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sezija · 22 days

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Hello! I recently saw your art of Ghali, Drephl and Rleiph, and decided to finally try out making wiki pages! I plan on making all three of them before adding them, but I have a few questions on about them. (Im pretty sure that you wrote the fic, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

first off, the fic is AMAZING, I cried multiple times while reading it, and everything goes together so perfectly there’s too much to talk about so I’ll stop here before it gets too long.

1) On Ghali, I wanted to double check that she took the last name Shims, because at some point it refers to the family as “the shims”

2) on Frihl, does he keep the last name Shims, or take his husband’s name?

3) can I say that Rleiph has pale speckles in her physical description?

4) could you give me more insight on Ghali’s , Drephl’s and Rleiph’s personalities? I personally struggle with describing those myself.

5) are there names for Drephl and Frihl’s parents, as I would like for them to be in the relationships category.

6) same for Rleiph’s girlfriend. Also, does she have a physical appearance? I’d love to draw the two of them together.

7) WEREWOLF CENTAUR. Amazing idea. What does the kid look like? I know that they’re described as a foal, but WHAT IS THEY JUST HAD A WOLF HALF INSTEAD OF A HORSE HALF, OR A WOLF HALF DURING FULL MOONS. I would love to know things like their skin tones and hair color too. (And coat) also thank you for all these centaurs, there isn’t even a catagory on the wiki for them yet.

8) what kind of clothes does everyone wear?

9) I know that Drephl and Ghali probably just went to a courtroom and signed some papers, but I really want to draw Drephl standing on a stool with her under an arch, where they just hug. This is also so I can mess around with possible wedding traditional clothing during that time period.

10) what is the name of Drephl and Ghali’s grandchild? The werewolf one?

Thank you for this amazing fic! Loved the art you made, and this will be very embarrassing if you didn’t write the fic!

Putting this under read more;;

Ok first of all. omg??? that's so cool what the hell!!! i'm so happy you liked my fic so much???

1) Yeah, she becomes a Shims

2) I think he takes his husband's name (which i don't have yet)

3) I forgot to give her some white in her coat in the art lol, but i decided to work that in; she's born with just a brown coat, but some white speckles start appearing as she grows older :3

4) They honestly don't have much, yet; the style i wrote in makes it really hard to add Character and Personality other than just stated facts like "she likes hiking" and "she's a computer programmer", sorry

5) Not yet, sorry

7/10) I want to give them at least 2-3 kids so i can actually make them all different, though i imagine they probably have 5-8 year age differences cus raising just one is chaotic and hard enough lol. someone made really good art of their kid!!! (i've come up w the names Phil, Lei, and Majil so far) (j pronounced like (consonant) y)

8) currently i've just been drawing them in some clothes from our time cus i haven't had the motivation&energy necessary to figure out the Fashion of their time, but i can say that the blanket??? dress?? things the centaurs wear is like. actual clothing they wear in their time period&place

9) I love that so much. also, it honestly makes a lot of sense for them to hold an actual celebration; your wedding is basically the only time in your life where you have an excuse to gather every single person you're close to in one place for a big party (aside from your funeral but uh. yeah.) their marriage was meant as the point where they no longer cared what anyone else thought bc they were so secure in their meaning to each other, so i love the idea of them going all out and then just hugging.

also behold! look what i found from way back when i was writing the fic :)

#sezijasks #this is. whattttttt i didnt know ppl cared abt my fic ???#i was like "oo ive got a new tablet maybe ill finally draw the Fam''#and then out of the floorboards oozed fanart and asks and reblogs of excitement and i was like !?!?!?!??!#its made me write some additional scenes to flesh out their personalities #idk if i'll release them yet they're just lil blurps but who knows #asks #i named zir 'nail' and it took me like 10 minutes to realize thats an actual english word lmao. its pronounced more.. finnish-like #put 'najiil' in finnish google translate and make it sound it out and uve got it #(the 'j' is less pronounced but if its not there it does it like english so)

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sixofcrowdaydreams · 2 months

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I cannot stop thinking about the implications of the Kerch alphabet on canon. I know I’m the only person who cares, but hear me out!

1. The show itself made a mistake with its own made-up language.

2. Wylan is a foreign name or he’s a Tragedeigh child.

Explanation below:

Daddy

Right before Jesper and Wylan meet Alby Rollins, Jesper finds a child's drawing labelled “Daddy.” In Kerch the word uses 3 distinct D letters, one of which is attached to the vowel. And bizarrely at the end of the word, the letter J/Y. The English translation is literally labelled beneath it so we know exactly what it says.

But according to the two alphabet charts here, there is no Y vowel in the Kerch language. The Y is given a J sound, (as in Jan Van Eck pronounced as Yan Van Eck) which makes sense given the Dutch influence on Ketterdam.

So Alby’s drawing says, “Daddya.” Daddy in Dutch is Papa, according to my nifty translation app. Where does Daddya come from? Either Daddya is a Kaelish pronunciation given the Rollins' Kaelish heritage despite it being spelled in Kerch, or the show made a mistake.

I think the J/Y letter may have been used to keep the same number of letters to make the connection between Kerch Daddy and English Daddy the same for the audience to quickly make the connection.

However, in Kerch the word Daddy should be spelled as “Daddee” with the hard E vowel attached to the last D consonant.

(When ranting about this to my husband, he listened to this entire spiel, then asked quite confused, “Who’s calling who Daddy in this show? That sounds more like a fanfic thing rather than something from canon...” 🤣 Saints, I love that man.)

2. Now let’s talk about Wylan’s name because it fascinates me.

There is no hard I vowel in the Kerch language. It just doesn’t exist. There is a hard A, E, and O, but no hard I. The name Wylan (pronounced Why-lan) cannot be written in Kerch.

Matthias’s name cannot be spelled in Kerch either. But that’s ok because he’s not from Kerch. He’s from Fjerda, where presumably, he can spell his name in his native language. Because it would be very silly to give someone a name that is unpronounceable in their native linguistic system. Right?!?

Except Wylan is as Kerch as Kerch gets. His family is old money with strong roots to the country and culture.

So what happened?

Maybe the name Wylan comes from one of the other cultures, Fjerdian or Kaelish. We don’t know much about Marya Hendricks/Van Eck and her family/cultural roots, but we do know that book Wylan inherited her red hair. So maybe somewhere in her family tree there’s Kaelish ancestry. Or she just really liked a Kaelish or Fjerdian name enough to give it to her son.

This explanation makes the most sense, but at the same time, I can’t imagine Jan Van Eck, a man so concerned with family legacy, not choosing a Kerch name for his oh-so-important heir.

So consider this alternative explanation: Jan Van Eck just sucks as a human being and gave his son a Tragedeigh name. AKA a name that is spelled and or pronounced nonsensically enough it makes you want to pat the kid on the back and legally help them change their name to something less awful.

For the record, I think Wylan is a lovely name. But it doesn't make sense as a Kerch name given how it uses sounds/letters not in the language.

Wylan’s name could still be pronounced as Why-lan and still written as Way-lan in Kerch. Or Will-lan, or even Wee-lan. We don’t know because we didn’t get to see it in show. There’s no hard I and some vowel needs to be used!

So Wylan was that kid who spent his entire life correcting everyone on how to say his name. Because his name was spelled one way but pronounced another. It’s simultaneously hilarious and tragic. The idea that his family was so wealthy that they gave him a special, nonsensical rich person name. And because Wylan can’t read he has no way of knowing why everyone says his name wrong if they see it written first. Ghezen, he'd be exhausted correcting everyone who met him.

Absolutely headcanoning that Jan Van Eck tried yet another way to screw Wylan by giving him a ridiculous name that can't even be written in Kerch.

#wylan van eck #alby rollins #matthias helvar #jan van eck #six of crows #shadow and bone

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catie-does-things · 4 years

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Patterns in Given Names in the World of Avatar

Or, Naming Your Avatar OC’s: Beyond Baby Name Lists

Naming an original character in any fantasy setting can be a tricky business. Do you use a real name? Do you make one up? Either way, it has to sound like it fits into the established world - but you don’t want it to sound too similar to the names of canon characters, either. In this post, I will offer an analysis of canon names of major and minor characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, looking for discernible patterns in the names of each of the fictional cultures of that world, and offer some suggestions based on my own experience for how to choose or create names for original characters in that world.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using a “baby name list” for inspiration or even taking a real name from one of the cultures the show is based on and using it. But since the fictional cultures of the show are not complete carbon copies of real cultures, just picking a name from a list of Inuit or Japanese names won’t always give you one that actually fits in with the Avatar world. And maybe you’ve seen enough Water Tribe OC’s named Nanook (I’m guilty of this one myself) and want to get a little more creative. In that case, welcome to the advanced OC naming class.

And yes, there will be color coded spreadsheets.

Methods and Goals

To get a feel for what sort of names will sound like they fit into the world of Avatar, we of course have to look at the names of canon characters. For our purposes, I chose to exclude characters who only appear in spin-off material such as the comics or Kyoshi novels, and only look at the given names of characters from the two shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. I have sorted the characters by nation, as well as into cultural subdivisions where applicable. LoK characters from the United Republic of Nations have their own category, since in most cases we do not technically know the specific cultural origin of those characters’ names - though based on the patterns below and other context clues, we can make a reasonable guess for many of them. Characters whose names appear to be nicknames or pseudonyms (such as Longshot and Lightning Bolt Zolt) have also been left out.

The aim of this analysis is to look for phonetic and other patterns in the names of each cultural group within the world of Avatar. We will be looking at the names as spelled using the Latin alphabet, since this is how most fan fiction is written, and how the character names are given in official material, but keep in mind that within the world of the show, all nations use the Han Chinese writing system, so names or syllables spelled differently in the Latin alphabet might be represented by the same character in-universe, or vice versa.

Finally, my guidelines and suggestions for how to choose or create OC names are just that: guidelines and suggestions. These are not rules. It’s your OC, you do what you want.

Without further ado, let’s start looking at some names.

The Water Tribes.

We don’t have quite the sample size for Water Tribe characters that we’ll see for some of the other nations, but 28 names is still plenty to look at. Notably, we have far more male (18) than female (10) names, a pattern we will see repeated without exception. Draw your own conclusions.

Water Tribe names appear to mostly be two or three syllables long, with most of the one syllable names being from the Foggy Swamp Tribe. Hahn from the Northern Water Tribe is the only other one syllable name. Two syllable names are the most common with 19 names, which is about two-thirds of the total. Three syllable names account for 5 out of the total 28, or less than one fifth - still, this makes them more common than names of the same length in any other nation, and more common than one syllable names in the Water Tribes, especially if you exclude the Foggy Swamp. If you’re looking to use an authentic Inuit or other Arctic indigenous name for your Water Tribe OC, I would be wary of names longer than three syllables, though, as we have none of these in canon.

Consistent with Inuit names, we do have a lot of /k/ and /g/ sounds. The letters K and Q are pronounced the same in Water Tribe names, though in Inuit they represent different sounds. 18 out of the 28 names have at least one of these sounds, with /k/ being far more common than /g/ (17 vs. 2 names). Of course, having the letter K in your Water Tribe OC’s name is by no means necessary, and especially if you are creating a lot of Water Tribe characters, you probably want some variation.

The digraphic consonant sounds /ch/, /sh/, and /th/ are almost totally absent, with the exception of one name from the Foggy Swamp, Tho. The /r/ sound is also never found at the beginning of a name, and the /j/, /l/, /w/, and /f/ sounds are totally absent. The /v/ sound is absent from all given names, but notably appears in the surname Varrick not included above.

Regarding gender differences, both male and female names can end in -a, but this is much more common for female names, with 3 male names compared to 8 female names having this ending. Notably, this accounts for all but two of the female names, and all of the female names end in a vowel. Consonant endings appear to be exclusively masculine, with final /k/ sounds being common, whether spelled with K or Q (8 out of 18 male names), though masculine names can also end in vowel sounds.

There do not appear to be major differences between the Northern and Southern Water Tribe names, however the three names we have from the Foggy Swamp Tribe are definitely distinct - all one syllable, and all open syllables ending in vowels. These sound more like Earth Kingdom names, as we’ll see, which makes sense given the location of the Foggy Swamp.

