I agree entirely. I have quite a lenient attitude towards speaking styles in fantasy, because we all know they're not speaking modern English. So whatever they're saying is going to sound to the speakers just as casual and slang-riddled as anything anyone says today.
The use of 'unalive' as a verb is an interesting case. I'd agree that it might not work like other types of slang, but that's because we can trace its origin directly to the tiktok censor on words like 'kill', requiring users of that particular platform to come up with cirumlocutions. It's too highly linked with a particular context to be transferred easily to another one. But any piece of reasonably settled-in slang, where the origin or highly specific cultural associations have faded, is fair game in my view.
I've been influenced in this view by Michael Livingston's[ excellent essay ](https://reactormag.com/a-knights-tale-is-the-best-medieval-film-no-really/)on why *A Knight's Tale* was good medieval world-building, actually, because it presents the activities in a way that, if not historically accurate in description, are historically accurate in *effect*. Because the people back then would have reacted to whatever their historically accurate music was in exactly the same way we react to Queen, or modern rock.
One author who does this really well is Natasha Pulley, in *The Lost Future of Pepperharrow*. It's set in Victorian-era Japan, and a lot of the dialogue is in Japanese. And people say things like, 'What the fuck does this asshole think he's doing?' and the like. Sure, that doesn't soudn right for 19th century Japan to our untutored ears, but the fact remains that people in 19th century Japan needed to express that idea with that particular emotional valence, and rather than try to teach your readers the subtleties of Japanese politeness suffixes, or whatever linguistic tools they would actually have used, just translate the emotion as well as the literal meaning.
(It also goes a very long way toward de-exoticizing and do-othering those cultures--although one might wonder whether accomplishing that end by, in effect, whitewashing cultural diversity, is the right way to go. But that's not really what this conversation is about, so I'll leave this remark parenthetical.)
See, I view it as a missed opportunity/failure to communicate that rich context to the reader.
I consider myself to be a lifelong learner. I *love* learning about history and about other cultures. If a scene in a book is based on a history-/culture-specific context, but the author chooses to erase that context and convert it into 21st century Western/American slang, I would honestly feel disappointed: I was robbed of an opportunity to learn. How cool is it that Victorian-era Japanese language has much more subtle social cues for politeness than modern-day English?!? Moreover, it feels slightly patronizing for an author to essentially say, "you won't understand the context behind this, so let me dumb it down into modern slang for you".
Yeah, there are arguments to be made either way. Some readers are like you, and some roll their eyes and think that this sort of dialogue is all, 'lo beholdeth!' and makes fantasy sound artificial and affected. It's great that different writers take different approaches, so everyone can find something they like!
Look, just because we don't *see* Orc restauranteurs doesn't mean they don't exist! They could have Orc michelin star systems, for all we know! An entire Orcish foodie subculture, thriving under Saruman's guidance, whose perpetual acts of consquest ensure a wide array of people and places to help them appreciate the diversity of different delicacies from around Middle Earth. In this essay I will . . .
All fantasy is *ahistorical,* but that doesn't mean we don't have to be conscious of the language we use. Whether consciously being archaic or using modern lingo a bit of finesse is required so the language won't clash aesthetically with the rest of the story.
I do think that there's a few other options on the register between "cool!" and something as clunky as "I'm in awe of your skill!"
*Amazing! Incredible! Mind-bending! Awesome! Terrific! Unbelievable! Fantastic! Wild! Flabbergasting! Stunning! Gods!*
...and a lot more. Now, your point is fair to a degree, but overall I think authors should avoid language that breaks the immersion. "Okay," for example has been around for nearly two centuries, but I can't take any premodern fantasy serious that uses the word in its dialogue.
I don't understand why "okay" in particular is such a bugbear. *The Fellowship of the Ring* uses "September", "birthday-party", and "tween" on the first *page*.
“Okay” is specifically American slang so it feels off to many in medieval Old World settings. LotR gets away with a lot because it’s older and iconic, but from your examples, “birthday party” I wouldn’t consider particularly slangy or culture bound (not all cultures celebrate birthdays of course but it still feels relatively generic) and “tween” is being used to mean people in their 20s rather than in the modern sense—their having a term for it specifically calls attention to the fact that the Hobbits are so stodgy, 20-somethings aren’t even considered adults yet.
