Have you ever wondered if Deadwood got it right?

 I spend a lot of time wondering about Deadwood and other shows set it past English-speaking environments. How do we know if people really talked like that? Well, there is some evidence. But the consensus is that Deadwood is full of it.

 

Will people in the future worry about these things? 

 

xkcd: Period Speech:

via delong.typepad.com

Comments

[King-Walters]

Your first link seeems to be broken.

I don't think that comic makes much sense. Are there really people who can't tell the difference between Chaucer and the Beowulf poet, or between Shakespeare and Austen? Not to mention the fact that many past dialects will be associated with particular times and places. Sure, there will be anachronisms, but I don't think people two hundred years in the future will associate pirate talk with the Wild West, or contemporary English with the Regency.

[Dennis Brennan]

As I mentioned over at that other place...

David Milch and the Deadwood writing staff very intentionally used anachronistic profanity. The alternative would have been for everyone to sound like Yosemite Sam.

[Bruce]

Hm - if we follow the analogy closely, how many people can distinguish between Chaucer and Shakespeare? If we're talking, say, 300 years in the future, surely the analogy would be from 1710 on back, perhaps to 1310*...and how many can distinguish, say, between different 17th century varieties of English?

Bruce

* - Beowulf is rather more than 400 years before Shakespear...

[Helena]

Two days ago, I arrived at the conclusion that, in a thousand years, Scientology will be a bona fide, thousand year-old religion. Oh, future, I weep for thee.