Too cool for subject

posted by [identity profile] snycock.livejournal.com at 03:52am on 17/02/2007
I absolutely agree that it would be a bad decision to try and write this in "ancient Latin" or whatever would be authentic for the time, because, as you say, 1) we really have no idea how people talked back then, and 2) it would sound stilted and, for me personally, make it difficult for me to get caught up in the story.

However, I can think of fic - Mab's "Cards on the Table" springs to mind - where it does seem important that the language be closer to authentic for that time period and not so modern. In that story, I think modern language would have thrown me. Maybe because I've seen movies and read books set in that time period, and I have a reasonable expectation of what people should sound like? In most of the movies I've seen set in ancient Greece/Rome, the characters seem to be speaking with a slightly Anglicized universal accent, like news reporters. So maybe that's why modern language doesn't seem that jarring to me in "Alpha and Omega" but might be in another historical AU...
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Too cool for subject

posted by [identity profile] gillyp.livejournal.com at 11:06am on 20/02/2007
"Maybe because I've seen movies and read books set in that time period, and I have a reasonable expectation of what people should sound like? In most of the movies I've seen set in ancient Greece/Rome, the characters seem to be speaking with a slightly Anglicized universal accent, like news reporters. So maybe that's why modern language doesn't seem that jarring to me in "Alpha and Omega" but might be in another historical AU..."

But isn’t that the very ‘perceived notion’ about the way people spoke that is so false? I think there’s a convention in TV and film, that ancient peoples have to speak in a slightly formalized way (possibly based on a nod to Shakespeare?), that can’t possibly be authentic, but does, I think, influence many people’s expectations of how 2 characters in an historical setting, should speak.
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