Reader Joanne sent me an e-mail recently that thrilled me down to my bitchy little toes, because she hit on one of my biggest peeves in historical romance: the way many of the characters tend to sound like Americans in period drag. Americans with bad British accents in period drag.
To quote from her e-mail:
I have literally not read any historicals since I was a teenager (now mid-thirties so a big gap there). I immediately re-read a few Heyers, and then the two novels so far released by Elizabeth Hoyt and my first two Julia Quinns (Bridgerton ones).
They were all very enjoyable but every time I came across anachronisms in the dialogue (it’s not so bad if it happens in the narrative) it would suck me right out of my happy haze. They might as well have stuck in the words THIS IS NOT REAL; YOU ARE READING A WORK OF FICTION. It would have much the same effect.
Now, I am British, so it may be that there are very small things that sound glaringly American to me but perhaps sound so everyday to an American reader that they don’t particularly notice them.
My beefs:1. Julia Quinn’s characters constantly say “Right” (as in “ok”). I just can’t see English people in the early 19th Century saying that. English people today don’t say that.
2. Again Quinn: she uses very English words like “bloke” and “sodding” as though to add to the authenticity but to me, these are contemporary words and stand out like a sore thumb.
Ohhhh, lordy lord yes. I have to interrupt here to emphasize this point, because honestly, adding contemporary British slang (bad British slang, at that) to a historical does nothing for the verisimilitude of the book. In fact, it makes the book sound more jarring. Look, kids, we’re aiming for characters who sound like Jane Austen, not Nick Hornby, mmmkay? Just remember: throwing in the occasional “sodding bloke” does not a convincing historical make.
(Insert Oscar Wilde jokes here.)
3. I have to say, Elizabeth Hoyt was pretty much spot on for my money on her dialogue – but for one thing. Her characters constantly said “I guess” when, to me, an English person would in fact say “I suppose”.
I suspect that 95% of the buyers of these books are American so, if those readers are not bothered by these (admittedly minor) anachronisms, I suppose the authors will not be particularly concerned. But damn it, this bothered me when I read these books and I wanted to bitch about it!
By the way, I am not just having a go at American writers. I am sure there are lots of British writers who are guilty of these faults – it’s just I’ve not really read much of this genre in the last fifteen years but in the last four weeks I’ve read 6 or 7 pitch-perfect Heyers and then read four novels by contemporary Americans with these very minor faults.
To get to the point – what interests me is this:
(1) is this type of anachronistic dialogue bothering to anyone else out there or am I being way too picky?
(2) what other anachronisms bother people and
(3) most importantly given that I am just getting into this genre again after about 15 years – who are the novelists who really get this right?
Here are my answers to Joanna:
1. You’re not alone. Oh God no. I believe I’ve bitched before about how it drives me bugfuck when authors slip in Regency-era slang like “make micefeet of things,” only to turn around and use terms like “OK” or “That’s fine,” or construct sentences that use “get” as an auxiliary verb, often resulting in sentences that are an unholy chimera of Regency Miss and Valley Girl (e.g., “I’ve got to run now, or I won’t get to go to the ball, and then Mama will surely be beside herself”). It throws me out of the story, and it’s one of the reasons why I have to be in the right mood to read Julia Quinn. Mary Jo Putney used to get a pass from me, but after a while I had to stop reading her, too, because I couldn’t get past her dialogue. And I gave up on Patricia Ryan’s medievals entirely (hey, what happened to her, anyway?) when one of her characters used the term “pariah” centuries before the English traveled to the Indian subcontinent.
2. It peeves me when scientifically-inclined types in historicals talk about science in modern terms—I’ve caught characters talking about bacteria, oxygen, genes, electromagnetic waves and morphine long before these things were discovered or isolated and given names. Look, if you want to create a mad scientist type who’s years ahead of his or her time, that’s all well and good, but have them talk about the science in the terms of their day.
Anachronistic behavior and attitudes often annoy me as well, but that’s another rant for another day.
