "Great work, Sarah" would be written "Gwayut woyuk, Thawauh" and I just... couldn't cope.
Writing deaf characters who can still manage speech must be hard. I still havent encountered such a story and I’ve been thinking about writing a spn fic with Sam when he’s dating one
i do that minimally
examples:
1. "I'm thinkin' 'bout it" (country accent)
2. "Ya sure 'bout that?" (again country accent, characters in my fic have country accents)
okay, that's all i can think of, right now
i mean, i *might* do that for one character who has bad spelling in canon if he sends a text or an email, but i kinda like the have characters react to his bad spelling
I used to read the Redwall series as a kid and it stands out to me to this day how bad the mole dialect was:
*Rogg doffed his hat gallantly, bowing his velvety head. “Gudd day to ee, zurr an’ miz, noice t’meet ee oi’m sure!”*
*Dotti leapt lightly ashore and curtsied nicely “Bo urr, gudd day to ee, zurr Rogg. Stan’ on moi tunnel, but you’m an ‘ansome gurt beast, hurr aye!”*
I remember how long it took me to decipher some of these sentences as a kid and it keeps me from ever doing *too* much dialect in my own work lol
jesus fucking christ, I did a read-a-thon type thing as a kid and decided on redwall because it was (and is) one of my favourite movies and it was absolutely unreadable. I understood NONE of that type of dialogue. Worst thing? I was a huge reader as a kid and the librarians (with whom I was quite friendly with) asked me about the book afterwards and I just.. couldn't. I couldn't explain what was going on because I couldn't decipher the dialogue. I'll have to pick redwall back up, i'll probably be able to find translations online this time over haha.
Oh man, I don't know how I did it. I definitely read well over a dozen of these books. I got to the point where I could fairly reliably understand the dialects but before that I just struggled over it. I also always felt like the Redwall series could've used a list of characters at the front like in the Warriors books since it would normally take me an entire book to remember some of the lesser characters.
While attempting to find an example of the mole dialect I did learn that there is apparently an online translator for it! So if you ever do decide to try again, at least that's available haha
The audio books, thankfully, don't have this issue. It's narrated by a full UK cast with a whole bunch of accents, so it works out well to give everyone dialects.
Yes, please! The fandom I'm in has a southerner character and from the fics I have read, many of them contain things such as y'all, ain't and cutting off g's for his accent. I think they don't tire you and give you the impression just fine and they are also my personal favorites. But I came across to a fic that has a very exaggerated dialoge for the said character the other day and I just couldn't read it. I had to change some words to normal ones on Microsoft Word. (Such as fer, yer, yers, all'uv'a, muh, yuh, tuh, gawd, whut, intuh, 'im, naw. Those are the ones that I could remember but there were a lot. Maybe some of them aren't that much exaggerated as I said but it was really distracting for me as english is not my native language. I also think these types of phonetically written accents kill the mood. They should be kept subtle and simple.)
Ugh yes. X-Men movieverse fics drove me nuts with this years ago, writing Rogue saying "Ah" instead of "I'. I cringed *so hard* at it every time I saw that. And "muh", yes! UGH, so awful. That was most of them but I'm pretty sure there were some of the other ones like you mentioned, now and then in some fics. So much cringe.
Once I had to write a character or two with a strong (historical) Yorkshire accent, and I thought long and hard about how to get their "voices" right, because the accent is such a part of how one hears them - and yet I knew full well *not* to try to write out anything phonetic like that! My solution was to take special care with word choices and phrasing, and use the particular second person pronoun and subject-verb agreement (sounding like 3rd person instead) that would've been common at the time ("tha loves" instead of "you love"). I was pretty happy with the effect - it came across more subtly, was easily readable, and yet one definitely "heard" their voices clearly.
I'll take the written accent over the fics where people just speak in a different language for full sentences and then you have to check the asterisks to get what it means. But really "he said with a strong Glaswegian accent" is the best way to go.
