Zompist Bboard Again

The writer Jo Walton named what she called the Tiffany Problem: in the Middle Ages, there were women named Tiffany. (It comes from Theophania.) But if a fantasy novel or even a historical novel had a Tiffany, it would sound comic.

What other similar cases can you think of? That is, things that sound anachronistic but really aren't.

Maybe less of a stretch, but still a bit odd: Herod the Great had a wife named Doris.

Or, imagine a university with 30,000 students, who sometimes embarked on massive anti-government demonstrations. That could refer to 1960s America or Europe-- or 2nd century Xi'an.

An Internet friend of mine is writing a story set in the 1940s, set mostly among gays, and mentions trouble with the word "gay". As he puts it, someone in that time might well ask another if he knew any "fun gay people". The old meaning of "bright and pleasant" might be meant, or the new meaning of "homosexual", or both at once, but it'd be hard for a modern reader to read it as anything but the latter. (Plus the nuance would be lost that only younger gays used it at that time.)

A very minor one, but as I'm trying to think of examples it occurred to me: Adam Smith, writing 243 years ago, uses "pretty much" in the same way we would today (meaning "largely"). Or, the use of "literally" as a mere intensifier, which pedants are always complaining about as a modern barbarity, goes back to at least 1863.

I find it strange that they had portable stoves in Biblical times, but that's probably just me. And that a stock market existed in 1600s England.

Toilets & baths with hot water go back to c. 2000BC in Crete, but had to be built around preexisting hot springs, so there weren't too many of them .... I think just in palaces for the rulers .

You might want to check out the TVTropes pages Aluminium Christmas Trees and Reality is Unrealistic, which while not exactly the same do cover similar sort of ground with regards to media depictions of real-life phenomena.

I was amused that although Titanic was full of anachronisms and inaccuracies, the detail that seemed to garner the most criticism was Winslet's flipping the bird. I guess people think that if it wasn't widespread in films and photographs, it wasn't in use.

One Tiffany problem in the USA is that people here don't understand much about British accents. For instance, there's a widespread misapprehension that "Shakespearean English" was closer to contemporary RP than to American English or West Country English so they would reject a Shakespeare that sounds anything like the real McCoy. They also have a weird stereotype of upper-class British English diction as something prissy and refined and are apt to consider accurate depictions of it "unrealistic".

I got that kind of feeling when I first heard of the Siege of Petersburg during the US Civil War. Large-scale trench warfare! In North America! Fifty years before World War 1!

I don't think it struck me as surprising when I heard it, but the people who basically seem to believe that sex was invented in the 1960s might get this kind of feeling if I tell them that when my grandma worked as a sales clerk in a kiosk during World War 2, one of the things she sold was condoms.

That said, having grown up with the idea that society was extremely old-fashioned before the 1960s, it has sometimes astonished me what kinds of things could be openly hinted at in code-era Hollywood movies, even if they couldn't be directly mentioned or shown.

The classical Kodak advertising slogan "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest" doesn't really sound like something out of the 1880s to me.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 10:26 amOne Tiffany problem in the USA is that people here don't understand much about British accents. For instance, there's a widespread misapprehension that "Shakespearean English" was closer to contemporary RP than to American English or West Country English so they would reject a Shakespeare that sounds anything like the real McCoy. They also have a weird stereotype of upper-class British English diction as something prissy and refined and are apt to consider accurate depictions of it "unrealistic".

While speaking of Shakespeare, it always amuses me how “Shakespearean” English in the UK is generally considered to be the Sir John Gielgud style of dick-shun, dahling. While the closest modern English accent to Elizabethan English is more like West Country English: for example.

Oh, don't start on accents.

Two shows where people have annoyed me (overwhelmingly Americans in both cases, incidentally) have been John Adams and Chernobyl.

With John Adams, people protest that everyone has silly, British accents, and surely the founding fathers didn't speak like that. Well yeah, they did, that's the point! [I'm not saying all the accents were perfectly historical, but certainly many of the actors did adopt intentionally archaic American accents. In particular Dillane's Jefferson's accent is just delightful - half urbane, half somerset farmer]

With Chernobyl, people keep saying that it's a great series but ruined by "unrealistic" lack of Russian accents. Because of course Ukrainian workers would spend their days speaking American English with a strong, Cold-War-spy-film-style Russian accent...