To my knowledge, only handful of the Water Tribe names are authentic Inuit names, and they are all characters from LoK: Desna, Yakone, Noatak, Unalaq, and Tonraq, or 5 out of the 28 total names. Yue is an authentic name, but a Chinese one. The main Water Tribe characters such as Katara, Sokka, and Korra all have invented names. So yes, you can pick from an Inuit baby names list (and Nanook does fit the patterns we see above), but you are by no means limited to this.

The Earth Kingdom

Since the Earth Kingdom is the largest of the nations, it makes sense that we have the most names to look at here, with 79 names total, including 56 male names and 23 female names. I’ve included Jet with a question mark, because he may be using a pseudonym like the rest of the Freedom Fighters do, but his name is also plausible as the one his parents gave him. Macmu-Ling, the name of the haiku master in Ba Sing Se, may also be a surname, but this is unclear given the limited information on the character.

One syllable names are much more common in the Earth Kingdom, accounting for 30 out of 56 male names and 10 out of 23 female names. This is roughly half of all Earth Kingdom names, or 40 out of 79. Two syllable names account for 34 out of the 79, or about 43%, with three syllable names being rare overall, just 5 names or 6%. Overall, Earth Kingdom names tend to be shorter, which is consistent with a basis in Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese names.

Unlike with Water Tribe names, there do not appear to be specific sounds that stand out as distinctively Earth Kingdom. Notably, nearly all names begin with consonants, with only 6 names beginning with a vowel, and always A or O. All of the consonant sounds found in English are represented in at least one name. The /ch/, /sh/, and /th/ digraphic sounds are all present, though not abundantly common. The Earth Kingdom being large and diverse, this greater diversity in names also makes sense.

There is evidence of unisex names in the Earth Kingdom. Wu is used by both a male and female character (Prince Wu and Aunt Wu), and the name Song which is listed as female above we will see again as the name of a male earthbender in Republic City. Other names could also be unisex, but as most are only used by one character, we have no way to know. The only noticeable gendered pattern seems to be that several female characters have English names, which I separated into the fifth column above. This seems to be exclusive or near-exclusive to Earth Kingdom women. Jet could also be interpreted as an English name, but as previously mentioned, this is possibly a pseudonym anyway.

The few named characters we have from Kyoshi Island all have authentic Japanese names, or at least names taken from the Japanese language - oyaji is an affectionate term meaning “old man” or “father”. Kyoshi is distinct from the rest of the Earth Kingdom in many other ways, including a history of isolationism which Japan also has. As for the sandbenders, we only have two names, but Ghashiun stands out as rather distinct in its spelling. Visually, the sandbenders resemble the Tuareg people of the Sahara region, so that might be the direction you want to go if you’re looking for authentic names to use for your sandbender OC’s.

The curious name Macmu-Ling is based on the surname of the writer for the episode she appeared in, Lauren MacMullan.

Fire Nation

We have 13 female names and 33 male names, for a total of 46 known Fire Nation names.

Two syllable names are most common, with 20 male and 6 female names, accounting for 26 out of the total 46, which is more than half. 15 names have one syllable, which is about one third of the total. Only 5 names have three syllables, or just one tenth, and once again there are no names longer than that.

The letter Z stands out as appearing in 8 names, while it’s much more rare in the other nations - though notably the Z in Zhao is pronounced differently than in the other names. Also worth noting is that all the names with Z other than Zhao - that is, all the names where Z is pronounced as it would be in English - are names of members of the royal family, with the exception of Kuzon. The digraphic sounds /ch/ and /sh/ are both present, but /th/ is not. Other absent sounds include /v/ and /w/.

The Fire Nation gives us our only example of gendered variants on the same name with Azulon and Azula. This implies that the -a ending is generally feminine, though we only have two female names that use it. Ilah ends with the same sound, albeit spelled with a silent H. There is also one masculine name, Yon Rha, that ends in -a, though with a different pronunciation (/ah/ vs. /uh/). The -on ending may also be masculine or generally masculine, but again, only two names use it. Female names are also more likely to end in the /ee/ sound, whether spelled -i or -ee, with 6 of the 13 female names ending this way. Only two male names end with this sound, and one of them, Li, is unisex.

In terms of basis in real world cultures, the Fire Nation often gets heavily identified with Japan in fanon, because they are an island nation with a history of imperialism, but what we see in canon is much more of a blend of Asian cultures, like the other nations. Some names, like Izumi and Roku are Japanese in origin, but some are also Chinese or Chinese-based such as Chan and Lu Ten. And as with the Water Tribes, the main characters like Zuko, Azula, Iroh, and Ozai, tend to have invented names. (Zuko especially would be odd as a Japanese name, since the -ko suffix in Japanese is feminine.) The name Ursa, curiously, is Latin - the feminine form of the word for “bear”. So while you certainly can use Japanese names for your Fire Nation OC’s, as with Inuit names in the Water Tribe, you’re not limited to that by any means. In fact, based on what we see in canon, I would say that if you’re creating several Fire Nation OC’s, you should have about an even mix of Japanese, Chinese, and invented names.

Air Nomads

With only 13 names, of which 9 are male and 4 are female, this is the smallest sample we have for any of the nations - understandably, since the Air Nomads are all but extinct for most of both shows. We’re even technically assuming that all of Tenzin’s children have Air Nomad names, but this is probably a safe assumption.

Two syllable names are still most common, with 9 of the 13, or about three fourths of the total. There are three names with three syllables, or a little less than one fourth. Aang has the only one syllable name.

With so few names, it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about phonetic patterns. The -a ending is seen on one name for each gender, as is the -i ending, and the -o ending appears on two male names and one female name. The -u ending only appears on one male name, but given the small sample size this doesn’t necessarily indicate a female Air Nomad name couldn’t have the same ending.

We do have clear and distinct real world basis for several Air Nomad names. Tenzin and Gyatso are both taken from the religious name of the current Dalai Lama. Rohan is an Indian name, and Laghima is a Hindu term for the spiritual power of becoming weightless. (Coincidentally, Rohan is also a French surname, but it was presumably the Indian name that the show meant to reference.) Pasang is a Nepali name, though a female one as far as I can tell, whereas it is used for a male Air Nomad. Tibetan, Nepalese, and Sanskrit names would thus all be good places to look for inspiration for your Air Nomad OC’s - though again, don’t feel limited to that. Chinese inspired names would also fit in, and Aang, like all the main characters, has an invented name.

United Republic of Nations

This group of character names, all from The Legend of Korra obviously, has to be considered differently. While we can make educated guesses as to the fictional ethnicity of most of these names, the fact is that many of these characters may be of mixed heritage and we can’t say for sure what the origins of their names are. In the chart below, I have color coded the names according to my best guess for nation of origin, rather than by gender. Names left in white, in my opinion, could be either Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation, and nothing about those characters gives us further clues.

With 31 names, we do have a decent sample size. Presumably Mako is a Fire Nation name and Bolin is Earth Kingdom, and based on the sound they do seem to fit in with those nations respectively. Raiko has a question mark because it is unclear if this is a given name or surname, but it does seem to follow the Zuko and Mako pattern and thus be most likely Fire Nation in origin. We also have the name Yasuko, for a character who is supposed to be of Fire Nation descent, using the -ko suffix on a feminine name.

Ginger and Buttercup I have designated as most likely Earth Kingdom because they are English names, and as we previously saw, only Earth Kingdom women seem to have names of this variety. Pema is presumably of at least partial Earth Kingdom descent based on her green eyes - this is also a real Bhutanese name. Characters like Lu, Gang, Daw, and Chung are all shown wearing green, and have one syllable names of the kind which are most common in the Earth Kingdom.

Hasook has a very distinctively Water Tribe name, and is of course a waterbender. Tahno and Ming-Hua are both waterbenders as well, though their names are less distinctively Water Tribe. These could simply be less typical names from one of the two polar tribes, or they may have Foggy Swamp Tribe heritage. (I believe this was a popular headcanon for Tahno, at least.) The possibility also exists that they have mixed heritage and may have Earth Kingdom or even Fire Nation names in spite of being waterbenders.

Conclusion

Like everything else in the world of Avatar, the names of the characters are inspired by and based on many real world cultures, primarily Asian, but no one fictional nation in the Avatar world corresponds exactly to a real world culture. When we look for or create names for original characters in this world, we want to respect the real world basis of these fictional cultures, but simply picking a Chinese, Japanese, or Inuit name from a list may not always jive with what we see in canon, in addition to running the risk of being a bit stereotypical.

With the canon patterns outlined above, fan fiction writers and fan artists should feel free to expand their search for names to other Asian, Arctic, or North African cultures, such as Thai, Burmese, Nepalese, Yupik, Aleut, or Berber names. Baby name lists can be helpful, but are often dubiously reliable, especially for non-Western cultures. Personally, when I want to give an OC an authentic name, I prefer to use Wikipedia to find real people from the culture or cultures I’m drawing on. I’ve joked about my own tendency to pick names of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean saints for my fan fiction, but searching for Wikipedia lists or categories of artists, philosophers, or scientists from a given culture can also be useful.

Wherever one chooses to look, name lists are best treated as a starting place - a name from a given real culture won’t necessarily fit into a given Avatar culture, and a name from a certain Avatar culture does not have to come from any particular real world culture. Fans should also feel free to invent names of their own, as the creators of Avatar did. Of the 20 major OC’s in my story Fate Deferred, half of them have real names or variations on real names, and the other half are invented.

And if you want to have a female Earth Kingdom OC named something like Jasmine or Crystal - these are also perfectly in line with canon.

#avatar the last airbender #legend of korra #atla #atla meta #fan fiction #catie writes things #y'all wanted it now here it is

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littleeyesofpallas · 4 years

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Shaman King - Name Games

I didn’t really intend to expand this accidental series of Bleach posts outside one series, but I was looking back at Shaman King, what with the new anime having been announced, and to be honest there’s not a lot to pick at in this particular regard --a lot of the names are pretty straight forward, or just not Japanese, and the O.S. are all similarly named, predominantly in English or with pretty straight forward Japanese epithets.

Like, for example Amidamaru’s name is just written as Amida[阿弥陀] as in the Japanese name for the Buddha, Amitabha, and -maru[丸] super common super generic suffix for boys’ names. All his attack names are accordingly Buddha themed. There’s no real obscure or obtuse kind of references or anything that isn’t really self explanatory. It does tie into Yoh’s general attitude and personal philosophies being zen influenced, which I guess takes a bit of a leap if you’re not familiar, but again it’s pretty obvious.

Then his Over Soul names are all things like:

阿弥陀丸 = “Amidamaru”

スピリット・オブ・ソード = “SUPIRITTO OBU SOODO” = “Spirit of Sword”

...白鵠 = “...Byakko ” = 白:“White,” 鵠:”Swan”

Really straight forward. English readers really weren’t missing much.�� Or at least if they were reading Mankin Triad’s scanlations. (I’ll be honest, I never read all the Viz prints front to back.)

But you know what are some fun kanji readings that TOTALLY get missed in English? The actual names of the main character. And granted, a lot of characters in the series aren’t Japanese so they don’t all get fun clever names, but the Asakura family is like one big running joke...

So, in-world, the family itself starts in Japan in the 900s with an orphan child named Asaha(麻葉) Douji(童子) whose names read as “Hemp”+”Leaf” and “Child(implicitly a boy)” but also an archaic reading meaning “Scholar" or depending on context “Sorcerer.“

For a little context, despite Japan having rather notorious modern marijuana policing, hemp was actually a widespread and integral crop in Japan for hundreds of years so it’s not an uncommon component of names in the first place. It’s also the basis of a very common pattern in traditional Japanese fabric printing (and you’d probably seen it before in period settings in anime, manga, J-dramas, or film) it’s called Asanoha(麻の葉) and you’ll notice is the exact same kanji as the name Asaha.

