Talk:eye dialect

RFV

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Rfv-sense: "The written representations of dialect speech in which words are spelled in a manner which indicates a non-standard pronunciation." I've only ever encountered this term in the meaning in which it was coined, "written dialogue that uses nonstandard spelling but doesn't indicate an unusual pronunciation", e.g. sez for says. If the spelling does reflect a dialectal difference, it's just a dialectal spelling, not eye dialect. —Angr 17:58, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

What about wonderfool? Is wonderful with /uː/ an usual pronunciation? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:44, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes. The examples at wonderfool all show it's a spelling reflecting a foreign pronunciation. It's a pronunciation spelling, not eye dialect. —Angr 20:47, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I've always understood the term to mean any written representation of a pronunciation, but I see that this wasn't quite the original meaning. The term seems to be currently used for any "spell as it sounds", including both standard and dialectal pronunciations in modern usage. The OED says: "unusual spelling intended to represent dialectal or colloquial idiosyncrasies of speech". Charles Dickens seems to have combined both usages in Bleak House: "...there wos other genlmen come down Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded as to be a-talking to theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin to us.". It is difficult to find usage that is exclusive to either sense. Dbfirs 10:11, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

If Dbfirs' definition turns out not to meet CFI, almost every entry which uses {{eye dialect of}} needs to be changed. - -sche (discuss) 16:05, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Not exactly. We have two choices:

1. We can put our definition in Appendix:Glossary and link to it.
2. We can change the text of {{eye-dialect}} to something else like "pronunciation spelling" (or do a redirect etc.).

The second option might compel us to be more specific about the nature of dialect that was being represented. DCDuring TALK 10:41, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

RFV-failed as sense in that entry (but kept as the definition of the term in our glossary, because it's how our entries and templates use it). - -sche (discuss) 20:13, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Eye dialect represents a standard pronunciation

See for example the definition here:

Such nonstandard spellings of standard pronunciations are sometimes referred to as eye dialect; the eye perceives them as nonstandard forms, though the ear recognizes their normality.

There are plenty of other sources referenced in the Wikipedia article, though most of them are not readily available online and would require a trip to the library to verify. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:11, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

You seem to be right: at least one sense of "eye dialect" requires that the eye dialect spelling has a pronunciation same as the normal spelling. The question remains whether there is another sense of "eye dialect" that is not so restrictive. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:20, 11 January 2015 (UTC)