posted
I'm curious to half-revisit a topic we discussed a while back (not at all inspired by the fact that I'm struggling with this in my current WIP).
In a speculative world that is completely unrelated to Earth, how much are you careful to avoid things that are clearly English or Earthly? In particular, I'm debating how to handle reference to elements of the language people are speaking. For instance, I have a child learning his letters. I could call the letters "Esch, abay, meeb," and so on, but that feels as if I'm calling readers out too much -- By the way, you're reading a book and not in a real world everybody! Can't you tell by the letters? Nerds will learn to speak this if my book gets big enough!. Also, I'm not a linguist, so there is no way I'm going to pull a Tolkien and invent a functional language.
At the same time, something feels wrong about "A is for apple," when they aren't really speaking English, and I'm worried about readers being almost as put off as if I had my characters visit a McDonald's while out for a quick lunch.
posted
Your mention of "A is for Apple" texts reminds me of the kindergarten books that dealt with life on the farm (the cow goes "moo" and all that)---being read and studied by kids in the city who wouldn't know a cow if it bit them in the leg.
I think a certain amount of "suspension of disbelief" has to come into play for just about anything "completely unrelated to Earth" to actually work as a story. You would be, most likely, writing in English, with the characters speaking in English. Anything more complicated than, as you say, Tolkien's invented languages, would make it too hard for a casual reader to follow.
posted
I agree that you have to assume a certain level of disbelief (else why is the reader in spec fi anyhow). My main concern is about what requires more disbelief -- a child trying to make the shapes of some made up letter names that I come up with, or a child learning how to write the letter 'A,' in a completely fictional world.
Will someone be jolted out of the experience by different letter names, or will they be bothered by the fact that this society manages to have a 26-letter alphabet that is identical to our own?
I'm not going near the area of renaming everyday objects, and of course the sign on the smithy's shop reads "Blacksmith..." but does a character explain to his child that "Blacksmith starts with a B" or "Blacksmith starts with aleph..."
posted
An experience in the MC's childhood with colored letters leads to him leaving a note for another character where every letter is a different color.
Another character tries to fake the same code, but the recipient notices that the letters are the wrong colors (one of them, anyhow).
It's very hard to talk about this without actually saying the names of the letters. I posted a discussion topic earlier about synesthesia -- the MC is a synesthete, and there is a scene in his childhood when he realizes that not everybody sees letters in color.
posted
I think that world building is a subtle art and part of the art is allowing the reader to know they are in a different world without beating them over the head with how different it is. You might enjoy making up new words to denote measurements etc. but not all readers want to be immersed in new jargon while reading fiction. If your alien alphabet is important to the plot, then by all means make it up. In my (fictional)world people still travel 'miles' but the reader should know that the word itself is not spoken or even thought of by my otherworldly characters. I am not going to name every measure of time, volume, distance et al for the reader. If these measures were central to my story I would make them up. If my story is poorer for my lack of creativity in this area, so be it. Don't know if that answers even part of your question but that is how this reader likes it.
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posted
As a reader, I'd be perfectly fine with you creating your own alphabet. I think that I would be thrown if you used regular ABC in the context you described.
My extremely brilliant suggestions for you are (1) that you keep it very vague, and (2) that you don't make the reader have to remember ANY of it. I think the best course would be to do it, but to do it so lightly, that no one could even ATTEMPT to figure it out for themselves. If you make too much a production out of it, then it will draw more notice than you want. Put it in, but keep it natural and almost in the background. For example...use the letter names the first time the kids sees them, but be vague after that-- just say "the forth letter was the wrong color." Or, "the meeb was in the wrong place." If you kept it light like that, then I don't think the reader would lose patience or belief.
Would that work? If you really need to explain the nuances of the color coding, then you'll have to become I linguist, I think. I guess it all depends on whether you want the reader to be able to unravel the mystery, or if you want the reader to watch the MC unravel the mystery. If you want to be technical and have the reader involved in the decoding, then you have a lot more work to do. In either case though, I think you need the foreign alphabet.
posted
I'd be more inclined to accept "A is for Apple" if I believed the setting for your story had apples.
What you could do is use ABC, etc, but have them refer to other things: "A is for apron, B is for barn, c is for crops, d is for digger, e is for earth, etc" for a farm setting, or "A is for anvil, b is for blower, c is for crookshank, d is for dent, e is for ember, etc" for a blacksmith setting, and so on.