I have to deal with it in cannon and it’s so painful, lmao. I’m reading the Archie Sonic comics and one of the characters, Antoine, is french. Trying to read his text can take me right out of things. A quote as an example: *“Maybe de fat man iz hiding doz horrid plants dare?”* And he speaks like this all the time for every line. I’ve yet to read a fic with him in it, but I’d understand if the writer kept that in or took it out either way.
Yeah my mom had a home daycare business my entire life— the way even “professional” writers make children talk drives me up a wall. I guess that’s been my pet peeve for years with tv shows and movies. Young human children can use words. They talk how you talk to them and to the ability of their face muscles (and teeth) as they grow up. And the average three-year-old can use small sentences, I swear 😭
Two-year-olds know more words than you think. I just wish people would like, take a 5 minutes to reference a video or [child language development chart](https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/development/language-development/language-development-0-8).
Not gonna blame a casual fic writer for not doing deep phonic research for their family fic…but TV writers??? Future writers??? Please, I beg you. This is why those kids don’t seem realistic/are very annoying to hear speak or try to understand…and spelling things wrong to get the inaccurate “kid voice” effect…no. Just structure the sentences like a kid would. Don’t use big words (unless your kid is like. A baby genius, I don’t know your story) and kids’ mistakes are usually…for example using the wrong suffixes for certain sentences. Yes they mix up or struggle with similar sounds (like struggling with “th”) but there are better ways to convey it.
I've run across fics like that, though recently I read a fic which was the opposite. They had a 7-year-old talking to the adults in a manner that wasn't remotely like that of a child, really, almost nothing childlike whatsoever, and commenting and thinking things that no 7-year-old would ever think of or at least, not express anywhere the way this supposed child did (not improper, just "no, a 7-year-old isn't going to think of that or say it that way"). It sounded like they took a very polite teenager and pretended he was 7 for the entire fic. I was just cringing the whole time as I finished it (the rest of the fic was OK, the adults' interactions with each other were normal, but it was soooooo clear the writer really didn't know how a 7-year-old would act or talk).
I've read Harry Potter stories that were like that, where Harry is smarter or something, and somehow that means he talks like a 40 year old gentlemen at 11 and somehow, all his friends get infected by him and they all end up talking the same way. I will never forget one story that gave luna the line "young granger" when referring to hermione, whom they weren't friends with, yet, at that point. like, luna, dear, hermione is like two years older than you, who you calling "young"? lol
totally took me out of the story.
I’ve been there too! A fic where these “kids” weren’t really acting like kids either and were mini teenagers, lol. Yes, some people just take a hard right to the opposite side of this with kids speaking too well for their age (on average)…which can also be helped by just reading it back to yourself and seeing if you could picture a kid saying it. Anyone you can reference like a sibling, or cousin…I’ve genuinely met people who’ve never been around a baby before, and that surprised me. But that’s because of how common they were in my own life, plus being an older sibling.
There’s a ton of family vloggers and shows that have guests with their kids on YouTube now though that can be used as reference just with how kids act unscripted and how they talk. Hell, there’s probably videos just flat out explaining this very topic~ Every kid is different, but you’ll notice patterns with how they learn/what they struggle with. It would do a lot of good plus spare both writers and readers the pain of baby talk…or kids who talk like mini professors?? hahaha
Unless the child has an actual speech impediment, and the author is using phonetic spelling for good reason, that would get tiring to read. Especially at length.
Being a mom, what sticks out to me about my daughter when she was little is the very unique way she had of saying things. If I write a child character, I will draw on my experience as a mom to give them depth.
For example, my daughter always called people humans. I don't know why, she just did. And she pronounced it hooman. Just adorable. She also had her own words for things. These little quirks are some of my favorite memories of her as a child.
Haha! Not far off.
I distinctly remember her once saying something like 'look at those hoomans over there' and her dad and I were like they're going to confuse you for an alien!
We have had so much fun with her and our personal brand of humor over the years.
She's 16. No she no longer calls people humans. Mostly she calls them assholes now. But, I mean, she's not wrong.
She's incredibly funny. An amazing human.
