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krirotoday at 12:45 PM1 replyview on HN

There's a decent argument for using today's words even for settings that are no the current world. But for fantasy specifically I find it breaks immersion quite a bit. I'm not convinced by the "language changes over time" line of argument. If you take it to a bit more of an extreme it would also be fine to have characters say "cool" or even use some gen-z-ism etc, because hey words change meaning over time after all.

However, I'm also aware that I'm kind of a hypocrite because I'm totally fine with current world grammar and punctuation for example.


Replies

short_sells_pootoday at 1:00 PM

You raise a good point, but where would we stop? Should movies depicting medieval events use medieval English? It was the lingo at the time after all.

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