Writing around anachronisms?

[Ireth]

I have a couple of issues with anachronisms in my medieval vampire story. The first and biggest of these is avoiding use of the word "vampire" (since it wasn't invented until the 1600's or 1700's, IIRC) and finding a good substitute. I've been trying to find a good Scottish Gaelic translation of the phrase "blood-drinker", but haven't had much luck yet. Other ideas would be good for a name the vampires "blood-drinkers" could use to refer to themselves as a people. I'm sure humans would have come up with names for them, like "sanguivores", but since the whole race/species/what have you is rooted in Celtic folklore as a direct creation of the Crone Goddess, I doubt the vampires "blood-drinkers" themselves would care to use a Christian-church-sounding language like Latin.

My second issue (and a much smaller one) is in greetings. The modern greeting "hello" wasn't invented until the first telephone was, and it seems rather out of place in a medieval story. Using "Greetings" all the time could get boring. Would something like "Hail" be better?

 

[Queshire]

Hello was used before the telephone, I'm sure, though I imagine it was popularized through the use of the telephone.

Vampire type myths have been around forever, even before the word vampire was used, I suggest taking a look at this page and simply picking one; List of vampires in folklore and mythology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[BeigePalladin]

hmmm, vampires, well you said your thing was gaelic in your other post, and If I remeber correctly there is a scottish vampires mythos (or someothing so close it would be very easy to translate it) that predates the word itself.

found it!

as to the greetings, well, will you be writing entierly in period english for the speech, or are you just avoiding a few modern terms? if the latter, cutting out "Hello" (though hUllo has existed as a greeting in england for generations, which is a 1 letter shift) might make your work fall prey to the Cocconut effect; a prominant feature of something else that will stand out and grate more that a possibly closer to real-life example, and as a note, people will be much more offput by that than an anachronism

if you are writing entierly in (forgive the expression) Ye Olde English, then I'd suggest reading a little shakesphere (because it's free) and see what greetings he uses.

hope this helps

 

[Ireth]

*browses Queshire's list* I'm afraid most of these are irrelevant, except possibly the Norse one. I'm sure any invading Vikings would have a name for the "blood-drinkers" that comes from their own myths.

As for the few Scottish examples I found: Leannan Sidhe/Liannan Sith and Baobhan Sith are Fae, and thus are distinct from the Crone-created "blood-drinkers"; this is addressed in the story itself. Both of the aforementioned Fae types are exclusively female, and the majority of my "blood-drinkers" are male, which further proves that they are entirely different creatures. I'll look up the Glastig somewhere else and see if that's more helpful.

 

[Ireth]

hmmm, vampires, well you said your thing was gaelic in your other post, and If I remeber correctly there is a scottish vampires mythos (or someothing so close it would be very easy to translate it) that predates the word itself.

found it!

as to the greetings, well, will you be writing entierly in period english for the speech, or are you just avoiding a few modern terms? if the latter, cutting out "Hello" (though hUllo has existed as a greeting in england for generations, which is a 1 letter shift) might make your work fall prey to the Cocconut effect; a prominant feature of something else that will stand out and grate more that a possibly closer to real-life example, and as a note, people will be much more offput by that than an anachronism

if you are writing entierly in (forgive the expression) Ye Olde English, then I'd suggest reading a little shakesphere (because it's free) and see what greetings he uses.

hope this helps

Concerning the Baobhan Sith, see my previous post.

As for the language, I'll be using modern English for the main characters (no matter if they're fourteen years old or 400), with Ye Olde English being reserved for the brief appearance of the Crone Goddess, to set her apart from the rest. "Hullo" might be a nice alternative to "hello".

 

[Queshire]

*shrug* you're going to have to settle for something one way or another

 

[BeigePalladin]

As for the language, I'll be using modern English for the main characters (no matter if they're fourteen years old or 400), with Ye Olde English being reserved for the brief appearance of the Crone Goddess, to set her apart from the rest. "Hullo" might be a nice alternative to "hello".

ouch. So they'll be using the format of modern english, but not the most common word? that's... thats really, really, really going to look out of place. if your speaking modern english, use the whole language - 1/2 measures produce much worse results than going the whole way.

 

[Ireth]

Well, when I say "modern", I mean that they're not going to be speaking stuff that would be more at home in a Shakespeare play or a King James bible, but they're not going to be all "totally radical" either. Just your basic standard English. It's not like they're going to be spouting phrases like "Wow, dude, that's awesome!" or anything ridiculous.

 

[Ivan]

ouch. So they'll be using the format of modern english, but not the most common word? that's... thats really, really, really going to look out of place. if your speaking modern english, use the whole language - 1/2 measures produce much worse results than going the whole way.

I completely disagree. Using a few obsolete but comprehensible words here and there is an effective device to give the work an antiquated feel, assuming that they are not in the same sentence as "dude."

If you use a Gaelic term or translation (for vampire), you could easily make it clear what you're talking about when you use that term. That being said, the most important thing is that you communicate the correct sentiment to your audience.

 

[Ireth]

I completely disagree. Using a few obsolete but comprehensible words here and there is an effective device to give the work an antiquated feel, assuming that they are not in the same sentence as "dude."

If you use a Gaelic term or translation (for vampire), you could easily make it clear what you're talking about when you use that term. That being said, the most important thing is that you communicate the correct sentiment to your audience.

I agree. I think for the most part my vampires (link leads to their info post in Brainstorming and Planning) are at least recognizable as such, even though my mythology is hopefully fairly different than what's been done. (They don't sparkle, for one thing.)

Also -- verily, dude, your comment about language amuseth me greatly. XD

 

[BeigePalladin]

I completely disagree. Using a few obsolete but comprehensible words here and there is an effective device to give the work an antiquated feel, assuming that they are not in the same sentence as "dude."

Never said use slang, nor did I say "don't use words other than hello".

What I'm saying is don't take a language then decide not to use major parts of that language to 'fit' a time-period that language dosen't come from. If they're using modern english, then hello cannot look out of place as it is the standard greeting - and one of the most often used - of the langauge. Intentionally missing that out is an anachronism for the language.

I'd still say use expressions and phrases from the time, but intentionallly leaving out hello and having to scramble for a replacement word is a pointless excercise, the same as leaving out and of the other 50% of the language developed since mediveal times would be. especially since none of those other words are nearly as well-used within the language.

and don't ever use dude. ever.

 

[Jabrosky]

Well, when I say "modern", I mean that they're not going to be speaking stuff that would be more at home in a Shakespeare play or a King James bible, but they're not going to be all "totally radical" either. Just your basic standard English. It's not like they're going to be spouting phrases like "Wow, dude, that's awesome!" or anything ridiculous.

Sounds like a good approach to me.

Think of it this way: these characters wouldn't realistically speak English in the first place, so while you can throw around a few ethnic terms here and there to create atmosphere, the dialogue and prose should still be comprehensible to modern readers.

 

[Ireth]

Sounds like a good approach to me.

Think of it this way: these characters wouldn't realistically speak English in the first place, so while you can throw around a few ethnic terms here and there to create atmosphere, the dialogue and prose should still be comprehensible to modern readers.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Saigonnus]

"Feeders" could work too as a substitute for "Vampire" since they feed off of people.