Challenge 989 Response

Boyfriends in Days of Yore

with Gary Inbinder

In Gary Inbinder’s Miss Moore: Was the term “boyfriend” in common use in 1907?

[Gary Inbinder] The answer, from a very reliable online source:

also boy-friend, “favorite male companion” (with implication of romantic connection), “a woman’s paramour,” 1909, from boy + friend (n.). It was attested earlier in a non-romantic sense of “juvenile male companion” (1850).

I’m off by two years. You got me, Don!

[Don Webb] Not at all, Gary I.! It seemed to me that, what with the early date and all the horses and carriages, readers might wonder whether colloquialisms of more than a century past would be quite the same as today’s.

[Gary I.] Thanks, Don. It was a good question. I try to avoid anachronisms in my historical fiction. I spot them quite frequently in films and novels, but such goofs generally involve things, such as clothing, hair styles, furnishings, weapons, etc. although, in a low-budget production, a Tolstoy or Jane Austen character might talk like a Valley Girl.

The vernacular of a recent period, like the early 20th century, can be tricky, but I don’t think too many readers would question a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” reference. After all, that was the era of ragtime dances like the turkey trot and bunny hug, lyrics with moon, June and spoon, hello ma’ honey, cuddle up a little closer, pretty baby, oh you beautiful doll, etc.

For the distant past. writers like Sir Walter Scott used to make something up that sounded old; I call it “ye olde shoppe” speak. Modernly, writers make historical figures speak more like our contemporaries. For example, in the popular “Rome” series, patricians have Oxbridge accents and a contemporary upper-class British vernacular to match; the plebes speak like cockneys.

[Don W.] A Classicist once remarked to me that the Roman empire depicted in British TV series struck him funny for that very reason. He would not have necessarily recommended that the dialogue be delivered in Brooklynese, but he did expect it to be more reminiscent of the Cosa Nostra.

And yet, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is as English as can be. Making the language easy for the groundlings to understand must have been a top priority, but the language also implied that the action itself need not be uniquely Roman. Such are the intriguing questions and problems posed by intercultural translation. At this point, I think, we’re broadening the original topic considerably, but that’s one of the benefits of the Challenges.