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 5:07 pmWith Chernobyl, people keep saying that it's a great series but ruined by "unrealistic" lack of Russian accents. Because of course Ukrainian workers would spend their days speaking American English with a strong, Cold-War-spy-film-style Russian accent...

Yeah, the use of foreign-accented English for characters who are presumably speaking their native languages is one of the weirdest preoccupations of my people. Right now I'm playing in a role-playing game set in Mexico City and we had to make it an explicit rule that no one would attempt a Mexican accent--because you know if we didn't, somebody would! (I'm playing a hick character so he has a hick accent--a Missouri hick accent since the other players mostly speak like Chicagoans.)

Last year, I did have this a little when reading the (fascinating and amusing) memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, a 15th century French politician. Some things that stood out as 'chronologistically surprising' (among a whole tranche of eye-opening things not directly relevant):

- at one point, armies in northern France bog down in trench warfare. I knew, of course, that cities were besieged, and technically this is a 'siege' of Paris, but rather than defending the walls, the defenders dig trenches quite some distance away, the attackers can't actually encircle the city because it's too big, and the two armies stare at each other across nomansland for some time, hiding in trenches while the artillery fires overhead and occasional snipers take shots at any idiot who doesn't stay under cover.

- at one point, Our Hero, the tyrannical king of France, is negotiating a pair of arranged marriages that will greatly strengthen his position and that of the nation. Their mother protests, but he ignores her complaints... until she makes clear that her issue is that her daughters just don't fancy the guys the king has lined up for them, at which point he folds. Because sure, he's a brutal tyrant (Commynes himself is locked in an iron box for a couple of years), and sure, he's desparate for these marriages to happen in order to, in effect, steal their mother's kingdom, but come on, he's not forced marriage bad. He'll occasionally burn random peasants alive in their houses, but he'd never think of putting a woman at the mercy of a man she's not interested in!

- the acceptance of female rulers in general. Commynes obviously thinks (to the point of not having to bother saying) it's women's place to do what their husband tells them, and he doesn't question that inheritence is systematically biased against daughters. So, in his world, it's rare and unusual for a woman to have any power, and when they do they'll probably be beset by domineering advisors and unscrupulous suitors. However, he doesn't for a moment think that women are in any way less capable of ruling - there's no silly "weaker sex" notion in his day. He praises the cunning of the Duchess of Savoy as equal to that of the (legendarily cunning - his nickname was "The Universal Spider") king, and he's respectful of the potential of Marie of Burgundy (relative to her being an inexperienced, teenage girl who's effectively held hostage by her own people and out of her depth when dealing with the king, as most people are) - he seems to think that, if she'd survived, she could have been a very capable ruler.

[Commynes' world is sexist in a more rigid, but much softer, way than later centuries were. I think it's that there's this overwhelming sense that the world just is how it is, either due to the will of God or just the will of fate, and part of the way the world is is the subjugation of women. So he doesn't have to defend that, to justify it by explaining that women are in some way inferior, or inherently unsuited for independence; and when God (or fate) happens to put a woman in a position of power, he's happy to assume she's just as worthy or unworthy as a man would be. Men in his age didn't have to be misogynist or chauvanist - they didn't have to hate women, try to oppress women, or believe women in any way inferior, or even particularly different from men - in order to ensure their dominance over women, because that dominance was so entrenched. They were free to accept, even celebrate, the occasional exceptional woman who managed to succede, precisely because they were so rare that they were no threat...]

- at one point, northern France is a chaos with three different, large armies hanging around not sure what to do, and the peasants restless as a result. There are bandits, and plain old angry farmers, and as a result any soldiers straggling behind the armies, or any who try to go anywhere in an insufficiently large group, tend to end up being found naked in a roadside ditch with their throats cut. It's horribly dangerous. Therefore, important messages have to be sent by... women, travelling alone with just one personal maid. Because sure, this is a "lone men always get murdered" situation, what with the three different nationalities, the bandits and the peasant unrest, but nobody in the 15th century, not even the peasants, is so barbaric as to waylay a woman! [while the women are perfectly happy to act as spies, messengers and so forth]