If you make it clear that your characters are speaking another language than English, even though your story is written in English, you should be able to get away with using English letters as analogs for whatever alphabet in whatever language they are speaking.
posted
Personally, I prefer a little ambiguity: "Darling, not like that." She repeated the pronunciation slowly, forcing Mel to take the time to get it right amidst her self-consciousness. as it does the same job without requiring me to be as language specific as: "Darling, not like that. Say after me, Em." Mel repeated the sound self-consciously.
I think this occurs in many ways in fiction. I had to approach the same problem, in a different context, twice in a recent story. In each case I was trying to balance being 'consistent with the milieu' with 'able to be relate to my audience'.
(1) In the 'world' in which my main character grows up, there are no animals or insects; that is, just humans and plants. I had to avoid using language that referred to animals ("strong as an ox") to allow the reader to be immersed in what my characters were experiencing.
(2) A character must use a computer terminal. I avoided describing pushing buttons or coloured icons, and just described what they were doing conceptually (searching for something, pulling up an analysis of data, etc); these move the story and don't bog the reader down in specifics.
As for what to do with an A is for Apple example, it really is up to you; assuming that Star Wars takes place in a Galaxy Far Far Away and therefore they don't really speak English, you have to wonder what the X-wing would really be called? A cross-wing? Or do they conveniently have a letter X?
posted
I agree that it really won't matter too much however you decided to do it. Most readers won't think anything of it.
As for Star Wars using X-wing...I think that's totally fine and allowed, and I doubt that it bothers many people. The reason that I vote for YOU to use a foreign alphabet, though, is because it seems like so much of your plot depends on it. X-wing is just the name of a ship, hardly ever mentioned. But the letter codes in your story carry much more weight, so I think the issue is more likely to draw attention.
posted
I wouldn't say that it is incredibly important to the plot -- just awkward to narrate around. It is very important that he's a synesthete, but the graphemes (letter -> color) are really only important twice.
snippet one (in which they are children)
quote: “Why do you always color them in the same order?” Madison whispered.
Grayson looked up, surprised, and smiled. I knew she was smart enough to get it. He drew a red A, a blue B, and a yellow-brown C.
“Why letters? I don’t understand,” she said.
He looked back at her, his eyes scrunched. How could she not get that if she saw the pattern to begin with?
Grayson pointed to the A, the B, and the C again. He drew a purple D and looked up at her. She shrugged back. It suddenly struck him… she doesn’t see the colors. E was sky blue. He picked up a green crayon and hovered over the paper, checking back up with Madison. She wore the same puzzled
The other situation is
Grayson tells Zia that he is synesthetic, and one of the few specifics she remembers is "A is always red."
Zia, along with a coworker, find a letter from Grayson -- Zia knows it is from him b/c he colored the letter with his graphemes. She tells her coworker that the colored letters are how she knows it is from him.
The coworker (who is a spy) tells her source that Grayson colors all the letters different as a way of confirming that a note is from him. The spy didn't notice that each individual letter was always the same color.
The bad guys leave a fake note with colored letters, but Zia recognizes it as fake because the A's aren't red. She also realizes that her coworker is a spy.
It wouldn't actually be that tough to replace 'A' with 'zarblog,' and the reader certainly wouldn't have to remember. It's just hard to see which is worse... "They have our letters?"... or "I'm supposed to believe zarbog is a letter?"
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited February 03, 2009).]
posted
I don't think many people are going to think, "My God! What is the normal alphabet doing on an abnormal world????" Where as creating a new language could cause more confusion.
Sure, the best books are one with close attention to detail. But I think that in this case, you could save your development for other sections of the book.
Also, I agree with KDW's advice about the different "A is for afghan" sort of thing.
Also,
quote:I could call the letters "Esch, abay, meeb," and so on, but that feels as if I'm calling readers out too much -- By the way, you're reading a book and not in a real world everybody! Can't you tell by the letters? Nerds will learn to speak this if my book gets big enough!
posted
Okay, I see what you're saying. There certainly doesn't seem to be any danger of you overloading the reader with unimportant and confusing info. I think that only adds to the conclusion that it's fine either way. I agree with the last person...no one's going to scream at you. Just do what YOU want to do.
But since I seem to be the only one on this side, and I seem to be losing, I'm going to stick with my opinion for now--use zarbogs. If there's no danger of it getting confusing, then why not? The readers already know they're in a fake world--I don't think that they'll be jarred by keeping up the fantasy. It seems to me that a few zarbogs would only enhance your efforts at making a complete world. It all comes down to taste, but I know that I would like to see a few fake letters.
Your book sounds really fun, by the way. Can't wait to buy it.
[This message has been edited by Betsy Hammer (edited February 03, 2009).]
posted
I liked your example and found it intriguing enough to have me go look up Synesthesia on wikipedia.