The boy, Asaha, grows up to be a powerful onmyoji and changes his name to Asakura(麻倉) Hao(葉王) meaning “Hemp“+”Storehouse/Warehouse/Treasury“ and “Leaf“+”King.” Considering the name “leaf” clearly refers back to the family name’s, “hemp” I really hate to admit it, but Hao’s name is basically “Weed Lord” of the family “Weed Stash.“ If it wasn’t clear this is also why Takei draws a lot of cannabis leaves in association with Yoh(葉) whose name is just written with the same kanji as Hao’s for “Leaf” but with an alternate reading.

Yoh’s super chill and laid back personality and his ever present headphones for relaxing to are all part of this theme in his name. This theme is also why he’s a fan of Soul Bob (aka totally-not-just-Bob-Marley) and why Soul Bob posters are everywhere in the background of Shaman King. The Asakura family crest, adapted from the Onmyodo five-path star, also resembles a leaf not unintentionally --I don’t remember if they openly refer to that fact in-world or not.

But as we follow the rest of the family tree from there we get the ancestor Yohken(葉賢) from 500 years ago, Yoh’s grandparents Yohmei(葉明) and Kino(木乃), his mother Keiko(茎子) and father Mikihisa(幹久), and eventually his son Hana(花). Also the branch family’s Yohkyo(葉虚), and his kids Ruka(路菓) and Yohane(葉羽). And you’ll probably already notice a lot of those names use the same Yoh/Ha(葉) that is the basis of both Yoh and Hao’s names.

So the rest of the family’s names go...

Yohken(葉賢) = “Leaf”+”Wisdom” which, at face value, is just naming him as a wise shaman. But it’s also basically a cheeky euphemism for “stoner logic.”

Yohmei(葉明) = “Leaf”+”Insight” synonymous with Yohken’s reading.

Kino(木乃) = “Tree”+”From/<posessive indicator>,” so “Hemp Tree” basically

Keiko(茎子) = “Stalk/Stem”+”Child” but keeping in mind that -ko(子) is just a super common suffix for girls’ names, so it’s not like she’s being called explicitly child-like or anything, her name is basically just “Stem Girl”

Mikihisa(幹久) = “Stem”+”Longtime” but I’ll come back to him...

Hana(花) = “Flower” but also a phonetic play on ha(葉) + na(ナ) from his parents’ names

Yohkyo(葉虚) = “Leaf”+”Void/Empty” (haha that’s the same “Hollow” used for Hollows in Bleach) As the head of the disgraced branch family of the Asakura house, his name reflects that he’s not part of the family, despite the family surname, by basically just calling him “No Leaf.” Technically it could also read “Fruitless Leaf” which kinda sticks to the plant imagery better, but makes a little less sense when he has kids...

Ruka(路菓) = “Way/Path/Road” + “Fruit” I assume this is meant as “Way of Fruit” like a metaphor for the fact that she’s been tasked with leading the branch family to success, and not “Road Fruit” as in fruit you’d find on the road, or by the side of the road. Although that does kind of fit in its own way.

Yohane(葉羽) = “Leaf“ + “Feather“ which I think is a play on the fact that when traced back to Jodai era(700s CE) etymology both words shared a common root word, reflecting the fact that he’s got the same ancestor as the core family, but has developed differently but in parallel.

So I said I’d come back to Yoh’s dad, Mikihisa, because as an outsider who married into the Asakura family he has an original family name other than Asakura. His full name is Miki(真木) Mikihisa(幹久) which read as “Truth“+”Tree” and “Trunk/Stem“+”Long Time“ which has some nuance to it. Obviously “Long Time Trunk” and “Tree (of) Truth“ evoke the image of an old and venerable tree with a thick and many ringed trunk. That image plays into Miki’s role as a Shugenja --there is a whole lot going on with the history of the religion, more than I can reasonably summarize, but the thing to know here is that the popular image of Shugenja in media leans into them being ascetic monks, living in the wilderness, generally forest mountains, with an association with Tengu.(Tengu are frequently dressed in Shugendo attire.)

So, the forest man is named after a big tree, pretty straight forward... The clever bit here is how once he takes the Asakura name his name can be read to match his wife’s, as the (幹) in Mikihisa and (茎) in Keiko can both read as “Stem.”

Unrelated to anything, but it’s always super weird to me that English translators insist on calling him “Mickey” (they did the same with Kaoru Miki in Revolutionary Girl Utena....)

And while I’m talking about outsiders, I’ll bring in Anna as well. Her given name is actually just written in katakana as An’na(アンナ) so, unlike Mikihisa, her name in English is untouched. But her family name Kyoyama (恐山) is written “Fear/Dread/Awe“+”Mountain“ which is both a description of her character as an imposing figure in Yoh’s teen life, but also a reference to Mt.Osore(恐山) where she first meets Yoh, which is both home to a famous Buddhist temple and a mythological location of the gate to the underworld. It is of course written with the same kanji as her family name but pronounced differently, as you can see.

The American, Alumi(アルミ) Numbirch(ニウムバーチ) is obviously named after Aluminum, as all the Patch are named after metals. I’m not really sure why the “-birch” part is in there? It might be an obtuse play on the fact that the Japanese White Birch is also called the Siberian Silver Birch, and her dad is Silva? It feels like a bit of a stretch, but I can’t think of another way “birch” would be relevant to her name. But otherwise she’s not really related to the family theme.

And not at all related to the Asakura’s, but beautiful androgynous British boy detective, Lyserg Diethel is named after the hallucinogenic compound Lysergic acid diethylamide. (aka LSD/Acid) The drug themes is part of why his spirit is named Morphine. She is a nature spirit of (of course) a poppy flower. The other reason she’s named Morphine is because Sherlock Holmes --from whom Lyserg gets his inverness cape aesthetic-- infamously used recreational morphine (and cocaine) to alleviate himself of the lethargy of being without a case to solve.

#shaman king #Shaman King Flowers #yoh asakura #asakura hao #asakura hana

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radramblog · 3 years

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Rating the letters of the alphabet

I feel like part of my style of comedy is just rambling about shit and making loose connections between things as part of an overall bit. I think. I’m no expert on myself, unfortunately.

The inspiration for the following absolute load of shite is trying to search Tiermaker for nothing. Like, no characters in the search bar. Didn’t come up with anything. Did a search for just a space. No dice. What about just a? Surely that’ll bring up everything with an A in the title. But it didn’t, and I was somewhat disappointed.

Then my head started writing bits about letters and that’s how we got here. This is probably really stupid, but maybe it’ll at least be fun. Wordplay is cool, though maybe not my strong suit? Anyway.

A: A is one of the two letters that’s also just a word, as you’ve just seen, giving it a necessary promotion in rank. Not a lot of things get to double up like that, though with the “an” ligature maybe it’s actually a double or nothing. But because of the confusing common connection crossing contexts for the character, it gets somewhat awkward to talk about the letter in conversation. An A, in my opinion, A does not get. 4/5.

B: B is also just a word letter but unlike A when you write it out you have to stick a few extra letters on to make it work, making it not as good. But B’s association with bees isn’t enough, because in the year of our lord, like, 2019 or something, it would become inextrixably linked with shite memes as the B emoji became king. And I just don’t respect that. It’s otherwise a fine letter, dragged down by its company. 2/5.

C: Oh come on now, the word doesn’t even have a C in it anymore! You can sea the see without any of our tertiary letter’s involvement whatsoever. Not to mention how its two main sounds are just copies from other letters wholesale. C must be confusing to non-english speakers, I’d imagine. C as a grade gets what C as a grade typically entails for many a schoolchild. 3/5.

D: It would be remiss of me not to give a sterling grade to the D. Why, none of us would be here without it. While many a youth may find the D to be quite a humourous subject, I assure you I’m taking it with the gravest of sincerity when I say the D has got to be one of the best letters of all.

And by D I mean deity, of course. Wait, what did you think I meant? 5/5.

E: The absolute absurdity that is the E meme elevates E efficiently enough to excel beyond many another vowel. However, it is also the single most common letter in the English language, going so far as to open the damn name. It’s to the point where someone made a point of writing an entire book without using it, and I think Gadsby is cool but mayhaps avoiding fifth uncial was a bit showy. I can’t help but mark it down for the sake of hipster cred. 3/5.

F: F is for Fuck. I like the word Fuck. F is for paying respects. I think the military-industrial complex has poisoned our cultural landscape to the point that a reference to one of its most prized productions’ awkward moments has become one of the most colloquially used meme letters in existence, And That’s Terrible. 3/5, I’m conflicted.

G: Man literally who the fuck cares about G. What is it even good for. Just an absolute waste of a letter, total shithouse. It’s NATO equivalent is Golf, the Worst Sport, too. Who asked for any of this? Just use a J instead, it’s cooler. 1/5.

H: I’ve seen “Hhh” used enough times in written forms of pornography to not consider it a Horny Letter. That and it, being short for Hentai, is often used to denote adult material in Japan. Basically what im saying is, I think this gets worse the less sex-positive you are. 6/9.

I: I think I’ve said enough about letter words already, but I is another high-tier one because like A I is just it’s own thing. It can also, however, be a bit confusing, looking just like an l a lot of the time, and having to constantly capitalise it is a pain in the ass. I also don’t have a particularly high opinion of myself, so a high opinion of I seems disingenuous. 3/5.

J: Clearly the best letter, hands down. I’m definitely not biased. There are so few letters as underappreciated by J- a fact many a person who’s had to do that “assign yourself an alliterative adjective” icebreaker game has had to reckon with. Because it appears to be a lot more popular with names than with words, and that just kind of sucks. 6/5.

K: K has in some circles managed to bump off its partner to become yet another letter word, though in a very informal abbreviated sense. However, when you’re looking into scientific fields, eventually said partner returns, having lost some weight on the trip down to absolute zero. This all makes complete sense in my head, and I’m sure is a lot less funny to anyone who doesn’t live there. 4/5.

L: I’d argue that L doesn’t cop its namesake. It’s a really useful letter, loads of words use it, especially in pairs, and my ADHD-brain thought it was fun to just say LLLLLLLLLLL for a bit while I was thinking about this so I guess that’s staying in now. Put me down as an L Lobbyist. 4/5.

M: Mmmmmm. M&Ms. But also it’s kind of a pain to write. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. 3/5.

N: I’d like to fight whoever decided we should have two letters that sound so similar right bloody next to each other in the alphabet. Actually, who the fuck even decided the alphabet’s order to begin with? Maybe it should go M to N, that’ll bloody show you. 2/5.

O: Our fourth vowel, and perhaps one of the underappreciated ones. O is similarly a letter word, but a much more common one considering its use as an interjection. It’s also one half of a very powerful letter combo, as we’ll see. 4/5.

P: There’s the other half. Many a joke involves OP as a phrase, whether it mean overpowered or original poster, and the letters’ adjacency is a lovely bit of serendipity. Whenever I say P out loud, on its own, I have to resist the urge to do some incredibly shitty beatboxing, which may or may not be a good sign. 4/5.

Q: I was going to write some very harsh words about Q, and its dependency on U, but then I realised that that is probably hate speech against the disabled. It still sucks, though. 0/5.

R: R is the one I am most struggling to think of things to say about. R is another letter that’s just kinda there. I’m sure the Roberts and Rachels of the world would disagree with me, though. It’s also the name of a program that I know has traumatised a lot of young biologist wannabes, slapping us with a whole pile of maths and statistics when we just wanted to look at cool plants and shit. Or in my case, cool cells and shit. 2/5.

S: The most overrated consonant, but also the thing that makes plurals not a pain in the ass. However I’m going to lean towards giving S a positive rating, if only because it’s associated with snakesssss (and serpentine characters who can talk) and I like those. 3/5.

T: I don’t think T gets enough credit as one of the pillars of the English language. A lot of very common words feature it, and yet it feels like it never gets the same level of credit as big shots like S or half of the vowels. T is like the character actor of the alphabet, is basically what I’m saying. 4/5.

U: Ah, the letter Americans hate for some reason. I think this is actually commentary on the history of American politics. Because throughout history, America has been extremely selfish and self-centered, while attempting to present a positive image that people are finally seeing past. They only entered WWI and WWII when it was convenient for them, they started wars and initiated coups in even their allies for petty ideological reasons, and they’ve gone to war with several countries and funded wars with several others seeming just for shits and giggles. Because apparently if you’re not an American, then you’re not one of them, and that means they hate U. 4/5.

