I've been working on the prologue and one of the things I want to make sure about is that it sounds (reasonably) authentic. I've written it in ordinary English to begin with, but obviously they spoke a bit differently in 17th century Essex. I want it to sound natural though, not silly. There isn't a Ye Olde Tea Shoppe on the village green.
I thought changing the 'you' and 'yours' throughout to 'thee' or 'thy' would work, and maybe throw in a couple of dialect words as well. But I hadn't realised it was more complicated that. I tried changing 'you' to 'thee' but it sounded wrong. I thought maybe putting in some 'thy' would help but I couldn't decide what should go where.
I started looking into it and it is more complicated that I thought. It's all to do with grammar. French and Latin grammar made sense at school, probably because I was learning the whole thing from scratch. English is already there, in my head, so talking about nominative, objective and possesive is just *whoosh* over my head!
Nominative: thou
Objective: thee
Possessive: thy (before a consonant, so "thy servant"), thine (before a vowel, so "to thine own self be true")
Which is all great. Now I know that if the 'you' is nominative it should be 'thou'. So I've just got to go and find out which of them are nominative and which are possessive!
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11 comments:
This is why historical fiction bites. Check out Rosemary Sutcliffe and Dorothy Dunnett to see how they handled it. Are you sure "thou" was still heavily used by the sixteenth century? You could also read some (English) books that were written at the time period that you are researching. How did the people back then write? Especially fiction. Just a suggestion. BTW, I think Rosemary Sutcliffe wrote the best Arthurian novel A SWORD AT SUNSET. Just a plug for a favourite book, sorry! GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think it needs something, just to make it seem different from the rest of the book. But you're right, it's got to be accessible.
I want people to read it and think about the story, not for all the thees and thys to get in the way.
That's a great idea, I feel a Google search coming on to find some contemporary writing :-)
I read Rosemary Sutcliffe at school, I remember "The Eagle of the Ninth" was great. I'll look out for that book, thanks for the recommendation.
Greatful for my link in your site... thank you...
Forsooth sirrah, I dost :-D
Methinks thou art most wecome FF
I think you're right to be cautious on this issue. I've been turned off on more than one occassion by writing that attempts to utilize authentic period language. Also urban/ethnic slang.
It sometimes works well when it's occassional, but not necessarily in a whole book.
Yes, I think a whole book (or even just the prologue) written in the manner of my last post would have people putting the book down.
Thanks for all the advice on this :-)
OK, here goes.
Nominative = subject of the sentence, e.g. "Thou hast a fine blog."
Accusative = direct object, e.g. "I like thee. / I like you."
Genitive = possessive, e.g. "Thy breeches are undone and thine eyes are moistened with tears. / Your trousers are ripped and your eyes have come into contact with an onion."
Dative = indirect object, e.g. "To thine own self be true."
Hope that helps. Though the other commenters are probably right and it could be irritating reading a whole book with lots of thees and thous. Mind you, Yorkshire people were apparently still using thee as the intimate form of you in the 1980s.
The other thing is, 'thou' would only be used between people who knew each other well, like 'Du' in German and 'tu' in French.
Also some people appear to find it difficult to conjugate verbs correctly in the archaic manner. Basically the thou form always has -(e)st on the end, and the 3rd person singular (he/she/it) always has -(e)th instead of -(e)s on the end.
On the subject of novels in dialect (invented or historical) chck out this blog post by The Silvereel (6th paragraph down about Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker.
Hope that helps!
Thanks yvonne that helps a lot :-)
I think if the words are used in a grammatically correct way they will probably sound much more natural, and I'll keep them to a minimum.
Thanks for the link too
Did they use these words in familiar conversation, or just in formal writing?
I have always wondered that...if the latter is the case, and you want to provide an authentic "slice of life"-type style, maybe there is some way you can research how people of the socio-economic class that you are portraying REALLY spoke in the 17th Century.
Anyway, you are off to a good start by asking these questions, and good luck to you!!
That's an interesting point Zen Wizard, I'll definately have to check that out. Thanks for commenting :-)
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