Kevlar
Troubadour
mirrorrorrim said:I, for one, am one of those who is a lot more thrown off by modern speech than by "older"-sounding dialogue. As a good example, I just finished Game of Thrones for the first time (I know, I'm about ten years too late), and while I loved it, I definitely had to get used to the way people talked. In particular, it was a little jarring to hear all the modern profanities.
I've read in a few places that our modern profanities were commonplace back in the day. Men didn't go pee or urinate. They took a piss.
Anyway, I came back to agree with much of what has already been stated. The use of purely modern dialogue would be absurd in fantasy works, but period language would render the work unreadable. Find an Old English dictionary online. Not a Middle English one. True Old English. It is like reading an entirely different language. English has, over the centuries, been progressively Latinized. A good example, really, is to try reading Beowulf in its unaltered prose. For added challenge read it in its unaltered text.
If you've ever even taken a look at Beowulf, or even Chaucer, you can see how difficult it would be for the fantasy reader to understand period dialogue.
This does not, however, mean we should just throw in the towel and make our characters talk just as we do. The work seems simply shallow and unresearched if the characters are spitting out modern colloquialisms. Some good old flowery language can be a great asset when strategically placed.
Reality can appear unrealistic, so as writers we must blend invention and fact into what seems correct.