Today we see that the speech patterns of non-native speakers should either be close enough to normal not to be noticed, or noticeable enough to immediately let the reader know the speech will be odd.
What I gleaned about the stories: You can find some wonderful things in a library, especially if you’re an asteroid miner.
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Note: This is a short story collection, so the rules are slightly different from standard Immerse or Die: instead of reading on every time I lose immersion, I stop reading that story and move on to the next one. As usual, I stop reading after the third WTF.
Analysis: Few paragraphs into the introduction, I encountered: Sometimes it’s a sub-genre mash-up, which often means absolutely nothing to me until I look them up… there is a very useful list of sub-genres on Wikipedia, and it extends my knowledge of the wonderful world of writing by venturing into these sub-genres and mixing them up (a mash-up). Ellipses traditionally signify trailing off or missing words, so hitting one at what appeared to be the end of a complete sentence niggled at me: why had the author highlighted a break here? What was it supposed to mean?
After a moment of consideration, the only possibility that came to mind was that the ellipsis was intended to link the following aside about Wikipedia more closely than a full stop would. However, that is usually done with either a semi-colon, a dash, or brackets; so each time it isn’t niggles at me.
With the spectre of further punctuation oddities catching my eye rising before me, I moved on.
Analysis: A little way into the first story, I hit “…Because the second variation of the rumour insists that one of them is well-known to you. A veteran of the Fremanoid System also.” The speaker is an alien, so I’d forgive odd usage; however, something about this phrasing niggled at me. A moment later, I realised it wasn’t unusual enough. Had it been noticeably mangled English, my mind would instinctively infer a non-native speaker. Conversely, had it been casual English, my mind wouldn’t have thought anything of it. However, this fell part way between: my mind instinctively thought English speaker, then tripped over the slightly off rhythm.
After flicking back for a moment to confirm it wasn’t a wider issue of stilted writing, I moved on.
Analysis: Slightly under a page into the third story I found: Suit material was tough, but the picks were chipping away rock. Unsure why, I found myself discomforted. After considering a moment, I realised the issue was the lack of a stated reason for the ‘however’: the suit material was tough but the picks {were designed for} chipping away rock. Consciously, the missing words didn’t stand out immediately, but their absence unsettled my unconscious flow enough to push me out for a third (and final) time.
Analysis: While I stumbled out three times, I didn’t lose my desire to read more. So, this will go in the pile of books to return to when I don’t care about a few moments of surfacing.
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