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Don't know the answer, but perhaps you could find a movie from that time period with those types of characters and watch/listen to it a couple of times. Just a thought.
How kids talked "in New York" is kind of like asking how they talked "in England." Well...not quite as bad as that, but NY is a big state and has a lot of different regional accents.
Even if you look at NY City alone, that's going to change dramatically depending on the neighborhood. Bronx? Brooklyn? Manhattan? Queens? Caucasian? Asian? Italian? African American? Upper class? Middle class? Lower class? All of them different.
You might want to try looking around at videos of interviews from back then. Or at old TV and movies, though you should take those with a grain of salt. They tended to throw in a lot of "groovy" and "far out" and "let's rap, man" lingo that made even me (a middle class white kid living in rural Maryland) cringe at the time because it didn't ring true.
Micah wrote: "How kids talked "in New York" is kind of like asking how they talked "in England." Well...not quite as bad as that, but NY is a big state and has a lot of different regional accents.
Even if yo..."
It won't be New York, it's a fictional city based on New York, so something like their talk. And characters are:
Main character is a 21 year old white male, with a working class background, but has managed to graduate from university with honors.
His best friend, same age, is African-American, middle-class.
There will also be a girl, same age, white, middle-class, and another white male, 23 years of age, from higher middle-class background, and yet another white male, 29 years of age, with middle-class background.
I don't want it cringe-worthy, but quite realistic, though I don't know if it matters that much where in NY they come from...?
V.M. wrote: "You could try these movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89wfy... for dialogue ideas."Thanks, V.M!
V.M. wrote: "AE - This may also be helpful: 1. http://www.smash.com/nyc-nostalgia-li...
2. http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2......"
These are awesome articles and videos. :-) Thanks.
If it's a fictional placed based on NYC, go with the way the three leads from The Mod Squad spoke. It's not at all accurate and if I recall, it raised a few hackles on some jive turkeys on another thread, which is why I suggest it. Accuracy will likely fall flat, you dig?
Christina wrote: "If it's a fictional placed based on NYC, go with the way the three leads from The Mod Squad spoke. It's not at all accurate and if I recall, it raised a few hackles on some jive turkeys on another ..."Well, I'm not going plainly on accuracy, since it's way beyond my skills to copy a born and bred Queens/Bronx/Brooklyn/etc. person's way of talking, but I want to use some kind of language that points to that time and that area every now and then in the dialogue.
I found a link that seems helpful. Would anyone be interested in taking a look and see if this indeed were words in use back then? http://www.inthe70s.com/generated/ter...
Thanks again for all good advice. :-)
Trying to do dialect from a place you haven't lived is tricky. But if you want to find expressions and words that might have been used in NY at that time, there's a book that may be useful. Robert Hendrickson's New Yawk Tawk: A Dictionary of New York City Expressions. published in 2002 by Castle Books, ISBN 0-7858-1556-2. I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, lived in Manhattan and the Bronx (from 1944-1967), until I moved away. I will say the 16 page introduction is very good, and will give you some guidelines. The book itself has many, many expressions I recognize and many I do not, but the author does put datelines on many of them.
Charles wrote: "Trying to do dialect from a place you haven't lived is tricky. But if you want to find expressions and words that might have been used in NY at that time, there's a book that may be useful. Robert ..."Thank you, Charles. That's great. I will definitely check in on that. :-)
Checking your link, some of these are way more eighties than seventies and some I would question, like 'Audi 5000' I'm sure that's way more nineties. But I'm glad to see they used the correct spelling of psyche and not 'sike' that I see today. Another thing to keep in mind is that slang differed from subculture to subcuture as well as region. Punk, disco, glam, prog, etc and that's just the popular music scenes. I would suggest peppering a small handful of the more generally used slang and not getting too technical.
Christina wrote: "Checking your link, some of these are way more eighties than seventies and some I would question, like 'Audi 5000' I'm sure that's way more nineties. But I'm glad to see they used the correct spell..."*pressing the like button*
Yes, that's what I had in mind, but since I'm born and bred in Sweden I'm not really that knowledgeable in what the generally used words are, and I don't want to use something out of lack of knowledge that will make the reader lose his/her concentration.
The sites I've checked seem to agree that 'dig it' was quite popular, as were 'cat', 'far out', 'chick', 'psyche' (as you mentioned), 'bread', and 'jive'.
