Re: [EK] Operation Renaissance Persona

["Karen Lyons-McGann" <dvkld.dev@mhs.unc.edu>]

Poster: "Karen Lyons-McGann" <dvkld.dev@mhs.unc.edu>

 Findlaech says:

>It's like there's a Star Trek Universal Translator that converts 
everyone's
>speech into Elizabethean Movie Dialog.  

Ha!  

>It's nice for atmosphere, but it's
>not how most non-English, non-later-period folks would speak.  Is it 
really
>less jarring for an 11th century Norseman to speak like a 16th century
>Englishman than like a 20th century American? 

I vote that it is but then  I've heard hardly anyone with a Universal 
Translator so far.  It is jarring to hear modern slang coming out of the 
mouths of well-garbed bodies. Since I've never heard or seen  a real 11th 
century Norseman, then any speech or action that seems "old" is enough to 
create an feeling  of something going on here instead of the feeling that 
I am sitting backstage at one of those living history plays.

> just someone who bows rather than shakes  hands,
> understands SCA nomenclature, and "goes along" with all the other folks 
who
> are also playing their version of the game.  I don't act like I don't
> understand what an electric light is.  

That, and avoiding going on about computers and current news events would 
be enough.  The gentle trying to catch up with friends mundane lives 
after months or years also seems reasonable enough. But Melisande de 
Belvoir  points out the following so well that I'm just going to use it 
here:
  
     minimal creativity can make a movie into an 
     "entertainment," or work on your car into repairs to your wagon (but 

     *not* to your dragon), or a difference of opinion with your boss 
into 
     one with your overlord.  It doesn't take too much work to ask after 
     someone's family in a way that doesn't pierce the delicate bubble of 

     the "medieval" environment, or to take an urgent conversation about 
     something obtrusively 20th C. out of the hearing of other people.
    
The hardest part is figuring out how to do this if you don't hear other 
people doing so.   What words and speech patterns do I need to have 
installed in my Universal Translator?  I was going to say that this 
practice may be easier for those who like the idea of playing a part.  
But really, it seems more like the ability to speak a foreign language.  
It may not be correct for any garb choice, but for those not heavily into 
developing and acting out a persona, it improves the look of garb to hear 
something other than modern American.  

Anne

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