Others slang language - is it real?
- Thread starter coffeeaddicted
- Start date
- Jul 4, 2017
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This particular topic is central to a lot of the work I do as an editor for the games I work on. Up until recently with the growth of GPT-3,4 etc, I'm not sure there has been a good way to produce text that is truely "native speaker sounding" without the assistance of a.... native speaker. And even within the anglosphere, those of us who hail from parts of the world where we have been immersed in both UK and US media from childhood probably have a better ability to write in various sub-dialects than someone raised in either of those places.
Speaking specifically about how manual proofreading/editing can help improve game dialogue, I'll give an example of three of the games I work on which are developed by non-native speakers of English, those being "Nothing is Forever", "Tabletop Bornstar", and "A Long Journey". Each of the devs of these games have an excellent grasp of English, but there is a clear gap between what they write and the specific words, sentence structure, and idiom choices that would be made by a native speaker. I think this is one of the places where I add the most value, in that I can work with them to improve the dialogue to sound "natural".
Within each game the developers then have different preferences for how that want their characters to sound, and I attempt to use regional phrases and slang to achieve the aim. NIF is supposed to be mid-atlantic, with US spellings. TabletopBornstar is true to it's setting, with MC speaking like a 40-ish y.o. man living in 90s California.
A couple of random examples of changes from the upcoming chapter 6 of Nothing is Forever:
Speaking specifically about how manual proofreading/editing can help improve game dialogue, I'll give an example of three of the games I work on which are developed by non-native speakers of English, those being "Nothing is Forever", "Tabletop Bornstar", and "A Long Journey". Each of the devs of these games have an excellent grasp of English, but there is a clear gap between what they write and the specific words, sentence structure, and idiom choices that would be made by a native speaker. I think this is one of the places where I add the most value, in that I can work with them to improve the dialogue to sound "natural".
Within each game the developers then have different preferences for how that want their characters to sound, and I attempt to use regional phrases and slang to achieve the aim. NIF is supposed to be mid-atlantic, with US spellings. TabletopBornstar is true to it's setting, with MC speaking like a 40-ish y.o. man living in 90s California.
A couple of random examples of changes from the upcoming chapter 6 of Nothing is Forever:
Code:
Before:
l "{color=eed147}*giggles*{/color} Maybe... and me here always thinking that you were much more of a pervert than me..."
After making it sound natural:
l "{color=eed147}*giggles*{/color} Maybe... and here I am, always thinking that you're a much bigger pervert than me..."
Before:
e "Alright, I guess I'll leave for good now."
After adding a more "slang" casual feeling, and toning down the nuance of "leave for good":
e "Alright, I guess I'll leave now, for real this time."
- Jul 4, 2017
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Ah-ha, a wild native speaker sample appears!
Of course, it depends on how far you turn the "slang" vs "proper" dial and what region you are targetting. So far MrSilverlust has preferred to keep it very mid-atlantic, and game could be set in any <insert random mid-northern Europe> country. Mainly I've been trying to keep the dialogue from being too formal, and Lea is definitely not canonically of English extraction.
- Jun 10, 2017
- 11,009
- 16,295
[Note: It's past 5AM here and I fight insomnia, so my English will probably be worse than usual, sorry]
But isn't it the core of the problem ? Outside of academics, no one speak properly his native language.
When it come to a foreign language, we are taught a basic vocabulary in the same time than the grammar, and it's on it, and the structural base commonly used by our teachers, that we will build the way we speak/write it.
But when it come to our native language we are only taught its grammar ; plus a bit of practical use in preschool. All our vocabulary is mostly learned by mimicry. If our parents think, we will think. If they figure, we will figure. And if they picture or believe, we will picture or believe.
Of course, when I say "parents", it's reductive. We will mimic the persons that impress us, our parents generally being the first ones, but not the only ones. Therefore, if Uncle Archibald is doing it with his tailor-made suit and soft but firm voice, we will probably speak better than if it's Uncle Joe who impress us with his funny voice when he drank too much. And, obviously we aren't stuck with this vocabulary and can improve once we grow up.
But in the end, while they carry the same global meaning, those four sentences are expressing four different things:
"Always thinking" represent the thoughts that unconsciously cross our mind when it come to you and perversion.