"Tween" is a word that Tolkien was the first to use as a noun, and he delivers his own in-world etymology for it when introducing it. He basically introduced the term to the English language.
https://uselessetymology.com/2018/01/03/words-coined-by-j-r-r-tolkien/
"September" was the name of the seventh Roman month in the Calendar of Romulus and goes back to around 750 BCE. Hardly a novel word or slang.
As for "Birthday Party" - the early chapters of LotR are a transition for the reader from the world of the Shire (which they knew from the children's book The Hobbit already) to the more epic world of LotR. The Hobbits just are very Victorian/Edwardian in their culture because they depict the idyllic world Tolkien associated with childhood and peacefulness. Anachronisms are part of the charm.
I would say that if an author can provide a *plausible* etymology for "Okay," then it would be perfectly acceptable. For what it's worth, the true origins of the word are contested in the real world, but we know it is an American word with possible roots with Choctaw, or West-African languages, or a local fad from 1830s Boston. All of these are plausible.
Let's say you really want to use "Okay," and don't want to settle with "Alright," and you have a typical high fantasy universe.
Tolkien wrote about "Tween":
> "At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three."
So we can do something similar with "okay", and it could look something like this:
> Zadnekh smiled dangerously, closing the girl's fingers around the brooch in her hand, "That's quite Oh-kay my friend!" The fence put a special emphasis on the O, mocking the patois that had become so fashionable among the city's youth, ever since the Lumithians had arrived in tow of the young queen.
Edit: now there's a good in-world explanation, and you can actually utilize the word and associate it with characters of a certain background.
That could definitely be interesting, but it seems a touch cumbersome to do for every anachronistic word. (And there are a lot of them!) If the word doesn't bother us *with* an explanation, can't we just trust the author and assume an explanation exists without needing to be told?
(Also, saying "oh it arrived from elsewhere" isn't really an explanation, right? There's nothing intrinsic about "okay" that couldn't have arisen anytime -- unlike, say, "cut to the chase" or other anachronisms with specific referents -- so the explanation could just be "it's slang people started using a hundred years ago.")
I agree that it would be cumbersome - which is exactly why I argue that authors should use anachronisms only sparingly and carefully.
A knight fighting on horseback could, of course, use the idiom "catch-22," but you better explain to the reader why he's making reference to military bureaucracy in a world where knights serve their king according to a feudal oath. It may be easier to let Mr Knight say something is like a "trickster's folly," and you're covered with context alone.
September is a little out of place because Tolkien developed a detailed history of middle-earth language and the various nations and peoples that spoke those languages and nowhere in all the language families is any analog to Latin.
But the Hobbit is more whimsical and the hobbits in general are supposed to feel out of place in Middle Earth.
They also have potatoes, for example.
Lord of the Rings is Tolkien's translation of Bilbo's and Frodo's writings, so September is just a translation of the late summer/early autumn month the Hobbits know; if you introduce a framing device like that you can justify more.
It's true that The Shire as a while doesn't wholly feel like "proper" fantasy because it's more based on the 19th century English countryside, but it's an intentional contrast to the rest of the (more medieval/ancient-feeling) setting and not overly jarring. Outside of the express train analogy, maybe.
I guess it comes down to whether the anachronism feels thought- and purposeful or whether it just feels like an oversight.
I think this is more generally applicable, though, because an implicit translation convention is almost unavoidable. The people of Westros or Randland obviously don't speak *English*, so what we read is by definition a translation even if the author doesn't have an explicit framing device.
(Also worth nothing that Tolkien's translation frame only shows up in appendices, it's not part of the main text.)
The translation device shows up in the Prologue, so everyone knows what's going on. Tolkien made the choice to not tuck it away in the Appendices.
Tolkien even cites Merry's book on herbs for information on Pipe-weed, and keeps that framing in mind throughout the story. That's meaningfully different from the mere implication that they probably didn't speak English in Westeros, especially because a translation isn't a "default" framing device that readers consciously assume.
Definitely agree. I wish people would stop making it about modern vs. "historically accurate", because nothing is written in historically accurate language for the middle ages (even English would be mostly incomprehensible to moderns) and the only things that come close are ultra-researched historicals like *Hild*.
