talkin' all medieval-like

[s/LaSH]

Time to shoot down Romance...

"I know it in my heart to be true."
"Don't follow your head, but your heart."
"There is only love in my heart."
That sort of thing.

Trouble is, historically you should replace 'heart' with 'brain'. Because up until a couple hundred years ago, we thought that thought took place in the heart, so of course we described things thusly. You think emotion and intellect are opposites? They aren't, you're just choking on out-of-date poetry.

I don't have any particularly good original phrases to share, except for a couple of principles:

- I see no problem with talking in modern slang in-game. If we're talking High Ancient Faerunic or whatever, well, we don't know that language - so we default to the language we're most fluent in, which happens to be modern English. The computer game series Gothic does this - lower-class people will swear at you, upper-class people will behave in a more refined fashion. It's very realistic IMHO.

- Religion in swearing is to be encouraged. The surprisingly recent "By Jove!" is an alternate name of Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus. "Zounds" from "God's Wounds" and other such things were all quite a bit more serious back in the day. I've got such epithets scattered throughout my scifi...

(But why would Victorian gentlemen swear by a pagan deity? I've often wondered this...)

 

[Gnome Berzerker]

alsih2o, where did you get this info from?

 

[tarchon]

(But why would Victorian gentlemen swear by a pagan deity? I've often wondered this...)

It's euphemistic. "By God" was considered coarse and vulgar so more polite alternatives such as "By Jove" and "By George" were used as (originally witty) alternatives.

 

[shilsen]

Hmm, that's not really true. Shakesphere was certainly ahead of his time. And he certainly invented many of the words. It would take time for his words to make it out of London proper and into common usage. The type of English used by some people in Medieval England would depend on what time your talking about. For a time England's Parlement strictly used French. <pardon my spelling, I'm rushing through this> From the time forward of 1066, Many parts of England become fragmented by regional dialects just due to the influx of Norman invaders.

Not that far ahead of his time in creating words. He had an incredibly large vocabulary, but rarely created his own words. Spenser, for example, who is his contemporary, does a lot more word-smithing. Almost all of the language in Shakespeare's works is what was in existence at the time. The regional dialects post-1066 had become a lot more standardized by Shakespeare's time, i.e. the Renaissance. He's about a century late to be called a medieval writer (later, if you consider the continent and not just England), but somehow his language is what people commonly think of as medieval English.

 

[hong]

Everyone please take note that I am not posting to this thread.

 

[tarchon]

Ye is pronounced The, the Y is a viking(?) rune that the english took on after they were invaded.

Xerox is latin for dry, (Maybe along with Xylos meaning wood) I think this is because before it was done with negetives in that red water. Which was wet.

"Ye" the pronoun is pronounced like "yee" and has been since the Great Vowel Shift. For a time (roughly 17th-18th centuries), "ye" was also used as shorthand for the definite article "the," commonly written as "y^e." Similarly, you see "y^t" for "that" and rarely a few other abbreviations like the fortunately uncommon "y^ey". An Old English (not Viking) rune thorn þ was used in OE manuscripts for the unvoiced "th," with the Latin alphabet, but after printing became common, printers tended to replace it with the much more common 'y', presumably because of the expense of casting special type.
Xerox isn't exactly Latin for dry - it was coined from a Greek root meaning "dry" ("xero-"), like in xerography, and it was referring to Xerox's dry reprographic process.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

you'll have to forgive Olgar. it is military training.

OD&D is 1A.

the latest stuff is 4F in my book.

Isn't D+D = 1A simply 13+13 = 26 in hexadecimal?

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Ferret]

All I know is alot of words come from greek and alot come from latin.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Mind your Ps and Qs comes from sailors drinking at taverns and they tracked how many pints and quarts they drank so they could pay before they left (as sometimes the sailors would drink more than they could actually afford).

I suppose you could explain it that way in a D&D game if you wanted. Historically--at least as I understand it, though I won't claim to be an expert--it comes from old printing presses, where the lower-case "p" and "q" were identical, except for the fact that one mirrored the other. They were very often confused.

 

[diaglo]

Isn't D+D = 1A simply 13+13 = 26 in hexadecimal?

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

i would agree with that too. but Olgar hates using hacks/cheats on his computer games. i don't think he owns a hex editor. so i went with his military background.