Cool was a big one as well. Still is, but it seemed... Cooler. ;) More like, 'be cool' or 'it's cool' and not so much 'that's so cool!'
A lot of the ones on that list of terms are actually older than the '70s, too. Spaz is at least from the the 50s, though the term was still used in the '70s.Jive, bread, cool, cat, chick...those are all very old. We're talking like '30s and '40s maybe older.
Keep on Truckin' was from the late '60s and was from Zap comix by Robert Crum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_on_...
Even 'dig' is way older than the 70s. Its first recorded use was in the '30s for both its meanings ('understand' as in "That's my car, you dig?", and 'appreciate' as in "Oh, man, I really dig that song.") Reference Miles Davis's 1951 album "Dig."
A lot of the phrases came out of black culture as far back as the '20s or so, like the swing music era. They were picked up later and popularized through the Beat poets and writers, and bebop music. And the Beats had a big influence on the '60s hippie culture, which had an influence on into the '70s.
As such, a lot of those phrases were not really part of most kids' normal speech, but were used (at least in my circles) much like catch phrases or popular movie/TV quotes are today. In other words, they were used consciously rather than subconsciously. You wouldn't use a lot of them when speaking around adults, but only with your peers and probably not even with them if you were in one-on-one private conversations because in those settings you weren't putting on a show for others.
If someone had seriously said "can you dig it" among my friends and they weren't obviously using the phrase as an add-on catch phrase...I think we all would have been like "what's this guy's deal?"
I think I still talk like a person from the 70s, but I didn't grow up in NYC (or anywhere close). I did have an older brother who was pretty much a hippie (for what that's worth). The only idioms I recall from then that were in common use (outside of TV and/or song lyrics) were: cool, man (not dude), chick. Occasionally I heard "bread" (money) but more often "dough" (a much older term). "Grass" was used more than "weed" (but is was always "pot plant". No one said "grass plant").
Again, this was not in NYC, but my impression at the time was that idiomatic speech there was more related to ethnic neighborhoods. Harlem had its own speech patterns, of course, but I believe musicians also had their own within that (Jazz culture).
(Hippie culture had its own idiomatic speech, as did surfer culture, wherever they occurred -- not to many surfers in NYC, I suspect. Some hippies, I imagine).
The people you describe aren't from any of those subcultures, so I wouldn't expect them to use much idiomatic speech beyond: "cool" "it's cool" "don't sweat it" "Hey, man." "Who was that chick?" Someone (younger) might say "Wow! Far out!" "Trippy" was used quite a bit. (Caveat, that's circa '74-'76. I don't recall '71 all that well.)
At some point, people I knew did start saying "righteous!" but that tended to be more self-conscious. (I never said and few of my friends did. It was a more a stoner thing. Forgot to mention stoners.) Note: The Righteous Brothers started in 1963, so the term must have become popular before that.
My impression is that a lot of "typical" 70/60's slang (dig it, groovy) was not in common usage among people who were middle class. Also, your 29-yr-old character would have had his speech patterns formed in the 50s.
A working-class character would speak differently, but I think that would depend on his ethnic mostly on his background.
One movie you might want to check out (although it's not that much fun to watch IMO) is Taxi Driver. It was released in 1976, but filmed and set earlier, it's set in NYC and I don't think it tries to present such a self-conscious image of the culture of the time, the way the "Mod Squad" did. I suspect the way people talk on Taxi Driver is fairly representative of how they actually did talk, and as I recall, is not that strongly idiomatic. You might get some ideas for working-class speech patterns from it.
Two other movies from the 70s that are set in NYC are "Three Days of the Condor" (1975) and "Klute" (1971). I don't recall either using a lot of idioms.
My point here is that these movies were all made in the 70s and reflected what the viewing public considered to be realistic portrayals of NYC and it's denizens in the 70s. "Taxi Driver" is the most atmospheric.
But overall (and I see there's already a wealth of opinion here) I'd suggest going light in the idioms and simply having your character speak in non-idiomatic speech with a few exceptions. (And I suggest relying on your beta readers here.) Not everyone in any era adopts the idioms, so idioms are less characteristic than fashion, TV shows, events in the news, and views on prominent social issues. (Given you are writing about a fictional NYC, I imagine those will translate, but probably not perfectly.)
