1920's Slang and Small Town America

Tepelus

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As I'm coming up to the finish line of my first draft (thank goodness!), I know one of the things I will have to do is incorporate more slang in the speech of my characters, but how much is too much when the characters, in particular my 17 and 19 year old girls, are from a small farming town in Michigan? My feeling is, don't use too much. Maybe the real common ones, like Cake-Eater or Bees Knees or Applesauce! or And How! and other such things. I have had other characters use Sheik and Sheba. Is it better to go easy on the slang and stick with just a few rather than litter the slang all over? I feel if they were flappers in a bigger city they would use more slang, but since they are not and from a small town where they are more sheltered, then use of a lot of slang would come off unrealistic, and not to mention, that it would make me look like I'm trying to show off with all of these nifty phrases I discovered.

The vampire character (this is a historical paranormal) who is over 100 years old uses very little if any of the slang from the time period. I thought to incorporate a few words into his speech as well, but with his character I feel he just wouldn't use any unless trying to fit into a certain situation.
 

frimble3

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You're right, in a rural area I'd keep the slang at a minimum. Where would they hear it, and who would they speak it to, without getting funny looks in return? A small farming town is seldom a hot-bed of the latest fads and fashions. (Part of the reason why people leave.) They may experiment a little, but I'd stay with the really common stuff.
As for your vampire, if he's 100 years old, he's seen language change, a lot. He may use a couple of modern phrases, but might be just as likely, if caught by surprise, to use favourite phrases from the start of his vampiric existence. (And have people look at him funny. :))
 

angeliz2k

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Agreed, these people won't be talking like city slickers if they're from the country. Life in the country now--and more so then, I'd think--was very different from life in the city. Of curse, you might have young folks who are starry-eyed about the big city and might have picked up slang from magazines or books, or from visiting the city once or twice, or whatever. That might actually be fun, to have a character who's way too into throwing around the slang.

Keep in mind that it can sound kind of hokey if you there's too much slang in general, especially '20's slang.

And, yes, I imagine your vampire fellow would have different cadences and speech patterns, though he might be the sort who assimilates well and, like the character above who throws around too much slang, gets too into being modern, like your granddad trying to be cool. This doesn't necessarily have to be super humorous, but it could lend itself to that, or it could just be understated wit. I have some very old characters in one WIP (not vampires, but they are long-lived human beings), and it was fun to have some code-switching. Ioan was born and raised as an Edwardian Englishman, and it pains him almost physically to speak in a modern American accent/dialect, but he does it flawlessly (after decades of practice). The old Englishman comes out of him sometimes, but only when he's startled. (And he totally trolls his mother with the American accent, too.)
 

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I don't know, kids are weird. Amongst themselves they'd probably slang it up a lot more than they might around adults, maybe to sound extra cool or whatever. If you're looking to find more I'd try and figure out what the big radio shows were from that time. That was what people were connecting to across the country, right? We all have those images of the entire family gathered around the giant radio to hear... whatever it was people were listening to after dinner. I'd think in a removed and rural environment, that'd be where a lot of the slang made its way to the kids. Next up would be checking out the newspaper comics, maybe? Google says Little Orphan Annie came out in 1924. She was huge, I think, but I don't know how long it took to catch on. I can't name another comic from that era off the top of my head, let alone what older kids might be in to. Good luck!
 

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I think your instincts here are pretty good. Maybe they pick some up from movies or from articles they read in magazines, if they're inclined to read such things, but they wouldn't be inundated with it via television like later generations, or via the internet, like people are today. I don't know how much youth-culture slang found its way to radio back then. Even today, slang can be somewhat regional, though it's becoming less so.

Though maybe the kids want to sound more big city and cosmopolitan than they are. That might have been a thing, even back then.

I don't know if there's a good source to find out how kids in different parts of the US talked back then.

Whether or not your 100-year-old vampire picks up new slang would depend a lot on their temperament. Do they relish youth culture and want very much to blend in, or do they identify more with more mature, sophisticated tastes? Do they hate change or embrace it?
 
