England, 1066. In a remote Northumbrian village, young Oswulf is to become an elite warrior for the English king. But as English, Norse and Norman forces wage war against each other to secure control over Northumbria, Oswulf is caught in a perilous web of fickle loyalities and relentless ambition that drive friend and foe alike.
Linguistic challenges for writers
I love languages, and my readers hate me for it. Well, that's not really true.Most of those I have spoken to and who have posted reviews of my books – historical novels set in the Middle Ages – quite like the sprinkles of foreign words and phrases in my novels because they enhance the medieval feel of the story for those readers.
But languages are not everyone's cup of tea, and I understand if readers are confused, annoyed or outright frustrated by words whose meaning eludes them. They are not alone, for this is a problem that readers share with us writers of historical fiction – not to mention the characters in our books, who may have faced a similar challenge in their living days, all those centuries and sometimes millennia back in history.
Imagine you're a peasant in the 9th or 10th century in northeastern England. You speak your local northern, Anglian dialect, church services are in Latin, your neighbours further south speak Mercian, and your king speaks West Saxon. Sure, as a peasant, you probably never have to talk to your southern neighbours or king in person, but what if messengers from down south come to your village to tell you something important – in their dialect? Would you understand them?
But languages are not everyone's cup of tea, and I understand if readers are confused, annoyed or outright frustrated by words whose meaning eludes them. They are not alone, for this is a problem that readers share with us writers of historical fiction – not to mention the characters in our books, who may have faced a similar challenge in their living days, all those centuries and sometimes millennia back in history.
Imagine you're a peasant in the 9th or 10th century in northeastern England. You speak your local northern, Anglian dialect, church services are in Latin, your neighbours further south speak Mercian, and your king speaks West Saxon. Sure, as a peasant, you probably never have to talk to your southern neighbours or king in person, but what if messengers from down south come to your village to tell you something important – in their dialect? Would you understand them?
More importantly, would you comprehend the Viking raiders that the messengers tried to warn you about and who are suddenly popping up on the outskirts of your village? It probably wouldn't matter, because chances are those Vikings will kill you before entering into diplomatic relations.
If this linguistic situation sounds confusing, don't even get me started on 12th-century France.
Anyway, back in England, fast forward another century. Assuming you survived, your grand-grand-children have come to terms – they didn't have a choice, after all – with the descendants of the Vikings who decided to settle in England. Now, all of a sudden, the country is flooded with Normans, and you are forced to work for someone whose language is unlike anything you've ever heard and utterly unintelligible to you. This is the situation my teenage protagonist of Warrior of two Kings is thrown into when the Normans try to establish their authority in Northumbria.
At this point, all writers will have to think about how they get out of this tricky situation. There are three options:
1. Ignore
You can ignore the historical reality and let both characters speak English and understand each other easily, without questioning how likely this would have been. This is the easiest solution for the protagonist, writer and reader.
2. Circumvent
Let your characters converse in a lingua franca, a common language, used at the time to overcome or circumvent their linguistic differences. This option might be tricky or even impossible. Latin, for example, was spoken by everyone belonging to the clergy – not necessarily at the same level of proficiency, depending on their position in the church hierarchy – across the whole of Christian Europe, but laymen, in particular of lower social orders, would not usually have known and even less mastered it. So, even if there was a lingua franca, your characters may not have been able to speak it. Incidentally, the same might be true for today's readers. While you solve the historical communication problem, for example amongst travelling clerics or members of a highly educated nobility, you could be creating (another) one for your reader.
3. Accept
Could you accurately convey the linguistic background without overcomplicating things and confusing yourself and the reader? This is not simply a question of willingness. You also have to be able to do it, meaning you should understand the medieval languages and be able to work with them.
I'm a linguist and a medievalist, so this third option is my preferred choice. While I know and accept that some readers will take offence at my incorporating bits of Old English, Anglo-Norman, Old Norse, Old Breton and whatnot, I appreciate the effort and goodwill of the majority of readers, who will happily dive into my stories despite, sometimes even because of those foreign words and phrases. Think of foreign as a flourish, not a flaw.
As a token of my appreciation and to help readers, notably the curious ones, I always include a glossary with translations, with literal and general meanings, at the end of my books. Yes, I know this is awkward to access on e-readers, hence I make sure that none of the information given in foreign words is essential to understanding the scene or the story. If it is, I cheat: in Warrior of two Kings, my young English protagonist – and hence also the reader – is lucky, as one of the Norman warriors is an interpreter who translates the foreign Norman gibberish into English.
Yet the linguistic challenges for us writers go beyond the character level. They start even before we decide how to handle languages of yore in our actual story, namely with the pile of research that every writer of historical fiction must do.
