The words we use

[CharleyH]

I have had editors tell me not to use too much slang or too many idioms. I have understood their concerns, but frankly I find that the use of slang is especially helpful in getting across a particular class, sub-culture and age of character or even situating that character in a particular point in time without having to actually write it out explicitly. Also, I find that the slang a character uses can be equally telling of his/her inner character.

Normally, at least when I am writing stories, I try to keep in touch with what's going on in popular culture and in language, but I must admit to a recent failing. The other day my nephew sent a link to his MySpace page. He's in a band. Anyhow, I went to listen to the music and afterwards I read the responses, a sample of which were:
"Man, that's sick," followed by "you guys are so sick."

I thought, 'well it's not the sort of music I like, but I wouldn't call it sick'. :|

I had half a mind to tell those fuckers off! When another response was something along the line of "So fuckin' sick, can't wait to see you play next weekend," I suddenly understood that last years -sweet- is this year's sick.

Do you use a lot of slang in your stories and can you say why you like to? If you are a reader, how do you feel about the use of slang in stories (erotic or not)?

If you don't want to discuss slang, that's fine, make this thread your own venue for "the words we use"

 

[Firebrain]

It totally depends on the characters and how I think they might speak. I don't use heaps of it though, in the same way that I wouldn't write in a colloquial accent; too much can be jarring.

 

[oggbashan]

The problem with using slang extensively is that it becomes out-of-date very quickly and can then become incomprehensible.

It is difficult now to read Rudyard Kipling's soldier slang, which apparently wasn't very accurate even at the time. Sir Walter Scott's Scottish novels can also be awkward, as can some of the great Robbie Burns.

Some authors can get away with invented slang, e.g. Burgess' Clockwork Orange and George Orwell's 1984.

If you want to indicate that a character is using slang, dialect or is not speaking standard US or UK English, a light touch and a few non-standard sentence constructions is enough. I think I overdid the effect for Professor Wald in my story Golem.

Og

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I read a Vietnam War memoir the other day. The writer sprinkled the manuscript with Vietnamese and immediately translated what was said, inside his own response. This worked well.

 

[SimonBrooke]

The problem with using slang extensively is that it becomes out-of-date very quickly and can then become incomprehensible.

It is difficult now to read Rudyard Kipling's soldier slang, which apparently wasn't very accurate even at the time. Sir Walter Scott's Scottish novels can also be awkward, as can some of the great Robbie Burns.

Ye'll likely fin lais scrievit i th Norn 'awkward', forbye, gin ye haena fashed yirsel tae lair thon leid.

Ignorance is not always bliss; sometimes it is merely bad manners.

 

[oggbashan]

Ye'll likely fin lais scrievit i th Norn 'awkward', forbye, gin ye haena fashed yirsel tae lair thon leid.

Ignorance is not always bliss; sometimes it is merely bad manners.

I have readers complaining that I write in British English.

I don't think that my English is too far removed from US versions.

I won't attempt Scots, Gaelic, Welsh but I have written Strine.

Og

 

[CharleyH]

I have readers complaining that I write in British English.

I don't think that my English is too far removed from US versions.

I won't attempt Scots, Gaelic, Welsh but I have written Strine.

Og

Most of the world thinks that Wales, especially, is part of England and that those in that region speak .... English. Do they not?

 

[jomar]

I read a Vietnam War memoir the other day. The writer sprinkled the manuscript with Vietnamese and immediately translated what was said, inside his own response. This worked well.

That's bangin sick, aight.

 

[SimonBrooke]

I have readers complaining that I write in British English.

I don't think that my English is too far removed from US versions.

I won't attempt Scots, Gaelic, Welsh but I have written Strine.

No-one is asking you to write it. No-one is asking you to read it. No-one criticises you for not being able to read or write Ryukyuan, or Swahili, or Suomi, or Yue, or Magyar, or Islenska. It's normal for monoglot English speakers to be ignorant of the languages of the people around them. But to refer to such languages as 'slang' is an example of the gross offensiveness of which only the English are capable.

Hint: while Robert Burns could write (well) in Greek, Latin, French and English he very rarely chose to write poems in any of these languages.

 

[SimonBrooke]

Most of the world thinks that Wales, especially, is part of England and that those in that region speak .... English. Do they not?

Most people in Cymru ('Wales') now speak English, although Cymraeg ('Welsh') is still taught in primary schools in many parts of Cymru. Most people in Scotland now speak English, and Scots is very infrequently taught now below University level, so most Scots people don't really have any education in their own language. Interestingly and confusingly, Cymru was originally the name of a Brythonic kingdom with its capital at Dumbarton, north of Glasgow, and extending south into the English Lake District (now 'Cumbria'); along with Gododdin (what is now the Lothians) and Rheged (what is now Galloway, although also extending at one time into northern England). These kingdoms ('the Kingdoms of the North') were the centre of Brythonic culture until they were defeated by the invading Anglians at the Battle of Catraeth in 598AD. This northern Cymru continued to be an independent principality until it was absorbed into Scotland in the eleventh century; I think it's only after this that the name 'Cymru' was applied to the remaining independent Brythonic principalities, to the west of England.