3. Laura Kinsale, in my opinion, gets the dialogue right—but she gets most things right. For My Lady’s Heart has dialogue in Middle English—how sexy is that? You may not care for her plots or the way she writes in general, but she does a fantastic job with the dialogue. And earlier Loretta Chase novels, before she became enamored with very. short. sentences, are a joy to read because she gets the cadences right as well. The Lion’s Daughter, Captives of the Night and Lord of Scoundrels are all cracking good reads, as are pretty much all her Regencies. Judith Ivory, a.k.a. Judy Cuevas, does a decent job much of the time, though she occasionally slips. These are just the names that immediately came to mind; I’ll post more as they occur to me.
So now we turn the questions over to the Bitchery: Do you in any way care about anachronistic language? If you do, what are the examples that especially burned your biscuit? (Note to authors: if you’ve ever, ever, ever used the word “cookies” to refer to biscuits in British-set historicals, shame on you—that makes the sodding blokes weep tears of sadness over their crumpets and cucumber sandwiches.) And most importantly: any authors to recommend Joanna?
I once started a Victorian era novel about a girl stranded on a desert isle with only her tutor. I was fine with the girl being named Victoria until about thirty pages in , when she’s called “Tori”. Then I threw it in the recycling bin because then all I could think of was Tori Spelling and that destroyed the whole story for me.
Tally-ho, chaps and chapesses!
I love this topic. Great for bitchery. As a Brit author with American publishers, I’ve been known to rewrite sentences and even paragraphs to avoid ‘gotten’. Leaps out and screams from the page when it’s used in British dialogue (one could be generous with the Medieval-set books, but I doubt it).
I really think that with accents/slang in books, less is more. I recently blogged that for a book I once researched a load of Jamaican slang and then threw most of it out, precisely because I’m so tired of reading misplaced slang in British-set books. Especially those time-travel ones where the burly Highlander tells the wee lassie “Dinna fash yerself,” which sounds like something a baby does in its nappy. And how come the modern American heroine always understand what the C16th Highlander is talking about,anyway? I barely understand modern Glaswegians.
As for misunderstood accents, if I had a penny for every time someone asked me which part of Australia I’m from, I’d be a rich little British girl. When I say I’m not, they apologise and say, “I’m sorry, you must be from New Zealand?” Usually the person asking is Aussie/Kiwi, or has at least lived there for a long period. Weird.
Britain’s the biggest little country in the world. We have more regional accents than any other English-speaking nation. My parents, Sheffield-born-and-bred, watced The Full Monty and complained that Mark Addy sounded like he was from Barnsley, not Sheffield—which is about twenty miles away. Brits can usually distinguish American from Aussie accents, although we think everyone from the Antipodes sounds like the cast of Neighbours…
I’m fascinated by the “gotten” thread here. I’m American (San Francisco) and I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word “gotten” used in speech (outside of someone making fun of hicks, “I done gotten me one of them there new-fangled machines.” kind of thing). But it certainly comes up in discussions such as this one every time, so someone out there must be using it. *shudder*
I guess I really wasn’t very clear. It’s not so much that a Brit says to him/herself, “Oh, that American sounds exactly like someone from Australian. However can I tell which is which?” It’s more that people think, “Oh that x accent sounds really similar to y accent. They don’t sound REMOTELY like mine.” It’s a who do you relate to most sort of thing.
In other words and in a generic sort of way, I know what someone who is from Autralia sounds like and what some one from say, Scotland, sounds like but I think they sound more similar like they’re close cousins and I speak some mutant variation that has words and grammer in common but not accent. (I believe this was the thesis of the paper: similarity instead of sameness.)
Kalen,
I am also from California…here is a common usage:
“Have you gotten the tickets yet?”
“Have you gotten your father a present for his birthday?”
That’s used all over America as far as I know.
Or
“Where have the kids gotten to?”
Oh heck, now that I think about it, for some people who really aren’t sensitive to accents, this may cause in an inablity to distinguish difference outside of home standard entirely.
