Era Appropriate Language – Charming Historical Ambience?

MerriTudor said:

Anybody else out there working with the speech of another era? How's it going for you?

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It is frustrating! I'm working on a historical set in 1889, and kind of dreading the scene where my hero (raised on the streets) mingles with some riffraff in a pub. Their manner of speech has to be distinct from the way the other characters talk, but I don't want it to come off as just dropped aitches and rhyming slang like I've watched too many Only Fools and Horses episodes. Which I have.

Oh well. Soldier through it.

Snap - I'm struggling with this too. I find it's really hard to replicate a true 18th century voice (or a written one at least), because it's just so convoluted! Oddly enough I can do a late 19th century voice fairly easily, but that's not the period my stories fall in, of course...

What I've tried to do is have a few staged scenes where the formality and manners of the period comes to centre stage, but to show this as much through the physical actions - the bowing, the fans, the etiquette - as much as the language. I'm also really careful with the metaphors in inner dialogue as well as avoiding howlers like "I have an issue with that!” I find this resource quite helpful in finding period-suitable words to use or avoiding anachronistic concepts: http://historicalthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/.

One of my characters, while ostensibly a gentleman, is also a boorish lout. I partly show this through making his dialogue much shorter and choppier, with a lot more swear words, and when he gets drunk, his sentences start to drop words and have non sequiturs.

I only watch Poldark for the 18th century Cornish mining history, myself... Or that's what I tell Mr S, anyway.

Thanks, Merri! I'm going to tackle that scene this weekend and hope for the best.

Only Fools and Horses was still getting into its stride during the first season, but after that it was great. I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

MerriTudor said:

Susannah - Naturally, you’d watch Poldark to bone up on your Cornish mining history. It’s very educational. I watch Pride & Prejudice for tips on Regency interior decorating. Colin Firth is a terrible annoyance, though, always standing in front of a tapestry or a very nice mantelpiece I’m trying to admire.

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Hah! You may laugh - but while I came for the scythe, I stayed for the mining. I am descended from a family of small-scale mine owners, a bit like Ross Poldark, and one of my more obscure Cornish ancestral surnames popped up for one of the secondary characters. I was so excited, until he turned out to be a villain.

I do 'mine' my family tree for period-specific names as well. I may even throw in a Tiffany if I do something set in the 12th century - but of course no-one then believes you!

Anachronistic names are the thing that throw me out the quickest as a reader, far more so than modernised language - so long as that language is neutral and not slangy. If I pick up a book with out-of-period names, I probably won't buy it even if the plot looks good. I just don't trust the writer to be writing an historical romance, as opposed to 21st century characters playing dress-ups. I do like it when the author does get a flavour of the time into the dialogue so long as it isn't just a few scattered clichés. Hats off to you for even attempting an 18th century voice!

MerriTudor, I'm doing something very similar with a Regency novel I've been working on. I'm interested that you say contractions were in use then - Austen used them rarely, and I've decided to use them mainly in 'familiar' contexts within family or with close friends, to allow more formal language in social scenes to flourish (and to indicate when my couples are growing closer!).

Jane Austen fan forums are a great source for Georgian/Regency information (not to mention fanfiction if you enjoy it!).

I agree regarding names. I love the classic Regency names, but about half the men in England were called John, and most women were Jane, Mary or Elizabeth, so it can make choosing names tricky. It's worth looking up the names of people of the time, or perhaps mining literature. Or you can always have a slight eccentric who names his children after Shakespeare characters or the botanical names of plants or Arthurian figures if you want a reason for something a bit unusual. Of course, this can be taken too far (as you say, some names are ridiculous, and on at least one occasion have put me off buying a book because I couldn't believe in it!), but it can be fun. Men do have the advantage of being called by surname or title, so you can always use those instead to give a bit of variety, depending on their preferences. And there are always nicknames (Nan for Anne, Sally for Sarah, Molly for Mary or Margaret, Nell for Eleanor/Elinor, Kitty/Katie/Cathy for Catherine/Katherine, Lizzy/Beth/Bess/Betsy for Elizabeth) - although it's worth noting that some nicknames were more likely for servants or the 'lower orders' than the middle and upper classes. ('Working class' didn't exist as a term until the 1820s or later, apparently - 'lower orders' sounds even more condescending.)

I have a Cecilia, who's nicknamed Sissy by her sisters, and Letitia and Matilda who are Letty and Tilly to their brother, despite their irritation with their childhood nicknames!

Sometimes characters DO pipe up and tell you their real names. I'm working on the third story in my time travel series, where the heroine was named Jill and she kept insisting her given name is Gillian. Since the book is set in the UK, I got to all right with that.

I love Graham's use of dialect in Poldark. I also love the way Demelza's speech transforms from that of a miner's brat to that of a lady. And it's not sudden or forced; gradually she loses the "sur" and the "t'edn proper" of Judd and Prudie and finds her own level of speech. Graham was a master. I never tire of the Poldark series (both of them), though of course I watch for the Anglo-Cornish speech variabilities rather than Aiden Turner without a shirt. Or Robin Ellis fully clothed. Or anything...

Besides fangurling over Poldark, I did want to say -- anytime we attempt to give verisimilitude to language and usage of past times, we're always going to end up with an approximation. I respect Austen's use of the conventions of her time -- she was writing contemporary fiction. But when we try to do it, we're casting back to modes of language that aren't our own. I dislike heavy use of dialect, because it generally throws me out of the story. A current-day master at including realistic-sounding dialogue in other (current-day and past-era) places is Susanna Kearsley. Her THE WINTER SEA really takes you to a place where they speak current day English, but certainly not like you and I speak it.