I think it's more important to avoid current idioms or those tied to a different decade or culture ("Dude! That was ... like ... so totally rad." "Oh suck, dude! Y'like totally harshed my buzz!" and of course, "Totally awesome!") Just avoid "totally", "like" (as a connective particle) and "Awesome!" (And "Rad!".) ;-)
(Sorry, got carried away.) Anyhow, I think it's more important to avoid the wrong idioms than it is try to employ the right ones. Rely more heavily on other details of the period to set the sense of place.
I hope all that rambling is of some help.
I was surprised once watching a 1950 b/w movie, a scene in a bar, where the bartender told the customer, "You ain't too hip, are you?" I was certain my generation invented that. I think "hip" and "cool" would work in the 1940s all the way into today. Those two words never left the vocabulary, and never changed.
Owen wrote: "One movie you might want to check out (although it's not that much fun to watch IMO) is Taxi Driver...I don't think it tries to present such a self-conscious image of the culture of the time, the way the "Mod Squad" did. I suspect the way people talk on Taxi Driver is fairly representative of how they actually did talk..."Ditto the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy. Very gritty and depressing, but it captured a lot of the street culture of NYC at the turn of the decade.
Ken wrote: "I was surprised once watching a 1950 b/w movie, a scene in a bar, where the bartender told the customer, "You ain't too hip, are you?" I was certain my generation invented that. I think "hip" and..."Hip came from at least the '20s. In the swing era (Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie...all them) 'hip' (or often 'hep') were in wide usage.
Reference Cab Calloway's "Are You Hep to the Jive" in which he uses 'hep' 'jive' 'dig' and 'in the groove.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgW3R...
Oh...and no one really said 'Keep on Truckin'It would show up in drawings and on t-shirts and things like that, usually with Crum's Mr. Natural character, but it wasn't really used in speech.
Micah wrote: "Reference Cab Calloway's "Are You Hep to the Jive" in which he uses 'hep' 'jive' 'dig' and 'in the groove..."
I was familiar with "hep," and in the '50s it wasn't hip to say hep, and that was when I thought the word changed. That movie, for me, put it back in the '40s, but both words could have originated in the '20s. I'll let Owen research that.
I was familiar with "hep," and in the '50s it wasn't hip to say hep, and that was when I thought the word changed. That movie, for me, put it back in the '40s, but both words could have originated in the '20s. I'll let Owen research that.
These are wonderful comments. I'm so happy for all your input, and it's fabulous hearing that some of you actually grew up hearing and talking like this. No surprise, really, but it's still fascinating. :-) (Yes, I love old times, being an archaeologist originally... ;-) )
Micah wrote: "Ditto the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy. Very gritty and depressing, but it captured a lot of the street culture of NYC at the turn of the decade..."Indeed. Not sure what sort of feel your version of NYC has, but if you seedy street culture with an edge, Midnight Cowboy will give you an great example of that. Yes, depressing. Great performance by Dustin Hoffman.
Ken wrote: "I was familiar with "hep," and in the '50s it wasn't hip to say hep, and that was when I thought the word changed. That movie, for me, put it back in the '40s, but both words could have originated in the '20s. I'll let Owen research that."Micah seems to have a quite good handle on this already. I'll defer to him.
Owen wrote: "Micah wrote: "Ditto the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy. Very gritty and depressing, but it captured a lot of the street culture of NYC at the turn of the decade..."Indeed. Not sure what sort of feel ..."
Probably not as gritty as that. It's the same nameless city as in 'Ithotu', but during the 70's, when Henry/Caesar is young (his first Research Project). Grittier than in the two first books, but not as bad as the real thing.
And yes, love Dustin Hoffman. He's a great actor. Haven't seen 'Midnight Cowboy', though, so that'll be a good evening someday soon. :-)
A.E. wrote: "Probably not as gritty as that. It's the same nameless city as in 'Ithotu', but during the 70's, when Henry/Caesar is young (his first Research Project). Grittier than in the two first books, but not as bad as the real thing..."Got it. If you're looking for a "palette", as well as geting a feel for the dialog of the time, those movies might be a good place to start. You can lighten things up as you like. :-)
PS: This is interesting because I got a strong feeling that the nameless city was the WDC metro area. To me, the opening paragraphs were written like you might have been there.
