Archaic English

[Martina]

Hello everyone.
I've got a little problem with my english - I want one character to 'sleep' for, say, 200 years and I would like to adjust his speech to this fact. Would anyone tell me something about archaisms in english, please?

[passer-by]

Hello everyone.
I've got a little problem with my english - I want one character to 'sleep' for, say, 200 years and I would like to adjust his speech to this fact. Would anyone tell me something about archaisms in english, please?

I can't tell you a thing about "archaisms", but I can suggest reading a book, poem etc from the period you need (in its original edition) and form the character's speech accordingly.

[Becky]

You may find this Wikipedia entry useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaic_English_words_and_their_modern_equivalents

[Snarky]

Two hundred years to the present? English wasn't all that different back in 1806. We're not talking Shakespeare or the King James Bible here. You might want to exaggerate the difference.

I would say: No swearing (at least nothing we would consider a swear word today). Avoid contractions like can't, won't, it's, etc. Most of the difference will be in the sentence construction.

Look at poets from the period for guidance. Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats... This won't be a realistic reflection of how people actually talked, but it's probably a pretty good guide to how we imagine they talked.

Good luck!

[Baron]

I agree with Snarky -> two hundred years ago English really wasn't all that different, and it certainly wasn't "archaic".

If you really wanted to use archaic English (i.e. Middle or Old English) then large parts of your dialogue would be next to incomprehensible by today's Everyman.  I suggest you just spice the language with commonly known anachronisms: thou instead of you, thee instead of you (accusative), thy instead of your, hast instead of have, art instead of are....  Try also to use simple words of Anglo-Saxon origin rather than the more complex words English has inherited from Latin.  A good way to tell if it's Latin is that there are usually prefixes and suffixes attached.  So use "old" instead of "archaic", or "good" instead of "exemplary", etc.... (I mean "and so on.....") 

BaRoN

[Kweepa]

You could also try skimming through novels from the time (check project gutenberg - www.gutenberg.org - once you have a list of authors: e.g., Washington Irving, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley).

[Martina]

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.

[Martina]

Thank you all for your help

[Alun]

I suggest you just spice the language with commonly known anachronisms: thou instead of you, thee instead of you (accusative), thy instead of your, hast instead of have, art instead of are....

Oof.  I strongly suggest not doing that unless you get your writing checked by someone who really knows how those words work.  Even most native English speakers don't understand how "thee" and "thou" and "hast" and "art" and such were really used, and get them wrong all the time--and IMO such misused archaicisms (and they are usually misused) look really bad to those who know how they're supposed to work.  It's better not to use them at all than to use them wrong--and, again, unless you know an English major or someone else who really knows how they work and who's willing to proofread your writing, you will use them wrong...

[Baron]

...and, again, unless you know an English major or someone else who really knows how they work and who's willing to proofread your writing, you will use them wrong...

That's a bit pessimistic, don't you think?Ã,  I say, if it sounds right, use it.Ã,  How many master etymologists could possibly play our games?

BaRoN

[Fuzzpilz]

Well... the good news is, it doesn't actually take a "master etymologist" or anything to get these things right. The bad news is exactly the same fact, since it also means that rather more people will notice if you get them wrong. Seriously, bad thou-speek is grating. Don't do it.

[Snarky]

Yeah, it's not that hard. Wikipedia has a thorough explanation.

The most common mistake is to use the wrong one of thou/thee. They're nominative and objective, respectively, like I/me, he/him or they/them, but some people have a hard time with it because "you" is the same in both forms. Thy/thine should be simpler, since they map exactly to your/yours.

I was taught that "thou" was an intimate and informal form, while "you" was used with strangers or one's superiors, but Wikipedia mostly debunks this claim.

[Kweepa]

I seem to remember when I was at the Game Developers' Conference a few years back that Bob Bates (who wrote Infocom's Arthur) gave a talk where he mentioned the problems with using archaic English. I can't seem to find it with a quick google search, but maybe you'll have more luck, if you're interested.

[Alun]

The most common mistake is to use the wrong one of thou/thee. They're nominative and objective, respectively, like I/me, he/him or they/them, but some people have a hard time with it because "you" is the same in both forms.

Another common mistake is to use them in the plural--"thou" and "thee" are singular forms only.  The corresponding plurals are "ye" in the subjective case and "you" in the objective.  But it's the verb forms that are more commonly gotten wrong.  (I won't go into details here, of course, but there's a fairly in-depth explanation in the Wikipedia article Snarky mentioned.)  I played one freeware RPG years ago that used "art" for every single present-tense conjugation of the verb "to be"--he art, I art, they art, etc.  This, of course, is totally wrong, and it really, really annoyed me.  (Not that it was the only thing wrong with that game, by any means...)

Anyway, I may have been a little harsh in my earlier post; I probably tend to be much pickier than the average person about such things, and probably most people aren't as bothered by that kind of grammar mistake as I am.  (Another pet peeve of mine: misuse of whom.  Please, if you're not sure you know when to use "who" and when to use "whom", just use "who"!)  So, yeah, most people probably won't be bothered by mistakes with archaic pronouns and verb forms.  But some people will be--I may not be in the majority, but I'm not the only one, either--and I'd still strongly recommend only using them if you're sure you know how they work, or if you can have your text checked by someone who does.

[Ali]

Snarky's hit the nail on the head. English hasn't changed that much in 200 years except a few spellings. In print, try using '&c.' instead of 'etc.' for 'twas the style at the time. Just avoid using modern idoms or falsely archaic prases. Eg:

'catch you later'

'thou hast wronged mine eyes with thine mini-skirt'

Remember that an Englishman from the 1800s would be witnessing the industrial age, the rise of capitalism and the decline of organised religion. Would he be that surprised by modern Britain?

Blake wouldn't have been.

[SSH]

Actually American English is closer to that of 200 years ago than British English.

[Baron]

'thou hast wronged mine eyes with thine mini-skirt'

Thou meanst, of course: "thou hast wronged my eyes with thy mini-skirt."

I'm beginning to see the problem.....

But since it's hard to take the fact of dragons sleeping for thousands of years seriously (*cough* REIGN OF FIRE *cough*), an affected though inaccurate rendition of old-style English seems to me entirely appropriate.

BaRoN

[Alun]

Thou meanst, of course: "thou hast wronged my eyes with thy mini-skirt."

Actually, technically, you're both wrong.  Actually, it should be "thou hast wronged mine eyes with thy mini-skirt."  In that style of archaic English, "my" and "thy" change to "mine" and "thine" before vowels.  (Hence the first line of Battle Hymn of the Republic: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord...")

I'm beginning to see the problem.....

Yeah, I think this sort of helps illustrate the point about most people not knowing how to use this sort of language correctly...  (Though I'm not claiming I necessarily know every nuance and detail of it myself...)

[Snarky]

Wikipedia claims that the mine/thine before vowel sounds rule was inconsistently applied, and may have emerged later. So BaRoN's version is not necessarily wrong. And Ali's wasn't meant seriously, I don't think.

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.

[voh]

American English has been heavily altered from its original form. Think of the most common difference - -or versus -our. Other (maybe not so common) changes which occurred were tyre becoming tire, and axe becoming ax.

I'm not so sure the notion that American English is closer to the English of 200 years ago than current British English, either (eether or aither? pick your fave ).

Both have changed a lot in the meantime, but both would be perfectly understandeable to someone from 200 years ago.