# Evolution of language?



## Ireth (Mar 29, 2012)

I'm working on a story which involves two characters with chronological, geological and linguistic barriers between them that they have to overcome. The story is set in Scotland in the early 1360's. The protagonist, a newly-turned vampire named Ã“lan, was born in 1337 and turned in 1360; he travels from his hometown of Edinburgh to Eilean Donan castle early in the novel. When he reaches the castle he meets Aileen, the ghost of a girl who had been murdered there almost 150 years before. Aileen was born and raised in Eilean Donan in 1200, and died there in 1215.

My question here is, what languages could Ã“lan and Aileen be expected to speak while growing up, and how far apart would their native tongues be? How easily could the two communicate (barring the fact that Aileen is quite insane from a century and a half of isolation on top of being traumatized by her murder by a vampire, which is another issue in and of itself)?


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## Ravana (Mar 29, 2012)

The language would not have changed all that much in 150 years; as long as they both spoke the same language in the first place, they'd have minimal trouble understanding one another. 

As for whether or not they speak the same language, that's up to you. Given the times you cite, he would probably have been raised speaking the Scots dialect of Middle English; she would more likely have been raised speaking Scots Gaelic–and if neither had acquired any of the other language, they likely wouldn't understand a word the other one said. On the other hand, she was raised in a noble environment (whether she was one herself or not), so it's quite possible she learned additional languages to at least some extent–with English, Irish and a dialect of Norse being more or less equally probable, quite possibly a smattering of all of these–whereas he was raised in a country that still clung proudly to its ancient distinction, so he may well have learned a fair amount of Gaelic. 

And if all else fails, they could always try speaking Latin at one another.


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## Ireth (Mar 29, 2012)

Awesome.  This will be fun to figure out and play with. Thanks for the help!


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## Ravana (Mar 29, 2012)

No problem. Always nice to talk about something in my _actual_ specialty–as opposed to the miscellany of other more-or-less useful information I collect when I'm not collecting dust.


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## Xanados (Mar 29, 2012)

Edinburgh is a city, not a "hometown". Please, I go there often. It's Scotland's capital. If you're going to be writing historical fiction, you should know that.


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## Ireth (Mar 29, 2012)

My mistake. "Home city", then.


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## Ghost (Mar 30, 2012)

It isn't a mistake if you mean that Ã“lan was originally from Edinburgh. A hometown can be the biggest city in the world or village in the middle of nowhere. It's where your roots and connections are.


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## Ravana (Mar 30, 2012)

Well, in the time period in question, Edinburgh's population would have been in the vicinity of 10,000–though that would have been regarded as a "city" by the standards of the day. On the other hand, it had only been a center of government since the mid-1300s, and didn't officially become the capital until 1437. (Prior to which, Scotland didn't _have_ a capital in the sense used by other nations; Scone, Sterling and Dunfermline had filled the role of primary royal residence, and thus _de facto_ capital, at various times.) So calling it that would be news to Aileen, at least… possibly to Ã“lan (and a great many other Scots) as well: had they been asked, they would have probably all said Scone.

Still… I live in a city of over a million (which is also a state capital), and refer to it as my "home town." I'd never even consider calling it a "home city" in the context where "home town" normally appears. Just doesn't sound right to me.


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## Sheilawisz (Mar 30, 2012)

I agree with Ouroboros and Ravana, Hometown means where your roots, connections and life are, regardless of the size of the village, town or city in question... By the way Ireth, your story sounds wonderful!! I have a story that starts in 14th Century England but I never cared about the proper languages =P

Olan and Aileen should talk to each other in Middle English, I love this idea of a vampire meeting a ghost...


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## Drakhov (Mar 30, 2012)

It's possible that even if they don't speak each others dialect of Scots Gaelic / Scots English they might share a common language in the form of either Latin or French, especially if they are both of noble birth


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## Sheilawisz (Mar 30, 2012)

@Drakhov: That's right, Edward III and his family in the 14th Century were speakers of French, like other Plantagenet monarchs before him.


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## Ireth (Mar 30, 2012)

Drakhov said:


> It's possible that even if they don't speak each others dialect of Scots Gaelic / Scots English they might share a common language in the form of either Latin or French, especially if they are both of noble birth



I don't think so. Aileen always struck me as more the servant-girl type than anything, and while Olan and his family are part of the Stewart clan, their connection with the monarch at the time (David II, son of Robert the Bruce, who lived in Edinburgh castle  if I'm not mistaken) might not necessarily be incredibly close -- they might just be distant cousins or something on Olan's father's side. Anyone with a better grasp of Scottish history than me, please feel free to fill me in on how that might work.


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## Ravana (Mar 31, 2012)

The Scots had fairly extensive contact with the French from 1295 onward (the "Auld Alliance," though I doubt it was called that initially)–what with their mutual enemy and all. Prior to that, I don't think they had any more than any other European court, though (and Aileen, raised in the west, would have been far less likely to encounter French in any event). Nor was French an "international language" at that time: Latin still filled that function.

