2796: Eye-Dialects Aug 16, 2024

English is notoriously internally inconsistent when it comes to what spelling corresponds to which sound, usually, though by no means exclusively, concerning the vowels. Even in languages with so-called phonetic writing, in practice this only means that there is internal consistency with the sounds as they match spelling, but not that it realistically matches how people speak, especially when it comes to minority dialects of a standard language. 

An eye-dialect is the term for when people write in a (semi-)phonological way to match the dialect. This often takes the form of replacing only key words that would vary dialect-to-dialect, but not ones that are less indicative. For example, [see picture] this is a tweet in the “Scottish twitter” style where people commonly write to the way they sound, but the majority of the words will retain their standard spelling.

Eye-dialects, named as such because the dialect exists to the ear, as it were, but only through this modified spelling will appear the same to the eye, can be used for regional dialects or sociolects, like African-American English alike. Because these are not standard, but still rely on spelling standards in most cases, the degree to which the words are modified along with which words are modified in the first place, varies widely.