Last week, I posted about using foreign-language slangs in your novel. Angela left a comment that had me thinking:
I have an Australian character in my novel, and I had to watch that I didn't overuse the term "mate." I watched video clips/movies to get an idea of how often they actually said "mate" and was surprised that from what I could see...it was quite often!
Last year, I critted a novel in which the author abused ‘eh’. One of characters was a Canadian expatriate, and the author assumed, like most non-Canadians, that we use ‘eh’ in every sentence.
We don’t
Not even close.
Unless, maybe, you’re from the east coast.
So why did she do it? Because she had heard Canadians say ‘eh.’ A lot.
The problem is Canadians love to make fun of that stereotype. It’s in our sitcoms and movies (comedies) that we know the Americans are going to watch. In the ten plus years I’ve known my husband, I’ve never heard him say, “Eh.” Occasionally, I might catch one of my friends saying it, but it really isn’t that often.
The best thing to do is ask a native of the country you’re portraying to find out what it true. The use of an idiom or utterance may vary according to location, or even according to demographics. And even if they say it often, still don’t abuse it in your novel. It’ll become annoying. It’s the same as ‘totally’ and ‘like’. Listen to teens. They say them all the time. But we all know you should never overuse those two words in your teen novel, right?