You must think it's very odd of me

[yendi]

In a bout of insomnia last night, I finally started reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which is living up to its hype (decidedly unlike another book I'll write about this week, if I find the time).

But I'm annoyed by one small thing, a personal pet peeve of mine when I read fantasy.

In this second world fantasy, we see people referred to as "sodomites*."

(ETA: We see the word used by the country that invades Baru's and destroys their way of life; its use is never to actually condemn the act from an authorial or reading perspective.)

Look, I get that all second-world fantasy is essentially run through a very good** magical version of Google Translate. No one in this book, or on Middle Earth, or in the Star Wars movies, is speaking English. I get that. But there are certain English words -- either eponyms like "maverick" and "mesmerize" or mythology-derived ones like "Achilles tendon" and, yes, "sodomy" -- that jump out at me. I realize that there are a ton of words in these categories, and not all of them stand out even to really good writers (even I'll overlook "shrapnel"). But when they stand out, they have a habit of throwing me out of the work. Since almost all second-world fantasies also give us a flavor of the native language as well, it seems like a great opportunity to coin some new words.

This is entirely my own pet peeve, and it's not realistic to expect authors to change (although there is a natural limit -- don't you dare put a Bowie knife into your fantasy, and I'll side-eye you if you can't refer to a hairstyle by any name other than sideburns). Unless an author is explicitly making a linguistic statement (the Ancillary series, for example), getting things in "plain" English is fine***. It's just something that for some reason I notice.

The other, even less rational, issue I have? I keep seeing "Baru," and expanding it to "badtz maru" for some reason, and now I want a book about The Traitor Badtz Maru, in which we see the entire Sanrio empire taken down.

Anyway, the book's great so far.

*This happens in chapter 1; if you're the sort of person who will complain about spoilers when talking about the first three percent of a work, you're probably not reading the right LJ.

**or not-so-good, if you're talking about someone like John C Wright.

***And yes, not taking an explicit linguistic stand is also a stand. I get it.

Comments

wait, what?

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite understanding you. Is your objection that the use of the word shatters believability because it references a time period that hasn't happened yet, references a specific entity or person who hasn't existed or just that it references a person in "our" world?

Re: wait, what?

[yendi]

The last -- it feels like something that shouldn't exist linguistically in that other world, in a way that a more generically-derived Indo-European word (like most of the ones in this sentence) wouldn't.

Re: wait, what?

[greylistening.livejournal.com]

I totally agree.

Re: wait, what?

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

ah okay so its the translation that bothers you - its like when I'm watching something and a translation includes slang terms that aren't obvious metaphors - that bothers the crap out of me. I suppose I'm usually too immersed to notice more remote references because I assume an etymologically-referenced word has been around long enough that it has a basic meaning. there's also the fact that some origins of words are debated. I looked up "Doozy" one time because I believed it to come from the Duesenburg car - a "deusey" - and found that there is some argument among linguists about the origins of the word. So now it is in my mind as an unclear word that possibly had multiple origins and therefore can be assumed to have entered lexicon from different points with vaguely similar meanings that over time converged until no one knows the origin anyway. Never really thought about the ones you mentioned but Bowie knife would definitely irk me because its a brand name. THe likelihood of that arising on its own or arising in an alternate version of Earth is pretty damned remote so I can't let that slide. I can see "sodomite" being the same since it arises from a coloquial name and has no similar words from other languages.

Re: wait, what?

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

however I will point out that words I think of as "psychic onomatopoeia" are excused. "Doozy" would be one as would "aw/e" and "slump" if that makes any sense

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

Kind of like X-wing, Y-wing, etc. space ships in Star Wars; when we know they don’t have the same language, or even the same alphabet, that we do?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

It can be jarring - I try and be understanding because not every writer has the knack for conlangs the way, for example, Tolkien or [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] have (even if it's only for creating a word here and there - and in some respects, I'd rather an author NOT make up a few words if they aren't going to think about them in the larger context of language).

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I miss things like this all the time, simply because etymology is not necessarily revealing. I had no idea that 'maverick' was based on someone's name until just this moment, for instance. (On the other hand, I did agonize whether to use the word 'quisling' in a second fantasy world because it was exactly the word I wanted, but... you know, historical context.)

Few are the writers with an encyclopedic knowledge of English's weird and convoluted history. :,

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I agree: I did not know "maverick" was an eponymous word either

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

dangit, now that's gonna bother me for the rest of my reading life

[yendi]

*nod* "Maverick"'s one of those harder examples (because it doesn't directly call on cultural knowledge in the same was as "sodomy" and "quisling"), and therefore one that bugs me a little less. But "quisling" is a perfect example of something that would knock me out of the narrative as a reader (or start having me rethink the narrative -- "wait, is this person a transplant from our world?").

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

"wait, is this person a transplant from our world?"

I saw a story once where things like that -- things specific to our world -- did start popping up. Slowly at first, so you might not notice, then more and more often until it was glaringly obvious. This was because that world was colliding with or being contaminated by our world in some way (with the assumption that the crosstalk was bidirectional) and the heroes had to do something to save their world (and, by extension, ours) from the ultimate destruction of both worlds that was going to result.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

That bugs me, too. I remember reading some fantasy epic once that referred to a noise as the sound of an airplane. Um...a what?

[yendi]

Wait, seriously? That's bad, even by these standards.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

I can't remember what it was, now; something I read for review and promptly forgot. I could forgive it if it had been in the style of a narrator directly addressing the audience (like Lewis sometimes did in the Narnia books and Tolkien did in The Hobbit), but it wasn't....

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oddly, "sodomy" was the very example I used when I was writing my first historical/secondary-world fantasy and talking about some of the language problems it threw up. Because no, you can't use cultural referents inaccessible to the culture you describe. Really not. A good translator doesn't do that either: sodomy will never make sense, in a context without Sodom.

[yendi]

I don't think it's odd at all -- it, along with the above-mentioned "quisling" and "Bowie knife" is so clearly out of place. And like all slurs (and it's a word that almost always presents as such), it says a lot about the speakers and the environment in which it's used, so not creating a new word seems like a lost opportunity.

And thinking of it as something that someone is translating is a metaphor I wish more writers used.

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

I've seen the word "catamite" used in some other-world fantasy stories, too; but unlike "sodomite", I wasn't aware of the cultural origin of "catamite" until I looked it up now. It's the ones that you know the etymology of that kick you out of the narrative.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

somewhat related; American Sign Language incorporates description as part of the language structure. They don't say things like "3rd light after the grocery store" they say "go, see grocery, go, lights 1,2,3 turn" - its a process in the language. Thus eponymous words are either spelled and explained (ASL has a whole structure and grammar about explanations and descriptions) or just described with no name attached. Names are actually rare in ASL anyway - when you learn someone's name-sign they might spell their name for you as well but forever after they are name-signed and many people will forget the persons' English name. Stories in ASL are a very interesting and very different experience as a result.