Means of Expressing Distortions in the English Speech of German–Speaking Characters of English Literature

Abstract

The article features the way fiction writers depict peculiarities of direct speech of characters, who are non-native speakers, but are able to communicate effectively with those characters, for whom these languages are mother tongues. The investigation of a dozen works written by British and American authors of the XIXth and XXth centuries shows how they, as well as their translators into Russian, imagined the speech of Germans, who had to talk in English. The numerous examples given in this article feature the interfering effect of the native, mostly German or Dutch, language of the character on the taught English language. A typology of language means, representing the main kinds of the English speech distortions made by speakers of German is given. The main phonetical and graphical devices are devocalization and voicing, substitution of consonants, and also vowel substitution. Most frequent are the following grammatical devices: violation of syntactic coordination, choice of verb forms and of word order. Also cases of the use of foreign language inclusions is noted.