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Lakey

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I don't know if there's a good source to find out how kids in different parts of the US talked back then.
Contemporary novels (meaning contemporary to the time period you’re writing about) are a great way to pick up on speech patterns and usages that sound true to period. There were lots of novels about small-town America written in that era and if you can find some that focused on younger people you might get some good ideas. I’m thinking of something like Steinbeck, though he was a decade or so later. Or Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, stuff like that. Or maybe Theodore Dreiser. Peyton Place was written in the 50s but it took place a few decades earlier, in a New England small town; one of the main characters is a teenager.

:e2coffee:
 

Tepelus

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Thank you all for your input. So my instincts to keep the slang to a minimum has been a good thing. I have been reading newspapers during the time period my story takes place (1923) and I find the way they are written to be rather entertaining, and I've found several instances of slang being used in articles in them. Flivver comes to mind at the moment. I'm kind of basing the slang usage in the papers as to what my characters would know to use. It helps that the story takes place in my home town and I have access to all of the papers from that era on microfilm, and I've copied them all for 1923 onto a flash drive.

As for the vampire, Josef, he is the type that likes to roll with the times. I can't recall if I've had him use any slang or not, I'm about to start editing so I'll get a refresh of the story here soon to know (I've been stuck on the final chapter that takes place 65 years in the future for the past month and a half), but I do know he seems to understand what the slang means, even if he doesn't use it. He was born in 1803, and was turned in 1823 before his execution (he went through with it to fake his death). He's German-French and he does speak some German in this story here and there (I have a friend who is German who's been helping me with his German dialogue, and my friend is aware of his age so has been translating into a more old-fashioned German dialogue), and though he knows French just as well, I don't have him using it much, and only write he said such in such in French (because I don't know of anyone who can translate into French for me like my German friend translates things into German). Also, he's not very proud of his French heritage so rarely speaks it. There are three other vampires in this story that form a family unit that Josef is a part of, but those three tend to avoid humans and don't assimilate well with the times. Josef on the other hand has kept a bit more of his humanity than the others and tries to assimilate with humans to a point. He's been a fun character to write, anyhow.
 

frimble3

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uh, we grew up hearing it in movies, on tv shows, on the radio ...
Yes, but in a rural area in the 1920's, how much of that would the girls be exposed to?
No TV, probably the local movie theatre had one movie a week, so it's just the radio. And, as the OP says, the newspaper. That's not a lot of reinforcement.
 

Tepelus

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Not to mention, in 1923 radio was in its infancy. Not many people would have one yet unless you could afford one. Not until about the middle and end of the decade did they become more popular and radio stations started popping up. I would think too that the music and talk the radio stations in a rural setting would be more on the religious side too. In my story no one owns a radio yet, at least none of my main characters or their families. Maybe someone out there had one but not in my story. If I had bumped the story up a couple of more years then a radio would have been in the home of one of girl's, but the other would have been too poor to own one.

Speaking of radios, I have an old 1929 Apex radio sitting in my living room. The wood case is in very good shape and most of the innards are there. It's missing a few pieces, and the power supply I was told was shot. I don't have the money to get it restored to working order so it sits there as a pretty piece of furniture. I wish it could work, but I don't know what kind of reception it would have if it did. It would need a lot of wire strung about to pick up stations, from what I've read on antique radio forums. And I've listened to AM stations around here. Not much in the way of stations that play music, let alone anything old timey. They're mostly sports and talk.
 

angeliz2k

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Probably, in a rural setting there wouldn't be any radio stations to pick up at that time.

OT, but I aspire to having space for a Victrola (for similar reasons, I think, to you having your radio, Tepelus). Bonus points if it actually works. Alas, I don't really have the dinero or the space for such a thing.
 

Tepelus

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So I decided to make a blog post about the radio with some pictures if y'all are interested to see what it looks like, inside and outside.

Apex 1929 Radio

Angeliz2k, I would like to have one of those, too. I want all of the old things. But I need money and a big old house to put all of my old things in first. A tiny one bedroom apartment doesn't hold much.
 

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My father grew up in a small town in the 1940s. He had very limited access to media, even books and newspapers.

In addition to the recommendations above, I'd say, Try to find diaries of teens from that era.