I'm no expert, but within the context of the examples it didn't feel like using A, B, C etc was inappropriate in any way. If the characters can suffer a fairly human disorder, then it seems reasonable to me for that to be paralleled in the language.
posted
On the notion of a blacksmith sign spelling out "blacksmith," this quote might be relevant:
quote:As Thomas Jefferson was suffering through a 1776 session of the Continental Congress cutting up his draft of the Declaration of Independence, [Benjamin] Franklin attempted to ease his pain by telling him a parable of a young hatmaker who wanted to put a sign outside his shop: "He composed it in these words, 'John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,' with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word 'Hatter' tautologous, because followed by the words 'makes hats,' which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word 'makes' might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats...He struck it out. A third said he thought the words 'for ready money' were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with; and the inscription now stood, 'John Thompson sells hats.' 'Sells hats!' says his next friend; 'why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word? It was stricken out, and 'hats' followed,...rather [uselessly] as there was painted on the board. So his inscription was reduced ultimately to 'John Thompson," with the figure of a hat subjoined."
(...took me awhile to find this and copy it here, 'cause I thought Lincoln had said it...if he did, he was quoting Franklin, I guess...)
posted
I think you should ask yourself if you are going to have an actual word that is spelled out with these letters. If that is the case, I assume you are going to be using English lettering. Therefore you might be better off just using the standard English alphabet. You could always put some comment about it being translated from whatever language.
Now, if you decide to use alien words to name the letters, keep in mind that letters in Earth spoken language came from sounds first. Letter names represent the phonetic sound someone wishes to make. If a culture uses a spoken language where words are written down with the use of individual letters, I would expect them to use a similar system.
IMO, we have a very illogical order of letters in our Greek/Latin-based alphabet (I wonder if extrinsic knows why they are in the order they are in). I would not expect an alien civilization to use the same alphabet order that we use. I probably would have put soft sounds first (vowels and soft consonants [h,s,etc]), hard sounds second (b,d,etc), and gutteral sounds (x,ch,etc) last. I would not even have a "c" and let "k" and "s" stand. But I didn't make it, did I.
These are just a few things to keep in mind if you are seeking that level of realism. If all else fails, you could always just write the English phonetic spelling of each letter or add accent marks - either one may seem alien enough to the reader.
posted
I've long operated on the theory that when I write fantasy, the dialogue and text has been translated from the original whatever language it might have been written in. To that end, I think it's better to use the English alphabet, and, as KDW said, use words that point toward the culture.
This brings up another problem I have, though, which is sometimes I have concepts that don't translate well into English. What do to there? I have some Latin words which are probably familiar enough, but I've had some readers complain about it.
posted
No one is certain of alphabet arrangement origins. I surmise it's a product of the evolution, frequency, and consensus of usage from it's Phoenician roots. The Phoenician alphabet likely evolved as a scrivener's shorthand version of Egyptian hieroglyphs, used for recording trading data, profaning religion's exclusive dominion of sacred knowledge. The letter A comes from the Phoenician word for ox, aleph, probably the auroch, perhaps the single most valuable portable commodity of the era. B comes from beth or house, C and G from gimel or camel, D from daleth or door, E from he or window, H from heth or wall, N from nun or serpent, M from mem or water, and so on.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited February 03, 2009).]
posted
Random chance for plugging a friend's website:
Juliette Wade's blog is one of the few that I read on a regular basis. Most blogs put me to sleep, but she covers some interesting topics and does so in an entertaining way. She's very personable and I'm sure she'd be interested in this question if you felt inclined to contact her. The web address and site description pasted below.
TTYU: Juliette Wade's blog for lovers of science fiction and fantasy who want to talk to an expert about questions of language and culture (linguistics and anthropology): in the real world, in published fiction, or in worlds and universes of their own creation
posted
I realize this topic is a few weeks old, but I felt the need to chime in.
A rule of thumb I use for questions like these is "If the story were set in a different culture on Earth, how would it be handled?"
So in your case, imagine a child in 15th-century Persia learning to write. I think most people would agree that A, B, C would be wrong - it would look like the writer wasn't aware that the script used in this milieu was Arabic, or couldn't be bothered to do the appropriate research.
It's the same kind of error as having someone in Ming dynasty China eating a hamburger, or people in the Amazon riding on reindeer.
In other words, the "translation" principle only applies when the underlying objects are reasonably similar in our world and the story world. If they use things that are recognizably blankets, then call them blankets. But if they don't use the letters of the Latin alphabet, then do not call them "A", "B", etc.
You might enjoy some of the advice I have for dealing with names and languages in speculative fiction, intended for writers who don't happen to be language geeks:
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