- mental illness. At one point, the Duke of Burgundy is overcome by what sounds like clinical depression - no great surprise there. But what surprised me was that Commynes describes this very straightforwardly as a form of mental illness. I don't remember the exact words he uses, but he specifically describes this as an illness, even though he's clear that its symptoms are behavioural and psychological. I knew, of course, that all societies have insanity, and I expected that by the 15th century they would recognise insanity as a medical condition (and later on there's a discussion of whether, as alleged, the King himself is outright mad in his later days, or only tormented by paranoia and fixated on avoiding death). But the Duke isn't mad - he's just depressed. [Commynes isn't there himself at this point and we don't get detailed descriptions, so I don't know exactly what happened to him, and whether there was any psychosis or the like associated, but at least my impression is that we're primarily dealing with depression - he retreats from company, broods on his grievances, loses interest in things he was interested in, etc]. So I was pleasantly surprised that Commynes so straightforwardly sees even this as a medical complaint - and so does everybody else.
Furthermore, while the doctors, like typical mediaeval doctors, go the usual, totally inappropriate treatment directions (lots of alcohol, iirc? and some pseudoscience?), Commynes himself is adamant that the best treatment for mild mental illness is usually therapy. There aren't any professional psychiatrists in his day, of course, but he gives some self-help about putting faith in God and learning to accept one's powerlessness, and advocates a steady regimen of absolutely open conversation with a trusted listener, because talking through these problems out loud helps you to address them.


- democracy. There is democracy in the 15th century, it's just, as it were, an unofficial veto power. Commynes is writing at the birth of the modern state (and to some extent ABOUT the birth of the modern state), and it's shocking how little power even great mediaeval monarchs had. They wander around with these armies... but they know their armies are tiny compared to the population of a large city. The fates of the royals and would-be royals in both France and England are decided by the people: wars come down to whether the people of London, or the people of Paris, will let a certain candidate in. Because if Paris or London says no to you, you're buggered - it's virtually impossible for these monarchs to take a city so large by force (and very difficult to remove them once they're there). Even smaller cities, while passive, can be a major problem: when it's France vs Liege, France will probably win, but it's going to be a serious fight. Even small towns can be a problem, as when the good people of Peronne come close to murdering both the King of France AND the Duke of Burgundy in one night. Commynes, incidentally, although a royal advisor, is a huge fan of England's Parliament.


- in particular, while Commynes doesn't say so, all the nobles are scared shitless by townspeople. When a noble doesn't like you, there's an investigation and a trial and an appeal for clemency and so on, and in the end usually some negotiate settlement... when a town doesn't like you, you get lynched by a mob the next morning. If you're lucky.

- Marxists. Towns periodically rise up and demand radical political and economic revolution. Fortunately for the nobles, the revolutionaries are always idealists - they say what they mean, they don't compromise, and they brutally murder any of their number who seem insufficiently ideologically pure. Therefore, they always lose, because men like King Louis can easily manipulate them (so, for example, if he doesn't like a rebel leader, he can just have it leaked that he's secretly negotiating with him, so that his own side lynch him and he's replaced by someone less frightening).



- this is a silly one, because it's not a conscious surprise, just an instinctual one: strokes. Louis has multiple strokes toward the end of his life - Commynes at one point has to hold him tight as he has a seizure - and the consequences are much the same as they still are. It takes weeks or months to recover, and in particular he has difficulty getting his speech back in one case. Rationally, of course we all know that humans have been having strokes, and consequently requiring rehabilitative care, since the dawn of time. But it's just the sort of thing you don't normally think of as happening back in a world of stone castles and ubiquitous horse dung...

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 5:42 pm

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 5:07 pmWith Chernobyl, people keep saying that it's a great series but ruined by "unrealistic" lack of Russian accents. Because of course Ukrainian workers would spend their days speaking American English with a strong, Cold-War-spy-film-style Russian accent...

Yeah, the use of foreign-accented English for characters who are presumably speaking their native languages is one of the weirdest preoccupations of my people. Right now I'm playing in a role-playing game set in Mexico City and we had to make it an explicit rule that no one would attempt a Mexican accent--because you know if we didn't, somebody would! (I'm playing a hick character so he has a hick accent--a Missouri hick accent since the other players mostly speak like Chicagoans.)

I always wonder whether these people, on some level, really believe that "Russian" is basically just an incredibly thick Russian accent... "ok, so we won't actually fully speak Spanish, but we should have a Spanish accent, right, because we should be as realistic as we can be while still being understandable..."

dewrad wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 1:32 pm

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 10:26 amOne Tiffany problem in the USA is that people here don't understand much about British accents. For instance, there's a widespread misapprehension that "Shakespearean English" was closer to contemporary RP than to American English or West Country English so they would reject a Shakespeare that sounds anything like the real McCoy. They also have a weird stereotype of upper-class British English diction as something prissy and refined and are apt to consider accurate depictions of it "unrealistic".

