Archaic English

Started by , Sun 12/02/2006 19:33:27

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Alun

Actually, for present purposes, all of this may be a moot point:

Quote from: Martina on Sun 12/02/2006 20:49:13
Well, I do'nt know how long ago it was. I thought about it and decided that the character (dragon),instead of sleaping,will be from a world separated from our some thousands years ago, but the language should shape itself there too, but that would be too difficult for me, so I thought I would use older english.

This is why I didn't say anything about the bit about English not being too different 200 years ago (which is quite true; you'd have to go back further than that to get really noticeably different language)--because if the 200 years was just an example, and if what you're really going for is just the feeling of a different world, then that doesn't really matter.  But then, for that matter, it also doesn't matter if you're using archaic English correctly.  If this is a different world that developed along separate lines, they won't really be speaking authentic archaic English anyway, so you can just use it however you want to without regards for accuracy--just try to be consistent.  Consistency is more important than accuracy in this case; the language on the world the character is from might have different rules, but it still ought to have rules.

Just make sure you make the backstory clear in your game, so people know it's supposed to be another world and you're not really trying to do archaic English (and so nitpickers like me won't jump on you about it. ;) ).  But beyond that, heck, you can make up whatever words and grammar rules you want to.  Creating your own slightly different (but consistent!) version of English may not be all that easy a task, but I wouldn't say it's more difficult than trying to get all the minutiae of archaic English right!  ;)

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Baron

I think I can finally agree with Alun on this one.

But....

Quote from: Snarky on Tue 14/02/2006 02:36:03

SSH, the claim that American English is closer than current British English to the English of 200 years ago mainly applies to pronunciation. British spelling is more traditional than American spelling in almost all cases.

...Ergo, clearly the most similar form of English to that of 200 years ago must be that in use by we Canadians!Ã,  We have an essentailly American accent while preserving the Queen's good spelling!Ã,  Ã, :P

Sam.

Silence fould jesters. Archaic Enligh is muchly obscured from your modern Tongue. I hath writ thus post in olde english. OBSERVE.
Bye bye thankyou I love you.

esper

#23
Thy post hath wrongly been written. Thus be not proper in such a case. Neither be fould, or your. Muchly and writ be in question, and thy doubled u's shouldst actually be u's, doubled. I suggest thou doest thyself a favor and ignite the rabbit of thy neighbor with incendiaries of some sort, cretin, lest I flail thy rank buttocks.

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SSH

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12

lo_res_man

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Haddas

Wrong mister. We'll all be speaking binary by then

lo_res_man

01001101 01100001 01111001 01100010 01100101
(Maybe)
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