V: I actually think V is underrated. It’s a fun sound. That’s it, no joke here. It’s neat, I like it. 4/5.

W: This may come as a shock to you, but double-u over here is actually two Vs! unless you’re writing in cursive, but fuck cursive. The French actually have it right on this one, naming it double-v (pronounced doobleh-vay). Add in the fact that it’s literally just M upside down, and you’ve got a pretty shite letter. 1/5.

X: There’s a reason literally every “A is for Apple” thing you see made for kids uses Xylophone for X, and that’s because there are no commonly used words that start with it. Seriously, it’s all just scientific terms- I’d argue X-Ray is more common than Xylophone in common parlance, but also, who wants to explain imaging to a kid. It doesn’t even get a second page of words on Dictionary.com. X also has implications as a letter word, that I’d rather avoid at the moment. 2/5.

Y: Ah, Ygreck, everyone’s favourite “what the fuck, France?” moment. Between that and being sorta kinda not really a vowel, Y prompts its own question more often than I’d care to admit. 2/5.

Z: As a (technical) member of the generation associated with this letter- on the one hand, I’m sorry, on the other, y’all have it coming. The final letter of the alphabet, one of the other ones worth 10 in scrabble (and yet X isn’t???), and one we probably got pretty sick of in the early 00s when it was everywhere- ironically, when most of the generation was getting born. 2/5.

And that’s the lot of them. I hope this didn’t alienate any non-English speakers too hard. It’s probably fine.

Join me for more bullshit next time I have another stupid idea. I mean, tomorrow.

#ramble #nonce shit tbh #remember when I made good content? yeah me neither

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Cinematic Legacy of Lupin: Arsène Lupin’s Live-Action Filmography

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When Netflix premiered the first season of Lupin last January, 70 million sheltered-in-place households ravenously binged it, making the series the most-watched non-English show for its premiere month on the streamer so far. Lupin steals a page from French literature. The hero of Lupin, Assane Diop (Omar Sy) is inspired by France’s iconic ‘Gentleman Thief’ Arsène Lupin, a fictional figure created by French writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905.

Lupin was the subject of some two dozen books by Leblanc, who continued adding into his literary franchise until well into the 1930s. Akin to Robin Hood, Lupin stole from the rich, and often did good deeds despite his thieving capers. He was a master of deception and disguise, a lady killer who always operated with a classy panache. With a legacy spanning more than a century, there have been plenty of live-action depictions in film and TV.

The First Lupin Films are Over a Hundred Years Old

The earliest cinematic portrayals of Lupin were in black and white, and many have been lost. One of the very first was a U.S. production, a short film titled The Gentleman Burglar in 1908. William Ranows, a veteran of over sixty films, played Lupin. It was directed by one of the first film directors ever, Edwin Porter, who worked for Edison.

Leblanc was a contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Consequently, Holmes appears in a few Lupin stories. Doyle took legal action against Leblanc, forcing the name change in Lupin stories to the thinly disguised ‘Herlock Sholmes.’ As Holmes is loved by the British, Lupin is cherished by the French, and both characters became global icons. Consequently, among the many film and TV adaptations, several that depicted their rivalry regardless of copyright issues. In 1910, a German film serial titled Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes starred Paul Otto as Lupin and Viggo Larsen as Holmes (Larsen also served as director.) There were allegedly five installments in the series, but they’ve all been lost.

France produced Arsène Lupin contre Ganimard in 1914 with Georges Tréville as Lupin (Inspector Ganimard was constantly on Lupin’s trail). The silent film Arsène Lupin came out of Britain in 1916 with Gerald Ames in the titular role, followed by more U.S. productions: Arsène Lupin (1917) starring Earle Williams, The Teeth of the Tiger (1919) with David Powell, which is also lost, and 813 starring Wedgwood Nowell. 813 was the title of Leblanc’s fourth Lupin book.

Lupin and the Barrymore Clan of Actors

The legendary thespian John Barrymore played Lupin in 1932’s Arsène Lupin. He took on the role under one of Lupin’s aliases, the Duke of Charmerace. His brother, Lionel Barrymore, played another Lupin nemesis, Detective Guerchard. Given the illustrious cast, this is a standout Lupin film, although there isn’t a shred of Frenchness in Barrymore’s interpretation. Coincidentally, John Barrymore also played Holmes in Sherlock Holmes a decade earlier. He is also the grandfather of Drew Barrymore.

Barrymore’s Arsène Lupin revolved around the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Historically, the Da Vinci masterpiece was stolen in 1911 and recovered in 1913. This inspired a Lupin short story, a parody akin to early fanfiction that was not written by Leblanc. In 1912, mystery writer Carolyn Wells published The Adventure Of The Mona Lisa which imagined Holmes and Lupin to be part of the International Society of Infallible Detectives alongside A. J. Raffles, Monsieur Lecoq, and other crime-solving luminaries. Barrymore’s Arsène Lupin does not retell this tale, but the theft of the Mona Lisa comes up again in other Lupin films because it’s France so robbing the Louvre is a common plot point. Netflix’s Lupin begins with Diop’s heist of the Queen’s necklace from the Louvre, an Easter egg referring to Leblanc’s original Lupin short story, ‘The Queen’s Necklace’ published in 1906.

The ‘30s delivered two more Lupin films. The French-made Arsène Lupin detective (1937) starred Jules Berry as Lupin and the American-made Arsène Lupin Returns (1938) with Melvyn Douglas who was credited under another Lupin alias Rene Farrand (Lupin has a lot of aliases). Despite being a completely different production, Douglas’ film was an attempt to capitalize on the success of Barrymore’s film as both films were from MGM. Universal Studios entered the fray soon after with their version Enter Arsène Lupin (1944) starring Charles Korvin. The following year, the Mexican-made Arsenio Lupin (1945) featured Ramón Pereda as the French thief. That film also starred José Baviera as Sherlock.

The Early Japanese Lupin Adaptations

Lupin captured the hearts of the Japanese. Ironically, Japanese speakers have a difficult time pronouncing ‘L’s so Lupin is usually renamed as ‘Rupan’ or ‘Wolf’ (Lupine means wolf-like – remember Remus Lupin from Harry Potter). As early as 1923, Japan also delivered a silent version of 813, retitled Hachi Ichi San, starring Komei Minami as the renamed Lupin character of Akira Naruse.

In the ‘50s, Japan produced 3 films that credit Leblanc: Nanatsu-no Houseki (1950) with Keiji Sada, Tora no-Kiba (1951) with Ken Uehara, and Kao-no Nai Otoko (1955) with Eiji Okada. However, post-WWII Japan has obscured most of the details on these films. Like Hachi Ichi San, these Japanese versions laid the foundations for the Lupin III, which debuted as a manga in 1967 and spawned a major manga and anime franchise. In karmic retribution for Leblanc poaching Sherlock, Japan stole Lupin. Lupin III was Arsène Lupin’s grandson.

Notably, the second Lupin III feature film, The Castle of Cagliostro, marked the directorial debut of famed animator Hayao Miyazaki and is considered a groundbreaking classic that inspired Pixar and Disney (Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective (1986) pilfered the finale clockwork fight from The Castle of Cagliostro). In the wake of the anime Lupin III Part I (1971), Japan produced some anime films that were more loyal to Leblanc, notably Kaitō Lupin: 813 no Nazo (1979) and Lupin tai Holmes (1981). However, this article is focused upon live-action adaptations. Lupin III is another topic entirely.

In the late ‘50s and into the ‘70s, France reclaimed her celebrated son. Robert Lamoureux became Lupin for two films, Les aventures d’Arsène Lupin (1957) and Signé Arsène Lupin (1959). A comedy version pitted rival sons of Lupin against each other in Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin (1962). Playing the Lupin brothers were Jean-Pierre Cassel and Jean-Claude Brialy.

Lupin on the Small Screen

From Lupin III to Inspector Gadget: Examining the Heirs of Arsène Lupin

By Natalie Zutter

France also delivered several TV series. Arsène Lupin ran from 1971 to 1974 and starred Georges Descrières. It encompassed 26 60-minute episodes. L’Île aux trente cercueils (1979) is often included in Lupin filmographies because it is based on a Leblanc novel published in 1919 in which Lupin makes a guest appearance. However, he was omitted from this six-episode miniseries, so it doesn’t quite count. Arsène Lupin joue et perd (1980) was another six-episode miniseries loosely based on ‘813’ with Jean-Claude Brialy from the 1962 comedy.

One more French TV show, Le Retour d’Arsène Lupin, was televised in two seasons, 1989-1990 and 1995-1996. These were 90-minute episodes with 12 in season 1 and eight in season 2. François Dunoyer starred as Lupin.

And in 2007, the largest Lupin TV show ran for a whopping 96 episodes plus one special. Lupin was made in the Philippines no less, starring Richard Gutierrez as André Lupin

Lupin in the Last Decade

In 2011, Japan delivered one more live-action film Lupin no Kiganjo starring Kōichi Yamadera. Based on Leblanc’s 3rd Lupin book, L’aiguille Creuse, the film is reset in modern Japan.

In the strangest permutation of Japanese Lupins, Daughter of Lupin was a TV series that is an odd hybrid of Lupin III and Leblanc’s work. A campy sitcom in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, Hana (Kyoko Fukada) comes from a family of thieves known as the L clan who are inspired by Lupin. Her lover, Kazuma (Koji Seto), is from a family of cops. When in thief mode, Hana wears a carnival mask and a velvet catsuit. It’s goofy, sort of a live action version of anime. It ran for two seasons in 2019 and 2020.

The Lupin Adaptation You Should See

The strongest modern adaptation of Leblanc’s iconic burglar is the period film Arsène Lupin (2004). It’s an actioner, a creation story for Lupin, starting from his childhood and moving rapidly to him becoming a master gentleman thief. Romain Duris plays the titular role, and the film is in French. Backing Duris are veteran actresses Kristin Scott Thomas as Comtesse de Cagliostro and Eva Green as Clarisse de Dreux-Soubise. The story is absurd, like a mash-up between a superhero film and the DaVinci code, and it gets a bit muddled in the telling. However, it’s shot on location (including the Louvre) and encapsulates the spirit of Leblanc’s character in an updated fashion. It’s a perfect primer for Lupin Season 2.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Lupin seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post The Cinematic Legacy of Lupin: Arsène Lupin’s Live-Action Filmography appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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leosrequiem · 4 years

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Letters of the American English Alphabet Rated by ME

A - The classic. 7/10 Not much to say here, it's usually a soft letter, good in making words sound less abrasive. Good at the beginning of a phrase/name but not very appealing. It is a vowel and starting phrased with a vowel feels weird. I gave it one extra point for being the first letter of the words ass, apple, angel, and anguish.

B - Meh 4/10 Less than average. It has terrible vibes. It’s almost uncanny. I can’t really explain it but I associate it with words like blubbery, bloat, baluga, balloon, berry(ies), and they all have a lumpy, rubbery and round look that all make me slightly uncomfortable.

C - 5/10 This letter is the bane of my existence in school. I associate it with feelings of failure even though it is not terrible to get a C. I associate it with words like: cool, clean, cock, cucumber, and conception and those are all pretty fun words which cancel out the overall negative feelings so it earns a nice average rating.

D - AW YEAH BOOOY 7/10 D is an interesting letter. I think it looks good at the beginning of words/phrases because the hump faces the way we read. One could argue the flat back is a block and makes it hard to start the word but I argue the opposite. It acts more like a gate that doesn't let you turn back, encouraging you to read further. However I am deducting 2 points from my original rating because the lowercase D is the worst letter for someone with dyslexia. I often confuse it for B and P and that is no good.

E - 6/10 A very versatile letter able to make a bunch of cool noises like E and eh and ey as well as it sounding different in different accents languages. It's the second vowel on this list meaning you can pronounce it without using anything in your mouth. The letter E is full of joke material like the meme E and puns like Eggciting. Despite this it's still a boring vowel that's hard to write in uppercase.

