Greetings! I am writing a story set in Nazareth in the Galilean hills, most likely 1 AD in AD 4–6. I am going to make the characters speak formally without the slang of right now, though I will probably add the slang of that time. I know there's more subtle slang that we use everyday without knowing, and I'd like to know what I could avoid. Thank you for reading and your help, have a nice day!
my personal opinion is that its unavoidable. Words, idioms, and sentence structures of today (even without slang) would not have been around back then. So its nearly impossible NOT to use them. Because the slang of right now ("Rizz" "bet" "OMG") are still relatively new. its easier to avoid them. Also, if these new slang terms are not in your natural vocabulary or way of speaking, its easy to avoid them because it doesnt occur to you to use them. Slang of today is not in my vocab, so I dont use them unless i'm actively making it a part of a characters dialogue. But on removing slang entirely? Unless you are writing n the original Aramaic and have studied thoroughly their speech patterns, i dont think you can avoid modern words and phrases that do include slang
I'd think there'd be even more "slang" two thousand years ago as the literacy of written language was much less prevalent than it is today.
And the best way to represent the slang of the time is idiomatically through translation to slang that fits I remember Antony riches being challenged about why his Roman legionaries used Fuck so much when it wasn’t all that common and he said it was because romans at the time would have used Cunnus much more often than the modern ear can deal with so he used language appropriate to modern soldiers to translate the intent
I read that as Antony first, as in Marc Antony and was wondering "Who is criticizing Antony on the language his soldiers are using?"
The profanity is always updated to modern language. It would make no sense without it. Actually, just about all the language is updated for readability. Even Old English is a pain to read.
well yes - the point about Riches is that hes translating the idiom not the actual word, Cunnus would be C*nt but the way the roman's used it was more like fuckwit or dickhead... they also used it as a general purpose expletive like we'd say fuck or shit
Which is kind of the point. You're not writing it in ancient Aramaic, so it's not going to be authentic anyway. You're writing it for a modern audience, so it neesd to be understandable to a modern audience, but with a flavour of pseudo-ancient dialogue. So instead of: "WTF Claudius Gaius Junius," said Quintilius Maximus. "Your wheels are pretty swish today. Won a bundle at the big fight, have we?" Replace with words and ideas that might have been around at the time. "Jupiter's balls, Claudius Gaius Junius," said Quintilius Maximus. "That's a mighty fine looking chariot. Fortuna smiled on you at the Colosseum, has she?" (or something like that)
There's a bunch of those in HBO's Rome. My favorite is when one guy turns to another and deadpans, "It's hotter than Vulcan's dick."
