I've seen a couple of threads on similar topics, but I'm mostly interested in learning to speak it/write it naturally, changing less ''time appropriate common words and all that jazz.'' (Mostly British, preferably Northern British dialects.) Also, would that question work better in a subreddit on language?
Or would I have to read a lot of books of the time period? (I know of Gatsby, obviously, Wodehouse, Tally Ho! -text-game- (which seems time appropriate as the writer is a Wodehouse lover and a history teacher I believe) also, and some others)
If so any recommendations for portayals of historically accurate language, preferably that isn't overly enriched jargon for writing's sake, recent or of the time?
(or movies of the 1920s mainly, though I believe they were silent)
Mostly to learn common people's/and more high class speech, if there are differences, that is. Or at least learn something about the subject or myths about the speech of the time. And also if some words weren't contracted and things along those lines.
Thanks for anything
I would point you to my recent Monday Methods post on doing research to inform historical fiction, specifically the third piece of advice:
No. 3: Read books, magazines, and other texts from the period
(Obviously, this can be problematic depending on what you’re researching. Some periods have very little documentary evidence left. You might also be blocked by a lack of translations.)
Fiction from the period you’re writing about is obviously not true – you can’t take Little Women as an objectively accurate representation of life in 1860s Massachusetts – but on the other hand, it shows you what people of that culture considered normal, unfortunate, or interesting. We can see that it was important for middle-class women to participate in charity, and that people perceived a moral dimension to fashion choices beyond simply “sexy = bad”. It gives us descriptions of what school could be like, family letter-reading, handicrafts, and courtships.
It’s important, though, to read widely. There are writers in every era who concoct unrealistic characters and situations, and you don’t want to assume that the only book you pick up is useful to copy. Once you start to read literature from the period you’re looking into regularly, you’ll spot the patterns of literary tropes and normal manners.
This applies to speech/writing patterns as much as, if not more than, the stuff I pointed out in that. Read primary sources, and keep a notebook near you to jot down what "rules" you notice in what you're reading. Are there many contractions? If there are, who's using them? Are sentences long or short? How do the characters address one another? And so on. There's no shortcut.
You might also look for books about writing that were published during that period. I'm familiar with a couple on verse (best practices, historical use of poetic conventions, etc). (E.g.: Saintsbury's Historical Manual of English Prosody (1919)I'd imagine there are similar books on other genres This, again, might give you some idea about what they thought was important in language; why one phrase could sound crass and another, near-poetic. (Probably this is more of a skimming project than an actual reading one!)