Struggling Authors

There is an author whose work I enjoy and greatly admire, although he is not most famous as a writer of novels. He is a sometimes comedy scripwriter (Blackadder etc.) and TV stand-up comedian. He is Ben Elton.

I have read two of his books recently and in both he has characters from 'The North'. He attempts to convey the sounds of a Northern accent by using idiosyncratic spelling and fails miserably. It comes across as a collection of weird guttural grunts, if it is sounded as written, which bear no resemblance to a Northern accent. One problem is the 'u' sound as in 'muck'. He spells it 'mook' in an attempt to convey the rounded vowels of a Northerner. I can see what his problem is. He has a very distinct London accent and in London the 'u' sound is distorted to an 'a' sound so 'muck' becomes 'mack'.
Now if they pronounced the 'u' sound correctly down there then it would still be 'muck' and not 'mack'.

I am surprised that a man of such sharp perceptions and observational wit cannot see clearly beyond his own regional vowel sounds.

I love his books though and the irritation is worth suffering.

Graham
ps This forum needs livening up a bit - wake up you lot!

Reduced to replying to my own topic?
Not really but I am sometimes caught talking to myself -'Is that so Graham?' 'Yes Graham, it is.'
Just more on the same subject - writing 'Northern':

When certain (ignorant?) writers wish to give their characters a Northern accent they use an elision device ...t' or th'. This is a written expression of the glottal stop. The glottal stop is not a sound. If anything it is an interruption of sound, a none-sound, but it does represent an article (the, an or a)
Reviewing on Youwriteon I found a joke(?) based on the glottal stop and it failed miserably because the writer must never have heard a Yorkshire accent.
"This is th' animation."
"Mummy, what's 'thanimation'?"

So - any suggestions as to how the glottal stop can be represented in writing? Should it be?

G.

Hi Graham,

That's a hard one to answer really - on the one hand it helps you to read it with the correct accent in your head, but on the other it's annoying and, as you said, rather ignorant.

I read Ben Elton's 'Chart Throb' and I found the same problem.

I have a couple if friends from 'up north' and I always thought that they use a singular 'T' to represent 'The'.
However, now you've thrown mud into the gravy I'm not so sure.
Perhaps it's more of a 'Te' than just a singular 'T'... mmmmm.


...mmmmmm... I don't know now.
Poo.

I always thought it was one 'T' as well...