Cymraeg is a modern variant of Brythonic, the language spoken throughout most of the mainland of Britain prior to the Roman invasion, and the language of the Brythonic kingdoms which succeeded the withdrawal of Roman administration. The other significant modern derivatives of Brythonic are Bretton and Kernewek (the latter being pretty much on the endangered list, now). Pictish, the language spoken in north eastern Scotland at least until the time of Kenneth MacAlpin, was probably also closely related to Brythonic.

'Wales' and 'Welsh' ('Wallace' in Scots) both derive from from an indo-european root simply meaning 'foreigner'; it's the same name as 'Wallonia' in Belgium and 'Wallachia' in Romania, although the Cymru, the Walloons, and the Romanians are not closely related peoples.

The other significant Celtic language family in the British Isles is Gàidhlig (anglicised as 'Gaelic'), originally spoken only in Ireland but brought into the west of what is now Scotland by the invading Scots in the fourth century AD. Until the Wars of Independence in the fourteenth century the main language spoken in most of western Scotland south of the Highland Line was Cymraeg - it's no accident that the Scottish armies were led in the early part of the wars by William the Welshman. After the Wars of Independence, which led to widespread depopulation, there was a second reinfusion of Gàidhlig speaking people from Ireland.

However, this is where things get complicated. There were two other significant language groups in Scotland prior to the wars of independence; Norn, a language closely related to Old Norse, and Inglis, a language derived from Old Low German and spoken in those parts of Scotland which had been part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, which is to say Lothian, Berwickshire and parts of Galloway.

Prior to the Wars of Independence Scotland saw itself as a nation of distinct ethnic groups; Malcolm IV used to address his charters to '...omnibus hominibus tocius terre sue Francis et Anglicis Scotis et Galweiensibus...' but the experience of the war welded these disparate groups together so that the Declaration of Arbroath is addressed to the Pope from the 'communitatem Scocie'. The dominant language of the kingdom was the language that had earlier been called 'Inglis'; but as people wanted to distinguish themselves from the English (also called, in Scots, 'Inglis') this language became renamed 'Scottis' and later 'Scots'. Meantime, the language of the ethnic group formerly known as 'Scottii' became known as 'Gàidhlig'.

What distinguishes a 'language' from a 'dialect' is largely a hegemonistic argument. It's possible to argue that English, Scots, Nederlands and Flemish are all dialects of the same language, but it isn't very useful to do so because while most Scots, Nederlands and Flemish speakers can also speak and understand English, they can't necessarily understand one another's speech and the English can't normally understand any of them. All of them derive from Old Low German, all of them have a greater or lesser degree of French influence. English emerged from the speech of the Kingdom of Wessex, Scots from that of the Kingdom of Northumbria, Flemish from Dutchy of Brabant, Nederlands from Holland. Of course, patterns of speech do not have sharp borders; they naturally merge into one another. As I've argued elsewhere, there's a continuum of mutually understandable dialects all the way from London up the North Sea to Iceland, but that doesn't mean that that Islenska and English are the same language.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I once made things exceedingly difficult for myself by creating a Korean character who uses a lot of Russian slang...

Oh, William Gibson, leading young authors so far astray!

 

[oggbashan]

No-one is asking you to write it. No-one is asking you to read it. No-one criticises you for not being able to read or write Ryukyuan, or Swahili, or Suomi, or Yue, or Magyar, or Islenska. It's normal for monoglot English speakers to be ignorant of the languages of the people around them. But to refer to such languages as 'slang' is an example of the gross offensiveness of which only the English are capable.

Hint: while Robert Burns could write (well) in Greek, Latin, French and English he very rarely chose to write poems in any of these languages.

Please note that I did not write that Walter Scott or Robbie Burns wrote in slang. What I intended was that the language they used had dated (as has Shakespeare's, Milton's and particularly Chaucer's).

I apologise if you think I meant that Scott and Burns were writing slang. They were, sometimes, writing in the vernacular.

One of my favourite but lesser-known poets, C J Dennis, wrote in early 20th Century Australian. Some of his work, while still understandable, requires effort because Australian has evolved since then.

Og

 

[driphoney]

No-one is asking you to write it. No-one is asking you to read it. No-one criticises you for not being able to read or write Ryukyuan, or Swahili, or Suomi, or Yue, or Magyar, or Islenska. It's normal for monoglot English speakers to be ignorant of the languages of the people around them. But to refer to such languages as 'slang' is an example of the gross offensiveness of which only the English are capable.

Hint: while Robert Burns could write (well) in Greek, Latin, French and English he very rarely chose to write poems in any of these languages.

I took Ogg's comments to fall under the last suggestion the original poster stated, "the words we use."