I'm ESL myself, writing solely in English for both US- and UK-based fandoms, so my native German really doesn't come into it much, if at all. But if I'm writing an ESL character, I might use certain expressions in dialogue that are indicative of ethnicity or a native language other than English. Whether it's a simple "Merde!" for a French person, or have a Latino mention someone's cojones, it rarely goes beyond that.
(I'm not familiar enough with other languages to use specific grammatical variations to English to denote different mother tongues, and wouldn't do it with German anyway because my teaching background rebels way too much at the mere thought. :P)
For an ESL narrator ... I guess I'd do pretty much the same, perhaps reinforce it by using language/culture-specific references -- provided I'm familiar enough with them to use them correctly, that is.
Overall, though, I'd say it very much depends onwho I'm writing -- how much is either the narrator or the protagonist actually immersed in their English-speaking environment? -- and then take it from there. In any case, I'd keep it to fairly recognizable expressions (by context, if nothing else), as I do want my readers to understand (or at least guess more or less accurately) what they're reading without having to have a dictionary close at hand. Anything more elaborate, and the flow does get lost, IMO.
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Date: 2012-01-03 04:48 pm (UTC)(I'm not familiar enough with other languages to use specific grammatical variations to English to denote different mother tongues, and wouldn't do it with German anyway because my teaching background rebels way too much at the mere thought. :P)
For an ESL narrator ... I guess I'd do pretty much the same, perhaps reinforce it by using language/culture-specific references -- provided I'm familiar enough with them to use them correctly, that is.
Overall, though, I'd say it very much depends onwho I'm writing -- how much is either the narrator or the protagonist actually immersed in their English-speaking environment? -- and then take it from there. In any case, I'd keep it to fairly recognizable expressions (by context, if nothing else), as I do want my readers to understand (or at least guess more or less accurately) what they're reading without having to have a dictionary close at hand. Anything more elaborate, and the flow does get lost, IMO.