Old English

[Lafayette]

In the novel I'm writing I have one group and one character speaking old English. My time frame would be 1492.

I don't mind sounding flowery, but I want to avoid sounding stupid, bad grammar, being cute, and misspelling.

If anyone can give me any advise on how to do this properly I will appreciate it.

By the way, I like the Old King James Bible.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I'm assuming you don't actually mean Old English as it refers to before 1066. Middle English is 1066-mid 1500s. A lot of Middle English is actually still preserved in dialects particularly Scots. (Scots is a spoken language with no standardised writing and is generally written in phonetically).

Old King James Bible is Elizabethan/Shakespearen English which is Modern English and probably closer to what you want.

I'd pick a few words to litter it with and be careful not to use any very modern sounding words. Use the OED online as it often gives you the origin and first recorded usage of words. Have a look at the sentence construction and try to use that without the flowery language.

My favourite book is Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neil. Its set later but his sentence construction rather than the words places it in the past.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

be careful not to use any very modern sounding words

Even when they are old! (Apparently unfriend* is older than 17th and OMG is Edwardian).
The idea is to build a flavour.
The King James is interesting as it used language that was archaic when it was produced. Read it and Shakespeare and avoid your character use 16th C. and 17th stuff that people might mistake as modern.
Note also that they attempted a poetic style in parts of the Bible (the New Testament's Luke and Acts is maybe best source of narration and dialogue) and Shakespeare isn't regular spoken or written English of its period either as it's plays or sonnets. His plays use a mix of prose and poetry and most is in iambic pentameter, so was not how people then really talked!

EDIT
Samuel Pepys diary is on Project Gutenberg free, it's genuine 17th English.


[* Unfriend

It’s in the seventeenth century that the word ‘unfriend’ becomes a verb. The OED provides a letter from Thomas Fuller in 1659 as the earliest citation: ‘I Hope, Sir, that we are not mutually Un-friended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.’ This is clearly the same as the modern usage

The Curious Origin of the Word ‘Unfriend’
(I heard about unfriend in a R4 program about experts and how most people think they are more expert than they are. Unless your self assessed Expertise has been externally tested, you can't tell if you are deluded. Also Experts in one specialist thing are more likely to think they are expert in something unrelated simply because they are smart and educated.)

Some other old words to avoid because people think that they are modern?
16 Words That Are Much Older Than They Seem
'Friend,' as a Verb, Is 800 Years Old

]

 

[Kylara]

Take a look at some middle English poetry for the right type of words (think Chaucer, piers plowman, the gawain poet, rather than beowulf which is OE). If you get hugely stuck send me a message as I spent most of last year studying middle English and probably have a few helpful things knocking about.

Everything was very much random, lots of nordic, lots of spell how you like depending on where you were.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Chaucer is a bit unreadable for modern readers, many editions have side by side "translations". It does help a bit if you try and read it out loud and are from N.I. or Scotland.

 

[Kylara]

It's not unreadable. I've never found it more than mildly challenging at times and that's because I read a lot of poetry which messes with syntax and structure more than the prose.
I'd say that piers plowman is more difficult to read if you find ME hard . But you tend to get better the more you read. And if in doubt with meddle English read it aloud as it is spelled out. Everything was pretty much written down as it sounded.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

It's not unreadable.

You are obviously an exceptional person

you tend to get better the more you read

Absolutely!

read it aloud as it is spelled out

Yes, I suggested that Works very well for me for Robbie Burns as well as Chaucer. I'm not used to reading out loud as I'm a very fast reader normally, so I find King James and Shakespeare a little tiring and Chaucer very very tiring and I certainly can't follow Chaucer 100%.

 

[Brian G Turner]

In the novel I'm writing I have one group and one character speaking old English. My time frame would be 1492.

I don't mind sounding flowery, but I want to avoid sounding stupid, bad grammar, being cute, and misspelling.

If anyone can give me any advise on how to do this properly I will appreciate it.

By the way, I like the Old King James Bible.

It may be worth looking at something like The Book of Margery Kempe, an autobiography written around 1440. You wouldn't need to read all of it - the Amazon sample chapters should give you a good idea of the language used:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0140432515/?tag=brite-21

There's probably a version online for free somewhere like Gutenberg.

If you want to check that your individual word use is historically authentic, I use this:
Online Etymology Dictionary

 

[Ursa major]

Read [...] Shakespeare

Be careful with Shakespeare (and Edmund Spenser): a lot of the words he used were of his own invention and so would definitely be inappropriate for use in 1492 (as would mention of anything** found only in the Americas).


** - Even if the story is set in the Americas, there still wouldn't be any English words for anything uniquely American.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Chaucer is a bit unreadable for modern readers, many editions have side by side "translations". It does help a bit if you try and read it out loud and are from N.I. or Scotland.

It's also too old for 1492 which was already transitioning to Modern English. Middle English also resonates in Northern England. A lot of Yorkshire/Lancashire dialect has preserved elements of Middle English.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

This is in Doric and it maintains a lot of Middle English (just like most dialects do) something like this shows how sparing the writing needs to be if you want your readers to understand what you're writing:

 

[Lafayette]

Thank you all for your suggestions and comments.

I know the variety of English I want and that is the Old King James and maybe Shakespeare. Mr. McCarthy mentioned that the Old King James was archaic when it was produced so my question now is what time period was it taken from? And is there any literature from that period I can download or obtain from a library?

I did read a little bit of The Book of Margery Kempe, but it lacked dialog and I found no thees and thous. I also downloaded from Gutenberg a copy of Samuel Pepys diary. The old spellings were interesting, but again no thees and thous.