How does this apply to period/place lexicon? Well, I’ve met lots of Americans who think that the only vocabulary difference between Autralia and the British Isles is the use of “let’s throw another shrimp on the barbi.” Perhaps then, for the general reading public that random ‘Okay’ coming from a Regency miss works for them but… for those of us with the sensitive ear, etc. it is surely a dead give away.
I’m not too nitpicky about dialogue, and I’m in the camp of don’t use hi, hello, or okay in the Regency.
However, what does drive me nuts is the use of sarcastic phrases such as “whatever”, or “could it BE more xxz?” Fortunately, I read those in a manuscript I was judging for a writing contest, so I was able to put a little note on the page, but it was enough to yank me by the hair right out of the story. If I hear Chandler, from Friends, in a regency-set story, I’m liable to do a Miss Snark and set my hair on fire.
JMHO
“Have you gotten the tickets yet?â€
“Have you gotten your father a present for his birthday?†That’s used all over America as far as I know. Or “Where have the kids gotten to?â€
Maybe my friends and family are strange then, because I don’t think we’d use any of those sentences.
“Do you have the tickets yet?” or “Have you bought the tickets yet?” or “Have you picked up the tickets yet?” But not “gotten”.
“Have to bought a present for your father yet?” or “Have to decided upon a present for Dad yet?”
“What have the kids been up to?” or “How have the ankle-bitters been amusing themselves?”
But once again, never “gotten”. It just sounds horribly, terribly wrong (or maybe it just sounds uneducated?). “Gotten” just doesn’t seem to be a part of my vocabulary.
I just have to ask one last thing: Why on earth is “bloke” considered contemporary?
http://books.google.com/books?id=G6oPAAAAIAAJ&q=bloke+date:1750-1820&dq=bloke+date:1750-1820&pgis=1
It’s used in 1753 in the modern sense. It’s not used a lot, but it’s surely not terribly “contemporary.”
I was just thinking about this whole accent issue, and I’d like to ‘draw’ a parallel with drawing… if you draw what you think a tree looks like, you get a caricature of a tree. What you ‘think’ a tree looks like. To draw a good tree, you need to look at one, specific tree and draw that one – a particular oak, or beech, or whatever. We should do that with writing: listen to one specific, authentic person speaking – interviews with real people, for example, not actors – and use that as a point of reference.
two things that bothered me:
Amanda Quick has one of her regency heroines saying ‘bloody’ every second page. Which as a middle class woman with social aspirations she would NOT do. Not only was it swearing (which is what I think Quick was trying to use to show the heroine was a bit dodgy), but it was blasphemy. A man in 1800 might have used it. But not a woman. And her lover used to use it in front of her without apologising too. Very annoying.
Also Jane Feather: she obviously did some research into the english civil war, but then she had one heroine marry her elder sister’s widowed husband ‘to keep the dowry in the family’.
NO!!! It was considered *incest* for a woman to marry a dead sister’s husband; or for a man to marry a dead wife’s sister. If she had shown any knowledge of this and even pretended to excuse it with a ‘they got a dispensation’ comment, at least I could have moved on. But the entire premise of the book was that one sister married her brother in law in yet another arranged marriage.
Sorry. Outside royal families with papal dispensations (ie Catherine of Aragon / Henry VIII), and possibly members of the nobility with – again – a dispensation, it did not happen. It was illegal and punishable by law. I know it did happen in other parts of the world, but not in England. End of story – and not hard to find out either.
Kalen, what is funny to me is that I was raised in the South Bay…Sunnyvale! So it isn’t a regional thing…not sure why you’ve never used this type of phrasing before. How funny!
Hmm. How about “I wouldn’t have gotten sick if I’d stayed home.”? It is a real word.
And her lover used to use it in front of her without apologising too.
I find it very amusing that she could have a lover, but it would be rude for him not to apologize for vulgar language. *g*
This isn’t really an anachronism at all, but since the discussion sort of veered onto just total inaccuracies, I was wondering what people thought about this:
Hymens. Seriously, through what strange scientific mechanism did the hymen somehow end up on the inside of the vaginal canal? The hymen is an external barrier, n’est ce pas? What’s up with all this “he slid gently until he reached the barrier of her maidenhood”? Furthermore, the hymen is not like a barrier stretched across the entire vaginal canal – if it were, menstruation would be kind of tough. Maybe novelists include this to represent some crucial moment “before” and “after” sex, but that seems both artificial and unnecessary. Am I completely misunderstanding all these euphemisms for “maidenhood” and “proof of her innocence”?