F - 2/10 Stupid. Fuck you. FFFFFF is such a dumb sound. And that’s the hex code for pure white which is the color of Apple™ and I hate them. F is also a boring letter that just looks like a broken E. G - 5.5/10 Not much to say here again. I associate this letter with pirates though, and that’s cool so I’m giving it .5 points above my original rating.

H - 7.5/10 H is like the eboy of letters. If I was drawing humanized letters, H would absolutely be a scrawny white eboy, mayhaps even a Tumblr sexy man. Cool letter. I don’t ADORE it, but I like it. Hell yeah.

I - 1/10 Bane of my existence. Between I and lowercase L… This vowel is only good in words, never the beginning of words. Ice? Igloo? Insane? Stupid looking words. Terrible design.

J - 5/10 No thoughts. The only good thing about this letter that's above average is that I like writing it in cursive, that is all.

K - 3/10 I just don’t care about this letter, everything it does can be done with a C or an X. We as a society have moved the need for K.

L - 5.3/10 Just barely above average because I associate it with lovecore and I fuck heavily with it. I also enjoy how smooth of a sound it is.

M - 5/10 Smooth sounding and that's all i care about.

N - 3/10 Nothing interesting fuck you.

O - 7/10 DONUT

P - -2/10 It’s a nerdy looking letter. Pronouncing it is like trying to speak with marshmallows in one's mouth. It’s massively unimpressive and looks terrible in the front of a phrase. It feels like a fucked up vowel rather than a usable letter.

Q - 0/10 Useless letter. Can almost never be used without having a U or CK next to it. Just use C or CK, It’s so ridiculous and a waste of time. It’s also a dyslexic nightmare letter often being confused with P.

R - 6/10 I don’t know what to say I just like to rrrrrrrrrrr, but that’s it.

S - 10/10 Slithery goodness. A flexible letter that can be written in so many ways before it’s confusing! I associate it with sky, snake, slithery, soup, serendipitous, serenity, soothe and I just think these are some nice words. Drawing S’s out also makes me feel like an evil snake or a creeper.

T - 6/10 Testosterone

U - 3/10 Helpful but ugly. This letter NEVER looks good or sounds cool in anything. Unique is a dumb looking word. Unicorn is too. (No hate to those funky horses)

V - 5/10 No thoughts but fun to use as an arrow pointing down!

W - 7/10 Double U? You mean double V? Despite the stupid name for this letter I think it deserves some appreciation because without out I wouldn’t be able to express as much confusion as I can now.

X - 8/10 TWO LINES and also reminds me of pirates but for a much more obvious reason. I like pirates!

Y - 8.5/10 No thoughts, just think its stupid in a fun way.

Z - 9/10 only because it’s a super uncommon letter and when I see it I get excited.

#long post #cage rattling posts #grrrrgrgrgr #bark bark bark bark bark

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reynaldorobinson · 4 years

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Pre-Dawn Carbonara

Sometimes One goes out One's head / Sometimes One goes mad / Sometimes One makes good with that with which One should make bad

I don't want to alarm you, pre-dawn wanderers, but I think I accidentally invented the Reverse Breakfast Asparagus Carbonara. There was I, just picture it (and only picture it, if you please), at a simple first attempt toward carbonara. However, as you may well know of me, there is no more complexity as to how simple I can become when issued (even by self) a simple task.

(To wit: I over-complicate. Seeming to be clever, but reilly a twit, to wit (And that's all there's to it).)

Distracted by myself, as I always am, I cooked everything in reverse order, separated and beat my whites, only to scramble them back into their yolks, and throughout the pasta water, accidentally turned my sauce into eggs leavened to high heaven. The capocollo I was thawin' in a broken microwave and fryin' in a pan like I was tryin' to double-rei-cure it from dyin'. I went far past al dente with the pasta part of my repast, saving with a quick bake on a plate, dedicated to reverse-desiccate it to a past, more palatial, palate (pronounced, here, "pal-ATE") for One to eat (pronounced, here, "ATE").

I don't even remember sautéing the peppers, though they ring a bell.

As for the asparagus (as for us, I guess), it could not have turned out finer; Out-of-sight, in oven-bounds not bemoaning this One diner. Thankfully (and with one onion, on one's way) out-of-sight.

To whet, to spare us (to wit: not embarrass): breakfast was served, although be it last night.

#reversebreakfastasparaguscarbonara

Today is National Chocolate Eclair Day and National Onion Rings Day It is NOT Discovery Day, finally. Good goddammit.

And good morning.

* * *

In lieu of a poem (for you, dearest reader (the only one still reading at this point)), I have especially offered here the first three chapters from a book I never finished writing entitled: How to Read: A Comprehensive Guide. So, if you would like to spend your pre-dawn learning how to read a bit, you may do so now.

Or not. I know it's early.

~ How to Read: A comprehensive guide

First Unit

The Letters Letter One of Twenty-Six (A a) Pronunciation

[fig. 1], [fig. 2] As in the A in "this is how to pronounce the letter A."

[fig.3] As in "I can never remember if tall & large are the same thing when ordering coffee. Also, grande."

[fig. 4] As in the word "chat," which is the French word for "cat" and whose vowel is pronounced as that in "chat," which is the English word for "chat."

[fig. 5], [fig. 6] As in, uh, something.

Any alliteration assigns an author as amateurish and asinine. Also: an asshole.

A is a wholly unique member of the Alphabet. Not only is it the only letter whose position in the Alphabet is the same as its position in the word "Alphabet" (i.e. first and fifth), but it also begins the majority of single-letter English articles.

The primary nature of A is itself a lesson on the importance of starting things at their beginning. You will find, as you embark upon your quest for literacy, that one of the imperative strategies for reading is to read the beginning of the word first. This is key. In this spirit, our exploration of the Alphabet will commence with the first letter, A, which we have just covered.

Chapter A Exercises

1. Using what you learned in this section, complete the Alphabet: __ B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 2. Compile a list of everyone you know whose first initial is A. Then, make a list of people whose last initial is A. Compare the lists. Doesn't the term "last initial" seem odd? I think it does. Letter Two of Twenty-Six (B b)

Pronunciation

Like "be" without the "e" (see E).

B was first discovered by early etymologists 45 billion years ago (previously known as 45 illion years ago), sparking a heated fissure that created the rogue, fringe group of ex-classical etymologists, known as "ontologists."

There are no other facts about the letter B. This chapter is over.~Chapter B

Chapter B Exercises

1. Write a short story using the letter B as a main character. Get it published in every literary magazine in the western world. Forget your dreams of becoming literate. Revel in your fame. Recieve an offer for a movie version of the story. Make a solid bundle. Move to a house made of strong, bare wood with a grand veranda that faces west. The house is on a cool, placid lake. There is a very large bed with very fine linens. Wake each morning in it with different, multiple sex companions who show earnest interest in your story, but know only the details of the film version. Watch less and less television as you see more and more commercials for fast-food figurine toys of the characters from the movie and spend less and less time online as you notice more and more internet ads for the book-on-mp3 version of the novelization of the movie (read by the actor who played B). Wake each morning with people who know nothing of your work nor any literature, really. Begin drinking first thing in the morning. Duck calls from your publisher, from the movie people. Curse the sunset from the veranda. Throw empty liquor bottles at the lake. Fall down your hard, wooden staircase and wake hours later, bleeding, in a small pool of vomit. Wonder how it has come to this. Buy a yacht and set fire to it. Cry every day, all day, in a soft and slow way. Breathe. Dig a shallow hole in the backyard, near the water, near the ashes, and sit in it. Hug the shovel and wait for rain that will not come. Do not shiver in the cool night that beaches itself in from the lake. Breathe. Think of another story, a longer one. One about a man who has nothing and is happy. He dies at the end, in a slow and terrible way and he regrets his happiness. He denies it and then he dies. Do not commit this story to paper or memory. Forget quickly its nuance. Make a mental note to buy a gun. Breathe. Letter Three of Twenty-Six (C c)

Pronunciation

C is pronounced like S (see ch. 19) or K (see ch. 11), as in "civic" and "coelacanth."

When C is paired with H (see ch. 8) it can have a pronunciation as in "lichen" and "chronometer."

While C is often referred to as the "bronze medal letter," its third-string placement in the Alphabet belies the integral role it plays in the world. Without C one couldn't comprehend. One couldn't compose. One couldn't couldn't. Without C the chaste would stop abstaining, in haste. It would be chaos, which would be haos, which is so absurd that this hapter is over.

Chapter C Exercises

1. Try to write an entire phrase without using this segment's letter. You will find that it is impossible.

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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Heeding the Call: Cthulhu and Japan

Depending on your interests, the name Cthulhu may stir feelings of some strange familiarity, or an excited, nearly existential sense of horror to come. Despite the fiction that birthed much of the “Cthulhu Mythos” being moderately popular, the cosmic horrors introduced by H.P. Lovecraft have morphed into a life of their own thanks to the work of his protege, August Derleth, leaving future generations to encounter the unknowable in various forms spanning video games, tv shows, movies, and perhaps the most popular forms, table-top roleplaying and board game experiences. Perhaps less well known, though, is the fact that the Cthulhu Mythos is exceedingly popular in Japan, and has a wide and exciting history of adaptations, works, and impact upon many of the genres we love in Japan to this day. Today, we’ll be taking a look and exploring that history!

The history of Cthulhu in Japan is a bit more diverse than you might initially think, and isn’t as unified as it might seem! The first bits of spreading horror came from translations of H.P. Lovecraft’s original works into Japanese in the 1940s, appearing in the horror publication Hakaba (or Graveyard) Magazine, translated by Nishio Tadashi. These early translations would prove vastly popular, and over the years ended up leading to numerous Japanese adaptations and inspirations based on Lovecraft’s original works.

Anime and manga fans are likely somewhat familiar with Kaoru Kurimoto, creator of Guin Saga, Hideyuki Kikuchi, creator of Vampire Hunter D, fan favorite horror author Junji Ito, and legendary mangaka Shigeru Mizuki, who all claimed Lovecraft as a direct influence on their works at some point. That existential, cosmic, unknowable horror is certainly present in Ito’s works like Uzumaki, and Mizuki’s interest in folklore and yokai make an attraction to the Cthulu Mythos a lot more understandable. Mizuki actually drew an adaptation of the classic story The Dunwich Horror under the title Chitei no Ashioto, simply moving the story and characters to Mizuki’s beloved setting of rural Japan.

Perhaps one of the most influential Lovecraft inspired creators in anime though is Chiaki J. Konaka, likely best known to many for his work on series like Serial Experiments Lain, Digimon Tamers, and Big O, as well as other series like Armitage III (which takes its name from a Lovecraft character!), RaXephon and Texnolyze among many others. Konaka’s career extends into the Tokusatsu side of things as well, having worked on numerous Ultraman series ranging from Tiga, Gaia, Max, and more, as well as many other series. Konaka worked in references to the Cthulhu Mythos into many of his projects, and even wrote his own short fiction; one of them, Terror Rate, was even published in English, and was even a guest of honor at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in 2018!

Much of the spread and popularity of Cthulhu fiction in Japan is owed to a few people, one of the most notable being Ken Asamatsu. Asamatsu has spent much of his career translating and spreading Lovecraft’s works in Japan, running fanzines and other publications in order to spread his love of the existential dread universe. While Asamatsu has worked on a few manga himself, he isn’t exactly an anime or manga creator, but without his input and dedication, it is unlikely that these works would ever be as popular as they are today!

Existential, creeping, unknowable horror translates well to other mediums as well, so it should come as little surprise that video games share various callbacks and influences from the Cthulhu Mythos as well. Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei series and its many spin-offs feature numerous callbacks to Cthulhu Mythos characters and creatures, with some of the most obvious being Nyarlathotep’s direct role in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona and Persona 2. Many of the other titles reference things like the Necronomicon, with that same text being the initial persona of Persona 5’s Futaba Sakura.