"Always figuring" is more conscious. We figure out something after we thought about it for a long enough period of time. We wondered how much of a pervert you can be, and we came to the conclusion that it's more than us.
"Always picturing" is how much pervert we guess you are. When we draw a picture, it represent the subject as we see it, what isn't necessarily how it really is. And it happen that we imagine you more pervert than us.
As for "always believing", it fall more on the side of the desire. When we believe in something, we hope that this something is true/exist. We believe that you are more pervert than us, because it's what we want you to be.
Yet, all the four sentences will be understood in the same global way by the reader. Whatever if we think, figure, picture or believe, in the end it will be read as "in my mind you are more pervert than me".
This come from what PaperDevil pointed out above in the thread. We will use a word because we believe that it's the word to use, and like everyone else is doing the same, unconsciously we learned to not read to much in what we hear/read, sticking to the global meaning of a word.
But the fact is that, for an amount of words that vary from an individual to another, we in fact don't know what they mean ; at least outside of their global meaning. We regularly use a dictionary to verify the meaning of a word from a foreign language, but how often are we doing it with our native language ? We do it to ensure that we write it correctly, but never really care to take a look at its meaning.
As long as we understood what is said, we will assume that we got the right meaning for each words. Then we will use them, people will understand us, not looking surprised, not needing time to process what we said, nor smiling because we looks like an idiot. Therefore we really got the meaning right, isn't it ? And we don't looks further, than this because all this learning phase happen when we are still children, we have better to do than opening one of those boring books that dictionaries are.
And, yes, this don't help writing correctly a dialog, because it mean that there isn't really a correct way to write it... As long as it's grammatically correct, the rightness of the words matter less than the rightness of the meaning.
And also yes, insomnia don't do good on me.
And both sentences are as correct as, "and me who's always picturing you as being a bigger pervert than me", or, "and here I am, always believing that you are a much bigger pervert than me", as well as probably few other possibilities, are.
But isn't it the core of the problem ? Outside of academics, no one speak properly his native language.
When it come to a foreign language, we are taught a basic vocabulary in the same time than the grammar, and it's on it, and the structural base commonly used by our teachers, that we will build the way we speak/write it.
But when it come to our native language we are only taught its grammar ; plus a bit of practical use in preschool. All our vocabulary is mostly learned by mimicry. If our parents think, we will think. If they figure, we will figure. And if they picture or believe, we will picture or believe.
Of course, when I say "parents", it's reductive. We will mimic the persons that impress us, our parents generally being the first ones, but not the only ones. Therefore, if Uncle Archibald is doing it with his tailor-made suit and soft but firm voice, we will probably speak better than if it's Uncle Joe who impress us with his funny voice when he drank too much. And, obviously we aren't stuck with this vocabulary and can improve once we grow up.
But in the end, while they carry the same global meaning, those four sentences are expressing four different things:
"Always thinking" represent the thoughts that unconsciously cross our mind when it come to you and perversion.
"Always figuring" is more conscious. We figure out something after we thought about it for a long enough period of time. We wondered how much of a pervert you can be, and we came to the conclusion that it's more than us.
"Always picturing" is how much pervert we guess you are. When we draw a picture, it represent the subject as we see it, what isn't necessarily how it really is. And it happen that we imagine you more pervert than us.
As for "always believing", it fall more on the side of the desire. When we believe in something, we hope that this something is true/exist. We believe that you are more pervert than us, because it's what we want you to be.
Yet, all the four sentences will be understood in the same global way by the reader. Whatever if we think, figure, picture or believe, in the end it will be read as "in my mind you are more pervert than me".
This come from what PaperDevil pointed out above in the thread. We will use a word because we believe that it's the word to use, and like everyone else is doing the same, unconsciously we learned to not read to much in what we hear/read, sticking to the global meaning of a word.
But the fact is that, for an amount of words that vary from an individual to another, we in fact don't know what they mean ; at least outside of their global meaning. We regularly use a dictionary to verify the meaning of a word from a foreign language, but how often are we doing it with our native language ? We do it to ensure that we write it correctly, but never really care to take a look at its meaning.
As long as we understood what is said, we will assume that we got the right meaning for each words. Then we will use them, people will understand us, not looking surprised, not needing time to process what we said, nor smiling because we looks like an idiot. Therefore we really got the meaning right, isn't it ? And we don't looks further, than this because all this learning phase happen when we are still children, we have better to do than opening one of those boring books that dictionaries are.