Getting back to anachronisms, heroines with smooth, shaven legs is definitely one… but not one I’d really want to get rid of. Some level of anachronism is definitely necessary to allow the modern reader to fully connect – but too much is just glaringly obvious. It’s a weird, thin line, and difficult to navigate because everyone has a different idea of where it’s at!
I’ve always wondered about the placement of the hymen too, in all erotic literature. I don’t think that I’ve read a single piece of creative fiction that ever got it right. I wonder who placed it all the way up the canal first?
“Seriously, through what strange scientific mechanism did the hymen somehow end up on the inside of the vaginal canal?”
“I wonder who placed it all the way up the canal first?”
Thanks goodness it’s not just me that finds this weird. It deserves an essay in itself.
“But once again, never “gottenâ€. It just sounds horribly, terribly wrong (or maybe it just sounds uneducated?). “Gotten†just doesn’t seem to be a part of my vocabulary.”
Huh. I picked up the habit of saying “got” instead of “gotten” while living in England. (Every place I’ve ever lived has left at least a small mark on my speech—my other English legacy is a tendency to clip words like “military” into three syllables—“militree”—when I’m speaking quickly.) But when I’m in a situation like a job interview, I’m careful to use “gotten” when appropriate…because I don’t want the interviewer to think I sound uneducated!
It was my email to Candy that started this thread and all I can say is that I am clearly not the only picky reader in the world. But oh my – there are a lot of kinds of picky!
Weirdly, reading this thread has made me feel a bit differently about this issue. I’ve realised that my own particular brand of authenticity is a pretty subjective construct which comprises every book I’ve ever read; every film I’ve ever seen; every TV show I’ve ever watched etc.
If I’m honest, a lot of my idea of what is authentic in Regency England in particular is based on Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer novels. Austen cannot be gainsaid but Heyer was writing from the 1930s-1950s. I remain of the view that she is probably a lot more accurate than some of the authors that have been mentioned in this thread, but equally, her writing was refracted through the lens of the time she lived.
Reading the comments by Victoria Dahl made me admit to myself (a little shamefacedly)that the fact that I live in the UK doesn’t necessarily make my measure of authenticity any more accurate than, say, a reader in New York. However, I’m going to exonerate myself from my slight (former) smugness on the grounds that the things that prompted me to email Candy are (generally) genuine howlers. No matter how good the writing is, if someone (Julia Quinn again I’m afraid) describes someone in Regency England as being curled up in a chair “like a pretzel”, I think it is legitimate to roll one’s eyes and email the Bitchery.
Just one more thing. I really enjoyed those Julia Quinn books and I can live with having to roll my eyes a few times when I’m reading a book I’m enjoying that much. I agree with the person who said that the only thing that will really stop me reading is bad writing and Ms Quinn cannot IMO be accused of that. However, the pursuit of perfection has to be a good thing.
I now await comments from anyone who has written a thesis on Germanic baked goods to tell me exactly when pretzels were introduced to Britain (my best guess is about 1990 but no doubt there is a reference somewhere to the Duke of Wellington eating pretzels at the battle of Waterloo).
describes someone in Regency England as being curled up in a chair “like a pretzelâ€, I think it is legitimate to roll one’s eyes and email the Bitchery.
Haha! I’m just picturing you muttering, “Oh, I have GOT to email the Bitches about this.”
I think what I’ve taken from this is that every single reader has something different that sets them off. This actually frees me up from worrying too much about it as a writer. The old “you can’t please all the people all the time” adage. Clearly there are even period words that don’t sound correct to people, so what the hell? All I can do is write my best and then give it up to god, as they say.
