Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Some thoughts on Language

So, this isn't much of a spoiler but one of the characters in The Chained series is properly Anglo-Saxon, by which I mean she died in 1016 or something, I'll have to double check my notes but circa William the Conqueror. For plot reasons (waggles fingers mysteriously) she has a working knowledge of modern English with occasional problems regarding sentence structure and mixing up modern and middle English vocabularies.

When I first tried to write her, I attempted to functionally teach myself old english and actually wrote out her dialogue. This proved tireless and unnecessary because the protagonist does not speak old english and likely neither does my reader base. I'm not Tolkien, I'm not trying to give anyone homework. So I took the old english out and just described her speaking rapidly in a strange language, this worked much better.

Fast forward to the end of the Series, where I have decided for plot reason (waggles fingers mysteriously) that she starts teaching Old English to the protagonist. Now I have to include the actual language and working definitions.

Why am I like this?

We just don't know.

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