Bloody Jack and "kip"
Jun. 2nd, 2019 12:16 pmBloody Jack
A young adult or children's book about a girl who is orphaned in the late 1700s, is lost in london childrens gangs for a bit, and ends up joining navy ship as one of the ship's boys. It's written very well. It's very reminiscent of Hornblower or M&C, but doesn't feel like a retelling.
Language in historical books
There's no choices without downsides here. Certainly when I've been forced to dabble in this region, even when I loved the result, it was not very defensible on many axes :)
You can use period accurate language, which is incredibly hard to get right, and will be hard to read for a lot of readers, and also likely sound fake since most people don't know what was accurate.
You can use "50 years ago" language, trying to sound "a little bit" archaic, and hope people will get the idea. I usually end up doing something like this or the following option, even if it doesn't really make sense.
You can use modern language but remove anything that "sounds" too modern. This is not very satisfactory, but usually works ok.
Or you can just use modern language. This usually throws people out of suspension of disbelief, even in works where you don't expect them to go for accuracy: even if you're using modern language, if you use slang from the last ten years without being deliberately tongue in cheek, it usually sounds weird to almost everyone.
The trouble is (as with most writing, but more so), you're trying to craft an *experience* of archaic language, not necessarily write accurate to what would actually have existed. But that means it needs to relate to people's expectations: they can do a certain amount of learning by reading, but your book also needs to be sufficiently accessible they can. But different people will have different levels of knowledge, so what seems right to one person, will seem impenetrable or too fake to someone else.
"kip"
According to my sources, "kip" meant a hovel (in Dutch?), then a brothel (maybe still does in Ireland?), then a boarding house, then a freelance place to sleep (both featured in down and out in Paris and London), then a short sleep.
Bloody Jack is using "place to sleep" in 1800 London, to mean the hideout where the children's gang stayed at night, or somewhere other than hammocks someone regularly slept on the ship. I don't know if that's from more accurate sources than whatever I found, presumably slang was ahead of what got wrote down. Or if it's deliberately using a milder archaism.
It's funny, why THAT grabbed my attention, when I know most of the other language is modern and at least as inaccurate. I guess, just because I knew a tiny bit about it, it drew my attention.
A young adult or children's book about a girl who is orphaned in the late 1700s, is lost in london childrens gangs for a bit, and ends up joining navy ship as one of the ship's boys. It's written very well. It's very reminiscent of Hornblower or M&C, but doesn't feel like a retelling.
Language in historical books
There's no choices without downsides here. Certainly when I've been forced to dabble in this region, even when I loved the result, it was not very defensible on many axes :)
You can use period accurate language, which is incredibly hard to get right, and will be hard to read for a lot of readers, and also likely sound fake since most people don't know what was accurate.
You can use "50 years ago" language, trying to sound "a little bit" archaic, and hope people will get the idea. I usually end up doing something like this or the following option, even if it doesn't really make sense.
You can use modern language but remove anything that "sounds" too modern. This is not very satisfactory, but usually works ok.
Or you can just use modern language. This usually throws people out of suspension of disbelief, even in works where you don't expect them to go for accuracy: even if you're using modern language, if you use slang from the last ten years without being deliberately tongue in cheek, it usually sounds weird to almost everyone.
The trouble is (as with most writing, but more so), you're trying to craft an *experience* of archaic language, not necessarily write accurate to what would actually have existed. But that means it needs to relate to people's expectations: they can do a certain amount of learning by reading, but your book also needs to be sufficiently accessible they can. But different people will have different levels of knowledge, so what seems right to one person, will seem impenetrable or too fake to someone else.
"kip"
According to my sources, "kip" meant a hovel (in Dutch?), then a brothel (maybe still does in Ireland?), then a boarding house, then a freelance place to sleep (both featured in down and out in Paris and London), then a short sleep.
Bloody Jack is using "place to sleep" in 1800 London, to mean the hideout where the children's gang stayed at night, or somewhere other than hammocks someone regularly slept on the ship. I don't know if that's from more accurate sources than whatever I found, presumably slang was ahead of what got wrote down. Or if it's deliberately using a milder archaism.
It's funny, why THAT grabbed my attention, when I know most of the other language is modern and at least as inaccurate. I guess, just because I knew a tiny bit about it, it drew my attention.