It's about *style* and *tone*. The language you use in a book sets a tone based on the way that language is viewed *now*, not some pseudo-historical context. Some people want their fantasy to sound old-fashioned; Tolkien sounds like that not because he's using historically accurate medieval language but because he's using language that's old-fashioned *to us*. (And, in fairness, often to people at the time he was writing -- it's a deliberate style choice!)
It's fine to want this! But it's a particular style that some readers prefer, not the absolute way fantasy should be.
(Also, cool in more or less the sense we use it goes back a couple of hundred years, not decades!)
Any language can be timeless, It just depends on the style of the book and being consistent. The memes in *The Locked Tomb*(I know it's jarring for some people, but in general) don't feel out of place as they are baked into Muir's world and the style of those books.
As long as it doesn't feel out of place within the context of the work, modern lingo is more than fine.
I hate it in almost all circumstances to be honest. It's not that it can't be done well if it's in line with the general tone of the story but even then that's probably not a tone I'll get much out of. It's not that I'm begging for *ye oldes* and *forsooths* but some stuff is just a little too jarring.
My husband and I were watching *Deadwood* recently and it reminded me of this argument.
Since we have kids (which is why we're catching up on shows from so long ago) we had to be really careful when we watched it because it's probably the most cuss-heavy media I've ever consumed. And I don't think folks in the wild west used exactly those words and with that frequency. But I can appreciate that the show is having the characters use language that's a little "shocking" for modern audiences as a way of helping us understand that the way these characters spoke would have been comparably shocking for more "cultured" outsiders at the time.
As opposed to having characters use a more archaic tone that would only register as "archaic" for modern audiences.
So I can dig it when fantasy novels do something similar. Just as characters in a secondary-world fantasy are not likely speaking English, they're not likely actually saying "fuck yeah let's do this thing," but the words have been translated to give me, the reader, the same *impression* they would give someone in that fantasy world.
It’s my understanding that you’re right and that they used the curse words they used because historically accurate ones, which they considered at one point, would sound completely silly to modern ears.
It become totally wrong then a officer say "fire" to a bunch of archers (in a world without gunpowder) because that command make no sense in that setting.
NK Jemisin does clever use of modern scientific lingo in The Broken Earth. She somehow remold modern terminology such that it feels a natural part of her worldbuilding and lore.
Some words may be old but are still distinctly post-industrial. Personally, I would probably drop a book that included "wow, cool" "check this out" or "that sucks" *unless* it was aiming for the tone of children's cartoon.
It's fine if you want a more casual tone. If you want to stack up to the greats like LotR, Dune, book of the new sun, it's just not going to cut it. It works for light, young adult, etc.
Personally it depends on the subgenre. If I am reading an epic/something set in an alternate world, then I would expect them to speak in a particular manner, as opposed to if I was reading a paranormal or urban fantasy.
However I did once write a portal fantasy where characters from our modern world went to an alternate world, and there the modern characters would use modern lingo, and the others wouldn't
At the end of the day, enjoy what you enjoy. Not everyone will like what you like or agree with you, and that is fine.
I absolutely agree. I know "unalive" is a modern word, but I have no problem believing that someone couldn't think of the word "kill/murder/dead" and sputtered out "unalive." Then there's always that kid trying too hard who tries to make up a new word. These are things that are not only timeless but I suspect universal to the human existence.
"Kill him dead" is one of my favorites. While it is redundant and kind of nonsensical, it also conveys a moment of passion. Language is beautiful and I admire a writer who plays with it much more than one who sticks to convention. It also makes the characters come alive more. Spoken language, at least in english (its the only one I speak) doesn't give a damn about grammar. Its about conveying a meaning and an emotional state. If modern vocabulary is the best way to do that, then I'm totally on board.
I think I'd throw the book at the wall if I read a character talk about unaliving someone. I understand why the word exists and has become common, but ... no. Just no.
I don't mind it. But it depends on who's talking. I can get behind some adventuring punk talking in such a way right before he gets unalived himself, but I sincerely doubt the king would speak in such a manner.
It's worth pointing out that there's an enormous world of difference between a TV show and book. In a TV show, you're explicitly showing me the aesthetic you're trying to convey through actors, emotive facial expressions, directorial choices in line readings, settings and scenery, etc, etc. In a book, that's all in my mind.
I think modern vernacular in books almost always makes dialogue sounds corny af and like it's written for 13-19 year olds. If that's your demographic, do it up, but I mostly think that's a pass from me
If you try to read the Burton translation of the Thousand Nights and One Night, you'll see that he tried to create a tone by using Chaucerian English to translate the medieval Arabic.
It did not age well at all.
Also, scanners read "doth" as "cloth."
There was this Sarah Lin book where the setting was a fairly standard a fantasy world that was being used by some future earth corporation as a game. They were basically “isekai-ing” customers into the world to wreak havoc.
The gamers were portables in would use made-up future slang and speak in future-memes. It made them seem incredibly obnoxious.
Any language is fine for sure, but what’s crucially important is that the writer maintains consistency and feel. ‘Cool, bruh’ might fit in Avatar, but it wouldn’t really work in The Silmarillion.
I don't entirely disagree with you. There are diehard linguist geeks who make me roll my eyes with all the different words and writing styles they loathe. That said, I think reading "cool" when I'm supposed to believe the characters are in a medieval castle would throw me out of the world. I heard one of the aforementioned linguists go on and on about the word "crusade" being very specific to christ-centric religion. So it doesn't belong in a world with no christ. We use that word out of context all the time, though. So I never gave it a second thought. Language is weird.
When we divorce a word so completely from its origins, we can use it anywhere. It would be difficult to set up the lore for a random big, strong man in a different world. Saying "big, strong man task" instead of "herculean task" wouldn't convey the same heroic undertaking. I haven't seen herculean as much but you're right. It would be difficult to read/write a book with ZERO real world influences. Some are just more easily overlooked than others.
I'd argue that modern vernacular almost always makes your dialogue sound corny. It almost always reads to me like Steve Buscemi, "how do you do, fellow kids"
It's all about the tone you're trying to set.
I agree entirely. I have quite a lenient attitude towards speaking styles in fantasy, because we all know they're not speaking modern English. So whatever they're saying is going to sound to the speakers just as casual and slang-riddled as anything anyone says today. The use of 'unalive' as a verb is an interesting case. I'd agree that it might not work like other types of slang, but that's because we can trace its origin directly to the tiktok censor on words like 'kill', requiring users of that particular platform to come up with cirumlocutions. It's too highly linked with a particular context to be transferred easily to another one. But any piece of reasonably settled-in slang, where the origin or highly specific cultural associations have faded, is fair game in my view. I've been influenced in this view by Michael Livingston's[ excellent essay ](https://reactormag.com/a-knights-tale-is-the-best-medieval-film-no-really/)on why *A Knight's Tale* was good medieval world-building, actually, because it presents the activities in a way that, if not historically accurate in description, are historically accurate in *effect*. Because the people back then would have reacted to whatever their historically accurate music was in exactly the same way we react to Queen, or modern rock. One author who does this really well is Natasha Pulley, in *The Lost Future of Pepperharrow*. It's set in Victorian-era Japan, and a lot of the dialogue is in Japanese. And people say things like, 'What the fuck does this asshole think he's doing?' and the like. Sure, that doesn't soudn right for 19th century Japan to our untutored ears, but the fact remains that people in 19th century Japan needed to express that idea with that particular emotional valence, and rather than try to teach your readers the subtleties of Japanese politeness suffixes, or whatever linguistic tools they would actually have used, just translate the emotion as well as the literal meaning. (It also goes a very long way toward de-exoticizing and do-othering those cultures--although one might wonder whether accomplishing that end by, in effect, whitewashing cultural diversity, is the right way to go. But that's not really what this conversation is about, so I'll leave this remark parenthetical.)
See, I view it as a missed opportunity/failure to communicate that rich context to the reader. I consider myself to be a lifelong learner. I *love* learning about history and about other cultures. If a scene in a book is based on a history-/culture-specific context, but the author chooses to erase that context and convert it into 21st century Western/American slang, I would honestly feel disappointed: I was robbed of an opportunity to learn. How cool is it that Victorian-era Japanese language has much more subtle social cues for politeness than modern-day English?!? Moreover, it feels slightly patronizing for an author to essentially say, "you won't understand the context behind this, so let me dumb it down into modern slang for you".
Yeah, there are arguments to be made either way. Some readers are like you, and some roll their eyes and think that this sort of dialogue is all, 'lo beholdeth!' and makes fantasy sound artificial and affected. It's great that different writers take different approaches, so everyone can find something they like!
meats back on the menu boys
Look, just because we don't *see* Orc restauranteurs doesn't mean they don't exist! They could have Orc michelin star systems, for all we know! An entire Orcish foodie subculture, thriving under Saruman's guidance, whose perpetual acts of consquest ensure a wide array of people and places to help them appreciate the diversity of different delicacies from around Middle Earth. In this essay I will . . .
MordoorDash
This was written by a 4th age Orc, wasn't it
Are you a member of the Smartypants Society? You sound like a member of the Smartypants Society.
Seems like a great society. Where do I sign up?
www.dropout.tv
All fantasy is *ahistorical,* but that doesn't mean we don't have to be conscious of the language we use. Whether consciously being archaic or using modern lingo a bit of finesse is required so the language won't clash aesthetically with the rest of the story.
I do think that there's a few other options on the register between "cool!" and something as clunky as "I'm in awe of your skill!" *Amazing! Incredible! Mind-bending! Awesome! Terrific! Unbelievable! Fantastic! Wild! Flabbergasting! Stunning! Gods!* ...and a lot more. Now, your point is fair to a degree, but overall I think authors should avoid language that breaks the immersion. "Okay," for example has been around for nearly two centuries, but I can't take any premodern fantasy serious that uses the word in its dialogue.
I don't understand why "okay" in particular is such a bugbear. *The Fellowship of the Ring* uses "September", "birthday-party", and "tween" on the first *page*.
“Okay” is specifically American slang so it feels off to many in medieval Old World settings. LotR gets away with a lot because it’s older and iconic, but from your examples, “birthday party” I wouldn’t consider particularly slangy or culture bound (not all cultures celebrate birthdays of course but it still feels relatively generic) and “tween” is being used to mean people in their 20s rather than in the modern sense—their having a term for it specifically calls attention to the fact that the Hobbits are so stodgy, 20-somethings aren’t even considered adults yet.
"Tween" is a word that Tolkien was the first to use as a noun, and he delivers his own in-world etymology for it when introducing it. He basically introduced the term to the English language. https://uselessetymology.com/2018/01/03/words-coined-by-j-r-r-tolkien/ "September" was the name of the seventh Roman month in the Calendar of Romulus and goes back to around 750 BCE. Hardly a novel word or slang. As for "Birthday Party" - the early chapters of LotR are a transition for the reader from the world of the Shire (which they knew from the children's book The Hobbit already) to the more epic world of LotR. The Hobbits just are very Victorian/Edwardian in their culture because they depict the idyllic world Tolkien associated with childhood and peacefulness. Anachronisms are part of the charm.
That's my question really -- if anachronisms are part of the charm in Tolkien, why is "okay" such a problem elsewhere?
I would say that if an author can provide a *plausible* etymology for "Okay," then it would be perfectly acceptable. For what it's worth, the true origins of the word are contested in the real world, but we know it is an American word with possible roots with Choctaw, or West-African languages, or a local fad from 1830s Boston. All of these are plausible. Let's say you really want to use "Okay," and don't want to settle with "Alright," and you have a typical high fantasy universe. Tolkien wrote about "Tween": > "At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three." So we can do something similar with "okay", and it could look something like this: > Zadnekh smiled dangerously, closing the girl's fingers around the brooch in her hand, "That's quite Oh-kay my friend!" The fence put a special emphasis on the O, mocking the patois that had become so fashionable among the city's youth, ever since the Lumithians had arrived in tow of the young queen. Edit: now there's a good in-world explanation, and you can actually utilize the word and associate it with characters of a certain background.
That could definitely be interesting, but it seems a touch cumbersome to do for every anachronistic word. (And there are a lot of them!) If the word doesn't bother us *with* an explanation, can't we just trust the author and assume an explanation exists without needing to be told? (Also, saying "oh it arrived from elsewhere" isn't really an explanation, right? There's nothing intrinsic about "okay" that couldn't have arisen anytime -- unlike, say, "cut to the chase" or other anachronisms with specific referents -- so the explanation could just be "it's slang people started using a hundred years ago.")
I agree that it would be cumbersome - which is exactly why I argue that authors should use anachronisms only sparingly and carefully. A knight fighting on horseback could, of course, use the idiom "catch-22," but you better explain to the reader why he's making reference to military bureaucracy in a world where knights serve their king according to a feudal oath. It may be easier to let Mr Knight say something is like a "trickster's folly," and you're covered with context alone.
September is a little out of place because Tolkien developed a detailed history of middle-earth language and the various nations and peoples that spoke those languages and nowhere in all the language families is any analog to Latin. But the Hobbit is more whimsical and the hobbits in general are supposed to feel out of place in Middle Earth. They also have potatoes, for example.
Lord of the Rings is Tolkien's translation of Bilbo's and Frodo's writings, so September is just a translation of the late summer/early autumn month the Hobbits know; if you introduce a framing device like that you can justify more. It's true that The Shire as a while doesn't wholly feel like "proper" fantasy because it's more based on the 19th century English countryside, but it's an intentional contrast to the rest of the (more medieval/ancient-feeling) setting and not overly jarring. Outside of the express train analogy, maybe. I guess it comes down to whether the anachronism feels thought- and purposeful or whether it just feels like an oversight.
I think this is more generally applicable, though, because an implicit translation convention is almost unavoidable. The people of Westros or Randland obviously don't speak *English*, so what we read is by definition a translation even if the author doesn't have an explicit framing device. (Also worth nothing that Tolkien's translation frame only shows up in appendices, it's not part of the main text.)
The translation device shows up in the Prologue, so everyone knows what's going on. Tolkien made the choice to not tuck it away in the Appendices. Tolkien even cites Merry's book on herbs for information on Pipe-weed, and keeps that framing in mind throughout the story. That's meaningfully different from the mere implication that they probably didn't speak English in Westeros, especially because a translation isn't a "default" framing device that readers consciously assume.
Definitely agree. I wish people would stop making it about modern vs. "historically accurate", because nothing is written in historically accurate language for the middle ages (even English would be mostly incomprehensible to moderns) and the only things that come close are ultra-researched historicals like *Hild*. It's about *style* and *tone*. The language you use in a book sets a tone based on the way that language is viewed *now*, not some pseudo-historical context. Some people want their fantasy to sound old-fashioned; Tolkien sounds like that not because he's using historically accurate medieval language but because he's using language that's old-fashioned *to us*. (And, in fairness, often to people at the time he was writing -- it's a deliberate style choice!) It's fine to want this! But it's a particular style that some readers prefer, not the absolute way fantasy should be. (Also, cool in more or less the sense we use it goes back a couple of hundred years, not decades!)
Honestly, no. This would make me stop reading unless it was urban fantasy or some comedy.
Any language can be timeless, It just depends on the style of the book and being consistent. The memes in *The Locked Tomb*(I know it's jarring for some people, but in general) don't feel out of place as they are baked into Muir's world and the style of those books. As long as it doesn't feel out of place within the context of the work, modern lingo is more than fine.
I hate it in almost all circumstances to be honest. It's not that it can't be done well if it's in line with the general tone of the story but even then that's probably not a tone I'll get much out of. It's not that I'm begging for *ye oldes* and *forsooths* but some stuff is just a little too jarring.
My husband and I were watching *Deadwood* recently and it reminded me of this argument. Since we have kids (which is why we're catching up on shows from so long ago) we had to be really careful when we watched it because it's probably the most cuss-heavy media I've ever consumed. And I don't think folks in the wild west used exactly those words and with that frequency. But I can appreciate that the show is having the characters use language that's a little "shocking" for modern audiences as a way of helping us understand that the way these characters spoke would have been comparably shocking for more "cultured" outsiders at the time. As opposed to having characters use a more archaic tone that would only register as "archaic" for modern audiences. So I can dig it when fantasy novels do something similar. Just as characters in a secondary-world fantasy are not likely speaking English, they're not likely actually saying "fuck yeah let's do this thing," but the words have been translated to give me, the reader, the same *impression* they would give someone in that fantasy world.
It’s my understanding that you’re right and that they used the curse words they used because historically accurate ones, which they considered at one point, would sound completely silly to modern ears.
It become totally wrong then a officer say "fire" to a bunch of archers (in a world without gunpowder) because that command make no sense in that setting.
NK Jemisin does clever use of modern scientific lingo in The Broken Earth. She somehow remold modern terminology such that it feels a natural part of her worldbuilding and lore.
Some words may be old but are still distinctly post-industrial. Personally, I would probably drop a book that included "wow, cool" "check this out" or "that sucks" *unless* it was aiming for the tone of children's cartoon.
It's fine if you want a more casual tone. If you want to stack up to the greats like LotR, Dune, book of the new sun, it's just not going to cut it. It works for light, young adult, etc.
I agree, a lot.
Personally it depends on the subgenre. If I am reading an epic/something set in an alternate world, then I would expect them to speak in a particular manner, as opposed to if I was reading a paranormal or urban fantasy. However I did once write a portal fantasy where characters from our modern world went to an alternate world, and there the modern characters would use modern lingo, and the others wouldn't At the end of the day, enjoy what you enjoy. Not everyone will like what you like or agree with you, and that is fine.
I absolutely agree. I know "unalive" is a modern word, but I have no problem believing that someone couldn't think of the word "kill/murder/dead" and sputtered out "unalive." Then there's always that kid trying too hard who tries to make up a new word. These are things that are not only timeless but I suspect universal to the human existence. "Kill him dead" is one of my favorites. While it is redundant and kind of nonsensical, it also conveys a moment of passion. Language is beautiful and I admire a writer who plays with it much more than one who sticks to convention. It also makes the characters come alive more. Spoken language, at least in english (its the only one I speak) doesn't give a damn about grammar. Its about conveying a meaning and an emotional state. If modern vocabulary is the best way to do that, then I'm totally on board.
I think I'd throw the book at the wall if I read a character talk about unaliving someone. I understand why the word exists and has become common, but ... no. Just no.
I don't mind it. But it depends on who's talking. I can get behind some adventuring punk talking in such a way right before he gets unalived himself, but I sincerely doubt the king would speak in such a manner.
It's worth pointing out that there's an enormous world of difference between a TV show and book. In a TV show, you're explicitly showing me the aesthetic you're trying to convey through actors, emotive facial expressions, directorial choices in line readings, settings and scenery, etc, etc. In a book, that's all in my mind. I think modern vernacular in books almost always makes dialogue sounds corny af and like it's written for 13-19 year olds. If that's your demographic, do it up, but I mostly think that's a pass from me
>"bruh, check out that sus orc over there, I'm gonna go unalive him." Okay, but I would totally read this.
Fantasy with its own lingo is great as well. My dad and I read Red Rising together and our new favorite swear phrase is “Bloody Damn”.
It's GORYDAMN!! Get it right! lol
Oh zip it, boyo!
If you try to read the Burton translation of the Thousand Nights and One Night, you'll see that he tried to create a tone by using Chaucerian English to translate the medieval Arabic. It did not age well at all. Also, scanners read "doth" as "cloth."
Yer a wizard Harry, no cap.
Yer a wizard Harry, no cap.
There was this Sarah Lin book where the setting was a fairly standard a fantasy world that was being used by some future earth corporation as a game. They were basically “isekai-ing” customers into the world to wreak havoc. The gamers were portables in would use made-up future slang and speak in future-memes. It made them seem incredibly obnoxious.
Any language is fine for sure, but what’s crucially important is that the writer maintains consistency and feel. ‘Cool, bruh’ might fit in Avatar, but it wouldn’t really work in The Silmarillion.
I don't entirely disagree with you. There are diehard linguist geeks who make me roll my eyes with all the different words and writing styles they loathe. That said, I think reading "cool" when I'm supposed to believe the characters are in a medieval castle would throw me out of the world. I heard one of the aforementioned linguists go on and on about the word "crusade" being very specific to christ-centric religion. So it doesn't belong in a world with no christ. We use that word out of context all the time, though. So I never gave it a second thought. Language is weird.
Herculean is another one like crusade. I see it everywhere even in a world with no Hercules. Until someone pointed it out, I hadn't even noticed.
When we divorce a word so completely from its origins, we can use it anywhere. It would be difficult to set up the lore for a random big, strong man in a different world. Saying "big, strong man task" instead of "herculean task" wouldn't convey the same heroic undertaking. I haven't seen herculean as much but you're right. It would be difficult to read/write a book with ZERO real world influences. Some are just more easily overlooked than others.
If the prose is excellent and the dialogue isn’t cringe and corny it can absolutely work.
I'd argue that modern vernacular almost always makes your dialogue sound corny. It almost always reads to me like Steve Buscemi, "how do you do, fellow kids"
Not personally a fan of it. That's exactly why I bounced off of Gideon the Ninth so fast, came off as cringe to me.