Mary Robinette Kowall on Writing Whitehall Ep 6: "Divine Passion"

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One of the tricky things about writing Catherine is that she’s not a native English speaker. The court documents at the time refer to her difficulty with the language. It’s hard to know how much she actually spoke, since the bar for being judged fluent has changed over the years and varies by region. Today, if an American can make themselves understood then we’re willing to grant that they “speak” a language even if they limp along. By contrast, if someone visits our country and does not speak grammatically precise language then their language is “broken.”Whether that broken language is considered charming or not relates directly to imperialism and who used to rule the world. A French accent? There’s a reason we still say the “lingua franca,” because France used to be the center of Europe. (Another time ask me about Latin and the lingering influences of the Roman Empire, or the still visible signs of the Mongols.) Spain, likewise, was a giant imperial force, so Charles and Catherine could share that language, and a Spanish accent still commands more swoon factor than a Mexican one. It’s an ugly double-standard.For Catherine, coming from Portugal, it had to have been difficult. Except with her Portuguese court, she was always communicating in another language. One of my challenges in this episode was to serve as a bridge towards her growing command of English. When I wrote her, initially, I just put her dialog in brackets so I could get her intentions.

"No. No cold-- I am not cold." The grammar of English was so nonsensical with all those extra words, but she would speak it. ["It is marvelous. This weather. At home... that is to say, in Portugal the autumn is not this.]" The sky was a high clear silver that erased shadows and left the world glowing in faeirie light.

"It must have been a very great shock to come here." The brisk air had brought a little color into her cheeks, which made her seem less sickly. "The weather, and the language, and then getting married straightaway."

"[I always knew that I would be sent away to be married.]"

"Was it... was the wedding what you had imagined?"

Catherine smiled, an image of Charles's smile taking up residence in her memory. "[What? Have I not yet satisfied your curiosity about our wedding?]"

As someone who has a hobby of learning languages, I’ve come to realize that when someone’s English “breaks” it’s because they are defaulting to the grammar of their dominant language. So I made a stab at learning Portuguese. Understand, that I didn’t want to hit a point of being able to speak it or to translate anything. I just wanted a grasp of the basic grammar. I didn’t need anything complicated, because when Catherine spoke English, she likely would have chosen simple sentences in an effort to avoid clauses.Then I tried to come up with a list of “rules” for how I would break her language.1. She would tend to leave out the "to be" verb.2. Adjectives would tend to follow nouns.3. She would sometimes not use pronouns, because in Portuguese the verb form will suggest the pronoun.4. Prepositions would tend to be mixed up, defaulting to "for" instead of "to"5. Portuguese uses "O que" for "What?" so she might retain the "O" when startled. (I wound up dropping this one, because it was confusing for the readers.)I also looked for places where I was using English idioms and then tried to replace them or find comparable Portuguese ones. In the latter case, I would use word-for-word translations to reflect Catherine’s uncertainty with the language. And then… we edited it for readability by a modern audience.All of which means that Catherine’s language is either more fluent or less fluent than she actually was, but it is almost certainly not what she really sounded like. I’m only hoping that I managed to convey the struggle of attempting to be Queen in her circumstances.

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