An open letter to the writers of Sleepy Hollow regarding language history and more
Dear writers of Sleepy Hollow,
Because it seems that you are too busy writing an awesome show to use Wikipedia, I have a few dates I wanted to share with you:
[spoilers for Sleepy Hollow through episode 1x05, ]-Late 1100's-late 1400's: Approximate date range in which Middle English was spoken in England
-Late 1400's-mid to late 1600's: Approximate date range in which Early Modern English was spoken in England (and its colonies)
-1585: Roanoke colony founded
-early 1590's: Shakespeare starts getting his plays performed in London
So, as you can see, the Roakoke colonists would have spoken Early Modern English, not Middle English. They would be harder to understand than Ichabod (because by his origin in the late 1700's fully modern English was being spoken). They would pronounce some words weirdly to our ears (the Great Vowel Shift had already changed pronunciations of many sounds from their Middle English forms, but was not yet quite complete), and have some vocabulary and grammatical oddities. But you certainly shouldn't be calling what they spoke Middle English, and I'm not convinced that an accurate representation of their dialect would need a translator. Just as we can understand Shakespeare, who was writing very shortly after the Roanoke colony was lost, with just an occasional footnote, they would be intelligible. (Look, I even found a video about a Globe Theater production in Shakespeare's original pronunciation on youtube. First example of original pronunciation is about 2:30 in. Note that you can understand the words just fine.)
Also, I would have liked it much better if Pestilence's attempt to bring a 16th-century plague back into the world was foiled with antibiotics, not the power of faith and the ghost of Virginia Dare or whatever. Like, I know that this is a fantasy show, but I think that would have been some nifty trope subversion there. Maybe we can have a scene in the future where Ichabod gets pneumonia or an infected wound or something and thinks that he's going to die, but actually he just gets to learn that modern medicine is pretty damn useful.
Y'all, I love this show hard. I am 100% down with the headless horseman using the automatic gun, the answers in George Washington's Bible, the Boston Tea Party actually being a cover to steal a dark magic book/weapon, and all the other glorious ridiculousness. But you have to stop knocking me out of the story with shit like the misuse of Middle English and the fucking Harris's hawk in the first episode. (That species doesn't live anywhere near Sleepy Hollow, NY, or anywhere Katrina could conceivably have been! They're from the southwest! Why couldn't you have just gotten a damn red tail or something??? I know Harris's hawks are easy to train, but I am 100% convinced that you could have found a more appropriate raptor if you tried. It's not like they're even native to the filming location in NC either.)
However much this show might give me the Nerd Twitches, I really do love the characters of Abbie and Ichabod. I love Ichabod's ongoing adventures with the 21st century. I love Abbie and Jenny's difficult sibling relationship and the beginnings of Abbie's attempt to make things right. I love that even if the show gets its hawks wrong, it gets the diversity of people so very right. Also, Ichabod/Onstar Lady OTP.
Sincerely,
tardis_stowaway
PS: Buy Ichabod some new clothes already, at least a change of shirt and pants. I can practically smell him through my tv screen. He was buried in those clothes, for crying out loud.
Because it seems that you are too busy writing an awesome show to use Wikipedia, I have a few dates I wanted to share with you:
[spoilers for Sleepy Hollow through episode 1x05, ]-Late 1100's-late 1400's: Approximate date range in which Middle English was spoken in England
-Late 1400's-mid to late 1600's: Approximate date range in which Early Modern English was spoken in England (and its colonies)
-1585: Roanoke colony founded
-early 1590's: Shakespeare starts getting his plays performed in London
So, as you can see, the Roakoke colonists would have spoken Early Modern English, not Middle English. They would be harder to understand than Ichabod (because by his origin in the late 1700's fully modern English was being spoken). They would pronounce some words weirdly to our ears (the Great Vowel Shift had already changed pronunciations of many sounds from their Middle English forms, but was not yet quite complete), and have some vocabulary and grammatical oddities. But you certainly shouldn't be calling what they spoke Middle English, and I'm not convinced that an accurate representation of their dialect would need a translator. Just as we can understand Shakespeare, who was writing very shortly after the Roanoke colony was lost, with just an occasional footnote, they would be intelligible. (Look, I even found a video about a Globe Theater production in Shakespeare's original pronunciation on youtube. First example of original pronunciation is about 2:30 in. Note that you can understand the words just fine.)
Also, I would have liked it much better if Pestilence's attempt to bring a 16th-century plague back into the world was foiled with antibiotics, not the power of faith and the ghost of Virginia Dare or whatever. Like, I know that this is a fantasy show, but I think that would have been some nifty trope subversion there. Maybe we can have a scene in the future where Ichabod gets pneumonia or an infected wound or something and thinks that he's going to die, but actually he just gets to learn that modern medicine is pretty damn useful.
Y'all, I love this show hard. I am 100% down with the headless horseman using the automatic gun, the answers in George Washington's Bible, the Boston Tea Party actually being a cover to steal a dark magic book/weapon, and all the other glorious ridiculousness. But you have to stop knocking me out of the story with shit like the misuse of Middle English and the fucking Harris's hawk in the first episode. (That species doesn't live anywhere near Sleepy Hollow, NY, or anywhere Katrina could conceivably have been! They're from the southwest! Why couldn't you have just gotten a damn red tail or something??? I know Harris's hawks are easy to train, but I am 100% convinced that you could have found a more appropriate raptor if you tried. It's not like they're even native to the filming location in NC either.)
However much this show might give me the Nerd Twitches, I really do love the characters of Abbie and Ichabod. I love Ichabod's ongoing adventures with the 21st century. I love Abbie and Jenny's difficult sibling relationship and the beginnings of Abbie's attempt to make things right. I love that even if the show gets its hawks wrong, it gets the diversity of people so very right. Also, Ichabod/Onstar Lady OTP.
Sincerely,
tardis_stowaway
PS: Buy Ichabod some new clothes already, at least a change of shirt and pants. I can practically smell him through my tv screen. He was buried in those clothes, for crying out loud.