I'm having trouble deciding on a vernacular for mine. I can't decide between a more flowery speech (something like "Mine eyes doth watered at the titillating thought of her abundant beauty", only not so Shakesperean. And Amish. And not so sappy, either), or a more comfortable speech, like what you hear these days. "She was beautiful, yeah, but she wasn't without her flaws. She had a slight limp--I'd heard about her falling off her horse when she was eight--and a tendency to get down and dirty in her private vegetable garden. And she smelled. She grew her own green onions and ate it with everything. Don't like to admit it, but I won't lie."
Or something like that. (I almost went with a Brooklyn-ish ("'ey, you talkin' to me?", but I resisted. Thank God! )
Anyway, how do your characters talk? My story is set in a fantasy past (not like OSC, for those of you who scream "Plagiarist!". Mine's prehistoric.), and to tell the truth, I can't really decide. I read Crichton's Timeline, and his 1300-something characters said cannot and should not and would not, instead of using contractions, because apparently, contractions didn't exist in that time period. Not really the same, but I'm proving a point.
Who says people didn't talk like this? I mean, yeah, there's proper and there's street slang, but that's true of any time and place, fictional or not.
...
Uh, I think I just answered my own question.
Never mind, then. :P
CVG
PS--I was going to start another thread, but it seemed a little arrogant of me to start two in a row. So I'm doing it here: I have to questions for all you hatrackers out there: What's your sex, and what's your age? I too often read a tidbit that implies a person's sex or age is the complete oppossite of what I'd imagined, and of what their name implies. For example, for the longest time, I'd been reading srhowen as "Sir Howen". Not true, I know, but still. Then I read she was a girl. I was bowled over! Same with JBShearer. I don't want to split hairs, but JB sounds like a boy's name.
These aren't the only two examples, but the two that come to mind first. You don't have to divulge this information (and some of you I know won't, but it's been eating at me, and I've been wondering, and I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't at least try.
posted
My characters use Shakespearean, as you name it, when they're minstrels obsessed with language. Otherwise, high born people use formal speech, and commoners a more 'normal' speech. I do make a difference, and I've noticed that I have a marked preference for using contractions as little as possible, but that's personal and unjustifiable. (incidentally, even if contractions did not exist in the middle ages, something like them must have been in use to distinguish between the speech patterns of kings and peasants...) Anyway, everything you write is a retranscription from your mind's eye, so adapting it for the reader's benefit is clearly acceptable. I'm not keen on having my reader worry for ages about what I meant every time a character speaks. Regarding the second question: I'm female, age 21.
Posts: 121 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
I think as long as you come up with something vaguely sensible and stick to it, nobody will mind. It might be sensible to use modern English. After all, we _know_ that your characters aren't actually speaking English at all, so why bother translating it into an archaic form of English?
(Actually there is a reason why: if there are two languages/variants of the language, one older than the other, I might translate that into archaic English).
quote:incidentally, even if contractions did not exist in the middle ages, something like them must have been in use to distinguish between the speech patterns of kings and peasants...
I haven't studied this in depth, so I could be mistaken, but my understanding is that in England, during the early middle-ages at least, the aristocracy spoke French, or some variant of it that came across with the Norman conquerors.
This explains why the motto of England ("Dieu et mon droit") is in French.
Wikipedia at least seems to agree with this understanding:
quote:In choosing a motto in French rather than English, it should be noted that the English language had only recently [in the early 15th century] replaced French as the language of the English ruling classes
posted
I go with the "I'm translating the whole story anyway" school of thought. Why not translate it into understandable english, therefore?
From OSC's "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" --
quote: However, there is a great danger in trying for elevated diction -- primarily because it is so easy to overdo it or do it very badly.
quote:If your characters are elevated, their language should be also; if they are common, then common language is appropriate. Furthermore, the language of the narrative should be a good match for the language in the dialogue.
He also recommends Ursula K. LeGuin and Gene Wolfe as the best examples of use of high language in speculative fiction.
Back to my own opinion...Your first example, what you called Shakespearian, was totally overdone and, I'm pretty sure, grammatically incorrect. (I'm not entirely sure, but that's why I don't use that kind of language. ) The second version, sounded like it was going to be elevated, but in a reasonable way. I think the "yeah" did it....but then you say "get down and dirty in her private..." and that made the bit disjointed and inconsistent.
posted
Anything that would easily identify your dialogue as being associated with a specific decade by most readers should be avoided.
Therefore, you should avoid any ultra contemporary usages. Words like "Phat" or "shizzle" or "groovy"...it doesn't matter what decade, if your prose is going to sound dated in ten years (or sounds dated now) then only use that prose to indicate comtemporary characters.
posted
Ditto on the above comments. There are a few "class" dichotomies to keep in mind, so that you might have one group of characters speak more formally, while another speaks less so; or one group speaks in a more educated manner while another is more back-woods, etc.
I'm male (is anyone surprised?), 50, with a big bald spot and a short beard that's turning gray around my mouth. Is that enough?
posted
I forgot the age/gender part of the question...seems unrelated enough to put up a new topic, really.
Female, 26 (for two and a half more weeks, anyway), long auburn hair that kinda pretty but in an unreliable sort of way, 5'6", hourglass figure, no comment on the thighs.
Wait, what am I thinking? This is the internet....I'm female, 22, blonde hair, blue eyes, 5'10", legs to die for, and a perfectly flat stomach.
quote:Wait, what am I thinking? This is the internet....I'm female, 22, blonde hair, blue eyes, 5'10", legs to die for, and a perfectly flat stomach.
ROTFLMAO
In this case, I'm 6'4 with full dirty-blond hair that isn't thinning at the temples despite the fact that I'm only 20, 155 lbs, and I run 5 miles everyday without fail.
posted
I don't know that we can be completely accurate in saying that older languages had no contractions. For one thing, we have no records of spoken language which is, as I'm sure you're aware, not the same as written language--especially in the days when only the highborn could read and write and would generally write, even as our grandparents were taught, in formal language.
Another thing to consider is that, if in fact there were no contractions, might they have had other forms of the word to connote different meanings? As in Latin verb forms, each form of the verb is, in essence, a combination of two words as in Ceasar's famous saying: Veni, Vidi, Vici. I came, I saw, I conquered. My characters use contractions unless they are speaking in a formal setting and as due their station.
If character is important, I often think it is difficult to fully sympathize with or become immersed in a character who constantly speaks in formal tones. If the character is not as important as, say, the milieu (I'm studying OSC's Ch & V right now!) then more formal language might be just what you want to keep that character from overtaking the scenery.
posted
I like Rita Mae Brown's recommendation in her book on writing (which I recommend for other reasons as well), STARTING FROM SCRATCH. She says to have characters who are upper level (meaning they could be any of a number of things: more educated, richer, prouder, more arrogant, etc--or trying to appear as one of those) speak using words with Latin derivations or at least with many syllables, and have characters who are lower level (which also means they could be any of a number of things: poorly educated, poor, brutish, stupid, just-plain-folksy, etc--or trying to appear as one of those) speak using words with Anglo-Saxon derivations--or at least with only one syllable.
There are enough synonyms in the English language for what you want to say that you can do a lot with the words you have your characters use when they speak.
Oh, and I'm female (remember, I'm SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED), and the mother of three twenty-somethings. (If we're going to get into physical descriptions, I'm 6 feet tall and I've been releasing my inner redhead for over a year now.)
posted
I'm male, although I have been accused of otherwise in my writing. As for Age I am not a second older or younger than I am. Physically I don't look exactally like myself.
posted
Yes. I was conceived thirty-odd years ago by a brilliant but slightly flaky engineer and his also brilliant and flaky assistant. I take the masculine gender.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
What I think about is not only a persons level of education , but also what their profession is. I figure the uneducated clod does have something he speaks fluently about. Unless a story is really short I find using strange vernacular or foreign language distracting. I think they can drag the pace of a story to a halt. I'm female and only one person has posted his age and is older than me.
Posts: 397 | Registered: Mar 2004
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:P 
) The second version, sounded like it was going to be elevated, but in a reasonable way. I think the "yeah" did it....but then you say "get down and dirty in her private..." and that made the bit disjointed and inconsistent.
