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If your antagonist is living in the present time (but is 1000 years old), then is there any reason to believe that his speech hasn't evolved? Think about what happens to people when they move to a...
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#3: Attribution notice added
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System
·
2019-12-08T03:04:28Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8864 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
If your antagonist is living in the present time (but is 1000 years old), then is there any reason to believe that his speech hasn't evolved? Think about what happens to people when they move to a new place with language patterns different from the ones they grew up with; don't they tend to adapt? That said, people adapt slowly, and a 1000-year-old character probably has a lot of built-up habit/precedent. So perhaps he speaks a _slightly_ different English than other characters, one infused with archaic words and odd grammatical structures. Don't go as far as Yoda, but you can make him linguistically _different_ without having to write in a foreign language (which your readers probably won't understand). As for the fact that he didn't speak English all that time, translation of dialogue into the reader's language is pretty common. Tolkein's elves speak Elvish but you can understand most of their dialogue -- but you still know they're not human.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2013-09-12T01:08:14Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 8