It's a real shame that Harold Lamb felt the need to write his dialogue like a bad Ren Fair, and perhaps why people don't know who he is.
Given a time machine, after nipping back and save Robert E Howard, I might want to drop by Mr Lamb and explain to him the effect of that one choice on the longevity of his work.
]]>But isn't archetypal fantasy-speak just modern English spattered with the occasional "thee" and thou" and wrapped in German grammatical structure?
]]>Sure, and it sets a tone.
You could probably do something with that. Like, your thief is thinking in normal modern english, and people keep reminding him about his funny accent. Then he travels somewhere that he doesn't have such a reputation, and the fantasy-speak is a bit stranger. He picks up the grammar etc real fast, but people still talk about how amusing his accent is. "Ah, heard of this I have, yah. Thou art bespie that land, beknownt for sie orange cheeses and sie poncy young men mit hair ribbons?" He tries to think of a way to inconspicuously remove his hair ribbon.
And he inevitably travels farther. "Ah, sie spikkin so joikklish es! Sie grokken sie chez dunkelgelb? Und de junge munner mit de longe haar!" And no matter how fast he picks up the dialect, his accent is always the first thing people notice about him.
It could be fun.
]]>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a55iAwMXylo
Of course, in all genres the language problems are ignored. It wouldn't do for Conan to have to settle down for at least 6 month, get a job and learn the language every time he moved 500 miles (or 50, depending...).
]]>It could be fun.
Could also be bloody annoying in a novel!
That said, Merchant Princes uses parallel earth ersatz German, doesn't it?
]]>I was very careful in my wording when defining the two groups but I suppose I should have made clearer that their tastes are often a subset of ours; we like both Shakespeare AND GoT, theatre AND D&D.
]]>Seagoon: What's your name? Eccles: Ah, the hard ones first, eh?
]]>Probably why much of it sounds so bad - its not that it can't be done well, I mean we can just point at Shakespeare for funny, flowing, smart dialogue even if the insults are over the top and turned to 11. Thing is most authors writing fantasy really can't compete with Will and would be better served by using language they're at least a bit more familiar with than that one time in 11th grade when they read Hamlet.
]]>Just a slight correction: you won't notice it in classically trained (by which I mean Anglo-Saxon / Chaucer / Shakespeare background) authors because they'll naturally see the linkages to 'modern' words anyhow.
It's only the faux users who do it. (C.f. Rabid Puppies and bad Latin).
]]>On your other point, and in case you doubt my credentials as a cook, I'll make my own curries starting with preparing spice and aromatic blends too.
]]>Also Doric and Scots are a separate language to English (different syntax, grammar and vocabulary), although Geordie is a dialect (at least as far as I know).
]]>That would be Britain 100 years ago. As soon as you travel more than 100 miles the accents change tremendously. Even 40 years ago, I met people from Wales and Scotland and could not understand what they were saying because I missed about 1 word in 4. As for Yorkshire and Geordies...
One of the strangest things I've had to do is translate at a christmas party, between two folk from Kerry and Donegal. Both speaking English, mildly intelligible to me from Dublin and unintelligible to each other ...
My father worked in the 1960s-1970s as a travelling salesman around Ireland. He claims (with reasonable truth) to being able to identify someone in Ireland (of that time) to within 10-15 miles by accent.
As for Gaeilge, the creation of Irish language TV station TG4 in the 1990s has been responsible for a visibly ongoing merger of dialects that were mutually very distinct until they were forced to merge in a TV studio. Imagine Welsh and Yorkshire being pushed together into a TV station and left to work out amongst themselves what RP should be ...
]]>In about 1962, I went to Dunnerdale in the Lake District on holiday ... the farm & Post Office & Hotel & Pub ... Had an elderly farm-hand - I could understand (at first meeting) about one word in 3. I suspect a Norwegian might have understood more.
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