I know my heroine says “hello!” at one point in my book. It just didn’t even register in my tired little brain until AFTER the final proofs were done. I’ve got to let it go. But boy would I be happy if I could find just one example of somebody spelling it “hello” in Victorian England. *g*
Speaking of gotten, I must admit that to me saying “have got” sounds uneducated, while “have gotten” is the correct way to say it. Which is interesting since it seems it can be considered vice versa in other places. Also, being thoroughly American, most English accents sound the same to me: I can tell the difference between cockney and posh, but that’s about it. They all sound the same to me, really. I still get confused between Scottish and Irish, though. ::wince::
Just wondering if people from the U.K. make a distinction between all the different American accents, or do you just say we have an “American” accent? I think that is the same thing as us not caring or noticing the difference between a London accent vs. Liverpool (or wherever else you determine the difference lies). I mean, I *hear* a difference between a more ‘upper-class’ British accent that would probably be classified as a Londoner and a more ‘working man’ type of accent found in other parts of the U.K….but they are all English accents, just different subsets.
We have California, New York, Mid-Western, Southern…and a whole host inbetween. Very definite accents from certain states, like Maine or Minnesota, for example. But I’m not offended if someone just says that my accent is “American.”
An “English” accent means you come from England. Scottish & Irish sound distinctively different to me, so I would classify them separately.
South African is bizarre to me. It sounds wholly unique…for a bit, you can’t quite place it. Are they Dutch? German? Australian? None seems to fit…then, they will tell me they are from South Africa, and it seems so obvious.
Just wondering if people from the U.K. make a distinction between all the different American accents, or do you just say we have an “American†accent?
Depends on how good you are at telling them apart! For a long time all American accents to me were either Noo Yoik, Southern Belle, or Other. Now I’m starting to be able to distinguish more, like that clipped New England accent or the Scandinavian-lilted Minnesotans.
BTW, ‘Londoner’ has dozens of different accents, everything from the Queen to Cockney Sparrer. Remember Henry Higgins’ boast that he could place an accent to within three miles? That’s how many! My own county has at least three native accents: Home Counties Posh, East Anglia Rural, and Essex Chav. Now people don’t stay in the same places all their lives, accents get mixed and you end up with weird hybrids like mine. Plus, whenever I go to Ireland or America I end up picking up a little local accent and cadence.
In Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson recounts an anecdote about fifteenth-century sailors from London who stopped 50 miles down the Thames to buy food. The farmer’s wife looked at them blankly and said she ‘coude speke no frenshe’. 50 miles, and their accents were so different she thought they were French!
(spamfilter: europe27, snigger)
I ran across some info that I LOVED as a (petty) American writing British historicals. Apparently there are quite a few saying and words that WERE used in England, then fell out of use there, and became reviled as Americanisms!
Words like sick (as in unwell), fall (for autumn), mad (for angry) trash, hog. . . And, oh my gosh, look at this. . . “and the expression I guess.â€
And, sorry girls. . . “The best noted, perhaps, is gotten,
Yes, but the point is to work out when they fell out of use in the UK generally, whether they fell out of use by some classes/in some regions earlier than others, whether some examples of the usage are deliberately archaic (e.g. in poetry) or whether the word has changed its meaning and/or is only used in particular contexts in UK usage.
There isn’t even one example of the use of ‘gotten’ in Jane Austen’s novels, for example. And although there are plenty examples of people or objects falling in her novels, the season is called ‘autumn’.
As for ‘sick’, I don’t consider it an Americanism. Again, checking Austen, she mentions sickness, sick chamber, being ‘sick of’ something. And all those usages (apart from the ‘sick chamber’) are ones that I would use and wouldn’t consider Americanisms. I looked up the OED and they give examples of someone being ‘sick in their braine’ (1551), ‘sick in their wits’ (1692) and ‘It was a tone Such as sick fancies in a new~made grave Might hear’ (1817) but in those examples it’s always made clear that this type of sickness is in the brain/wits/fancies. Just saying ‘you’re sick’ in a Regency would probably be interpreted as meaning ‘you are ill’ not ‘you have a warped sense of humour’.