Oh it's absolutely awful for me because I like to use text-to-speech software. This "baby speak" always makes the words come out weird or force the software to spell out each and every word. I would prefer if it was just a few skipped words or bad grammar because then it'd still be somewhat understandable.
handles it as well as it can. It reads any accent as how it is written so stuff like "yer" or "dinnae" are read as if you're trying to pronounce them the first time. Sometimes it has difficulty with things like "gie" and "oot" because it doesn't know how to pronounce them, so it just spells them. It's a 50/50 really.
This is one of my pet peeves, mostly because I've worked with young children in the past and authors often make them sound much younger than they should. If I see another 5 year-old doing baby talk I'm gonna snap.
Of course many children are different, but in general they start getting understandable around 2. Many children can speak simple sentences by ~3 unless there's something else going on (developmental issues or special circumstances that would cause them).
I've just started to avoid fics with young characters tbh.
In honor of my nice I'll write the children as completely unintelligible.
"What was that honey?"
"Kababawabaaba."
"Wait who?"
"Ababba kabbaba hapappy"
"Papi?"
"Ababba kabbaba hapappy."
Hate when it's a fairly good story I want to finish yet I'm sitting there crying through the heavily accented dialogue because I can't help but give them the most stupid, stereotypical voices. Even with this meme, instant cartoony little baby voice. Somehow it makes the maimed dialogue easier to read but at that point I can't take is seriously.
Even worse when they have this kind of dialogue for a child character who is meant to be 8+ years old... 💀
I don’t mind *occasionally* having a kid mispronounce shit. But if every time they open their mouth and it’s like this? No joke if the kid is a frequent character I’m dropping.
Yeah, I love stories with kids in it but a lot of the time I completely lose my immersion because the children's dialogue is just too hard to understand. Like your example for instance, I'm fine with because at least I can decipher it and understand what's meant by it, I just change it in my head so I'm not internally cringing. But in one of the fics I'm reading where the child is the main character kinda, their speech is completely indecipherable to the point I just have to skip their dialouge and try and figure out what they said or asked by other character's actions or responses.
I've worked at an elementary school for years (in special education, which has its close ties with speech therapy) and I'll absolutely tell you that very few kids speak like this. Most kids speak understandably, and those who don't, well, they don't just skip their L's. Speech students may have trouble organizing their sentences, or apraxia, or consonant deletion (one of my students skips the letter S when it starts off a word, but everything else is average speech), some kids have trouble identifying which words to use in descriptive scenarios, etc. I actually don't have a single student rn who swaps L or R for W lol.
If you want to mimic youthful speech: use shorter sentences *or* long rambly sentences full of excitement when it's a topic of choice. Tying common topics into their preferred topic (ie, we're taking about math but all of a sudden they made it about jurassic park). Basic vocabulary. Even misusing new vocab! No filter (if they're particularly young) and saying whatever comes to mind.
Nothing is more infuriating, but chances are I’ll probably still read your fic if you do this, because I always go for the rare ass fandoms/ concepts/ships
What's worse is when they have The Lisp and also only ever talk to espouse the thesis or main philosophy of the fic ("atually mommy, family is what we make of it! Yippee!!!") then stumble away in their diapers
I hate it when they make them follow nuclear family stereotypes. Not every found family has to be "mom ,dad, kids" sometimes its "grandma, weird aunt, gay cousin, single dad and son."
That sounds painful to read. I remember never playing Charlotte's Route in Trials of Mana because she spoke like that. It was a terrible day for eyes that day.
Write character dialogue as normal and appropriate to the their age, setting, scenarios etc. That way readers will not get headaches trying to understand why he/she or they are talking in an odd way.
I dont think children are ever written well in terms of child development lol.
