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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 unimpressed 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.
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 unimpressed 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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