Dialect in Looking for Alaska

In my book that I am currently reading, Looking for Alaska, by John Green, I have noticed a lot of dialect from a couple characters. Dialect is when a character has an accent or a way of talking, it shows up in their dialogue. The first character is Lara. Lara is from Romania and moved to America when she was 12 years old. There is even a part in the book where it explains her accent and what she can and cannot say, "'You don't sound like you have an accent sometimes,' I said, which was pretty stupid, but darn sight better than throwing up on her. 'Eet's only soft i's.' 'No soft i's in Russian?' I asked 'Romania,' she corrected." (Green. 102) This is one example of dialect in John Green's writing. We see more of it as we go on, the Colonel's mom is from the more southern part of Alabama and she says, "'I believe,' Dolores said, 'that yer s'posed to drink white with turkey, but-- now I don't know 'bout y'all-- but I don't s'pose I [care].'" (Green. 93)

I really do like how he adds personal touches to the characters. It adds diversity and gives more information about the characters. Like where they came from or how they might have been raised. Opposed to most authors that don't, we get these characters expeiriences and might even be able to relate to them in a personal way. For example in a part of the story Lara tells us that when she immigrated from Romania, she had to speak for her parents because they didn't knwo any English, and it was a good and bad experience. The good story was, "'Eet's easy. The day I came here. I knew Engleesh and my parents deedn't, and we came off the air plane and my relatives were here, aunts and uncles I had not ever seen, in the airport and my parents were so happy. I was twelve, and I had always been a leetle baby, but that was the first day that my parents needed me and treated me like a grown-up. Because they did not know the language, right? They needed me to order food and to translate tax and immigration forms and everytheeng else, and that was the day they stopped treating me like a keed...'" (Green. 116) But there was a bad side, "'My worst day was prbably the same day as my best. Because I left everytheeng. I mean eet sounds dumb, but my childhood, too, because most twelve-year-olds do not, you know, have to feegure out W-2 forms.'" So from her dialect, we get to knwo her background and her struggles she has had. Her dialect is a key part of her story if she didn't have an accent then we wouldn't have known that she has struggled so much back then.