Eye dialect: translating the untranslatable

The term ‘eye dialect’ was first coined in 1925 by George P. Krapp inThe
English Language in America(McArthur 1998). The term was used to describe
the phenomenon of unconventional spelling used to reproduce colloquial
usage. When one encounters such spellings “the convention violated is one
of the eyes, and not of the ear”. Furthermore, eye dialect would be used by
writers “not to indicate a genuine difference in pronunciation, but the
spelling is a friendly nudge to the reader, a knowing look which establishes a
sympathetic sense of superiority between the author and reader as
contrasted with the humble speaker of dialect”. While the phrase “the
humble speaker of dialect” may smack of prescriptivism to the modern
reader, this passage is important, as it finally gives a term for a device that
has been used in literature for centuries. Krapp was referring to spellings
likeenufffor ‘enough’,wimminfor ‘women’,animulzfor ‘animals’ and
numerous other examples in which the standard spelling of the word belies
in some way its pronunciation. One may envisage these spellings as a sort of
insinuation on the part of the author that the character whose speech is
depicted so would spell these words in this way, hence demonstrating a
level of education and literacy substantially lower than the average.