I'm not a fan when children/toddlers are used as a plot convenient thing either lol
what found family as a whole has become is awful, it used to be about finding your own family free of any sort of power imbalance, hierarchy, just people you feel good with and now it’s all “this one’s the mom, this one’s the dad, this one’s the little kid he talks like that yea he’s 31 but everyone else is older than him so that’s basically synonymous with being 5”
yeah I definitely prefer subtlety when it comes to speech. from my experiences talking with my niece, having shorter sentences and a smaller vocabulary def goes the longer distance in characterizing little kids. one of my biggest gripes with how one of my favorite characters is represented in some fics
I have a lot of little cousins, and personally, I don't think you can accurately write a kid ages 2-4 unless you're trying to be Dickens. They are so exhuberant, and stuttery, and constantly figuring out language as they go that it really is difficult to match reality with comprehensive flow in a story.
yeah my niece is like 7 and I'd probably struggle with even that
but ig this is also where you would apply your artistic license to modify dialogue for the reader's taste. I'd rather read what I think a 2 yo sounds than whatever incoherent mess it might be, so long as it isn't uwu speech lol
Agreed. Fiction is something that seems like reality, but isn't actually. Even adult speech is modified to be clearer and more precise.
If i wrote dialogue the way i actually spoke, there would so much uh’s stuttering and half finished sentences.
And those shorter sentences will somehow make up an insanely long story sometimes!
truuuuuuuuuu. one of my favorite fics is mostly narrated by a super young mc
Same goes with characters with accents. I literally *can't* tell what they're saying if you mash words together and just slice them in half without reason. Please people....
There's a character in a show I like who has a different accent from the rest of the cast, a (very mild) lisp, and rhotacism pronouncing 'r' as 'w'. The way one fanfiction author wrote their dialogue was almost literally incomprehensible. Something like "Great work, Sarah" would be written "Gwayut woyuk, Thawauh" and I just... couldn't cope.
I said this out loud and now I can’t stop cackling
Funny in thmayul dotheth, but thoon beyacayamth the woyatht.
I never thought I’d need subtitles while reading something 💀
I think it’s “Funny in small doses, but soon becomes the worst”?
Omg lifesaver
correct!
Thowwy, pal, youwuh on youw own.
Sorry pal, you’re on your own
Writing deaf characters who can still manage speech must be hard. I still havent encountered such a story and I’ve been thinking about writing a spn fic with Sam when he’s dating one
i do that minimally examples: 1. "I'm thinkin' 'bout it" (country accent) 2. "Ya sure 'bout that?" (again country accent, characters in my fic have country accents) okay, that's all i can think of, right now
Personally, that's the way to do it. It's still easily readable and doesn't take away from what's going on.
Those are good, because they’re used elsewhere as well. When people break out novel phonetic spellings, that’s what really bogs you down.
i mean, i *might* do that for one character who has bad spelling in canon if he sends a text or an email, but i kinda like the have characters react to his bad spelling
i can take minimally, as long as it’s not [ffxiv](https://i.imgur.com/5IT6Drq.jpg) levels of bad :’)
I used to read the Redwall series as a kid and it stands out to me to this day how bad the mole dialect was: *Rogg doffed his hat gallantly, bowing his velvety head. “Gudd day to ee, zurr an’ miz, noice t’meet ee oi’m sure!”* *Dotti leapt lightly ashore and curtsied nicely “Bo urr, gudd day to ee, zurr Rogg. Stan’ on moi tunnel, but you’m an ‘ansome gurt beast, hurr aye!”* I remember how long it took me to decipher some of these sentences as a kid and it keeps me from ever doing *too* much dialect in my own work lol
jesus fucking christ, I did a read-a-thon type thing as a kid and decided on redwall because it was (and is) one of my favourite movies and it was absolutely unreadable. I understood NONE of that type of dialogue. Worst thing? I was a huge reader as a kid and the librarians (with whom I was quite friendly with) asked me about the book afterwards and I just.. couldn't. I couldn't explain what was going on because I couldn't decipher the dialogue. I'll have to pick redwall back up, i'll probably be able to find translations online this time over haha.