Re ‘trash’, I think the difference is when it’s used as a verb. As a noun, yes, it’s accurate in the Regency e.g. from Northanger Abbey, ‘talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans’. But as a verb, I looked up the OED and found trash meaning ‘To check (a hound) by a cord or leash; hence gen. to hold back, restrain, retard, encumber, hinder. Obs.’ (they give an example from Shakespeare of that usage), ‘To walk or run with exertion and fatigue, esp. through mud or mire’, ‘To fatigue (with walking, running, or exertion); to wear out’, ‘fig. To labour (a point)’ and ‘To free from trash or refuse; spec. to strip the outer leaves from (growing sugar-canes) so that they may ripen more quickly’. The usages which I don’t think would be historically correct in a Regency romance would be ‘to trash’ meaning ‘To vandalize (property or goods), esp. as a means of protest. Occas. intr., to perform such acts of destruction. Also fig. colloq. (chiefly U.S.).’ or ‘To injure seriously, destroy or kill (someone or something). U.S. colloq.’ or ‘To reduce or impair the quality of (a work of art, etc.); to expose the worthless nature of (something), to deprecate. colloq. (chiefly U.S.).’
I won’t read anything with a character who’s a Viscount. I want the hours of my life back spent reading that stuff.
There isn’t even one example of the use of ‘gotten’ in Jane Austen’s novels, for example. And although there are plenty examples of people or objects falling in her novels, the season is called ‘autumn’.
Oh, I agree that if there is a clear and definite time at which a word isn’t used in England, that should be taken note of, if possible. But Jane Austen is ONE writer and I have to assume she is from ONE area of Britain, raised and educated and influenced by a small set of people. As we’ve seen here, Kristin and Kalen are from the same area of the US, and Kalen’s never used the word “gotten”.
I’m also inclined to feel that a nineteenth-century writer may have been using her best, most correct words when writing something for public consumption. If it’s considered more genteel to refer to “rubbish” instead of “trash”, or “autumn” instead of “fall”. . . Well, there you go.
Keep in mind, I haven’t put any research into these few words. My argument is that what seems right to any one person may not necessarily be the end of the discussion. What drives me crazy is the level of irritation directed even at words which are technically correct but don’t “feel” right. Or words that make some people wince but could have actually been in use at the time.
Beyond that though, my goal as a writer is to NOT throw readers out of the story so, arguments aside, that is what I strive for.
Oh, and the book I’m about to start writing is about a viscount. He’s quite lovely. Ha!
What drives me crazy is the level of irritation directed even at words which are technically correct but don’t “feel†right. Or words that make some people wince but could have actually been in use at the time.
Like ‘gotten’ and ‘fall’, you mean? Both would have been used in Shakespeare’s day, but not Austen’s. Both were words that were almost literally taken away by settlers to America. ‘I guess’ was also an English term that died out. ‘Gotten’ makes more sense grammatically (we say forgotten and ill-gotten), but since ol’ Will’s day, it’s just not been common in Blighty, and nor is it considered correct.
Apparently several Australianisms like ‘fair dinkum’ and ‘no worries’ were orginally English dialect words. ‘Yeah’ was also an English dialect word, so could legitimately be used in a book set in, say, Surrey.
But if you wrote ‘yeah’ in a book set in Emma Woodhouse’s village, I doubt anyone would believe it was authentic.
No, I meant words like “bloke”. Clearly in use at the time, but just bothersome for some reason?
But I do think it’d be difficult to pinpoint exactly when a word fell out of use altogether. Much harder than coming up with a definitive first use. You could argue that a specific word was in use in Shakespeare’s time, but DEFINITELY not in Austen’s time. But you could also argue that Shakespeare was writing dialogue for a huge range of characters—lower, middle and upper classes. Clearly you’d see words used that Austen would never write, even if they WERE still in use. Cock, for example. *g*
(Now, that was just a joke. Yes, I know cock would’ve been used in other works in Austen’s time and is therefore verifiable.)
