Funetik Aksent/Quotes

"Harry: Um, why are you talking that way? Hagrid: An' wot way izzit dat yer referrin' ter? Harry: That. You know, the accent? Hagrid: Oh, that. Ter accent's ter create, like, ter illusion of character devel'pmint. Yeh, apparen'ly ter li'l snots...er, readers...kin hear, like, my voice insider heads. An' they gets so hung up on muh funny way o' talkin', they dunna notice 'at I'm not hardly sayin' a single thing 'ats ter least bit in'nerestin'. Harry: I bet it's also helpful for the long passages with just dialogue, so you can tell who's saying what, without having to go back to look. Hagrid: Yer learnin' fast, yiz are."

- Desmond Devlin, in a Mad Magazine spoof of Harry Potter

""In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.""

- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn