Archaic language in a historical novel?
At the time period of the story, certain names are different from the modern day language.
An example of the "Japan" word in Portuguese:
- Portuguese 2016: Japão
- Portuguese 1506: Iapam
The questions:
How the characters should introduce objects and names like this above?
If I put today's Portuguese term, will it sound unrealistic? Or will the archaic term be too most complicated for the reader?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/24436. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
I would make a distinction between linguistic drift and anachronistic references. You cannot write a story about the middle ages in Middle English because no one speaks Middle English anymore. That people use different vocabulary to talk about the same things in the 14th century and the 21st century is linguistic drift. When a 14th century character pulls out a cell phone or discusses supply-side economics, that is an anachronism.
Use the modern term when the change is due to linguistic drift. Avoid anachronisms.
Or, at least, avoid the anachronisms that will irk the reader. This is the tricky part because virtually all historical novels have anachronisms because most readers want costume drama rather than actual history, so they tend to want modern people with modern attitudes, not actual historical attitudes and ideas.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads