When writing a character who hasn’t quite adjusted to using the English language, the author will purposefully disrupt the syntax and grammar of the character who is speaking. This creates a sense of distance and alienation between the character and the language that the character is trying to learn.

As chapter 8 begins, the reader will immediately notice how differently Sae Young speaks compared to the average native English speaker. As the chapter is narrated from her perspective, it is clear that Sae Young is not a master of the English language. After all, she is a Korean immigrant who migrated to Cleveland with her husband. She spends most of her time working in the store, so there is no need to brush up on her English. And once her husband dies and she is held at gunpoint, Sae Young alienates herself from people by staying in her house all day. Fleishman uses her broken English to accentuate her grief and loneliness in a new land.

Paul Fleischman's novel Seedfolks is set up as a compilation of thirteen character vignettes that all center around an accidental community garden, started by a young girl who wanted to honor her father. The story is set in Cleveland, Ohio, and the garden is located in a vacant lot. 

Sae Young is the eighth character readers meet in the book. She is from Korea and didn't come to the United States until she was an adult. Readers can infer this is the reason for her limited grasp of the English language. The Korean language is vastly different from English. For instance, in English, verbs come at the beginning of the sentence. In Korean, they come at the end. Listeners need to listen all the way to the end of a sentence in order to know whether the sentence is past, present, or future tense. With such differences in sentence structure, speaking English would have been difficult for an adult learner. Fleischman uses this in his vignette about Sae Young to help create her unique voice as a character. 

For example, Sae Young uses many sentence fragments. Here are a couple of examples: "Five sisters." "Many friends." A native English speaker would say, "I have five sisters and many friends."

Sae Young also leaves out articles in her sentences. Here is an example: 

"We buy dry cleaning shop, live next block. Dry cleaning shop better than restaurant. Don't have to speak English too much and only work six days." 

Notice that she leaves out the article "a" at the beginning of the quote. She also leaves out the conjunction which would join the two sentences. A native English speaker might say it this way: "We bought a dry cleaning shop and lived on the next block." Sae Young also speaks in the present tense even though she is referring to events that happened in the past. So, the main ways that Fleischman uses grammatical changes to develop Sae Young's voice are unconventional verb tenses, omitted articles, and irregular sentence construction.