Really enjoying this, Marian! Thanks so much for sharing it here. I like the variations and really suggests a lot about the world in which this version resides.
I hope you don't mind me chiming in, but how do you make your word choices? I seem to spend a lot of time picking out words with the 'wrong' anachronistic etymology, when the story is based in a specific time and place. Do you choose for poetic reasons, based on the sound of the word, as in alliteration, rather than its origin?
The poetic reasons mostly outweigh anything else. I wouldn't (consciously) use a blatantly 'modern' word, but I'm looking for rhythm and cadence, and alliteration, primarily.
That's what I thought. A poem is different to prose anyway. I had an excellent beta reader for several of my books and she would flag up words with Latin or Greek roots. Mostly I was able to find substitutes with Old English or Norse origins but it surprised me how much it altered the style of the text, and brought it close to the sound of Yorkshire dialect which fitted perfectly.
I admire your dedication! I've always said one of the reasons I write about a near-parallel world is that I don't have the discipline to write true historical fiction. My characters aren't speaking any known language(s) although there are similarities and even overlap, but what I'm doing is 'translating' those languages into English. For example, Druisius (of Empress & Soldier) is often described by other characters as 'pragmatic'. The word is anachronistic, but, I work on the basis that there is a word that means that in whatever language is really being spoken, and it's the clearest translation of that word - the one that will make sense to the majority of readers.
Pragmatic wouldn’t shock me. The moment a word has roots in the language in use, it passes for me. Nobody notices anyway. I do it because I like it really. If people don’t notice American idiom in Early Medieval-style stories, they’re not going to notice words from the Seventeenth Century creeping in.
I can get more incensed about inaccuracies in flora and fauna. Potatoes in 10th C Scotland. Vultures in the same (that is a misunderstanding of the use of sea-vulture in Norse sagas - it refers to the white tailed sea eagle but has been translated to vulture, for some reason.) Pheasants in pre-Roman England. Tulips in Tudor England.
Really enjoying this, Marian! Thanks so much for sharing it here. I like the variations and really suggests a lot about the world in which this version resides.
Thanks, James. You gave me the impetus to go back to this! I’m enjoying writing it, too.
I hope you don't mind me chiming in, but how do you make your word choices? I seem to spend a lot of time picking out words with the 'wrong' anachronistic etymology, when the story is based in a specific time and place. Do you choose for poetic reasons, based on the sound of the word, as in alliteration, rather than its origin?
The poetic reasons mostly outweigh anything else. I wouldn't (consciously) use a blatantly 'modern' word, but I'm looking for rhythm and cadence, and alliteration, primarily.
And I had to laugh - Heaney has used 'gumption' in his translation - I just got to that part.
Gumption sounds as though it ought to have Old English roots. Take away the suffix...
It might - Middle English from Norse - but that is only a possibility.
That's what I thought. A poem is different to prose anyway. I had an excellent beta reader for several of my books and she would flag up words with Latin or Greek roots. Mostly I was able to find substitutes with Old English or Norse origins but it surprised me how much it altered the style of the text, and brought it close to the sound of Yorkshire dialect which fitted perfectly.
I admire your dedication! I've always said one of the reasons I write about a near-parallel world is that I don't have the discipline to write true historical fiction. My characters aren't speaking any known language(s) although there are similarities and even overlap, but what I'm doing is 'translating' those languages into English. For example, Druisius (of Empress & Soldier) is often described by other characters as 'pragmatic'. The word is anachronistic, but, I work on the basis that there is a word that means that in whatever language is really being spoken, and it's the clearest translation of that word - the one that will make sense to the majority of readers.
Pragmatic wouldn’t shock me. The moment a word has roots in the language in use, it passes for me. Nobody notices anyway. I do it because I like it really. If people don’t notice American idiom in Early Medieval-style stories, they’re not going to notice words from the Seventeenth Century creeping in.
I can get more incensed about inaccuracies in flora and fauna. Potatoes in 10th C Scotland. Vultures in the same (that is a misunderstanding of the use of sea-vulture in Norse sagas - it refers to the white tailed sea eagle but has been translated to vulture, for some reason.) Pheasants in pre-Roman England. Tulips in Tudor England.
Rabbits, cats, donkeys, peasants on riding horses, taverns, bakeries, butcher’s shops in ‘Viking’, villages writing paper, candles. It’s Disney, not history.