'Dashie' and 'Ah'. · 7:01pm Jul 6th, 2014
Oh Dashie, Ah love ya.
Alright, who are you and what have you done with Applejack?
Wut? What're ya talkin' bout, sugarcube?
C'mon, fess up! Are you a changeling? Or even...
PINKIE PIE.
How did you know it was me?!
I thought my disguise was foolproof! So it should've worked on you!
Silly Pinkie, Applejack doesn't say 'Dashie', or "Ah". It just looks stupid. And hey! I'm not a fool!
I dunno, 'Dashie', somedays you make that hard t'believe.
Huurk!
I'm sorry, AJ, that just sounds wrong coming from you! And hey!
I defend you from doppelgangers and this is how you repay me?
Yer right, that was downright unfriendly o' me.
Here, have a cider on me!
On?
Dangit RD, not in public!
Bwah ha ha ha
This has been your friendly PSA. For the love of Celestia and all that is apples, Applejack does not call Rainbow 'Dashie', even if they're in a relationship, unless she's using it to tease Dash. But... she's not the type to use it as a term of endearment. If anything, she'd have a nickname of her own choosing (Speedy? Thunderbutt?) or just "Dash", but "Dashie" sounds... wrong, coming from her. That's more something for Pinkie and Fluttershy, who have both used it in the show.
As for "Ah"... I'm sorry, but if you use that, you're infected with a terrible case of 'Ah'tism. Where you replace a perfectly good single letter with two in effort to create an accent. It just looks terribly silly and annoying to read! :P
There's plenty o' ways t'give Applejack her darlin' accent. You jus' gotta avoid the Ahs.
That, and give her southern sayings. 
Applejack, an example please?
Sure thing! 
Why, I remember my sister and her friends during the Equestria games! 
Made me sit up proud like a cornstalk in August!
Thank you, Applejack.
As you can see, this type you won't have any idea how to use unless you're from the south yourself. 
So find someone who knows!
Rasser frassin' unicorns...
I am an unrepentant 'Ah'tist and you can't stop me!
media.giphy.com/media/70MpPFc5q0LEk/giphy.gif
2262521
I'm dissapointed in ya, pardner.
i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g474/zQZXzAgent0/5f9f3_ORIG-fuck_you_i_do_what_i_want.gif
2262528
I have to be. Or else I'd have to go back and rewrite a LOT of stuff. You trying to make me work more? HUH?!
2262533
Find all 'Ah', replace all with "i!"
Actually in nearly every single book or story that has southern accents it either doesn't show it and says with a southern accent or it uses words like 'ah' and 'pardner' and for the dashie part I believe that it could be used properly and smoothly, But I mostly agree.
2262536
You know I'm going to continue writing AJ with Ah's just to bug you now, right?
2262568
God. No.
"o'" and dropped g's is not appropriate for southern vernacular. Think Irish instead, or maybe cajun/creole.
Unless you're lampooning it, AJ's accent works just fine with a bit of creative word choice and no need to maul the language.
Nashville native, here to answer all your southern lingo questions. I have made a bit of a hobby studying southern accents. I might do a little write up of my on, on the topic in a day or two.
You mean that bizarre pet names shouldn't be used every other sentence in place of the correct name for an entire story?
2262575
The o' might be a bit excessive, sure. Dropped g's I think is fitting enough. But yeah, it's mainly the "Ah' I'm railing against, which just looks awful (and we both know there's far, far worse examples of her accent going around - I think those people encounter the same issue as me:they don't know the southern vocab or idioms, and so try to use it in a different way.
2262577
I just might ping you some time in the future! I've a fic with AJ as one of the main protagonists, and I'd probably need to have it double checked for proper lingo.
2262584
Not so much saying that as saying "Dashie" is not something Applejack would say~
So it was just Pinkie being Pinkie. Good. That's good. Because nopony else (Fluttershy excluded because of unfortunate canon) is allowed to call Dash 'Dashie'. Nopony. I was about half a second away from breaking out the torches and pitchforks, there.
Go tell the 'Ah' thing to Ez
And I'll be honest, I've used it several times but I've stopped recently.
2262536
I yes, as I once said to my friend AbrIam Iab CallIan and his wife DeborI while travelling from TallIasse to the BIamas: "Ioy there! Make sure to check if it's a CheetI or a ChihuIua before you throw your TomIawk. Of course, he only spoke SwIili, but he still got GigIertz of information from it!
(Kinda wish capital i didn't look the same as lower case L in this font, but hey.)
Seriously, though, I can get why it'd be annoying, but, if you think about it:
2262528
"Yer", "Ya" and "Pardner" are no different - altering the spelling of a word, from one letter to most or all of it, to represent the phonetic change caused by an accent. Is it necessary? No - if nothing else, a good writer should be able to make every character sound distinct and recognisable, accent or no - but it's a perfectly valid technique.
What's more irritating is when people inject the "Ah"s... and do nothing else. If you're going to do a Funetik Aksent, fine, but either do it or don't. Don't add one thing and expect it to all the work - it's just annoying.
2262592
The accent Ashleigh Ball is imitating comes from dekalb county: between Watertown and hurricane bridge. The area was the home of many of the original grand old opry singers. 50 years later the new blood is still imitating that sound.
As a side note the area stands out from other nearby accents, due to what I think is a Virginia influence. It also old school moonshine country.
Pm me any time.
