Learn English – When quoting a speaker of another English dialect, should you spell things his way

dialectsorthography

I realize (or realise?) I may be splitting hairs here, but I find this question interesting, and I’ve never heard or seen it discussed before.

I was about to post a quote from Rich Hickey outside my cubicle, taken from an interview with him, in which the writer uses the traditional British spelling of realize. Hickey is an American, as am I, so I changed it back to the American spelling.

However, it got me thinking: if Hickey were British, should I spell it his way?

The question then is whether I should do so only if quoting something he wrote, or even if I were quoting something he spoke — and thus something he did not actually spell.

Tangentially: should I think of this as quoting Hickey himself, or quoting the author who quoted him?

My gut instinct is that if you’re quoting something written, then you should maintain whatever spelling the author used, and if something spoken then it’s debatable, and using the spelling of your dialect (or of your audience’s dialect) is probably okay.

But I’d like to know: do any conventions exist on this matter?

Best Answer

We can take a look at BBC News for an example of a quoted American (source):

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realise that life is that gift from God," [Mr Mourdock] said.

Now let's look at the New York Times quoting a Briton (source):

“I think what he’s achieved will never be bettered in terms of five consecutive Games,” Hoy said. “You start to realize what it means when you actually break it down and see what you have to do and the number of things that can go wrong.”

Unfortunately, many style guides overlook your exact question, but we can see in practice what news sources do. Short of poring over hundreds or thousands of articles from each outlet, it's hard to tell if they are all consistent, but generally the publisher or author will use the spelling conventions of the publisher's or author's country unless quoting directly from a text.

How do we deal with other aspects of a dialect or accent (e.g. preserving someone's g-droppin', etc.)? The answer is, as per some style guides such as the MLA Handbook:

Obvious typographic errors may be corrected silently (without comment or sic; see 13.59), unless the passage quoted is from an older work or a manuscript source where idiosyncrasies of spelling are generally preserved. If spelling and punctuation are modernized or altered for clarity, readers must be so informed in a note, in a preface, or elsewhere.

Note that this describes "typographic errors". However, the quoted speech you describe is transcribed at some point. If you choose to preserve someone's speech verbatim, then you will wind up capturing typographic and grammatical "errors". Therefore, you could apply this guideline.

When quoting a speaker, if she said, "I ain't got nofin' to cook wif," then I could use [sic] or an alternative. It's often suggested, as in this ELU question that "quiet editing" take place, so you would write "I have nothing to cook with" or "I ain't got nothing to cook with" depending on how you want to portray the speaker.

In short, go with your gut instinct.

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