do you thee and thou and whence?

[Lord Rasputin]

I use "whence" in my normal speech. I'm a little stunned to find that folks think of it in the same way they think of "thou."

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

I could not imagine doing that without sounding like the cast of a bad junior high school production of Shakespeare or the people who work at the front desk of the Excalibur hotel in Vegas (ie. Would thou likest to have thine luggage carrier accompany thou to thy room...or shall thy wishest to indulge in some ale first at ye olde sports bar in thy casino over yonder.)

In fact I'm giggling slightly at the idea of some of the guys in my group trying to talk like that.

Yeah. It wouldn't work.

Personally, I think we talk TOO much like normal people sometimes. I don't think that people in a fantasy world would ever describe peculiar situations as being "weird-ass" but who am I to judge, right?

 

[Angcuru]

I use "whence" in my normal speech. I'm a little stunned to find that folks think of it in the same way they think of "thou."

"From whence they came..."

Sounds normal to me. Forsooth, however, is right out.

Originally posted by Djeta Thernadier
I don't think that people in a fantasy world would ever describe peculiar situations as being "weird-ass" but who am I to judge, right?

Or saying "What the blood clot, yo!" when the troll doesn't die.

 

[LazarusLong42]

Like Rasputin, I use "whence" and "whither" all the time in normal speech. However, I cringe whenever I hear someone say "From whence," given that "whence" means "from where."

(For those interested, German uses the same words in everyday conversation. English "whence" and German "woher" mean the same, and "whither" and "wohin" mean the same.)

 

[KenM]

Yo, whassup Homies? When me and my posse sit to do some RP'ing, we talk modern like. Unless someone really gets into a scene.

 

[doctorjeff98]

Usually use thee's and thou's for nobility.

 

[mmu1]

For my more stuffy or older NPCs I generally just try to use fairly formal modern English, which I think keeps it from sounding too familiar without going into the whole silly "thee and thou" thing - it seems like that's all some people who try to affect archaic forms know, and it just ends up sounding ridiculous most of the time.

I also generally try to have them say things in the most elaborate way possible - as in, to steal a reference from a recent movie, "I am disinclined to acquiesce to your demands" as opposed to "No."

For everyone else, "talking like normal folks", just without modern idiom or slang, is fine.

 

[Arnwyn]

Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. We usually do it just because it's goofy and fun. Modern slang, though, is unacceptable during PC to NPC discussions.

 

[Felix]

This was just last night...

Played a one-shotter when most of the party couldn't show up, and I made a CN Barbarian/Rogue. Who was a pikey (from the movie Snatch). Buddy thought I couldn't keep up the accent in character, and if I did he was buying the next round.

So the NPCs had a very hard time understanding what the hell Cristoph McGuinness was talking about; so did the DM. Particularly after Bill provided the next few rounds of scotch. Heh.

 

[s/LaSH]

Nope, we speak modern (albeit ever-so-slightly personalised modern) at the game. I could rattle on for ages in archaic, I don't know why - I've never really read any old English, but when people complain about people misusing it I think "Hey, I was speaking it correctly all this time".

I figure if the lingua franca (Common) is Latin in my campaign, either we speak that (which only one of us can do) or we speak with our common tongue as their common tongue, thus experiencing the fluency of communication that such a thing should offer in the first place.