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I like some dialect, but if it’s going to be strong it has to fit with the setting, culture, and time period(as well as education level). Let’s take a strong Irish brogue for example – most people associate the accent/dialect of English with a spunky, red haired lass or lad. Expand that, and you also often see that people with a lower education level are associated with ‘rougher’ dialects of common speech – often due to poor schooling. People in isolated areas often have subsets of dialects and languages as well, for example there’s a dialect of German that originated near Hamburg where my mother grew up that’s nearly dead now due to the influx in widespread technology, travel, and common languages.

If I were to incorporate a dialect into fantasy, I’d have to take all this into account. My young, prideful captain probably won’t speak in a thick accent like a foot soldier among his ranks, and likewise the slave raised in a rich household will probably speak better than the slave raised entirely for hard labor(field work, etc). The old philosopher and the young inventor will speak differently, no matter whether they grew up in the same area or not – they may have common phrases and euphemisms, the same sayings – but they have very different levels of experience and very different experiences of different time periods.

As for “how much is too much” – well, I think that relies a lot of the character as well. It’s perfectly acceptable to have a foreigner confused by the poor English of an African tribesman, and it might even be expected. But to have a character that speaks in terms of “slang” or accent that have no purpose behind them or have no meaning is often quite grating. Southern accents in writing have nearly always sounded annoying to me simply because I was born and raised in the very north of the U.S., and in an isolated small community as well. Everyone speaks like a northerner, so when you hear the southern drawl it’s considered a bit “informal” or even “impolite” – especially if it’s followed by a lot of slang or phrases that are likewise very southern. At the same time, I was raised by a German mother and therefore picked up some of her pronunciations of words – for example, saying plag instead of playg. Or bag-el instead of bayg-el. (Honestly though – plaque is pronounced plak, not plake. Why should plague or bagel be any different? English!)

When slang starts to get confusing because it’s never explained and is just thrown in there for “effect” is when it starts to annoy me. Pirate slang is fun and all, but having a character who speaks with that terminology “just because” is annoying and sloppy. The same goes for any accent. Slang that’s extremely heavy and used constantly can also be quite annoying, so for main characters I prefer to tone the accent down a bit, simply because reading 400 pages with a character that speaks like: “And that thar littl’ spoon is fer dippin sauce, and th’other one is fer the pas-ta, and the last is fer yor sauerkraut” is a little annoying and tedious.

For anyone wanting to write a Hi-Fi set around the Oregon Trail period, I recommend Eloise Jarvis Mcgraw’s novel Moccasin Trail. It’s one of the only westerns I can truly enjoy reading because the slang(which is pretty thick) doesn’t get in the way of the character’s actions, thoughts, or the reader’s understanding of them – and it fits the characters and the time period. (It’s also just a darn good book.)