While speaking of Shakespeare, it always amuses me how “Shakespearean” English in the UK is generally considered to be the Sir John Gielgud style of dick-shun, dahling. While the closest modern English accent to Elizabethan English is more like West Country English: for example.

There was something in Albion's Seed about how there was a dialect or dialects spoken until the mid-19th century in Sussex (or possibly the West Country) that had a number of phonological and grammatical features that are now strongly marked as AAVE (such as habitual be and use of dem as a demonstrative), the implication being that AAVE is essentially a direct descendent of the speech of 17th-century West Country cavaliers and indentured servants.

The other linguistic sections of Albion's Seed are kind of half-baked and I don't know how far this one goes...

The People's Republic of China produced anime well before the 90s? Wha?

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 6:00 pm
- the acceptance of female rulers in general. Commynes obviously thinks (to the point of not having to bother saying) it's women's place to do what their husband tells them, and he doesn't question that inheritence is systematically biased against daughters. So, in his world, it's rare and unusual for a woman to have any power, and when they do they'll probably be beset by domineering advisors and unscrupulous suitors. However, he doesn't for a moment think that women are in any way less capable of ruling - there's no silly "weaker sex" notion in his day. He praises the cunning of the Duchess of Savoy as equal to that of the (legendarily cunning - his nickname was "The Universal Spider") king, and he's respectful of the potential of Marie of Burgundy (relative to her being an inexperienced, teenage girl who's effectively held hostage by her own people and out of her depth when dealing with the king, as most people are) - he seems to think that, if she'd survived, she could have been a very capable ruler.

I generally find it quite fascinating how, historically, some societies that were extremely sexist and patriarchal and completely dominated by men at every level sometimes made one temporary exception for one specific individual woman at the very top of the social structure.

dhok wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 9:20 pm
There was something in Albion's Seed about how there was a dialect or dialects spoken until the mid-19th century in Sussex (or possibly the West Country) that had a number of phonological and grammatical features that are now strongly marked as AAVE (such as habitual be and use of dem as a demonstrative), the implication being that AAVE is essentially a direct descendent of the speech of 17th-century West Country cavaliers and indentured servants.

The other linguistic sections of Albion's Seed are kind of half-baked and I don't know how far this one goes...

Use of demonstrative "them", dh-stopping, and wider use of "be" are widespread characteristics of stereotypical rural British speech. I don't know exactly when "be" is/was used in different dialects, so I can't be sure it was specifically habitual anywhere, but it sounds plausible.

The strong dialects of sussex folk, people of kent, and kentish people (yes, traditionally these were distinguished fiercely) are all now extinct, unfortunately, although some locals, at least in Sussex, still have a bit of the accent (only middle-age and up, though, I've never heard it from young people). The only bit of Sussex dialect that anyone knows now is the county's motto: WUNT BE DRUV. And yes, it's a motto that pretty much demands all-caps.

But yes, certainly AAVE is quite English/conservative in some respects, and specifically southern English - being non-rhotic, for a start.

Most Native American groups originally used body armor, which was gradually abandoned with the introduction of firearms. The early European colonists of the east coast and Southwest were meeting warriors decked out in wooden slat armor or layered leather armor and giant leather shields and everything, but I'm confident this falls under the umbrella of "things people would laugh at you for if you put it in a movie" (as the linked post notes at the beginning, it never is portrayed in movies).

I can't remember who it was now, but I'm pretty sure on the old board one of you praising the lack of Russian accents in Chernobyl complained about the actors in The Death of Stalin using their own L1 English dialects in the film, resulting in Russians speaking in a mish-mash of British and American English. There's no pleasing linguophiles, apparently.

James II, before one of the Jacobite risings, wrote "It is now more than ever now or never." Something about the playful syntax strikes me as very modern.

It's not just that you could have a guy hanging out with Theseus who's named Jason. It's that his wife could quite properly be Melissa.

Kǒng Fūzǐ's Latin name sounds very anachronistic, but of course, he had it from 16th century Europeans.

Mornche Geddick wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 3:52 pm Kǒng Fūzǐ's Latin name sounds very anachronistic, but of course, he had it from 16th century Europeans.

In what sense "anachronistic"? Other figures from the same time period (e.g. Nabonidus, Cyrus, Croesus) are also known by Latinised forms of their names.