You got a problem with me usin' "Ah" little man?
2262656
I do!
This is what I love the spanish lenguaje, it's sounds exactly as you write it!
I'm one of the 'Ah'tistic ones, it seems. But to be honest, I rather be one of those
, than one of those who write Applejack with soooo many "accent impairments" and wrong tenses that she and all the Apples sound retarded. 
Now you've gone and made me feel bad for writing "Ah" in the only fanfic I've ever shared.
2262857
And you should feel bad!
2262858
From Those Blue Wings:
No, you feel bad!
2262870
That was my first effort, before I realized how dumb it looked. I've not used that in ages
2262521 Same here!
Honestly though, I do get what you're saying, and when I started doing it, it felt awkward as heck modifying Applejack's words just to make it apparent she has her own speaking mannerisms distinct from the others. Personally, though, I'd prefer to simplify the reading experience instead of throwing unusual things at readers that can be distracting. And unfortunately, at this point, writing in an accent for Applejack is just something pony fanfic readers are used to. It's not the correct form, yes, but it's the expected one.
Still, Ah or I is just a small piece of Applejack's dialect, and as you pointed out, writers should learn a general idea of southern speech patterns rather than just modifying the words themselves to appear more 'country'. On that, we are in agreeance.
i still you "Ah" for AJ in place of "I". that's what it sounds like to me when she's speaking. and i know lots of people down here in Mississippi that say it that way, so i'll stick to my guns on this one.
2262943
Indeed! I just find "Ah" terribly distracting to see in a fic, these days.
2262970
I find human middle names and massive pet names a deleting offense. Unless an accent is literally unreadable it is irrelevant to me while the previous two rip me right out the story.
2262943
I think you have that backwards. The majority of authors don't change the spelling, and no reader is going to be confused or caught off guard if you don't. On the other hand, switching the spelling could easily be considered needlessly distracting, because it's an entirely artificial and awkward means of writing an accent.
In general, writing an accent via spelling is going to be distracting regardless, even if done well, which very few fanfic authors are able to do.
2262992
We must be pulling from two different groups of fanfics, then, because nearly all of the stories I've read involving Applejack are guilty of using the 'Ah', or even more commonly chopping off g's from the ends of words, or 'accenting' words besides. It happens enough that it strikes me as being commonplace amongst bronies (not literature in general).
2263023
I expect that this is a gross exaggeration. Or maybe you're just reading all of the wrong stories.
I don't deny that it's common, but I do strongly deny the assertion that being common makes something okay. There are all sorts of common mistakes, many of which could probably be found in half of all the stories on this site. Being common doesn't make any of them correct.
Of course, you are totally free to continue changing the spelling, and readers like me will continue to find it distracting and irritating, and all the rest of the world will continue to not care at all.
As someone who is a born and bred southerner... I've never heard a phrase like that "corn stalk in August" one.
And while I do use "Ah," it's not something I feel terribly strongly about. I could easily switch to using "I" in any future stories (but switching mid-story might be a little confusing).
2263157
Probably a good plan! It just feels very distracting to see, at least compared to some other ways to show her accent.
Respectfully disagree on "Ah." Accents don't really translate well in writing beyond simply saying a character has one. (And the only place I've seen that work really well was Ordo ab Chao, where instead of just putting it in black and white that Discord talks strangely they have the other characters question this or that pronunciation.) The easiest way I've seen, and the one that seems natural to me as someone who grew up reading the Redwall books and desperately trying to figure out what in the HELL THOSE OTTERS ARE SAYING, was spelling out what they're saying the way it's pronounced, rather than the correct spelling. "Ah" (or the less common "Ai" that I've seen used a couple times) instead of "I" is a rough approximation of how AJ and people with similar-sounding accents sound. Unless she's talking slowly and deliberately, it's not an inaccurate way of going about things from where I'm standing. If you want your AJ to not use "Ah," that's fine, but Ah'm gonna' stick with what I know on this here issue!
2263315
you saw nothing!
As both a nat'ral born Texan and a member of tha autistic spectrum, Ah can cunfirm that partikulah accent ain't exaggerated, sugarcube.
On July 7th, truth was spoken on Tchernobog's blog. It's one of the things that made Hillside suck balls, and I regret ever writing it.
2262532
Now we just need to put that to music...
Yer're*
So many authors forget to do this.
2263320
Agreed. AJ's verse in What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me, for example, has some very clear ahs.
This is an old debate actually. Writers have been disagreeing about the right way to do accents for a long time now. Personally the way I learned I like and seems sensible enough. Use word choice and a few words spelled as they should sound to remind the reader of the accent. Also only do so in actual dialog, never in the text. But there have been authors that wrote not only dialog, but the whole text in an accent. This sort of makes some sense if it's supposed to be journal, but otherwise it's just odd. The point is while you clearly disagree many writers much greater than anyone on this site have argued about this sort thing and not really come to a conclusion. It may annoy you, but it's in no way wrong.
The Dashie thing so makes sense though. Unless AJ is teasing her it's just too cutsie. Fluttershy obviously likes cute too, so it makes sense she might repeat, and that Dash is too prowd to admit it bothers her so of course she might keep using it. I have a thing about Rarity always using Rainbow since it's more proper, and I think it at least makes sense she would never use Dashie. It's just too inacurate for Twi obviously. Also obviously someone might disagree, but word choice can say a lot about a character, far more than just how you choose to write an accent ever could.