An essential question is how to get the information about the time and place where the story is set. What looks like a simple task might, however, be more complicated than it seems. After all, depending on your chosen time and setting, you may not be able to read source texts, because you do not speak the language they were written in and because there is no translation into a language you are familiar with.
There might also be specialist literature on certain essential details – architectural, social, cultural, whatever – in languages you don't know. Of course, if you don't know the languages, you won't be aware of those sources, but if for some reason, you come across them in your research, you'll have a hard time trying to make use of them.
Lastly, if your books are translated, how do you assess whether the translation is good? With my range of languages, those three areas are less of a problem, because I can search, understand and evaluate results in multiple languages. But what if this is not possible?
With the advent of free or cheap AI translation, you could always give that a try to get the gist of specialist literature. I would not go as far as to suggest using it on old source texts, though. For translations, you can always try to find colleagues or readers you trust who speak the translated language well enough to gauge the quality of the translation.
However, when it comes to specialist information, such as historical details and linguistic problems, there's nothing better than asking a specialist. Especially for obscure questions – I once needed help with Old Breton and Occitan dialects – I have found specialists very welcoming and helpful. So, don't be afraid to ask. It shows wisdom, not lack of it.
When faced with the challenge of languages, pick what is possible, desirable and most convenient to you and your readers. Think about how important languages and potential language barriers are for your story – you might discover interesting constellations of characters, underlying conflicts or motivations that could add an exciting extra to your novel.
For young Oswulf in Warrior of two Kings, it is the language barrier above all that alienates him from the Normans, creating mistrust and wariness. Cutting out the linguistic aspect would have removed much of the tension between the two opposing nations. It would also have given readers one reason less to fear for the young Saxon's life at a court full of foreign, battlehardened Norman warriors.
Whichever way you decide, language is a powerful tool to convey a story. Make sure you use it to the fullest of your abilities – your readers will love you for it.
Helpful resources for languages:
https://www.oed.com/discover/history-of-english – History of English
http://www.triviumpublishing.com/articles/languages.html – Languages in Medieval England
https://bosworthtoller.com – Old English Dictionary
https://www.oed.com/discover/old-english-an-overview/ – Linguistic background of Old English
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary – Middle English Dictionary
https://www.oed.com/discover/middle-english-an-overview/?tl=true – Linguistic background of Middle English
https://anglo-norman.net – Anglo-Norman Dictionary and everything Anglo-Norman
http://zeus.atilf.fr/dmf/ – Dictionary of Middle French
https://dicodoc.eu/fr/dictionnaires – Dictionnaire occitan (available in Occitan/French only)
http://www.koeblergerhard.de/ahdwbhin.html – Dictionary of Old High German (German only)
https://mhdwb-online.de/wb.php?buchstabe=A&portion=0 – Dictionary of Middle High German (German only)
http://micmap.org/dicfro/search/ – Enter a word and select one of the available dictionaries of English, French, Old French or Latin to look up the word
https://www.etymonline.com – Etymological Dictionary of English
https://lecteur-few.atilf.fr/ – French Etymological Dictionary
Birgit Constant
About the Author
Birgit Constant has a PhD in medieval studies, has learned eleven languages and worked her way through translation, IT and Public Relations before ending up in the world of books. She writes historical fiction for language nerds and is particularly interested in hidden histories of less well-known people and places. Her works include the Northumbria Trilogy and a fictional biography about Marie de France, a 12th-century French writer. Subscribe to her newsletter Medieval Motes at www.birgitconstant.com for exclusive reading material, news from the Middle Ages, and information about her projects and books. You canalso find Birgit Constant on Facebook and Bluesky
If this linguistic situation sounds confusing, don't even get me started on 12th-century France.
Anyway, back in England, fast forward another century. Assuming you survived, your grand-grand-children have come to terms – they didn't have a choice, after all – with the descendants of the Vikings who decided to settle in England. Now, all of a sudden, the country is flooded with Normans, and you are forced to work for someone whose language is unlike anything you've ever heard and utterly unintelligible to you. This is the situation my teenage protagonist of Warrior of two Kings is thrown into when the Normans try to establish their authority in Northumbria.
At this point, all writers will have to think about how they get out of this tricky situation. There are three options:
1. Ignore
You can ignore the historical reality and let both characters speak English and understand each other easily, without questioning how likely this would have been. This is the easiest solution for the protagonist, writer and reader.