If anything, the southern Scots at least were _more_ likely to speak Middle English than many English themselves were, since the regions along the border were still predominantly Anglo-Saxon: the king who reigned for nearly all of Aileen's life, for instance, was originally the Earl of Northumbria. Nobles on both sides of the border would normally have known Norman French… the difference being that the ones in England were less likely to speak anything other than that. The common folk would have spoken regional dialects of Middle English (which was never really a single language anyway), no matter where they were; those in the northern parts of England were just as likely to speak Norse as they were Norman, if they had a second language. Considering that there was a Norse kingdom, later earldom, in the Hebrides up to the end of the 14th century, it would not have been uncommon to find Scots speaking this as well.


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## SeverinR (Apr 17, 2012)

English has changed since I was little, the slang words, the sayings, how we greet each other.

I am not positive, but I bet this isn't different in the past.
It would probably take an indepth study to find the minor differences in 150 yrs.

Look at how Americans spoke in 1860 compared to now.


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## Penpilot (Apr 17, 2012)

From the little I know, which is very little, a language such as English has changed significantly enough in 150 yrs to the point where there there would be difficulties in communication. From personal experience trying to read text from the 18th and 19th centuries can be very challenging. Flipping things around, imagine saying, "Me and buddy hopped into my BMW and jetted down to the local Micky-Ds for a soda and latte." to a 19th century person. Communication wouldn't be impossible but it would/could be challenging.

Even in modern days differences between UK English and US English can cause difficulties. A funny example is when the movie The Last Air Bender was released in the UK. For those who don't know, Bender is UK slang word for homosexual which made for lines that had double meanings like this one, "I could tell at once that you were a bender, and that you would realise your destiny."

But like I said, I don't know much, so I would suggest doing a bit of research on it.


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## Shockley (Apr 17, 2012)

In all honesty, the reason we have trouble understanding texts from the 18th and 19th century is because the only texts that we read regularly were those penned by the exceptionally literate or speeches made by the supremely eloquent. Think about it like this - what is it like when someone of low word comprehension skills reasons someone like Neal Stephenson? He uses our slang, our modern language, but can be very difficult to crack.

 If you were to go back and divide the groups between the groups with the lowest and highest literacy rates, communication would be fairly simple.

 Addition: Also, slang has only evolved so much. A lot of the terms that we assume are modern inventions - especially swear words and the like - have ancient origins. If you read Chaucer, you'll quickly notice that he uses a peculiarly modern term (let's say it rhymes with 'swat') when referring to certain orifices. The writers of the time were usually members of the upper class and wrote for the upper class - thus they used few instances of slang in their writing. But when they use lower class characters (such as Chaucer) that Slang can come out.


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## Penpilot (Apr 17, 2012)

Good points Shockley.

I found this online resource containing newspapers dating back as far the 18th century. Historical Newspapers Online

You can get an idea of how much language can change over a time period by reading a few articles from a 100+ years back.


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## Ravana (Apr 18, 2012)

A hundred years ago, newspapers were still being written by the highly literate, and in most cases for more literate readers. They didn't assume that everyone was an idiot like most papers seem to do today. Take this quote (which I grabbed randomly from that site you mention–thanks, by the way: pretty neat), from the _Birmingham Iron Age_, Feb. 12, 1874:



> "In a state of civilization, agriculture and manufactures are strangely dependent on each other. Firmly and closely interwoven, they are the warp and woof of the great industrial fabric.…"



Apart from the "s" at the end of "manufactures," that's no different from what we would see today. Except that we _don't_ see it today–not in newspapers. Textbooks, yes–and when we do, we have no problem reading it–newspapers, not so much. What's changed isn't the language; it's the assumptions being made about the audience. 

And in case anyone was wondering, that isn't Birmingham, _England_; it's Birmingham, _Alabama_.

Or this:



> "From the press and the pulpit we have suffered much by being incorrectly represented. Men, whom we equally love and admire have not hesitated to represent us disadvantageously, without becoming acquainted with the true state of things, nor discerning between virtue and vice among us. The virtuous part of our people feel themselves sorely aggrieved under the existing state of things–they are not appreciated."



If that sounds like something Martin Luther King Jr. might have written, that isn't too surprising: first, because he used a highly literary style in his writings, and second because that's from the introductory issue of _Freedom's Journal_–the first paper in the U.S. owned and operated by African-Americans. Only the spelling of the word "colour" (and that stray comma after "Men," which might have been an error) contrasts with how the same thing would be written today… in spite of the fact that this was printed in New York on March 16, 1827, one hundred and eighty-five years ago. 

No, what's changed is the style of writing, not the language. If anything, the style of writing has changed less than the spoken language, inasmuch as writing is inherently conservative. Assessing language change based solely on written material is a difficult matter, even though it's the only option we have for linguistic data predating sound recordings. Regional variations in pronunciation, themselves diminishing with unprecedented rapidity owing to broadcast technology, don't get reflected in writing… not unless the author makes a deliberate (and often highly artificial) attempt at doing so. A small handful of words may have only regional currency, but this leave untouched more than 99% of the shared vocabulary. Syntax almost never varies between dialects–in fact, where there are syntactic differences, this is often taken as a reason to consider something a different language, not a dialect.