Aside from Shin Megami Tensei, there are less obvious, but somewhat hard to miss, references to many of the tropes and unique style of horror in the Cthulhu Mythos in From Software’s Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and most directly Bloodborne games. Demon’s Souls in particular draws heavily on the existential, unknowable horror that is descending upon the kingdom of Boletaria and the secrets behind its true collapse, and the Dark Souls games similarly feature somewhat Lovecraftian ideas and monsters. Of the three, Bloodborne is the most direct with its inspirations, with characters routinely discussing the fact that seeing more of the truth may drive one mad, cosmic entities controlling, mutating, and destroying humanity, fish people (a staple of Lovecraft’s works), and humongous, tentacle-faced monsters (here known as Amygdala).

Ironically, however, there is actually another reason for the popularity of Cthulhu Mythos in Japanese media that helped spread its flavorful influence amongst various genres, and it actually has little to do with Lovecraft’s actual writings themselves. Instead, many Japanese fans encounter Lovecraft’s elder gods through the table-top role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, first published in Japan 1986, and the explosion in popularity was not only a staggering success, but it continues to this day! Although many Western fans might assume that TTRPG games like Dungeons and Dragons are popular in Japan due to some of their influences in fantasy anime, Call of Cthulhu reigns supreme as the most popular TTRPG in Japan, and its popularity likely helped introduce many Japanese to the TTRPG genre in the first place!

Call of Cthulhu is, essentially, a group mystery adventure game, and that seems to have really hit big with Japanese audiences far and wide, because the game has remained in print since its initial introduction in the nineties, and has fans of all ages and genders playing in groups, to the point that some places will find their rooms for group meetings rented out to play games of Call of Cthulhu! Recently, the game even got some favorable air time in an NHK news segment, talking about the game itself and the fun that can be had with it! With this popularity came the growth of a somewhat unique phenomenon: Replays, essentially narrative, semi-novelized versions of Call of Cthulhu campaigns collected and printed for other people to read, similar to today’s popular “actual play” podcasts and videos such as Critical Role or The Adventure Zone. Even today, Call of Cthulhu replays are extremely popular, with new versions being printed all the time, sometimes even adorned with amazing, cute anime styled art and other interesting little design choices, like semi-doujinshi level works featuring Touhou characters, and more! These Replays became so popular that they soon spread to other types of TTRPGs, and are the inspiration behind anime such as Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, and many others!

If one were to search Cthulhu on Amazon.jp, you’d actually find that most of the results are these colorful and interesting Replay books, almost more so than you’d even find the original novels and stories by Lovecraft himself! There are many other fascinating fan inspired books about the Cthulhu Mythos, including a personal favorite of Cthulhu monsters arranged in a book similar to those of Kaiju and Tokusatsu stylings (even featuring a cartoon Lovecraft on the cover doing the famous Ultraman pose). There are other small Cthulhu publications in Japanese, include a manga anthology called Zone of Cthulhu and numerous adaptations, and Gou Tanabe’s versions are even being translated into English, with The Hound and Other Stories already available, and At the Mountains of Madness coming later this year.

Of course the Cthulhu love isn’t limited to just print media; many anime have featured some nods and callbacks to the mythos, such as in the visual novel and anime of the same name Demonbane, which is even set in Lovecraft’s beloved Arkham. Main character Kuro Daijuji works with Al Azif, the living personification of the Necronomicon, to defeat the nefarious Black Lodge (a very probable nod to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks here). As mentioned above, numerous works by Chiaki J. Konaka draw from the Cthulhu Mythos, but Digimon Tamers might be the most surprising, with callbacks to Miskatonic University and Shaggai, as well as a computer AI that seems to have more in common with the Great Old Ones than it does Skynet! Another example is a fairly popular series, Bungo Stray Dogs, where one of the characters... is actually named Lovecraft! But that's not all! His "The Great Old Ones" ability is a reference to Cthulhu's origins. Probably one of the most famous examples is Nyaruko: Another Crawling Chaos, where the monsters of Lovecraft’s works are revealed to actually be aliens, but still very weird! The anime is a comedy featuring numerous Mythos characters repurposed or slightly renamed, such as Nyarlathotep as Nyaruko, the Yellow King Hastur, and more. The series of novels proved popular enough to spawn 3 anime seasons and other spin offs, proving that even if you take the horror out of the Mythos, people will still find it entertaining and… cute?

Speaking of cute, this brings us to a few interesting final tidbits about the Cthulhu Mythos and Japan. Aside from the direct popularity, the language change and differences have led to a few running gags in Japan about the series, one of which has to do with the somewhat infamous Cthulhu cultist chant, “Ia Ia Cthulhu Ftaghn,” with “Ia Ia” being pronounced very similar to the Japanese expression “iya iya”, which has a few various uses in casual Japanese, either meaning something similar to “um” or “no” depending on how and where it is used. The second comes from the fact that Japanese, being a syllabic language, actually has an easier time pronouncing the supposedly “unpronouncable” names of the Cthulu Mythos creatures, with Cthulhu being translated as クトゥルフ, or “Kutourufu”, which is not only a lot easier to actually say, but sounds oddly cute for the sinister elder god!

Cthulhu mania seems as popular as ever both outside and inside of Japan, with new games, movies, comics, and more drawing inspiration from the titles. Although Lovecraft’s own works are less popular than when the fascination started, the current passion for his ideas stems from the attractive allure of the unknown, the potential darkness lingering in shadows and dark pools of water. Whatever the reason people flock to the Cthulhu Mythos, it seems like we can look forward to numerous adaptations, inspirations, and callbacks for years to come… until perhaps even Cthulhu awakens! Until then, it’s best to keep your wits about you and stock up on your esoteric lore… You never know where the elder gods might pop up next during your next anime, manga, or video game binge!

Have any secret and mysterious ancient Cthulhu influences we didn’t mention? Know of any other influences on Japan you’d like us to cover? Let us know in the comments!

----

Nicole is a features and a social video script writer for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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uiruu · 6 years

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fuck what youve been taught, the way we write our language has NOTHING to do with the language itself. it doesnt matter and isnt in and of itself important to uphold.

fac wat jūv ben tot, ða wej wī rajt awr lāŋgwiǧ hāz NAÞIŊ ta dū wiþ ð’ lāŋgwiǧ itsélf. it daznt mātr ānd iznt in ānd av itsélf impórtnt t’ aphóld

ooooookay so i just did this because i wanted to try coming up with my own spelling reform. going full International Phonetic Alphabet isnt practical, so i came up with this.

English has a lot of vowels, so here’s how i broke them down:

a = butt, cup ā = bat, cap e = bet, crept ē = bait, day i = bit, skip ī = beat, keep o = bought, cop (uhhhh sooooo this vowel is the same in my dialect. cot and caught are pronounced the same. uhhhh i never remember which is which sooooo uhhhh this is something i might wanna change. ooooorr i might make this alphabet more catered to my dialect because theres nothing wrong with different dialects having different spellings) ō = boat, cope u = book, put ū = boot, coop aj = bite, climb oj = boy, coy aw = cow, bow (like taking a bow and bowing, not like the thing you use to fire arrows)

am i missing any?

so okay i know what youre thinking. “a” for the sound in “cup”? and yeah, i didnt really know what to make that sound be.... and if i made “cap” be an “a” with a line over it, thatd let me use “a” for that sound, which tbh, isnt that big of a stretch. i was gonna have that sound be “u”, but then what would be “put”?

i want as many sounds as possible to represented only by a single letter, with as little combinations of letters as possible. so i could have “beat” be “beet” or “biit” or “beat” but having it be “bīt” feels simpler. bite, boy, and bow are written with two letters cause they’re diphthongs. i used the consonant version of the end-sound (j,w instead of i,u) because english is weird and a sequence of “oi” could be “o-i” like in going. that doesn’t rhyme with boing. going would be goiŋ and boing would be bojŋ.

also the acute accent marks stress

aaaaaaaaalso i know that the reason we spell “boot” with two o’s is cause long ago it was pronounced as a long o, but i dont care about the past, i wanna spell things as they are now. basically every other language also does it that way, we should too. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalso i know “boat” and “bait” are also diphthongs, “ow” and “ej”, but if i spelled them that way there’d be no ō or ē, and they never contrast. english is weird.

now to consonants. okay so the biggest tricky thing is k vs c. heres why. so, for the j sound in “judge”, i used ǧ, since that sound comes from a g historically and often alternates with it (oblige vs obligation). so for “ch” as in “church”, should i make it č like in slavic languages? in those languages “c” means “ts”, a sound we dont really have. (when we have t+s its not the same as the sound at the beginning of tsunami or tsar). however, in analogy with g/ǧ, i could have “c” ALWAYS be the sound in “cock”, and do away with the letter “k” entirely. or i could do vice versa, and have “k” always be that sound, which is much less ambiguous. but then would “church” have to be “ǩrǩ”? no, thats ugly. but should i have č but no c? or should “c” always be “ch”, so “charles” is “carlz”? i think for now im going with c and č, and no k, because it feels cooler

other than that its pretty straightforward. r, l, m, and n can act as vowels (bigger/bigr, little/litl, rhythm/riðm, and rotten/rotn), but if you want you can use an a since that means schwa in unstressed syllables, and in english those sounds can be interpreted as schwa+consonant or as syllabic consonant. þ, ð, and ŋ get their own letters (thick/þic, this/ðis, king/ciŋ). š, ž, č, and ǧ are modifications of other letters (shin/šin, asia/ēža, cheese/čīz, and gym/ǧim), etc. t/d between vowels sound the same (latter vs ladder) but im keeping them separate because of things like “writer” vs “rider” where theyre both pronounced the same but the vowel is pronounced slightly different. can you tell? “ice” and “eyes” have slightly different vowels, because one ends in s (a voiceless sounds) and one ends in z (a voiced sound). besides, not every dialect of english does these things the same way, not every dialect even pronounces writer and rider differently, so i figured id just leave the t and d just in case. im going for phonemes, not just for strict phonetic sounds.

oh and i used j for the sound in “yeah” because i figured that i might want to use “y” for a vowel. i might, in future revisions. proooobably for the short i in “in”? yn? we’ll see

so uhhhh yeah! i think thats mostly that

this is a work in progress that i may very well never return to

lmk what you think haha

#i should figure out something for the cot caught merger cause i have them merged and its hard to think of them not as merged #but if im going for phonemes i should have them separate #spelling reform #english spelling reform #linguistics

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tulunnguaq · 6 years

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Linguistic Excursions (5): Cornish / Kernowek

So after my four previous Celtic excursions it’s fitting that I turn south to visit the final Celtic tongue of the British Isles, Cornish.

Like Manx, Cornish is a revived language, but with a rather longer time between the passing of the last native speaker and the revival – more like 200 years rather than 20-30. So one of the complications this has brought is that there has been less agreement on the exact type of Cornish that should be revived, e.g. Middle Cornish, Tudor Cornish or Late Cornish, and of course there are no recordings available to confirm exactly how Cornish is spoken.

Cornish also did not have a fixed orthography during its last few hundred years, so Cornish revivalists have at times been at loggerheads in terms of the form of writing that should be used to write it (see for example, Kernewek Kemmyn - Cornish for the Twenty First Century (1997) by Paul Dunbar and Ken George, which is essentially a 160 page rant - in the form of a dialogue between the two authors – analysing the criticisms of their orthography by another Cornish scholar, Dr Nicholas Williams, rather than (as I hoped) an introductory grammar of the Cornish language). Fortunately, since then, the disparate groups have come together to cooperate and create a new Standard Written Form of Cornish, which strikes a balance between traditionalists and modernisers, and which also permits alternative forms to be used according to the writer’s style.

Like with Manx, there’s been some attempt to push the revival at the nursery/primary end, as this video suggests, but sadly I couldn’t easily find out what the current status of the early education programme is in Cornwall.

Today’s first text comes from Skeul an Tavas (The ladder of the language), an introductory Cornish language coursebook. The version I have uses the ‘traditional graphs’; another edition is available that uses the more modern ‘main form’ graphs.

Cornish is a Brythonic (or Brittonic) language, and is very close to Welsh, so where possible I’ve shown the Welsh equivalents in the vocabulary, out of comparative linguistic interest.

Text 1

Yma Peder hag y whor, Morwena, ow mos dhe’n lyverva. I a garsa cavos nebes lyvrow tochya an balyow coth y’ga ranndir. Peder ha Morwena a gar whithra an jynnjiow.

“Kemmer with!”

“Yma’n lyvrow na ow codha, Peder”.

Wella a wra aga hachya. Yn y dhorn yma dew lyver da.

“Gwra mires, Morwena, Tas-gwynn a garsa an lyver ma.“

Y whrons i mos tre gans an dhew lyver.

Vocabulary

yma – is . Cf. Welsh (W) mae

ha, hag – and. W. a, ac

y2 – his. Causes the second (soft) mutation to applicable consonants. W. ei

whor (f) sister. NB wh- does not mutate. W. chwaer

ow4 in this case, a verbal noun particle. W. yn, Ir/Sc G ag. Causes fourth (hard) mutation to applicable consonants. Cornish has no fewer than four mutations (!), listed as the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th state mutations in Cornish text books. Compare this with one mutation in modern Scots Gaelic (lenition), two in Irish and Manx (lenition and eclipsis/nasal mutation), three in Welsh (lenition/soft, aspirate and nasal) and Breton (lenition, aspirate and hard); Breton and Welsh both also have a “mixed” mutation but unlike Cornish it doesn’t create a new scheme of mutated consonants that don’t appear elsewhere. The Cornish mutations are as follows:

- the 2nd state mutation is a soft mutation, like the Welsh soft mutation, causing (p>b, b>v, m>v, t>d, d>dh, ch>j, c/k>g, g>w or Ø)

- the 3rd state mutation is an aspirate mutation, like Welsh aspirate mutation, causing (p>f, t>th, c/k>h, qw>wh)

- the 4th state mutation is a ‘hard’ mutation, creating unvoiced sounds, causing (b>p, d>t, g>c/k/q)

- the 5th state mutation is a mix of the aspirate and hard mutations, causing (b>f/v, m>f/v, d>t, g>wh).

Letters not mentioned in the above lists are not mutated.

mos to go

dhe to. W. i, Cf. Irish (Ir) do, Scots Gaelic (ScG) do/dhan

’n, an the. W. y, yr. Ir/ScG an. Note that as in W. the same form of the article is used for singular and plural definite forms, whereas in Ir/ScG an is singular only.

lyverva library. W. llyfrgell, but cf. W. ending -fa ‘place of’ as in swyddfa office.

i they

a garsa would like. From cara to like. i a garsa they would like. Cornish is structurally a VSO language like the other Celtic languages, but it also has a number of “impersonal” verb forms where the subject/pronoun comes before an uninflected (for person/number) form of the verb, separated by verbal particle a2, which causes the 2nd mutation. So the meaning is something like “[it is] them who would like”. In doing so it gives the impression of an SVO word order, possibly something that might have been influenced by the surrounding English language as Cornish declined?

cavos to get, find

nebes (a) few (takes plural form)

lyver (m) book, plural lyvrow

tochya to touch. Here meaning “concerning”

bal (m) mine. pl. balyow. Not sure if cognate with W. pwll pit?

coth old. Does not seem to be cognate with W. hen, Ir sean, ScG seann, but rather Breton (Br.) kozh

y(n) in. W, Ir i

’ga3, aga3their. Probably not cognate with W. eu their but note the similarity with Ir acu, ScG aca at them, often used in possessive constructions, but not used directly as a possessive pronoun as in Cornish.

ranndir (m) area, district. W rhandir

whithra to search, investigate. Similar to W. chwilio

jynnjy engine house. Presumably from Eng. loanword jynn engine + chi house. Plural jynnjiow

kemmer take (imperative form of kemeres take). W. cymryd, cymer-

gwith care. Here with second mutation as with. As in Welsh, the soft mutation used for the direct object of a verb appearing after the explicit or implied subject. Cf perhaps W. gwyliad(wriaeth) caution

na that. Appears after the noun hence an lyvrow na those books. ‘This’ is ma, used in the same way.

codha to fall. Note that the 4th state mutation after ow4 does not change initial c-

Wella boy’s name

a wra does. This is the impersonal (3rd person singular) form of gul do, which is gwra reduced to wra after the soft mutation caused by a2, as above. Cf. W. gwneud. In this case it is used as an dummy auxiliary verb - much as English do has a dummy auxiliary function as in “do you like that?”.

cachya to catch. From English, presumably. Here in the aspirate 3rd state after aga3 their giving aga hachya ‘their catching’. Similar to Welsh, the possessive pronoun is used with the verbal noun to indicate a direct object, i.e. ‘catching them’. So the phrase Wella a wra aga hachya means lit. ‘[It is] Wella who does their catching’ or more naturally ‘Wella catches them’

dorn (m) fist. From which yn y dhorn in his fist

da good. Same as W. da

gwra do! (imperative form of gul). As above, acts as auxiliary verb for following action verb.

mires to look. Hence gwra mires look!

tas-gwynn (m) grandfather. Lit. “white (gwynn) father (tas)“. Grandmother is similarly dama-wynn “white lady”.

y whrons i they do. y5introduces the statement form of the verb (cf. Welsh fe, mi) and takes the 5th state mutation (softening and devoicing g-), which in this case converts gwrons to whrons. As above the verb is acting as an auxiliary to mos go.

tre (f) town, farm (seen in the names of a number of Cornish villages), but here as an adverb meaning home(wards)

gans with

dew (m) two. Here with soft mutation after an, and note the use of the singular noun after the number. The cardinal numbers in Cornish (which are very similar to Welsh) from 1-10 are:

1 onen/unn

2 dew/diw

3 tri/teyr

4 peswar/peder

5 pymp

6 whegh

7 seyth

8 eth

9 naw

10 deg

Translation

Yma Peder hag y whor, Morwena, ow mos dhe’n lyverva.

Peter and his sister Morwena are going to the library.

I a garsa cavos nebes lyvrow tochya an balyow coth y’ga ranndir.

They would like to find a few books about the old mines in their area.

Peder ha Morwena a gar whithra an jynnjiow.

Peter and Morwena like investigating the engine houses.

“Kemmer with!”

“Take care!”

“Yma’n lyvrow na ow codha, Peder”.

“Those books are falling, Peter.”

Wella a wra aga hachya. Yn y dhorn yma dew lyver da.

Wella catches them. In his hand are two good books.

“Gwra mires, Morwena, Tas-gwynn a garsa an lyver ma.“

“Look, Morwena, Grandad would like this book.”

Y whrons i mos tre gans an dhew lyver.

They go home with the two books.

Text 2

The second text is the Cornish version of a well-known song, and a different orthography has been used, reflecting a Late Cornish approach. See if you can work out the song before you read the translation.

Spladn che steran vian spladn,

War an moar ha'n doar en dadn.

Dres an clowdes, otta che,

Carra jowal 'terlentry.

Spladn che steran vian spladn,

War an moar ha'n doar en dadn.

Vocabulary

spladn bright. Note alternative spelling splann, which can be pronounced /nn/ or /dn/. Further alternative spellings shown in brackets below. Not sure what this may be cognate to, but same word is used in Breton: splann

che (also jy) you. W. ti

steran (also steren) (f) star. Cf. Welsh seren

bian (also byhan/byghan) little, here lenited after feminine noun as vian. W. bach, bychan

war on. W ar

moar (also mor) (m) sea. W. môr

doar (also dor) (m) earth, soil. W daear

en dadn (also yn dann) under. W. tan

dres above, across. W ar draws

clowd, clowdes (also clowdys) cloud(s). From English.

otta behold, here is.

carra (also cara) like. W. caru. The odd thing here is that carra/cara means to like, be fond of, rather than English like=as, which would be avel. I wonder if this is a translation issue on the part of whoever translated the song into Cornish.

jowal jewel. From English

’terlentry.to twinkle. I think the apostrophe here might represent a missing verbal particle ow, described in Text 1 above. Not sure what this word might be cognate to, but note Breton terenn ray of light

Translation

Spladn che steran vian spladn,

Bright, (are) you, little star, bright.

War an moar ha'n doar en dadn.

Upon the sea and the earth below.

Dres an clowdes, otta che,

Above the clouds, there you are!

Carra jowal 'terlentry.

Like a twinkling jewel

Spladn che steran vian spladn,

Bright, (are) you, little star, bright

War an moar ha'n doar en dadn.

Upon the sea and the earth below.

As ever, I hope people found this latest ‘excursion’ interesting. Do let me know if so.

Not sure if there are any Cornish learners on tumblr? If so - corrections or comments welcome!

So where next? I’m basically working my way through my bookshelf and I suppose will work my way round the globe little by little...

#cornish #cornish language #kernowek #cornwall #celtic languages #brittonic languages #revived languages #langblr #endangered languages #welsh #irish #scots gaelic #manx #notgreenlandic

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foneticairina · 3 years

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r-sounds

The /r/ is the most variable consonant phoneme of English in the sense that several of its allophones are, from a phonetic point of view, significantly different from one another, and it is only from a phonological point of view that they can be regarded as allophones of the same phoneme. This is underlined by the fact that the major pronunciation variants of /r/ can be represented in a phonetic transcription proper by separate symbols, rather than being indicated merely by diacritics.

Any r-sound is technically termed a rhotic. Most of the next nine rhotics usually occur in clearly defined environments, (the choice between them is largely rule governed, and they are therefore commonly regarded as allophones in complementary distribution)

Typical in RP:

The neutral r (neutral in RP, that is): lenis postalveolar approximant (or frictionless continuant), and is non-syllabic. It is the sound we hear word-initially in red, or when /r/ is pronounced in isolation, and it can be represented in a phonetic transcription proper by an r-like symbol turned upside down and reversed, [J], as in [jed].

The flapped r, or tapped r: is a lenis alveolar flap, or tap, and it can be represented in a phonetic transcription proper by the symbol [r]. It is similar to the rolled r, but it involves only one flap of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge, rather than a vibration. It occurs in RP and in several other accents of British English, typically between two vowels, as in very American. Because the flapped r resembles a fast /d/, it is sometimes spelt as dd by writers who want to represent spoken language as closely as possible, as in veddy Ameddican.

The devoiced r is a variant of the neutral r, and does not, therefore, have a separate symbol, but can be indicated by the diacritic [r̥]. However, the devoiced r is no longer an approximant, like the neutral r, because the gap between the tongue tip and the rear of the alveolar ridge has become narrower, and the air now produces audible friction when forcing its way through. The devoiced r can therefore more specifically be described as a devoiced postalveolar fricative. It typically occurs after a fortis plosive, /p, t, k/, in stressed syllables.

The labialised r is also a lenis postalveolar approximant (postalveolar because the rear of the alveolar ridge is still the place of the primary articulation), like the neutral r, of which it is a variant. It can be indicated by the diacritic [rʷ]. If the labialisation is overdone, i.e. if the lip-rounding is too strong, the labialised r begins to resemble a /w/. Such a sound is frequently used to satirise the (affected) speech of the upper classes, and it is sometimes (facetiously) spelt as ww by writers who want to represent it as closely as possible in traditional orthography. Ironically, this is also the sound most English children make until they have learnt to articulate /r/ properly, and if adults make it, it is sometimes regarded as a language disorder.

The fricative r is the second fricative among the r-sounds. It differs from the devoiced r only in that it has retained the intrinsic voicedness of /r/, and it can therefore more specifically be described as a voiced postalveolar fricative. It is another variant of the neutral r, and can be indicated by the diacritic [ɹ̝]. The fricative r only occurs after /d/, as in dread [dɹ̝ed], dream [dɹ̝i:m], and drive [dɹ̝aiv].

On the other hand, the allophonic variants of /r/ that do not occur in RP are:

The retroflex r is a lenis retroflex approximant, and it can be represented in a phonetic transcription proper by the symbol /ɻ/. It typically occurs in rhotic accents, for example in most American accents, after a vowel and before an alveolar consonant, as in bird [b3:ɻd] and world [w3:ɻd].

