I had similar thoughts when reading Huck Finn. It's not just phonetically spelled, it's much different. Almost like Twain came up with a list of words, and then had a bunch of 2nd graders tell him the spelling of words they had seen. I guess at some point, you just get good at bad spelling?

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spauldo 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Writing in the vernacular, I believe it's called. I do something like that if I'm texting.

The book "Feersum Endjinn" by Iain M. Banks uses something like this for one of its characters to quite good effect.

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dylan604 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Except it forces me to slow down to "decypher" the text and makes the reading labored. I understand the point as it is part of the character, but it is easier to understand someone speaking in that vernacular vs reading the forced misspellings. I definitely don't want to get to the point of being good at reading it though. I wonder if this is how second grade teachers feel reading the class' schoolwork?

	▲	spauldo 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's true. I'm sure Twain and Banks were aware of this, though. Apparently they considered the immersion to be worth a little extra work on the part of the reader. Whether the reader agrees is a different story. I try to limit my use of it to just enough for my accent and way of talking to bleed through. I don't go for full-on phonetics, but I'm often "droppin' my g's and usin' lotsa regional sayin's." It probably helps that the people I text have the same accent I do, though.