RSchibler wrote:I have seen it done both ways in published works. I can make an argument that in a historical fiction, the English words are the loan words and the Latin/other languages are the actual language of the character, but it's early and that makes my head hurt. Point being, I guess I feel like italicizing words from other languages would damage the immersion of the piece?
I guess "italicize other-language words" is like every other rule of writing: know the rule well enough, then you can know when to break it.
You make a good point about the perspective of a character impacting which words are other-language (although not which words are *loan* words: whether or not a word is a loan word has to do with the historical development and mingling of languages, not the perspective of a character, unless your character is in a world where languages evolved differently). Although I'd be careful about refraining from italicizing even in this case because your story is still in English and the thoughts of your character are in English, even if the English is meant to give the sense of another language. If you fail to italicize, some readers will be put off because it's bad grammar to not italicize. I suspect that fraction of readers is larger than the fraction that would be put off if you italicized the other-language words of a character that speaks another language. Why? Because not so many readers will think of your clever argument about other-language words not being another language from the perspective of the character. And even if they do, they will understand if you do italicize because the imperative to be grammatical is so commanding.