1. Hey, sugar. How y’all doin’?
Dialect
Dialect is an author’s use of speech patterns (way of speaking) characterizing a characters background and/or geographical area or certain group of people. Dialect helps to make a character and setting appear realistic.
Hi, you guys. What’s up?
Howdy, partner.
Hey, sugar. How y’all doin’?
A dialect becomes accepted in a culture and is adapted and used in speaking and writing. Dialect differs in its details of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and expression. It gives hints about a character’s regional, educational, social, economic, and historical background.

2. Dialect
Everyone speaks a dialect of some kind. For example, in the American dialect of English, a car has a hood in front and a trunk in back, and it runs on gas.
petrol tank
gas tank
bonnet
hood
trunk
boot
hood
trunk
gas tank
bonnet
boot
petrol tank
A British speaker of English uses different words: He or she speaks in a British dialect.

3. My character is thirsty. Would she ask for . . .
Dialect
Writers may use dialect to bring a character to life.
My character is thirsty. Would she ask for . . .
a soda?
a tonic?
some pop?

4. Examples from Literature
The first line of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn illustrates the speech patterns of lower-class Mississippi Valley residents in the late nineteenth century:
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter

5. Examples from Literature
William Shakespeare’s characters speak in Old English as in this line spoken by Leonato from Much Ado About Nothing:
How now, brother, where is my cousin, your son?
Hath he provided this music?

6. Examples from Literature
Sir Thomas Malory’s work contains the Medieval dialect of Romanticism:
“And thus it past on from Candylams untyl after Ester that the moneth of May was com, . . .”

7. Examples from Literature
Many of Bret Harte’s characters speak in the dialect of the Old West, as demonstrated by this line from Captain Jim’s Friend:
“Well, the hull thing’ll be settled now, boys; Lacy Bassett is coming down yer to look round . . .”

8. Identifying Dialect Match the following words and phrases with their region, time period, or social group.
Feller a. modern teenagers
Chillin’ b. eighteenth-century Quakers
Sire c. the Old West
Thee d. Medieval times
Peace e. The sixties

9. Unscrambling Dialect Name these two familiar songs that have been written in unfamiliar dialects.
1. At the summit of a platter full of pasta enveloped in parmesan, I misplaced my distressed sphere of beef when an individual responded to an allergic trigger with a nasal scream. 2. Flash, flash, miniature sky rock. Where are you, man? Out of this world. Like a sky diamond. Flash, flash, miniature sky rock. Where are you, man?

10. Turn in your Textbook to page 33
“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
Let’s read pages 33-35

11. Flower’s for Algernon
Once you have been given your number. You and your group will revise, edit, and rewrite a passage from the first 3 entries of the story.
Passages are available from the teacher.