2. Circumvent
Let your characters converse in a lingua franca, a common language, used at the time to overcome or circumvent their linguistic differences. This option might be tricky or even impossible. Latin, for example, was spoken by everyone belonging to the clergy – not necessarily at the same level of proficiency, depending on their position in the church hierarchy – across the whole of Christian Europe, but laymen, in particular of lower social orders, would not usually have known and even less mastered it. So, even if there was a lingua franca, your characters may not have been able to speak it. Incidentally, the same might be true for today's readers. While you solve the historical communication problem, for example amongst travelling clerics or members of a highly educated nobility, you could be creating (another) one for your reader.
3. Accept
Could you accurately convey the linguistic background without overcomplicating things and confusing yourself and the reader? This is not simply a question of willingness. You also have to be able to do it, meaning you should understand the medieval languages and be able to work with them.
I'm a linguist and a medievalist, so this third option is my preferred choice. While I know and accept that some readers will take offence at my incorporating bits of Old English, Anglo-Norman, Old Norse, Old Breton and whatnot, I appreciate the effort and goodwill of the majority of readers, who will happily dive into my stories despite, sometimes even because of those foreign words and phrases. Think of foreign as a flourish, not a flaw.
As a token of my appreciation and to help readers, notably the curious ones, I always include a glossary with translations, with literal and general meanings, at the end of my books. Yes, I know this is awkward to access on e-readers, hence I make sure that none of the information given in foreign words is essential to understanding the scene or the story. If it is, I cheat: in Warrior of two Kings, my young English protagonist – and hence also the reader – is lucky, as one of the Norman warriors is an interpreter who translates the foreign Norman gibberish into English.
Yet the linguistic challenges for us writers go beyond the character level. They start even before we decide how to handle languages of yore in our actual story, namely with the pile of research that every writer of historical fiction must do.
An essential question is how to get the information about the time and place where the story is set. What looks like a simple task might, however, be more complicated than it seems. After all, depending on your chosen time and setting, you may not be able to read source texts, because you do not speak the language they were written in and because there is no translation into a language you are familiar with.
There might also be specialist literature on certain essential details – architectural, social, cultural, whatever – in languages you don't know. Of course, if you don't know the languages, you won't be aware of those sources, but if for some reason, you come across them in your research, you'll have a hard time trying to make use of them.
Lastly, if your books are translated, how do you assess whether the translation is good? With my range of languages, those three areas are less of a problem, because I can search, understand and evaluate results in multiple languages. But what if this is not possible?
With the advent of free or cheap AI translation, you could always give that a try to get the gist of specialist literature. I would not go as far as to suggest using it on old source texts, though. For translations, you can always try to find colleagues or readers you trust who speak the translated language well enough to gauge the quality of the translation.
However, when it comes to specialist information, such as historical details and linguistic problems, there's nothing better than asking a specialist. Especially for obscure questions – I once needed help with Old Breton and Occitan dialects – I have found specialists very welcoming and helpful. So, don't be afraid to ask. It shows wisdom, not lack of it.
When faced with the challenge of languages, pick what is possible, desirable and most convenient to you and your readers. Think about how important languages and potential language barriers are for your story – you might discover interesting constellations of characters, underlying conflicts or motivations that could add an exciting extra to your novel.
For young Oswulf in Warrior of two Kings, it is the language barrier above all that alienates him from the Normans, creating mistrust and wariness. Cutting out the linguistic aspect would have removed much of the tension between the two opposing nations. It would also have given readers one reason less to fear for the young Saxon's life at a court full of foreign, battlehardened Norman warriors.
Whichever way you decide, language is a powerful tool to convey a story. Make sure you use it to the fullest of your abilities – your readers will love you for it.
Helpful resources for languages:
https://www.oed.com/discover/history-of-english – History of English
http://www.triviumpublishing.com/articles/languages.html – Languages in Medieval England
https://bosworthtoller.com – Old English Dictionary
https://www.oed.com/discover/old-english-an-overview/ – Linguistic background of Old English
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary – Middle English Dictionary
https://www.oed.com/discover/middle-english-an-overview/?tl=true – Linguistic background of Middle English
https://anglo-norman.net – Anglo-Norman Dictionary and everything Anglo-Norman
http://zeus.atilf.fr/dmf/ – Dictionary of Middle French
https://dicodoc.eu/fr/dictionnaires – Dictionnaire occitan (available in Occitan/French only)
http://www.koeblergerhard.de/ahdwbhin.html – Dictionary of Old High German (German only)
https://mhdwb-online.de/wb.php?buchstabe=A&portion=0 – Dictionary of Middle High German (German only)
http://micmap.org/dicfro/search/ – Enter a word and select one of the available dictionaries of English, French, Old French or Latin to look up the word
https://www.etymonline.com – Etymological Dictionary of English
https://lecteur-few.atilf.fr/ – French Etymological Dictionary
Birgit Constant
# # #
About the Author