Ah yes, but Shakespeare was incredibly bawdy and he knew his audience: not particularly highbrow (whatever Tom Stoppard tried to tell us!). Plus, he made up words all the time. A tenth of his words had never been recorded anywhere else. Even outside of his writings, thousands of new words were coined (English was still evolving from Middle to Modern) during the C16th and 17th. It’d probably be completely impossible to figure out which word came exactly when.
Unless you’re Doctor Who. He’d know.
A tenth of his words had never been recorded anywhere else.
I love that. To be completely contemporary: it’s the coolest thing evah! So amazing to consider a time when you could make up new words and the world would just ACCEPT them! Makes me feel all mushy inside.
-Victoria, who (in case you can’t tell) tends to rebel against absolutes
Just listening to the Amy Winehouse album in the car and heard my favorite line: “What kind of fuckery is this?” It immediately reminded me of our Shakespeare discussion!
I hear many times this is why some people won’t read historicals. It isn’t authentic enough for them. Geez. Can I point to any number of romantic suspense stories that mess up how the FBI works or don’t know an uzi from a .45?
Mistakes in contemporaries drive me bugfuck nutty as well, for what it’s worth.
I read a blog by one writer who claimed that she didn’t need to research about the FBI or the CIA because you can learn all that stuff from watching TV! AAHHHH!!!!!!!!
You should understand our anguish, then, when we encounter authors of historicals who seem to think they don’t need to research anything extensively because they can learn all that stuff from reading Judith McNaught and watching BBC costume dramas.
I’m a pedant all around—at least, about the things I’m knowledgeable about. The pedantry occasionally interferes with my enjoyment of the books. This particular thread documents pedantry regarding anachronisms. We’ll have to cover other varieties of pedantry some other time, hee.
Fiction is fiction.
Yes. And lazy is lazy, and ignorance is ignorance.
It was nice that you bought all these books about each historical period, but if you wrote a book and used the word ‘stew’ for brothel most of your readership would be highly confused.
Ach, you gotta give the readership some credit for being able to figure what words like those mean based on context. I’d encountered that term in particular at a fairly young age in period works as well as the occasional bit of historical fiction, and had no trouble deciphering what it meant without reaching for my dictionary.
Actually, that’s another one of my peeves: authors who don’t have faith in their readers and insist on explaining every damn thing, from having foreign characters repeat themselves in English after speaking a phrase in their mother tongue, to having archaisms explained with excruciating awkwardness in the course of their story. Either make it clear in context, skip using the archaism or foreign phrase, or just use it and let the reader do some legwork. I have several dictionaries, Google and Babelfish, and I’m not afraid to use ‘em.
Regarding regional accents: I think I have a better ear than some people when it comes to that sort that thing. I can differentiate most varieties of regional accents, both British and American, even if I can’t place them precisely, though I confess I can’t really tell the difference between Australian and New Zealand accents, and West Coast Canadian from Pacific NW American.
Also, regarding mufflers: I’ve always associated that with British usage—rather old-fashioned British usage, at that. The On-Line Etymology dictionary says that muffler being used synonymously with scarf has been around since 1535.
Actually, that’s another one of my peeves: authors who don’t have faith in their readers and insist on explaining every damn thing, from having foreign characters repeat themselves in English after speaking a phrase in their mother tongue, to having archaisms explained with excruciating awkwardness in the course of their story.
Blame the editors on that count. They’re terrified the reader won’t understand those obscure bits of dialogue. I’m always being told to change stuff (and I write paranormals, I can make up whatever I like!).
I know an American author, living in Britain, writing books set in America with american characters. Her British publisher changes all the gottens to gots, no matter how accurate they may be.
Regarding the “mufflers” again, this was in Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, set in Oxford in the nearish future. I’ve never heard anyone using the word in England (I’m obviously not the final authority), except to refer to part of a car. Everyone appears to call the woollen things “scarves”. There were a couple more things in those books that were a bit annoying that way – she does tend to throw in a few too many quaint Englishisms (sometimes those that are slightly anachronistic even for today), so it makes the more egregious errors more glaring.
