Ye Olde Foreigne Languages

[dhok]

The title says it all. In English, extra <e>'s, plus "ye" for "the", mark fake old-style English. What about other languages, like French, Spanish, etc.?

[Mr. Z]

When you want to fake old-style Hebrew, you usually use a lot of possession markers on nouns and object markers on verbs, and move the verb to the beginning of the sentence (e.g. VSO order instead of SVO).

[CrazyEttin]

Fake old-style finnish is usually just modern finnish written with the orthography of Mikael Agricola who first developed an orthography for finnish language. And sometimes word "se" (it) used as a definite article.

[sirdanilot]

In Dutch, you will turn every word-final <s> into <sch>, every <aa> into <ae>, every <ei> into <ey>, most <k> s into <ck>, sequences of <ks> into <ckx>, and many more. We'll use the old 2nd person pronouns 'gij', rather than contemporary 'jij' or 'u'. We will also try to insert some old case marking -n, but we'll usually fail at doing it correctly. Randomly capitalizing words is also fun. I'll just post an example.

Deze mens is waarlijk bedeeld met meer wijsheid dan u.

Deezen mensch is Waerlijck bedeeld met meer Wysheydt dan ghij.

"This human is truly endowed with more wisdom than you."

[Shm Jay]

You can even fake Esperanto to make it look medieval.

[roninbodhisattva]

You can even fake Esperanto to make it look medieval.

I may create a sister for Esperanto out of that now as a joke.

[tezcatlip0ca]

Spanish: Write "x" instead of "j", "ça, ço, çu" instead of "za, zo, zu", etc. Hardly ever done around here.

[Ser]

*Strongly stresses the "hardly ever"*

Years of watching TV and I can't even remember a single instance of fake old language...

[Ulrike Meinhof]

In Swedish, you'd use plural forms of verbs, like "äro", "kommo" etc. (often incorrectly), randomly replace <v> with <fv> or <hv> (I rarely see fake old Swedish with plain <f> for <v>, although this was common in the old orthography), substitute <e> for many <ä>s, <-arne> for <-arna> and I don't know what else. When I want it to look old, I make sure it's genuine, not faked... Although the <e> for <ä> thing you can pretty much just bullshit your way through, since that was never really standardised fully until around the turn of the 20th century.

[Niedokonany]

In Polish, to sound and look vaguely archaic:

orthography: change i/j to y (when they stand for /j/), ks to x
syntax: use a lot of final verbs, detached adjectives, dative-impersonal structures like "trzeba nam", adverbial participles, esp. anterior ones (obróciwszy się)
morphology: use instrumental plural -y/i instead of -ami, genetive plurals like koloniy (kolonii), accusatives like kompanyą (kompanię), in adjectives: instrumental and locative sg -em, plural instrumental -emi instead of -ym/ymi, short adjectival and participial forms such as łaskaw, pogrzebion, conjugate verbs such as pokazywać as pokazywam, pokazywasz... instead of pokazuję, pokazujesz, żywiesz instead of żyjesz
vocabulary: probably it's the most frequently employed strategy: throw in some rzec, kontent, rad, pono, przecie, zaiste, azaliż, albowiem, nie lza, ku, chędożyć, siermiężny, alibo, lubo, tako, waszmość, waść, aśćka, białogłowa etc. even if you do it randomly and without much understanding - few people will notice

additionally, you might want to throw in some Latin in a macaronic fashion

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

In French... oh boy. Where do I start? In Quebec, at least, common rules would be : turn "i" into "y", especially when following "o". Add and delete various consonants, and you may replace any "s" with "z" or "x", and you can replace any final "x" with "s". Then, you have all the ancient sounding expressions.

For Japanese... Since Japanese students still study old Japanese, there's no point in creating a fake version. Though most students would be bad enough to make gross mistakes.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

In French... oh boy. Where do I start? In Quebec, at least, common rules would be : turn "i" into "y", especially when following "o". Add and delete various consonants, and you may replace any "s" with "z" or "x", and you can replace any final "x" with "s". Then, you have all the ancient sounding expressions.

One thing I've been wondering: Voltaire and those old guys write étois for étais etc., was that just an old spelling convention, or was it actually pronounced /etwa/?

[Cathbad]

In Slovene? Perceived pre-Romantic 'free-for-all' orthography always works! Also inu instead of in 'and' (as in Primož Trubar's famous 16th century sermon: "STATI INU OBSTATI" - roughly "To Stand and Stay"), and weird particles like pak, randomly odd vocabulary choices, and so on.

