Tag: language

Read Elder Race

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) and although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, for his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…

There was a lot done well here, even if it tied up a bit neatly at the end and I really wanted to see more consequences for choices.

Tags 2021, Adrian Tchaikovsky, aliens, anthropology, book, language, novella, sci-fi

Culture Society The Internet

Escaping corporate mindsets on the indie web

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date August 29, 2024
7 Comments on Escaping corporate mindsets on the indie web
❤️

Liked NSFW on the IndieWeb by

Paul Watson (lazaruscorporation.co.uk)

If you can’t find certain types of content in the curated collections of links on IndieWeb sites because the curators have adopted wholesale the corporate rules of “what is allowed” then the IndieWeb is just going to be a pallid reflection of the CorporateWeb, but with far less clout.

I also notice people don’t swear much on their blogs. I have cut back on cussing in my writing myself, more from fear of sounding strident than causing offense — as a woman in patriarchal society, expressing strong emotion can undercut my argument — but I do believe in the power of a perfectly placed “fuck.” And our society is fucked up enough to deserve the vocal, even vulgar expression of our dissatisfaction — because I think what’s disgusting is not “profanity,” but allowing schoolchildren to go hungry and razing encampments to make homeless people invisible again.

Read The Jewel-Hinged Jaw

Read Jewel Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fict… by Samuel R. Delany

From the four-time Nebula Award–winning author, an indispensable work of science fiction criticism, revised and expanded.Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw appeared originally in 1977, and is now long out of print and hard to find. The impact of its demonstration that science fiction was a special language, rather than just gadgets and green-skinned aliens, began reverberations still felt in science fiction criticism. This edition includes two new essays, one written at the time and one written about those times, as well as an introduction by writer and teacher Matthew Cheney, placing Delany’s work in historical context.

Overall he comes off as pretentious, name-droppy, and braggy, and I’m not inclined to read his fiction based on this. There were some extremely interesting bits and pieces, unfortunately buried in a lot of rambling.

Tags 1977, book, essays, genre, language, prose, Samuel R. Delany, sexism

Political Commentary

Recognizing fascism

Replied to Ur-Fascism by

Umberto Eco (nybooks.com)

I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

(Archive link.)

“Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.”

Tags authoritarianism, fascism, language, names, Umberto Eco, United States

Writing

Translations within translations

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date April 10, 2024
1 Comment on Translations within translations
❤️

Bookmarked Pseudotranslation and the Art of Made Up Words by FILIP HAJDAR DRNOVŠEK ZORKO (Uncanny Magazine)

Pseudotranslation is the idea—prevalent in, but not unique to, SF/F—that the author did not write the stories we read, but translated them from some fictional language into English (or whatever other language we happen to be reading in).

In other words, my brain is interpreting anathem not as a word in a made-up language—even though I am told explicitly that that is what it is!—but as an English translation of such a word, in the same way that every other word in the novel is an English translation. The fiction holds together because I’m never asked to imagine what that original made-up word might look like.

It follows that problems sometimes arise when I am asked to do that… Why are these words untranslated when every other word is not?

Their approach is to indicate the difference to the reader stylistically (e.g. italics, inside chevrons <>) rather than making up a word wholesale, and if necessary making up an English word or phrase that theoretically represents the foreign concept.

Tags approach, invention, language, linguistics, translation

Cool Writing

The many tongues of English

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date February 13, 2024
2 Comments on The many tongues of English
❤️

Bookmarked Of melting pots and mongrel languages by Joe Bennett (thepost.co.nz)

Thus English has two registers. We can say the monarch consumed the provisions, or the king ate the food. The former is Latinate, the latter Anglo-Saxon.

…I’ve been urging a young writer I am coaching to use Anglo-Saxon vocabulary as much as possible. The short words pierce a reader’s skull like nails.

The Latin-rooted words sound highfalutin whereas the Anglo-Saxon words are blunt and hard.

Challenging myself playfully

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date January 2, 2024
13 Comments on Challenging myself playfully
❤️

Recently, James asked me how I challenge myself as a writer. I don’t like to pressure myself under the mindset of I need to get better! anymore — my blog is fun writing I do in my free time, and I’ve worked hard to escape the mentality of constant growth — but there is a joy in doing things well, and getting better at things, so long as I don’t wallow in perfectionism. It’s perhaps a fine mental line, but an important one for me as I’ve battled unhealthy self-expectations. Now, I challenge myself in the spirit of play by listening to my curiosity and excitement.

What makes the difference, I think, is that this type of play requires me to listen to myself. It’s self-motivated, not shaped by “should”s. It is its own reward. It asks me to learn what I like and lean into it; to explore what I want. It invites me to indulge myself.

Tags aspirational, challenge, craft, exploration, language, personal, play, words

Culture

Symbolic parts of speech

Watched Why “No Problem” Can Seem Rude: Phatic Expressions by Tom Scott from YouTube3 minutes 51 seconds

“Hello!” “Thank you!” “You’re welcome!” These are all phatic expressions, and people can argue about them.

Phatic expressions = serving a symbolic function, e.g. hi, how are you, you’re welcome

Backchannel expressions = signal of active listening, e.g. really?, yeah, uh huh

Tags communication, language, linguistics, phrases, video

History Political Commentary

History and fascist speak

Trump Compares Political Foes To ‘Vermin’ On Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda by Sara Dorn (Forbes)

“Vermin”. He calls his enemies vermin.

A former president, who could be president again, holds entire swaths of Americans in this kind of contempt.

There’s a reason conservatives keep coming for our education and books: they don’t want people to remember history, to match their fascist language against literally Adolph Hitler’s. To remember what the Nazi’s “final solution” was. To learn that Hitler was inspired by the United States’ Jim Crow laws. To remember that we, too, incarcerated the innocent. That we stripped Japanese Americans of their citizenship.

The Far Right’s Obsession with Modern Architecture by Joe Mathieson and Tim Verlaan (Failed Architecture)

“Modernism, multiculturalism and the European project”, [Baudet] says, “enforce an alienating living environment… A world without a home.” Racism pervades Baudet’s worldview, where “gargantuan tower blocks with satellite dishes directed towards Al Jazeera” become a poignant symbol of the sickening aversion to “our own” habits, the nation, and the beauty of traditional arts and architecture.