And, yes, this don't help writing correctly a dialog, because it mean that there isn't really a correct way to write it... As long as it's grammatically correct, the rightness of the words matter less than the rightness of the meaning.
And also yes, insomnia don't do good on me.
- Apr 13, 2021
- 1,828
- 1,497
When i grew up, dialect was not seen as something good. It made people that spoke it appears as less intelligent.
So you were indirectly taught to speak the official language instead. Part of the crowd, part of seen as equal.
When i hear today a dialect, i know i don't have it. We never spoke it in our 4 walls. And i am missing it.
Dialect has it's charm.
So when i hear english speaking dialects and slang, i am curious. It feels original and witty.
Slang isn't meant that anyone can understand it.
Youth create slang to distinguish people that are belonging and those that are not.
And each generation has their own slang. It evolves constantly.
For practical purposes, slang isn't probably a good way to write dialogs. I think snippets are ok to make a character known to be something where he or she came from.
Today everyone is a master through autocorrection. There aren't a lot of nuance that i see in conversations. Though you can tell if someone is not native, or is it?
I live for over 20 years in the US and i still suck at grammar. In my defense i never visited a language school but learned by error.
Today, i unlearned my native language so much so, that sometimes i can't remember what the word is because i breath more English than my native language.
And so language is a living thing. Learning in school helps, but if you never use it it sounds stiff because you don't live it.
I tried to learn at one point French and i can tell that i sucked. French is a more musical language where you have to learn to connect every word in a sentence. You breath differently in order to put the words out of your mouth.
Spanish sounds to me more like a machine gun. It's a very hard sounding language. I don't speak it.
My point is, each language has it's own way to speak it but you need to live it to master it.
If you are young, like a kid, you will have an easier way to learn and adapt to a foreign language. To the point that you will sound like you live there.
But the charm of foreign people speaking a non native language is how they speak it. I find it very amusing in a good way. Because that is what i sound like. Especially if native speakers ask you, are you from Norway?
I think what i don't like is playing games where everyone sounds like he is a native English speaker. I think there should be always a hint at least that this person is from somewhere else, reflect his education, his background to make the person whole, to make it a real person.
This is probably not easy.
One way to distinguish characters is probably if someone uses a more posh version of the language and one where there are more curse words in it.
So you were indirectly taught to speak the official language instead. Part of the crowd, part of seen as equal.
When i hear today a dialect, i know i don't have it. We never spoke it in our 4 walls. And i am missing it.
Dialect has it's charm.
So when i hear english speaking dialects and slang, i am curious. It feels original and witty.
Slang isn't meant that anyone can understand it.
Youth create slang to distinguish people that are belonging and those that are not.
And each generation has their own slang. It evolves constantly.
For practical purposes, slang isn't probably a good way to write dialogs. I think snippets are ok to make a character known to be something where he or she came from.
Today everyone is a master through autocorrection. There aren't a lot of nuance that i see in conversations. Though you can tell if someone is not native, or is it?
I live for over 20 years in the US and i still suck at grammar. In my defense i never visited a language school but learned by error.
Today, i unlearned my native language so much so, that sometimes i can't remember what the word is because i breath more English than my native language.
And so language is a living thing. Learning in school helps, but if you never use it it sounds stiff because you don't live it.
I tried to learn at one point French and i can tell that i sucked. French is a more musical language where you have to learn to connect every word in a sentence. You breath differently in order to put the words out of your mouth.
Spanish sounds to me more like a machine gun. It's a very hard sounding language. I don't speak it.
My point is, each language has it's own way to speak it but you need to live it to master it.
If you are young, like a kid, you will have an easier way to learn and adapt to a foreign language. To the point that you will sound like you live there.
But the charm of foreign people speaking a non native language is how they speak it. I find it very amusing in a good way. Because that is what i sound like. Especially if native speakers ask you, are you from Norway?
I think what i don't like is playing games where everyone sounds like he is a native English speaker. I think there should be always a hint at least that this person is from somewhere else, reflect his education, his background to make the person whole, to make it a real person.
This is probably not easy.
One way to distinguish characters is probably if someone uses a more posh version of the language and one where there are more curse words in it.