Funnily enough, actually looking at something from 1790 (namely the classic comedies adapted from German and French originals by Anton Tomaž Linhart), the actual orthography seems to set the most distance, especially the sibilants: sh for ž [Z], z for c [ts], zh for č [tS], and so on (basically Enhanced German Orthography). The language itself is completely transparent for a modern native speaker, so not much has changed in 220 years at all.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

One thing I've been wondering: Voltaire and those old guys write étois for étais etc., was that just an old spelling convention, or was it actually pronounced /etwa/?

It was pronounced /etwE/.

[Qwynegold]

In Swedish, you'd use plural forms of verbs, like "äro", "kommo" etc. (often incorrectly), randomly replace <v> with <fv> or <hv> (I rarely see fake old Swedish with plain <f> for <v>, although this was common in the old orthography), substitute <e> for many <ä>s, <-arne> for <-arna> and I don't know what else. When I want it to look old, I make sure it's genuine, not faked... Although the <e> for <ä> thing you can pretty much just bullshit your way through, since that was never really standardised fully until around the turn of the 20th century.

Also <w> for <v>.

[Jipí]

Hardly done in German, but for fake pre-20th-c. orthography, use lots of "ey" instead of "ei", use "ck" to indicate k after a long e, use "ß" for all "ss". Also, long s is obligatory. For even older-looking German, you probably also want to have lots of final "mb" instead of plain "m", and stick an "e" on basically everything that ends in a consonant... You may also want to spell all "au" as "auw" or something. Also, capitalize more or less randomly.

Zugegeben: ich bin insaße eyner Heyl= & pflehge=anſtalt, meyn pflehger beobachthet mich, läßet mich kaum aus dem aug'; denn in der Thuer iſt eyn guck=loch, & meynes pflehgers aug' iſt von jenem braune, welches mich, den Blau=Aeugiſchen, nicht durchſchauen kan.

[Niedokonany]

Also inu instead of in 'and'

What's the etymology of this anyway?

[Viktor77]

In French... oh boy. Where do I start? In Quebec, at least, common rules would be : turn "i" into "y", especially when following "o". Add and delete various consonants, and you may replace any "s" with "z" or "x", and you can replace any final "x" with "s". Then, you have all the ancient sounding expressions.

Also replace s in circumflexed vowels too, no? Tête > Teste. Tôt > Tost. Château > Chasteau.

[Jipí]

Ime Pârzival reit Gâwan nâ "schastel marveile" z'âventiure. (In Perceval, Gawain rides to "schastel marveile" for adventure. That's Old French as filtered through Middle High German ~1185.)

[linguoboy]

Zugegeben: ich bin insaße eyner Heyl= & pflehge=anſtalt, meyn pflehger beobachtet mich, läßet mich kaum aus dem aug'; denn in der Tuer iſt eyn guck=loch, & meynes pflehgers aug' iſt von jenem braune, welches mich, den Blau=Aeugiſchen, nicht durchſchauen kan.

What, no t > th?

[Jipí]

What, no t > th?

How could I forget

[spats]

One thing I've been wondering: Voltaire and those old guys write étois for étais etc., was that just an old spelling convention, or was it actually pronounced /etwa/?

It was pronounced /etwE/.

My understanding is that there was a phonological split at some point and they respelled the /E/ version of <oi> as <ai> (while the [we] > [wa] version stayed <oi>).

[sirdanilot]

*Strongly stresses the "hardly ever"*

Years of watching TV and I can't even remember a single instance of fake old language...

Perhaps this is a bit of a cultural thing? I think that in an environment where most people are monolingual, or just generally suck at the foreign languages they speak (German, Spanish and Japanese speaking areas, for one), there will be less consciousness of the language they speak, and as a result you'll see less of these things.

Do people in Spain mimic other people's accent, know exactly where someone comes from based on their accent etc.? I can say that at least in Dutch, I can mimic most people's accents and in most friend groups there's plenty of memes going around involving language. From people from my region, I'll hear exactly what area they are from, and for Dutch speakers in general I'll always have some idea of their location, if they don't talk perfectly standard Dutch. I see the same lack of this consciousness in Brazil, where most people are monolingual or suck at their foreign languages (usually English). I hardly ever hear people from, for example, Rio de Janeiro, mimicking people from São Paulo (which have a blatant alveolar approximant for /r/ in coda-position, which sounds ridiculous in my ears) if they appear on TV or something. While if I hear someone talk some ridiculous dialect on Dutch TV, people seem more inclined to laugh at it or mimic them etcetera.

But again, this is just some random hypothesis here.

[Shrdlu]

It is probably true. Something similar: there is a place in Sweden called Dalarna(the valleys). I never made the connection that it meant "the valleys" so Dalarna(the place called "the valleys") and Dalarna (the valleys in general) where two different things in my mind until I started studing linguistics as an amateur. Then it hit me.

[Niedokonany]

What, no t > th?

How could I forget

There was <th> for /t/ in Old Polish, too, but it's too obscure to be used as a popular archaizing device.