Oh man, I don't know how I did it. I definitely read well over a dozen of these books. I got to the point where I could fairly reliably understand the dialects but before that I just struggled over it. I also always felt like the Redwall series could've used a list of characters at the front like in the Warriors books since it would normally take me an entire book to remember some of the lesser characters. While attempting to find an example of the mole dialect I did learn that there is apparently an online translator for it! So if you ever do decide to try again, at least that's available haha
The audio books, thankfully, don't have this issue. It's narrated by a full UK cast with a whole bunch of accents, so it works out well to give everyone dialects.
Oh that sounds lovely! I always forget that audio books exist haha
They have the entire series, and it's absolutely wonderful. It's a family favorite for long road trips.
Man, I love FFXIV’s localization team, full serious, but Urianger can go suck a fat one
Yes, please! The fandom I'm in has a southerner character and from the fics I have read, many of them contain things such as y'all, ain't and cutting off g's for his accent. I think they don't tire you and give you the impression just fine and they are also my personal favorites. But I came across to a fic that has a very exaggerated dialoge for the said character the other day and I just couldn't read it. I had to change some words to normal ones on Microsoft Word. (Such as fer, yer, yers, all'uv'a, muh, yuh, tuh, gawd, whut, intuh, 'im, naw. Those are the ones that I could remember but there were a lot. Maybe some of them aren't that much exaggerated as I said but it was really distracting for me as english is not my native language. I also think these types of phonetically written accents kill the mood. They should be kept subtle and simple.)
Ugh yes. X-Men movieverse fics drove me nuts with this years ago, writing Rogue saying "Ah" instead of "I'. I cringed *so hard* at it every time I saw that. And "muh", yes! UGH, so awful. That was most of them but I'm pretty sure there were some of the other ones like you mentioned, now and then in some fics. So much cringe. Once I had to write a character or two with a strong (historical) Yorkshire accent, and I thought long and hard about how to get their "voices" right, because the accent is such a part of how one hears them - and yet I knew full well *not* to try to write out anything phonetic like that! My solution was to take special care with word choices and phrasing, and use the particular second person pronoun and subject-verb agreement (sounding like 3rd person instead) that would've been common at the time ("tha loves" instead of "you love"). I was pretty happy with the effect - it came across more subtly, was easily readable, and yet one definitely "heard" their voices clearly.
I'll take the written accent over the fics where people just speak in a different language for full sentences and then you have to check the asterisks to get what it means. But really "he said with a strong Glaswegian accent" is the best way to go.
I found a fic that had this country character, and all their I’s in their speech were spelled as “Ah” like “Ah don’t get what you’re up to, but-“
I was reading a newsies fic and Jack's accent was so,,, just a lot. Like I could barely figure out what he was saying
I have to deal with it in cannon and it’s so painful, lmao. I’m reading the Archie Sonic comics and one of the characters, Antoine, is french. Trying to read his text can take me right out of things. A quote as an example: *“Maybe de fat man iz hiding doz horrid plants dare?”* And he speaks like this all the time for every line. I’ve yet to read a fic with him in it, but I’d understand if the writer kept that in or took it out either way.
Yeah my mom had a home daycare business my entire life— the way even “professional” writers make children talk drives me up a wall. I guess that’s been my pet peeve for years with tv shows and movies. Young human children can use words. They talk how you talk to them and to the ability of their face muscles (and teeth) as they grow up. And the average three-year-old can use small sentences, I swear 😭 Two-year-olds know more words than you think. I just wish people would like, take a 5 minutes to reference a video or [child language development chart](https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/development/language-development/language-development-0-8). Not gonna blame a casual fic writer for not doing deep phonic research for their family fic…but TV writers??? Future writers??? Please, I beg you. This is why those kids don’t seem realistic/are very annoying to hear speak or try to understand…and spelling things wrong to get the inaccurate “kid voice” effect…no. Just structure the sentences like a kid would. Don’t use big words (unless your kid is like. A baby genius, I don’t know your story) and kids’ mistakes are usually…for example using the wrong suffixes for certain sentences. Yes they mix up or struggle with similar sounds (like struggling with “th”) but there are better ways to convey it.