I did bookmark the Online Etymology Dictionary and that I think will prove to a great help.

I also discovered something else following the comments and suggestions: I don't like rap no matter what language it is in. I did find it amusing, but I don't want to spend the time listening to it. But thanks for sharing it.

 

[Kylara]

Ah thee and thought are unlikely to appear in lots as they are the now defunct personal version of you. Like in French you have tu and vu we had you and thee etc, however we ditched this informal and kept the formal. You may find it in love poetry though, much more personal.

I would advise against Shakespeare myself as too different from the main language of the day, try Webster or Marlow instead.

The Gawain poet shows good use of the heavy dependence on norse and is lovely to read (but you'll probably need a translation, look for the Tolkien one).

Chaucer is later but still ME and the easiest to get hold of and understand and shows a good deal of the older ME with the beginning of more modern. Troilus and Cressida/criseyde probably a good one to look at.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

so my question now is what time period was it taken from?

Not particularly any. I think the "thee" and "thou" was falling out of use. They wanted it to sound reverent. Also the source material is roughly from 2000BC (Oral, time of Abraham) to about 90AD, Hebrew (OT except Daniel), Aramaic (Daniel) and a form of Greek popular outside Greece in 1st C. (all the NT).

Read Gospel of Luke and Acts. It's most like a novel and really a two part story by one person.They are written in a good style by an educated Greek convert to Judaism and have a mix of dialogue and narration.

The Pauline writings have almost no narration and less dialogue, so though Paul is very educated and a good logical writer, it's all more advice and logical exposition of a rabbinical kind, so not useful for novels.

The Gospel of John is a bit mystical. Mark and Matthew a bit basic. Revelation is seriously symbolic "prophesy", similar to Daniel (most of which was in Aramaic) and Ezekiel.

Old Testament Hebrew Narrative & Dialogue

• Genesis from when Abraham enters the story.
• Exodus
• Judges
• 1st & 2nd Kings
• Esther is good story style with some dialogue
  
• Judith, Tobit and Maccabees are story like (non-canonical, but there IS King James version of all the "apocrypha").

The New Testament is in three styles of Greek, none of which is like Classical Greek. Luke & Paul maybe have the best Greek.

No-one ever spoke as in Shakespeare.

Download individual books. Not complete (too unmanageable). Oddly the only PRINTED version of KJ bible out of copyright is the layout in Matthew Henry's Commentary (which has the entire KJB).
Books: King James Bible (sorted by popularity)

The text itself is long out of copyright. It's important to understand that it's a mix of translation and paraphrase. Sometimes they may have used Septugint (an early Jewish translation to Greek of OT) or Vulgate (an early Christian Latin translation, much later than the Septugint) where the Hebrew was "difficult".
Most of the names are changed in King James version, and differently in NT and OT!.
There is no James, that was a sop to the King.
James and Jacob are both really Yakob (Ya'akov) Misconceptions & Clarifications: James Was Not a Disciple
Joshua and Jesus are both the same name, Yeshua
Miriam and Mary are both the same name.
John is Yohanan
Anna = Hannah

 

[pambaddeley]

You might be better off tracking down books of manners which were produced to teach children how to behave correctly, and recipe books of the period.

If you look at this link for a more modern translation of some books of manners by a writer who lived 1825-1910, you can see the names of several in the review - and the clickable book at the top has his translation of one of them - The babees' book: medieval manners for the young: done into modern English from Dr. Furnivall's text : Furnivall, Frederick James, 1825-1910 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

You can probably track the originals down online to see how they were actually written and compare to his, but his will give the flavour of the phrasing used.

Recipe books would also be a good source. This site has some of them - Medieval Cookery - Online Cookbooks
Be prepared that the spelling is all adhoc at that period and it takes a bit of puzzling over some of it. I think there are also more readable translations knocking about, possibly some in print.

This is an example from one, mid 1550s or so, a bit more readable than the earlier ones I think
- "Fyrste take awaye all the legges and the
heades, and then take all the fysh out of
the shelle, and make the shell as cleane as
ye canne, and putte the meate into a dysche,
and butter it uppon a chafyng dysche of coles
and putte therto synamon and suger and a
lytle vyneger, and when ye haue chafed it
and seasoned it, then putte the meate in the
shelle agayne and bruse the heades, and set
them upon the dysche syde and serue it"

You could also try googling "Commonplace book" as there are examples of the books women kept with notes of recipes, medicines and lots of other everyday things.

 

[Jennifer L. Carson]

I have a related question. I'm trying to uses some affectations of early modern English. I have a pamphlet and have read it and applied it as best I could. But English being as complicated as it is, there are instances that are not covered by the pamphlet. I've wanted to find someone who has an understanding of such things and ask them to read the one scene for consistency of use. I tried to contact the author of the pamphlet but had no luck. Anyone here have any ideas?

 

[The Judge]

Have you tried a local university English and/or history department? No idea whether they read EModE, but it might be worth an email or two to see if anyone can help.

Writers-wise, if it's a c1600 pamphlet, then one possibility is Anne Lyle who writes fantasy novels based on Elizabethan England, and who has done lots of research on the period I believe, so she might be able to spot any inconsistencies/anachronisms.

Otherwise, it might be worth putting the scene up on Writing Group. I don't know that any of us are experts, but between us we might be able to help.

 

[Jennifer L. Carson]

Thank you! All excellent ideas. I most certainly will pursue them.

 

[Kylara]

I studied it at uni and happy to put you in contact with one of our lecturers who is an old/middle English specialist if you PM me.

 

[Jennifer L. Carson]

Ooooo! So cool! I'll get the scene together then and PM you. Thank you so much.