Dialect/slang in sff

Harlequin said:

Sandwich could easily be reappropriated. Maybe in your setting it's a giant slug hollowed out and stuffed with meat, then roasted on a spit. Heck if I know.

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Ah, yes, but then for accuracy you would need to add a "John Montague, Fourth Earl of Hollowed Out Giant Slug" for it to be named after...

"Train of thought" didn't come from railroad trains--it's first recorded in the OED in 1688. "Train" itself generally means something long that trails or drags behind something else. Think the train of a dress.

Marlys said:

"Train of thought" didn't come from railroad trains--it's first recorded in the OED in 1688. "Train" itself generally means something long that trails or drags behind something else. Think the train of a dress.

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Yes but Tolkien doesn't say "train of thought". He says "The dragon passed like an express train..." in reference to the fireworks at the party in the opening chapters of Fellowship. It's clear he's referencing an anachronism.

When I was working on the Steampunk novel a few years back, I named a deity in that (alternate) Earth Cor. Which allowed me to use some of the Victorian slang without having to have the Judeo-Christian religious structure there. (It actually looks a bit like the same religion at first glance, but has a Mary-type as the third part of the Trinity.)

I mean, we all use a lot of words that were specific brands or named for certain people without necessarily knowing the origin. The question is always "What works for your story?" and if sandwich works in your fantasy world then one should use it. If it doesn't, there are options to be found.

Aggy B. said:

Yes but Tolkien doesn't say "train of thought". He says "The dragon passed like an express train..." in reference to the fireworks at the party in the opening chapters of Fellowship. It's clear he's referencing an anachronism. .

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Exactly. It doesn't bother me, frankly, but I know some people still have fits about it.

That said, I am more than a little suspicious that most people didn't notice the train reference as an issue, until Tom Shippey wrote about it.

AW Admin said:

Exactly. It doesn't bother me, frankly, but I know some people still have fits about it.

That said, I am more than a little suspicious that most people didn't notice the train reference as an issue, until Tom Shippey wrote about it.

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For me it's not so much an "issue" (in that instance) because Tolkien clearly just wrote what and how he wanted. Portions of Return of the King are far more lyrical than Fellowship or Two Towers (which does bother me a little that they aren't as consistent) but Tolkien was able to get away with it, so to speak, so... egh.

I will say that there are certain things I notice now as a writer that I might not have noticed when I was less interested in the particulars of craft. The first draft of the Steampunk novel had terrible, horrible omni narration which I didn't notice until I was starting to revise and realized there was something that wasn't working with the narrative (beyond plot and general style/tone). A few years ago someone recommended a particular book to me and I've not been able to get more than about 30 pages into it because there is no consistent POV. It completely gets in the way of me being able to read that particular book. But, I wonder if it would have bothered me as much when I didn't have the means to analyze what was bothering me.

And, I think a lot of folks use words like "sandwich" and "French doors" and so on because the bulk of readers really don't care. (I run across a fair amount of self-pubbed stuff that is just not well written in any sense, and it still has readers so they can't be as bothered as I am by the issues in those books.)

There's a happy medium between being completely unaware, and being too obsessive.

Anecdotally, at one extreme there's the Medieval Welsh setting for a fantasy romance where the heroine's name is the Modern Welsh word for sanitary napkin/kotex.

At the other extreme are philologists who complain that Connie Willis in Doomsday Book mixed Northern and Southern dialect forms in her ersatz Middle English.

Specialist dictionaries like the OED and the Dictionary of Middle English may be some help (and there are others for other eras and dialects and specialized vocabulary including slang) but the point of fiction is the story.

Depends on the context. For low fantasy in a contemporary setting, I wouldn't find it jarring. Some might find it so in high fantasy placed in some reimagined Medieval world.

The classic example is a character in a pre-gunpowder world talking about "firing" a bow. But most people seem hip to this error these days.

Again, you could trace every word in the English language back to a root that would not have existed in a fantasy world. But what's the point?

I think every writer must make their own decision what they can use that isn't jarring to the average reader. Myself, I would consider the term "French doors" to imply the existence of France, but I don't think "sandwich" necessarily implies the existence of the Earldom of Sandwich. Others may differ.

I think the use of words like "sandwich" really depends on who the NARRATOR is. If the narrator is a part of the fantasy world, then they should be using the appropriate dialect. However, if the story is being told ABOUT the fantasy world and not FROM it, like a lot of fantasy is, then I think translation can cover this. Yes, the fantasy world doesn't have sandwiches, but the narrator does, so he doesn't spend a paragraph explaining that these are two pieces of bread stacked with foodstuff between them and blah blah blah, he just says "sandwich."

In third person omniscient, the same rules don't have to apply to the narrator as to dialogue. Honestly, this is something that drives me crazy with fantasy readers and writers. Why is using the English language fine, but using English words isn't? I get that you have to draw the line somewhere, but I think most people draw it too firmly.

You could invent your own slang. In my series the swear words the characters use are curse words in orcish or gnomish.

Albedo said:

Still, how is it possible I've never heard of these centuries-old desserts before?

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Well, to be fair, they're rather stale by now, and more than a bit green...

Twick said:

Again, you could trace every word in the English language back to a root that would not have existed in a fantasy world. But what's the point?

I think every writer must make their own decision what they can use that isn't jarring to the average reader. Myself, I would consider the term "French doors" to imply the existence of France, but I don't think "sandwich" necessarily implies the existence of the Earldom of Sandwich. Others may differ.

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+1

It comes down to drawing your own line and sticking with it. For instance, I'm not as jarred by "sandwich" (citing the usual "translation convention" and the "don't call a rabbit a smeerp" rule of thumb, and the idea that placing meat or cheeselike substance or other filling between slices of what-is-essentially-bread wouldn't be an implausible parallel culinary development in another world) as I would be by seeing "French fries" in a world without a France (even though I don't expect they originated there, anyway...)

Will Collins said:

You could invent your own slang. In my series the swear words the characters use are curse words in orcish or gnomish.

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Inventing your own slang can be a bit tricky. You could end up with something natural sounding that furthers your worldbuilding... or you could end up with something like Larry Niven's infamously awkward "tanj" - short for There Ain't No Justice - in the Ringworld books. (Used as a curse word by itself - "Tanj!" - and an adjective - "Get your tanjin' hands off me!")

French fries in France are just fried potatoes. "French fries" was an American term for them. (The English were already calling them "chips".)

For me, some of it has to do with the breadth of a setting. I've written stories where there was really only a single culture/location portrayed in the story. I could get away with saying "boiled grain". But I've also written stuff that has a much larger (planet-wide) scope with multiple cultures interacting and in that case I "translate" more words and differentiate "barley" and "rice" and "oats" even if *technically* this secondary world would have distinct names for those things (even if they had similar plant life to produce them) because trying to describe every little bit of food and name it doesn't really fit the story-telling.

So, it does, once again, come back to what the world looks like and how much of it are you trying to share? What fits with that particular story? Rather than fitting some generic rule about what not to do to every piece of fantasy, every time.

Harlequin said:

Sorry, but I don't think sandwich is comparable to French doors at all.That's referencing period and nation specific design--of course it's ridiculous to have that term when you don't have France.

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Not. The term "French doors" is widely used in the U.S., and probably in a lot of other non-French locales. Sort of like "Dutch oven", or "Thai food".

But it's use in an SFF setting certainly would need to be clearly non-anachronistic.

caw

At the end of the day, doesn't it come down to - are you telling a story, or creating a new language? I personally don't enjoy reading a story where I have to constantly check the vocabulary at the end to see what a 'slenerton' is.

I think you use the words that are familiar so that the person reading isn't repeatedly tossed out of the story trying to remember what all these strange words mean.

The only thing I'm really fussy about is swearing. If the people in the story don't have the concept of hell, they wouldn't say 'what the hell', etc. But this is also good because it lets you be really creative in your cursing. I wrote a story with horse nomads and all their swears were related to horses or their horse goddess.