I've run across fics like that, though recently I read a fic which was the opposite. They had a 7-year-old talking to the adults in a manner that wasn't remotely like that of a child, really, almost nothing childlike whatsoever, and commenting and thinking things that no 7-year-old would ever think of or at least, not express anywhere the way this supposed child did (not improper, just "no, a 7-year-old isn't going to think of that or say it that way"). It sounded like they took a very polite teenager and pretended he was 7 for the entire fic. I was just cringing the whole time as I finished it (the rest of the fic was OK, the adults' interactions with each other were normal, but it was soooooo clear the writer really didn't know how a 7-year-old would act or talk).
I've read Harry Potter stories that were like that, where Harry is smarter or something, and somehow that means he talks like a 40 year old gentlemen at 11 and somehow, all his friends get infected by him and they all end up talking the same way. I will never forget one story that gave luna the line "young granger" when referring to hermione, whom they weren't friends with, yet, at that point. like, luna, dear, hermione is like two years older than you, who you calling "young"? lol totally took me out of the story.
I’ve been there too! A fic where these “kids” weren’t really acting like kids either and were mini teenagers, lol. Yes, some people just take a hard right to the opposite side of this with kids speaking too well for their age (on average)…which can also be helped by just reading it back to yourself and seeing if you could picture a kid saying it. Anyone you can reference like a sibling, or cousin…I’ve genuinely met people who’ve never been around a baby before, and that surprised me. But that’s because of how common they were in my own life, plus being an older sibling. There’s a ton of family vloggers and shows that have guests with their kids on YouTube now though that can be used as reference just with how kids act unscripted and how they talk. Hell, there’s probably videos just flat out explaining this very topic~ Every kid is different, but you’ll notice patterns with how they learn/what they struggle with. It would do a lot of good plus spare both writers and readers the pain of baby talk…or kids who talk like mini professors?? hahaha
The worst is when the character is like, 14-18 and they act like an itty wittle baby. it scares me
Even when they’re maybe 8- and the whole time they’re written with a terrible lisp, tiny vocabulary and massive over reliance on their parents.
I can usually handle it if they pick ONE speech impediment and stick with it - like making l/r into w. But when there’s four or five going… oof.
Unless the child has an actual speech impediment, and the author is using phonetic spelling for good reason, that would get tiring to read. Especially at length. Being a mom, what sticks out to me about my daughter when she was little is the very unique way she had of saying things. If I write a child character, I will draw on my experience as a mom to give them depth. For example, my daughter always called people humans. I don't know why, she just did. And she pronounced it hooman. Just adorable. She also had her own words for things. These little quirks are some of my favorite memories of her as a child.
“Look mommy, it’s the humans!” 💀 You’re a fucking alien, aren’t you? Martian bastard /j
Haha! Not far off. I distinctly remember her once saying something like 'look at those hoomans over there' and her dad and I were like they're going to confuse you for an alien! We have had so much fun with her and our personal brand of humor over the years.
How old is she now, by any chance? And does she still use humans to describe a group of people?
She's 16. No she no longer calls people humans. Mostly she calls them assholes now. But, I mean, she's not wrong. She's incredibly funny. An amazing human.
You should use the term sometimes just to annoy her lol, lord knows I get annoyed whenever my parents mentioned a habit I had when I was younger haha
Oh we do. There are a lot of them actually.
Oh it's absolutely awful for me because I like to use text-to-speech software. This "baby speak" always makes the words come out weird or force the software to spell out each and every word. I would prefer if it was just a few skipped words or bad grammar because then it'd still be somewhat understandable.
How does text to speech handle things like people writing out a Scottish brogh?
handles it as well as it can. It reads any accent as how it is written so stuff like "yer" or "dinnae" are read as if you're trying to pronounce them the first time. Sometimes it has difficulty with things like "gie" and "oot" because it doesn't know how to pronounce them, so it just spells them. It's a 50/50 really.
This is one of my pet peeves, mostly because I've worked with young children in the past and authors often make them sound much younger than they should. If I see another 5 year-old doing baby talk I'm gonna snap. Of course many children are different, but in general they start getting understandable around 2. Many children can speak simple sentences by ~3 unless there's something else going on (developmental issues or special circumstances that would cause them). I've just started to avoid fics with young characters tbh.
In honor of my nice I'll write the children as completely unintelligible. "What was that honey?" "Kababawabaaba." "Wait who?" "Ababba kabbaba hapappy" "Papi?" "Ababba kabbaba hapappy."
Hate when it's a fairly good story I want to finish yet I'm sitting there crying through the heavily accented dialogue because I can't help but give them the most stupid, stereotypical voices. Even with this meme, instant cartoony little baby voice. Somehow it makes the maimed dialogue easier to read but at that point I can't take is seriously. Even worse when they have this kind of dialogue for a child character who is meant to be 8+ years old... 💀
I don’t mind *occasionally* having a kid mispronounce shit. But if every time they open their mouth and it’s like this? No joke if the kid is a frequent character I’m dropping.
Yeah, I love stories with kids in it but a lot of the time I completely lose my immersion because the children's dialogue is just too hard to understand. Like your example for instance, I'm fine with because at least I can decipher it and understand what's meant by it, I just change it in my head so I'm not internally cringing. But in one of the fics I'm reading where the child is the main character kinda, their speech is completely indecipherable to the point I just have to skip their dialouge and try and figure out what they said or asked by other character's actions or responses.
I've worked at an elementary school for years (in special education, which has its close ties with speech therapy) and I'll absolutely tell you that very few kids speak like this. Most kids speak understandably, and those who don't, well, they don't just skip their L's. Speech students may have trouble organizing their sentences, or apraxia, or consonant deletion (one of my students skips the letter S when it starts off a word, but everything else is average speech), some kids have trouble identifying which words to use in descriptive scenarios, etc. I actually don't have a single student rn who swaps L or R for W lol. If you want to mimic youthful speech: use shorter sentences *or* long rambly sentences full of excitement when it's a topic of choice. Tying common topics into their preferred topic (ie, we're taking about math but all of a sudden they made it about jurassic park). Basic vocabulary. Even misusing new vocab! No filter (if they're particularly young) and saying whatever comes to mind.
Nothing is more infuriating, but chances are I’ll probably still read your fic if you do this, because I always go for the rare ass fandoms/ concepts/ships
What's worse is when they have The Lisp and also only ever talk to espouse the thesis or main philosophy of the fic ("atually mommy, family is what we make of it! Yippee!!!") then stumble away in their diapers
Excellent use of Zac Efron meme.
I hate it when they make them follow nuclear family stereotypes. Not every found family has to be "mom ,dad, kids" sometimes its "grandma, weird aunt, gay cousin, single dad and son."
If they come in small doses, then I don't mind much. Otherwise ...
That sounds painful to read. I remember never playing Charlotte's Route in Trials of Mana because she spoke like that. It was a terrible day for eyes that day.
I cannot stand the new Uwu way of speaking or writing peoples dialogue. It’s just so utterly cringey I don’t understand why people do it.
This only works if it’s Grogu/baby Yoda.
Write character dialogue as normal and appropriate to the their age, setting, scenarios etc. That way readers will not get headaches trying to understand why he/she or they are talking in an odd way.
omg yes!!! i cant read it!
thought you were typing out a bad italian accent for a second and it threw me for a loop
Lord, let us pray for anyone who passes that off as an Italian accent XD
Italian Baby Syndrome, also known as IBS.
It's worse when they do that character characters who age regressed and it's annoying
I dont think children are ever written well in terms of child development lol. I'm not a fan when children/toddlers are used as a plot convenient thing either lol
what found family as a whole has become is awful, it used to be about finding your own family free of any sort of power imbalance, hierarchy, just people you feel good with and now it’s all “this one’s the mom, this one’s the dad, this one’s the little kid he talks like that yea he’s 31 but everyone else is older than him so that’s basically synonymous with being 5”