[lbo-talk] Writing semiliterate English (advice)

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Jul 11 06:45:06 PDT 2008


On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Chris Doss wrote:


> Anyway, the document is written in semiliterate Russian. Especially,
> words are written spelled as they sound. I really don't know how to
> reproduce this in English

I'd say post a paragraph of it translated into standard English and let people on the list try their hand at altering it. That's probably the quickest way to get across practical suggestions that will allow you to evolve a style.

Since Rasputin was very intelligent, my own suspicion is that the writing should be very colloquial and the spelling should be bad -- not funny bad, like you did it, but like a 1st grader would spell words big words they'd never heard. I might even switch letters liked "b" and "d" and "p."

Michael



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list