Owen wrote: "A.E. wrote: "Probably not as gritty as that. It's the same nameless city as in 'Ithotu', but during the 70's, when Henry/Caesar is young (his first Research Project). Grittier than in the two first..."Yeah, I like that thought. :-) And it's fascinating to hear that I managed to describe a place you thought resembled WDC. The only place in the US I've ever visited was NYC, and that must've been in 2003. My nameless city might have similarities with NY (because I can relate to it), but I've smoothed it out a bit. ;-)
Owen wrote: "Micah seems to have a quite good handle on this already. I'll defer to him..."Let's defer to Google and wikipedia instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_%28s...
"The term hip is recorded in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the early 1900s, derived from the earlier form hep. In the 1930s and 1940s, it had become a common slang term, particularly in the African-American dominated jazz scene."
So...WAY earlier than even I had suspected.
Micah wrote: "Owen wrote: "Micah seems to have a quite good handle on this already. I'll defer to him..."Let's defer to Google and wikipedia instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_%28s...
"The term hip..."
That's fascinating! Wikipedia might be a better resource of colloquial words than I thought.
A.E. wrote: "That's fascinating! Wikipedia might be a better resource of colloquial words than I thought..."I find Wikipedia to be an excellent resource -- for fiction.
Micah wrote: "Let's defer to Google and wikipedia instead:..."
I, for one, do not welcome my new Google and Wikipedia overlords! (I'm kinda on the fence about robots.) ;-)
Owen wrote: "I, for one, do not welcome my new Google and Wikipedia overlords!"Meh. They're overlords. That means they're often times handy to consult but no way you should trust them.
And at least wikipedia comes with references.
Micah wrote: "Meh. They're overlords. That means they're often times handy to consult but no way you should trust them..."That's why I like them for fiction (our fiction in particularl). I get interesting ideas, but I don't care if the info is accurate. I especially like to look for inspiration for villains there.
Hi! It's been a while. I've now started to work on the text, and of course a new question showed up immediately. :-) Can I use the words: 'Come on!' or is that expression of later date?Text goes like this:
Jack squinted at him. “You haven’t heard?”
“What?”
“G’s gone.”
Henry raised his eyebrows. “Come on!”
You mean like, "Ah, come on, man!" as in "I don't believe you" or "stop that"?I think you're safe. My grandfather used to use both "come on" and "go on" interchangably in the late seventies.
Christina wrote: "You mean like, "Ah, come on, man!" as in "I don't believe you" or "stop that"?I think you're safe. My grandfather used to use both "come on" and "go on" interchangably in the late seventies."
Thank you, Christina! That's great! I was thinking more in the 'unbelieving' terms. I tried 'Jump back' and 'Go home', which I saw at some place, but it sounded... not real... :-)
And what about "No way?" instead of "Come on!"? Would that work or is that of a later date? Can't find any references to the date when it was first used on Urban Dictionary, and I'm not that sure how reliable the answers are there either.Just found the answer on dictionary.com. :-)
http://dictionary.reference.com/brows...
A.E. wrote: "And what about "No way?" instead of "Come on!"? Would that work or is that of a later date? Can't find any references to the date when it was first used on Urban Dictionary, and I'm not that sure h...""No way!" goes back a long time. I believe I recall it from high school.
A similar term that I recall, but was less common was: "Get outta here!" That (the way I heard it) has more of a sense of: "You expect me to believe that?" and is more derisive than: "No way!"
I would agree with the above posts for either "No Way" or "Get outta here". Both were in broad use during the mid seventies. A resource you might consider that is pretty good for language use is the TV show, "That 70's show". I grew up in the 70s and think it is really good on the language use.
"Ain't No Way" became a big hit for Aretha Franklin in 1968. I may be mistaken, but I'm thinking that I began to hear "no way" a lot after that. It was definitely used in the '70s, often followed by "José."
That's great! Thanks for helping me out. It's so appreciated and I think that I finally have started to get into the writing style now. :-) But there will probably be more questions eventually. ;-)
Anyone who knows how young people in their twenties talked in New York 1973, all different groups and classes?
Main character is a 21 year old white male, with a working class background, but has managed to graduate from university with honors.
His best friend, same age, is African-American, middle-class.
There will also be a girl, same age, white, middle-class, and another white male, 23 years of age, from higher middle-class background, and yet another white male, 29 years of age, with middle-class background.
Thanks, all!