How to speak Regency
From the top of the snowy Alps, via cable-car over majestic craggy peaks, all I could think about was how I should be back at my hotel room writing. There are only 17 days, 19 hours, and 14 minutes left in National Novel Writing Month, and I only have 6 thousand words of the 50 thousand word goal. Corpus Bones! I’m forced to continually tell myself, “Write! Don’t Edit!”, but it’s hard. I want to read back over what I’ve written and change and format and add and subtract and improve and OMG! Onward, Ciara, onward! To edit is to retreat! Fortunately there are few distractions in the hotel room once I’ve returned from seeing the charms of Switzerland and my hubby has fallen asleep.
NaNoWriMo also has developed a Facebook application that displays a participant’s word count marker. Yes, I have installed it on my Facebook page. Perhaps then when you see me procrastinating on Facebook, or by BLOGGING, y’all can yell at me to get back to writing my story. Ha! I wanted to put this picture on the left on my blog somewhere, but can’t figure out how to add it to the sidebar. This layout is simply one of the many pick-and-choose options offered by WordPress, so I can’t make many changes.
Today’s oh-so-fun resources for writing Regency Romance novels pertain to writing dialog.
Regency Speak:
“How to Speak 19th Century” by Eric Fergusson – a short list of odd lexicon used in the 1830 book Private Yankee Doodle, some of which is used today with the same meaning and some of which is completely different.
The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Captain Grose et al, courtesy of Project Gutenburg. A much, much longer list of Regency-era slang, most of which would not be used by any sort of proper lady, but could make a quite colorful addition to your dialog. I plan on adopting a few into my everyday 21st century speech. Watch out!
Example:
BLOWEN: A mistress or whore of a gentleman of the scamp.
Regency speak: “The blowen kidded the swell into a snoozing ken, and shook him of his dummee and thimble”
Translation: The girl inveigled the gentleman into a brothel and robbed him of his pocket book and watch.
“The English Language and Literature Research Guide” from Yale University. Not a specific list of words, but of famous works of the Romantic Age authors and poets. Read the works of leading literary figures of the day (ie Jane Austen) and take notes on their language and lexicon. Obviously this is a more time consuming approach, but you could always skim. Besides, reading the classics is good for you.
“Lord Livingston, I presume?” Learn about the British Peerage system and how to address a Peer, his wife, his sisters, his eldest son, his younger sons, his daughters, his horses… no, really. It’s all rather confusing. But better to look it up than have your readers call you on it!
Tags: , "romance novels", NaNoWriMo, Regency England, Regency romance novels, writing
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