OK?

[poliphilo]

Arising out of last night's episode of The Village.

We said "OK" in the 1950s but were aware of it as an Americanism (which was what made it so cool) and were frowned at when we used it. Would a Derbyshire hill farmer in 1916 (who hadn't seen a talkie or watched I Love Lucy or even ever met an American ) have had it in his vocabulary? I rather think not.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's not impossible, but I tend to agree. I'm always being thrown out of historical dramas (and novels) by slips like that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's tricky. If The Village were committed to complete accuracy its characters would be speaking a dialect that would make them all but incomprehensible to a modern audience. Or would they? There's so much we can't really be sure of.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's what I was going to say - that you have to regard the dialogue as to some extent translated. I haven't seen 'The Village' and I don't know much about Derbyshire speech, but I'd guess how comprehensible it would have been depends on the audience, what it knows and how much effort it's willing to make. And once you are translating, well, you might as well translate.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This is supposed to be a fairly isolated place; the narrator tells us at the beginning of the first episode that his father never "went abroad" by which he means "left the parish". It seems likely that the speech of such a place would be fairly idiosyncratic.

[sovay]

a dialect that would make them all but incomprehensible to a modern audience. Or would they? There's so much we can't really be sure of.

That would be awesome: Alan Garner out loud.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There'd need to be subtitles.