There are two major reasons why the English of Chaucer and the English of Hemingway appear so different. (Well, three: Chaucer wrote better.  ) First of all, Chaucer was writing in an environment of language contact–Anglo-Saxon and Norman French were still coming to an uneasy accommodation with one another. (Language contact situations are also where syntactic variations are most likely to be found, as parts of each language get borrowed and overlaid.) Second, the written _form_ of the language had itself not yet been established, and wouldn't be firmed up for another couple of centuries; he and his contemporaries were very much making things up as they went. In spite of which, much of Chaucer can be read by any modern English reader willing to put a bit of effort and imagination into the attempt. By the time Milton was writing in the mid-1600s, written English so closely resembled its modern form that anyone today who says they have trouble understanding him is really just saying they don't feel like reading him.

Slang changes regularly, but it too constitutes a vanishingly small percentage of the vocabulary–even if it's a disproportionately heavily-used percentage of the vocabulary. Though that too depends on audience. Don't believe me? Try dissin' yo' grandma, homey: she gonna get all up in yo' face, smack you upside yo' head. Word. The fact is, you don't speak to everyone the same way; you don't even use the _same_ slang with everyone. No one does. Slang (and to a lesser extent its cousins, jargon and technobabble) has as one of its main functions the identification of group membership: that is, you use it because that's the way the people in that particular group speak to one another. If you don't, you quickly get marked as an outsider, and will remain such as long as you fail to or refuse to learn and employ it. Which is why slang changes regularly: teenagers can't self-identify as being in a different group than their parents if they're using the same non-standard linguistic features. But you can easily pick up new non-standard usages, and in the meantime you have no difficulty understanding the rest of the language being used.


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## SeverinR (Apr 18, 2012)

Ravana said:


> A hundred years ago, newspapers were still being written by the highly literate, and in most cases for more literate readers. They didn't assume that everyone was an idiot like most papers seem to do today. Take this quote (which I grabbed randomly from that site you mention–thanks, by the way: pretty neat), from the _Birmingham Iron Age_, Feb. 12, 1874:
> 
> Slang changes regularly, but it too constitutes a vanishingly small percentage of the vocabulary–even if it's a disproportionately heavily-used percentage of the vocabulary. Though that too depends on audience. Don't believe me? Try dissin' yo' grandma, homey: she gonna get all up in yo' face, smack you upside yo' head. Word. The fact is, you don't speak to everyone the same way; you don't even use the _same_ slang with everyone. No one does. Slang (and to a lesser extent its cousins, jargon and technobabble) has as one of its main functions the identification of group membership: that is, you use it because that's the way the people in that particular group speak to one another. If you don't, you quickly get marked as an outsider, and will remain such as long as you fail to or refuse to learn and employ it. Which is why slang changes regularly: teenagers can't self-identify as being in a different group than their parents if they're using the same non-standard linguistic features. But you can easily pick up new non-standard usages, and in the meantime you have no difficulty understanding the rest of the language being used.



I believe the papers write for attention span rather the literacy. 

Is it possible to figure out slang 150 yrs ago? Maybe a diary? Because news print would be proper, not slang.

You are right, most people think they can write dialog for a southerner, Irishman, Englishman, maybe even a generic oriental "tourist".  I bet to the individual it sounds like John Wayne imitators. 

I have tried to write a street drawl or a seaman, not even trying to imitate any race, just poorly educated with possibly a speech impediment. I worked at it to make it sound believable. 

Suggestion: if you want to try to portray a drawl, listen to the people that speak it. Don't mimic a tv show or movie, just like on everything else, their research is questionable.


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## Ireth (Apr 18, 2012)

I don't typically try to portray anyone's accents in my writing; if someone has an accent other than the main characters', I tend to just point it out in the narration.


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## Ravana (Apr 20, 2012)

Likewise. At least unless it's for a language I invented; then I might. (The reader isn't going to know what the accent is supposed to sound like anyway… and describing one can be harder than representing it, sometimes.) 

Getting at past slang can be tricky, and I suspect can never be more than an approximation. Even where someone does bother recording some of the terms, odds are a lot is going to be left out. Diaries… sometimes–though most people who kept them would be toward the higher end of the social and educational strata. Also, there isn't the same motivation for writing slang as for using it in speech: first of all, there isn't anyone to impress with it, and second, there's always the chance (heh) someone else will read your diary… and you wouldn't want them to be _un_impressed by your writing, neh? Probably your best bet would be to look for authors who wanted to convey differing social "types" and hope he actually bothered to figure out how such people spoke, rather than relying on uninformed impressions thereof. Dickens and Twain both did this; so did Chaucer, as mentioned; and while her characters never reached "street" levels as far as I know, Jane Austen sometimes has characters who reflect the differences between the established upper crust and people who were trying to make it into that select group from the middle classes.


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