I'm very, very good at throwing Americanisms into my Georgian novels I go back over the text often to try to weed them out - hopefully I manage it in most cases!
I'd hate for readers to be thrown out of my story because I said a character's brain was 'fuzzy' when they didn't use the word in that context until the 1930's!!
I once read a Regency where a gentleman looked over the head of the lady he was dancing with and 'scoped the room'... :-\

Merri, I love delving into time periods - not only great verisimilitude, but a fab form of procrastination, as you can argue to yourself you're still working on your novel! As for names, Cecilia herself was very insistent that she's Cecilia - it's her sisters who called her Sissy! That's also how Letty and Tilly got their nicknames, and they're equally displeased when their brother uses them in less intimate company (although they both went through several other names first). He, on the other hand, is Turner to all except his sisters and brother, even his future wife, while it turns out Wallace really likes Cecilia calling him Anthony (although in the latter case, it's pretty much because he hates the reminder of his seriously-not-nice father).

I like your names for your sisters, but it's worth looking up usage on some - certain Biblical names were more often found with Catholics or Jews, such as Naomi, and while the Rebekah spelling was around, it was much more likely to be spelt Rebecca. Barnabas was more likely to be found as Barnaby - the English spelling - and its use mostly died out by the early nineteenth century (although not entirely - I went to school with a Barnaby!). I'm a big fan of Behind the Name (www.behindthename.com), which often gives a bit of context behind names and their use, as well as etymology.

The best resource I know to have come out of the JA forums is The Regency Encyclopedia, which has a list of Georgian names and their derivatives and how often they're used, but I think you need to be part of one of the forums to get the username and password.

Free confession, I haven't watched Poldark, even the new version.

Dialect is tricky, whether historical or fantasy, especially if you want to ensure everything's readable. I agree that you're often working to an approximation, and it has to be easily comprehendible to the reader as well as avoiding throwing them out of the story. Sometimes, I find syntax can be quite useful for this, as well as a few specific words or phrases, even it's simply a northern character using "Aye" instead of "Yes", or "Can you not do something?" vs. "Can't you do something?" vs. "Cannot you do something?"

As for breaches in the time-space continuum, I confess I'm a fanfic reader as well as original, and those can have terrible offences. On the other hand, it can be tricky working out the differences between Parisian and bottle green and what exactly sarsnet/sarsenet/sarcenet is (let alone which spelling you want to use!).

I think the Puritans did go for a lot of the Old Testament names that the Anglicans didn't, as well as 'virtue' names, so that's probably down to Atlantic divide! (I have no objections to cemetery-creeping, I can definitely understand the draw, if it's not names, it's wondering what happened to them and feeling sad for the lists of lost babies).

Glad you like the link!

Plymouth... I've got nothing. I'm not sure I even knew it was in Devon (English county geography is not my strong point, and I'm better with the north anyway!). I do know I have ancestors from there though! It might be worth Googling resources for slang or common phrases, but you might want to check when they came into being/fell out of use. Maybe check a little bit of the history around there, since references to specific streets or pubs or events can help ground a novel in a setting. Since it's a port town, nautical jargon is probably common, perhaps even among the townsfolk, but who knows? You might want to try the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue - I don't know where to locate it, but if you're wanting to separate classes, or even male from female (since men were probably more casual and vulgar around each other than the womenfolk), it might be a good source of slang, etc.

Plymouth was home to a big naval base at Devonport from the early 18th century onwards, so the area attracted lots of sailors and incomers in search of work (lots of my rural Devon folk ended up migrating to Plymouth for part of their working lives). It's also right on the border with Cornwall, so the speech patterns etc won't be too different from there - a general West Country (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset) vibe would be OK for most readers?

Hi Merri, I tend to collect resources - I have a whole folder of sub-folders for useful Writing Resources on my Bookmarks! And you're right regarding wealthy and well-bred - it was well-known that Viscount Castlereagh (an eighteenth/nineteenth-century politician) had a northern accent that he was mocked for by others in the Houses of Parliament, including his own party! (His rivalry with George Canning is pretty interesting - they had a duel, IIRC.)

Wealthy people used to get literally sewn into clothes as well, although I get the feeling that they used large stitches that were easy to cut through! There's a great scene in The Duchess with the wedding night, where Devonshire takes a pair of scissors to Georgiana's clothes (and then you get treated to the sight of what a corset did to leave marks on your skin - yee-ouch!).

Heehee, wonder how many torn garments had to be explained! Yeah, we can get dressed in two minutes flat nowadays. Even if you were poor, it probably took a good five to ten minutes just to get all the layers on in the past, not to mention old bodices/corsets/stays!

MerriTudor said:

Tanydwr, I'll have to read up on the Viscount Castlereagh (awesome title) and George Canning.

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Castlereagh was not universally admired. Shelley mentions him in a poem:

I met murder on the way
He had a face like Castlereagh.

But he is an interesting man. I always wonder if Shelley had a bit of sympathy after Castlereagh committed suicide. Probably not. Shelley was always more interested in ideas than in people.

MerriTudor said:

Well...being pinned and sewn into clothing must have put something of a damper on spontaneous seduction.

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Partially compensated for in most time periods by a lack of underwear...

I've always had a sympathetic spot for Castlereagh, mostly because of his appallingly sad end.

You can read about Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue at the British Library.

Note that it's a slang dictionary, really, so it's going to be very class specific (the rich do not use the same language as the poor or the rural).

It's part of the Gutenberg public domain elibrary, and available to download from numerous sources for free. There are multiple editions, so pay attention to publication data.