Actually ... Spoken Words

In the process of writing historical drama scripts, it has been most interesting to observe how the usage of language has changed across the eras. I speak of English of course, as that is my “native” language. Of course, I speak of American “English” which differs greatly (in some instances) from the English spoken in England and in Australia. The formality of the language has lessened over the years, syntax has been simplified, and many words that were commonly used in everyday speech have become uncommon in the vernacular of today.
I am, by nature, a perfectionist, and would prefer to write the “dialogue” of a script in a manner that would be as true to period as possible. By reading literature that has been written over the ages, I have been able to, in a slight degree, write script that “fits” the era. Over the years though, I have learned that by doing so the audience becomes confused, does not understand the dialogue, or is irritated by the manner of speaking portrayed by the characters. Simply stated, “period” speech patterns distract from the message of the script. As a result, the dialogue I have written for scripts during the past few years has been in today’s vernacular with only a sprinkling of “period” terms and phraseology interspersed to “flavor” the script with the era. Simply stated, I now write dialogue in the plain, everyday, ordinary language of society.
I have begun to wonder if this is also observable in other languages. I have studied other languages; mainly the “romance” languages of Latin, French, and Italian. I have not reached the degree of fluency to ascertain whether or not this change of language usage is a common occurrence across cultures.