Immortal-ish Character's Dialogue

[trykynyx.livejournal.com]

So I'm doing a fun little side project involving Greek gods in the modern age and a certain pop star, but the specifics aren't really all that important. I was just wondering if anyone who wrote characters that have lived a particularly long time (vampire/god/robot/whatever) could give me their perspective on dialogue? Do you go for the "I Am Old And Speak In Archaic" thing or are your characters a little... hipper? I swung back in forth in the same scene and couldn't make up my mind... So, any ideas?

Comments

[kurushi.livejournal.com]

I've found in my experience that often the characters themselves hold the key. Remember that we pick up language virally from others, quite a lot of the time. While an ancient character isn't likely to speak street-slang (Unless they've predominantly lived there), unless they've been unaware of society and humans for all these years, they probably speak pretty modern English.

But there might be throwbacks, even into classical greek. I loved the verb aporeomai (I am perplexed) so much in my classical courses that I still sometimes use it. There might be the occasional grammatical quirk as well.

But in the end, it's the individual god or character who will be the best guideline for this. If they're dependent on human faith for their existence, then popular cultural perceptions of them might dictate their speech patterns. If they are independent entities, their roles, symbolism and personality might hold some clues. Think about where they've been for the last three centuries. Hermes might be using 1337, Poseidon might be concerned about his oceans and have some eco-rants.

The more thought you put into the why of their language (and not just the what), the easier they will flow. But since we don't know your setting or gods it's a little hard to be any more helpful than that. Do keep in mind that what a lot of the English speaking mind thinks of as "archaic" is really just formal and sometimes very British sounding language. Greek isn't British, and there were some pretty dirty mouths and nasty slang in Classical Greece too.

[rogerdr.livejournal.com]

I've done some Methuselah-types, but no true gods so far. My truly old people - several hundred years - have learned language as it has evolved, recalling archaic conventions only as a kind of nostalgia. My old characters in my long project of last year are human(ish) and so have had to live and change with society, so they naturally lose their 'child tongues' over time as people do IRL.

For gods, I'd give smart ones the ability to speak any language, but the Greeks (or Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Hindu, etc.) would probably be prejudiced against what they would consider to be mongrel and degenerate languages like English or the Latin languages. For instance, Zeus might use English to seduce a goth chick in Seattle, but Hera would be too proud to ever condescend to it. For her, no other language exists besides Classic Greek; all others would be so much animal farts.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

If you're having trouble, it might be worth it to go find someone really old, like 80 or 90 (in a retirement home or some place) and spend some time with them. Listen to the way they talk.

I've found that while their speech is perfectly understandable and modern, they occasionally use some old phrase that you don't hear much anymore. Sometimes use a word that might have changed meaning over the years according to it's older meaning. Mimicking this way of talking is a great way to convey the age of a character through their dialog.

Unless your immortal character has been really out of touch with the world, there really isn't any reason to make them sound archaic and writing dialog to sound archaic without sounding fake is really tough to do right. But if that's what you think is best for your character, by all means go for it.

[lenaf007.livejournal.com]

When I wrote in the VC universe way back when it was allowed, each of the vampire characters had different takes on immortality. As such you'd have some that just didn't fit in the current times very well (ie. Mael). And others that would fit in perfectly and seemed born to be in a particular age of time (ie. Lestat).

The really interesting characters were the ones you watched go from awkward to smooth understanding of the culture. One of the amusing parts from the books is when Armand demands Daniel connect to Paris on a telephone, cause he just found out about the technology but didn't completely understand how it worked. So he wakes him up at 3 AM and asks him to call Paris. xD Characters that have to move into a world they've been disconnected to for a long time tend to need someone within the world to help them make the transition.

Sorry for getting off topic, but back to dialogue! :D Going for the archaic speech is nice for giving a character a wiser-than-thou feel, but you risk losing your audience's ability to identify with the character. If you use it, make sure you don't need the audience to identify with them, or they're not gonna talk much. ;-) Personally I'd rely on other methods to show their archaic background - ie. mannerisms, dress, misunderstanding items/tools that are today taken for granted. Hope that helps!