Of course, the Watsonian explanation would be that certain turns of phrase re-entered the English of those times. 🙂
The one that always gets me is “jumper” instead of the American “sweater.” Whenever I read “jumper,” I think of an adult wearing toddler clothes. I know what they mean, but my brain automatically throws me that little mental image…I just can’t help it.
Whenever I read “jumper,†I think of an adult wearing toddler clothes. I know what they mean, but my brain automatically throws me that little mental image…I just can’t help it.
And pretty much the same thing happens for speakers of British English when we read about characters wearing pants and a vest. Those are items of underwear in British English. But not anachronisms 😉
Since nobody ever got around to quoting from For My Lady’s Heart I had to go locate my own copy. Now I can’t decide on the best quote. I think I need to re-read it from the begining.
🙂
Mostly it was Sir Ruck that spoke in Middle English. How about this one when he tells Melanthe about his encounter with a dragon.
“I fettered Hawk, to forage for his fodder, could he finden it, but I broke nought e’en hard bread to brace me. Black night befell us, of all brightness wanting…”
Or later when Melanthe discovers that there was no real dragon and calls Ruck a liar.
“On my lady’s heart, then, I swear!” he shouted. “Fore God, n’ill I ne lie to you, nought while I live! I ne have nought lied, ne’er! Was but a tale. A lay—for the delight of it, no more than that!”
In the back of the book Kinsale has an acknowledgements section where she says the following.
“Readers should know that there exists in the world a manuscript of this book in which all of the Middle English dialogue has been rendered accurate in both spelling and grammar, a labor of love for the language by Suzanne [Parnell], which allowed me to water it down for modern consumption…”
I SO want to read that copy.
Dumbification vs. edification:
euri: “I know many Aussie authors who have their work ‘Americanised’ because the editors seem to assume that reader’s can’t cope with the unfamiliar.”
kristin: “if you wrote a book and used the word ‘stew’ for brothel most of your readership would be highly confused.”
Don’t assume readers are dumb. I was a preteen when I first read “the stews” in a historical. I didn’t necessarily know exactly what a brothel was, but I understood the type of neighborhood.
Consider Harry Potter. Why did the American publisher substitute fortnight/two weeks, post/mail, boot/trunk, lorry/truck? The stories are good; the reader is motivated; the context is clear; the learning would be painless. Wasted opportunity. If readers can figure out “quidditch” they can figure out real words.
Writing dialect:
Ew. Use the right words, in the right way. Do NOT spell them funny. Unless you mean to be funny.
OTOH, if it’s set in a period using a dialect as distant as Middle English, maybe the author has no choice. “What that April with his showres soote” ≠ “When April’s sweet showers”.
“Gotten”:
I thought “gotten” was not an anachronism but a flaky indicator of region/education. It’s not used “all over America”. I’ve lived in several regions of the U.S. and only heard it once, in high school. The mumbly kid in the back said “gotten”. The instructor said it was “uneducated” and a “non-word”.
Hymens:
How many virgins have intact hymens? Even pre-tampon and pre-women’s soccer, Regency misses rode horses! I read that it’s common to retain a small band of flesh that allows partial penetration without tearing. But so common it explains the prevalence of “Three inches in, he nudged her barrier”??
The in and out:
OT, but I’m puzzled by “He slipped a finger inside to stroke her little button.” Clit = outside, yes? Is anything between the lips “inside”? Or is there a surprising amount of G-spot stimulation going on in novels that call it a “button”?
Don’t assume readers are dumb.
Consider Harry Potter. Why did the American publisher substitute fortnight/two weeks, post/mail, boot/trunk, lorry/truck?
It’s usually the publisher doing this, not the author. I know I was damn surprised when I flicked through one of my own books to find ‘gotten’s I’d never put in there.
As for the HP thing, well they even changed the title, because apparently ‘philosopher’s stone’ was too difficult for poor dumb Americans to understand. I don’t know what the thinking behind changing the title of the first His Dark Materials book was: why is The Golden Compass more accessible to American readers than The Northern Lights?