The rolled r: is a lenis alveolar roll, or trill, and is represented in a phonetic transcription proper by the same symbol used for the underlying phoneme, [r]. Even though it does not occur in RP, but it is typical of Scottish and Irish accents, and it is sometimes used in stylised speech, for example on stage or to convey jocular stereotypes. It is also common in the varieties of German spoken in the north of Germany, in Bavaria, and in Austria.

The syllabic r is a lenis postalveolar approximant, like the neutral r, of which it is a variant, and it can be indicated by the diacritic [r̩]. It is very common in many rhotic accents, but rare in non-rhotic accents.

The uvular r is produced by moving the back of the tongue against the uvula. It is less technically also referred to as a back r, or informally as burr. It is not a variant of the neutral r, but comes itself in two distinct variants. One variant is the uvula r roll, or uvular trill. Unlike the lingual roll, which is produced by a vibration of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge, the uvular roll is produced by a vibration of the back of the tongue against the uvula. It is a common sound in German, and a prestigious allophone of /r/ in French, which is why it is informally also referred to as the Parisian r. It can be represented in a phonetic transcription proper by [ʀ]. The other variant is the uvular fricative. It is the third fricative among the r-sounds of English, and the friction here is produced by air forcing its way through a narrow gap between the back of the tongue and a tensed uvula. It can be represented in a phonetic transcription proper by an [ʁ]. Both variants of the uvular r are very rare in English. They are stigmatised by speakers of RP, and in the past were even regarded as language disorders. They are typical only of some accents of north-east England and south-east Scotland.

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the-golden-city · 6 years

Text

Unofficial Name Reference

Once Upon a Time there was a girl named murakumo who said she’d write a list of preferred name spellings for the Shoukoku no Altair fanbase. She’s been pretty busy and kept forgetting to honour her promise, but she finally decided to make a start…

Part 1 - Türkiye

Kato Kotono

Japanese: カトウコトノ

Explanation: I decided to make an addendum and include Kotono, just because. While romanising her last name as “Katou” or “Katō” isn’t incorrect and Hepburn would be proud, official materials always write it “Kato” in English.

Rumeliana

Japanese name: ルメリアナ (rumeriana)

Other names: Rumeriana, Lumeriana

Pronunciation: roo-mel-YAH-na

Explanation: The roman letters R and L are rendered the same when converted to Japanese using the ninth row of gojuon katakana (ra, ri, ru, etc), so it’s easy to get mixed up between the two. However I believe that Rumeliana is most likely the intended spelling because of its similarity to the name “Rumelia”, in turn derived from the Turkish “Rumeli”, which historically referred to areas of Europe under Ottoman Imperial control. “Rum” is derived from “Rome”, meaning the Roman peoples (i.e. non-Muslims). Incidentally, I call the inhabitants of the continent “Rumelians”.

Türkiye Stratocracy

Japanese name: トルキエ将国 (torukie shoukoku)

Other names: Türkiye Devleti, Torqye Devleti, Turkiye

Pronunciation: tuhr-kee-eh

Explanation: Türkiye is, pure and simple, the Turkish name for the country of Turkey. Kotono uses this spelling liberally on maps and such. It seems the anime may have changed it to Torqye to prevent any backlash from people mistaking the portrayal as real, rather than fictional? I don’t know. “Shoukoku” is a made-up word indicating a country governed by pashas, or “generals” in Japanese. There’s no accepted English translation, but in the magazines Kotono writes “general nation” in the roman alphabet. The earliest scanlators instead picked “stratocracy”, which is a military government. “Devleti” is a Turkish word meaning “state”, so in using that name the military aspect that sets Türkiye apart from its neighbours is lost.

Altın (The Golden City)

Japanese name: 金色の町 (kin’iro no machi) / アルトゥン (arutun)

Other names: Altun

Pronunciation: AL-tuhn

Explanation: Most common roman typefaces still don’t support several letters of the Turkish alphabet. To avoid using a lowercase “dotless i”, the official English version of the manga decided to call the capital “Altun” instead. Its name is Turkish for “gold” and also the colour “golden”. Most towns in the Katoverse have a phonetically written foreign name, and also a Japanese name explaining the meaning behind it, so Altın’s Japanese name is “the golden city”, or perhaps “golden town”.

Divan (The Council of Generals)

Japanese name: 将軍会議 (shougun kaigi) / ディワーン (diwaan)

Other names: Diwan

Pronunciation: DEE-van

Explanation: “Diwan” is perhaps more commonly known in English (where “divan” refers to a type of furniture), but it’s actually Arabic. Kotono appears to have also made this mistake. “Divan” is the correct Turkish word for a council of state.

Pasha (General)

Japanese name: 将軍 (shougun) / パシャ (pasha)

Other names: Paşa

Pronunciation: pa-SHAH

Explanation: Ugh okay I’ve been wondering for a long time now whether or not to switch to the Turkish word “Paşa” instead of the romanisation (which is in the English dictionary and everything). But “s-cedilla” is such a bitch to typeset and I feel like many people, most of all myself, are very attached to the name “Pasha” at this point. Maybe it’s the one spelling I’ll never change… For the sake of consistency, I’ve rendered other Turkish ranks “Vizier” (not “Vezir”), Binbashi (not “Binbaşı”), and so on.

Note on Turkish names: Katoverse Turks don’t have surnames, so the first word is an epithet, a kind of official nickname, and the second word is their given name. Their title - if any - comes last.

Burak

Japanese name: 大将軍 (taishougun) / ビュラク (byuraku)

Other names: Büyük Pasha

Pronunciation: BU-rak

Explanation: Give me strength… I don’t know this man’s name! My main issue is that, while “Büyük Pasha” would make sense as a translation of his title, the katakana rendering of his name isn’t anything like “Büyük”. However, it does resemble “Burak”, which is a masculine Turkish name, so my current theory is that it operates much like the names of cities, combining a Turkish name and Japanese title. It would seem strange, after all, that every other pasha is addressed by first name except him. In Toukoku no Subaru, Turkophile prince Yan Tao adopts the same Japanese title, but is still addressed by name.

Tuğril Mahmut

Japanese name: 犬鷲の将軍 (inuwashi no shougun) / トゥグリル・マフムート (tuguriru mafumuuto)

Other names: Tughril Mahmut, Tuğrul Mahmut, Mahmud

Pronunciation: TOO-ril MAH-moot

Explanation: “Mahmut” is a Turkish variant of the name “Mahmud”, which is Arabic. Maybe the French release thought it sounded more familiar to their audience. Otherwise it’s consistently been “Mahmut”, and Kotono has confirmed this. His epithet is a bit of a headache; “Tuğrul” might be more accurate, if it weren’t for the Japanese pronunciation. In any case, all of the above are variable spellings of the same word, which refers to a mythical bird also called “Turul” or “Togrıl” (and described as a hawk or falcon, not an eagle). It was also the name of the founder of the Seljuk Empire, often romanised as “Tughril”.

İskender

Japanese name: イスカンダル (isukandaru)

Other names: Iskandar

Pronunciation: is-KAN-dar

Explanation: “Iskandar” is the Arabic and Persian form of the name Alexander, whereas “İskender” is the Turkish form. Kotono has written his name this way in the roman alphabet on several sketches. The name became popular in Middle Eastern countries out of admiration for Alexander the Great.

Zehir Zağanos

Japanese name: 毒薬の将軍 (dokuyaku no shougun) / ゼヘル・ザガノス (zeheru zaganosu)

Other names: Zaganos

Pronunciation: ZEY-heer ZA-ah-noss

Explanation: Note the “soft g”, which is more-or-less silent and always a nightmare to typeset. Kotono doesn’t seem to have realised this at first, judging by the rendering of his name in katakana. I found out a while back that the Byzantine Greeks called certain types of falcon and kestrel “Zaganos”, which sets up a pretty neat contrast to Mahmut.

Şehir Halil

Japanese name: 大都市の将軍 (daitoshi no shougun) / シェヒル・カリル (shehiru kariru)

Other names: Khalil, Shehir Halil

Pronunciation: SHEY-heer HA-lil

Explanation: Kotono seems to have initially made another mix-up with this name, since “Khalil” is the Arabic form (and even then, the “k” is silent). She later corrected herself and has consistently written his name “Halil” in the roman alphabet on sketches and artwork, though the katakana stayed the same. The curse of “s-cedilla” sabotages attempts to get his epithet right.

Tesisat-Kapı Saruca

Japanese name: 水門の将軍 (suimon no shougun) / テシサトゥ・カプ・サルジャ (teshisatu kapu saruja)

Other names: Sarjah, Salja

Pronunciation: TAY-see-sat-ku-puh SUH-ru-jah

Explanation: It’s a shame Saruca kicked the bucket before I took over, so I’ve never had a chance to correct his name in the manga. “Sarjah” and “Salja” don’t mean anything as far as I know. I went through a fair amount of trouble finding out the truth, however patience prevailed and I discovered that his namesake was fittingly a real-life pasha who served Mehmet the Conqueror, alongside the men who Zağanos and Halil are named after. May be derived from the Turkish word for “yellow”. His epithet is a bit of a mess; “tesisat-kapı” does not mean “watergate” as the Japanese implies.

Şanslı Nurcan

Japanese name: 幸運の将軍 (kouun no shougun) / シャンスル・ヌルザーン (shansuru nuruzaan)

Other names: Şanslar Nurzan

Pronunciation: SHANS-luh NOOR-jahn

Explanation: Kotono threw me a red herring with this guy by writing his name in katakana “zaan”, as the Turkish letter “C” usually becomes “J” in names like Saruca and Cemil. Nurcan is fitting for him, however, since it means “light of life”. In one chapter Kotono miswrote his epithet in roman characters as “Şanslar”, which means “luck” and sounded legitimate enough, throwing me yet again. “Şanslı” is an adjective, but fits the katakana spelling better.

At-Nalı Cemil

Japanese name: 蹄鉄の将軍 (teitetsu no shougun) / アトナル・ジェミル (atonaru jemiru)

Other names: Atnal Cemil

Pronunciation: AT-naluh JEH-meel

Explanation: A minor detail - “atnal” and “at nalı” both mean “horseshoe” and are pronounced roughly the same way in Japanese.

Kara-Kanat Süleyman

Japanese name: 黒翼のスレイマン (kokuyoku no sureiman)

Other names: Suleiman

Pronunciation: KA-rah KA-nat SU-lay-man

Explanation: Yet another case of mixing up the Turkish and Arabic transliterations. His title, “Başkan”, is a pain to typeset, so Bashkan will suffice.

Caterina

Japanese name: カテリーナ (kateriina)

Other names: Katarina

Explanation: We’re talking about Süleyman’s golden eagle here. Since it came to light that she shares a name with Caterina de Rossi, I changed to an Italian form.

Şapka İbrahim

Japanese name: 飾り帽子のイブラヒム (shapuka iburahimu)

Other names: Shapka Ibrahim

Pronunciation: SHAP-ka ee-BRAH-heem

Explanation: The curse of “s-cedilla” strikes again. In Turkish there are of course two letter i’s, dotted and dotless. They are pronounced quite differently and should not be confused.

Şara

Japanese name: シャラ (shara)

Other names: Shara, Shahra

Pronunciation: shah-ra

Explanation: This caused me so much grief that I was glad the artbook gave me a way out by rendering her name “Şara”. Though it’s not a common name even nowadays, it fits the bill better than any alternative spellings.

Koko & Koran

Japanese names: ココ (koko) / コラン (koran)

Explanation: I’m really not sure about these two girls. Their current names are just romanised Japanese, and don’t resemble anything used either historically or contemporarily in Turkey or Arabic-speaking countries. I’m tempted to assume that Kotono made them up.

Unchanged Names

Liman

Japanese name: 港の町 (minato no machi) / リマン (riman)

Pronunciation: LEE-man

Uyandırma

Japanese Name: 警告の鐘 (keikoku no kane) / ウヤンドゥルマ (uyanduruma)

Pronunciation: oo-YAN-dur-mah

Kurt Kurt

Japanese name: 狼の将軍 (ookami no shougun) / クルト・クルト (kuruto kuruto)

Pronunciation: koort

Mimar Zeki

Japanese name: 建築家の将軍 (kenrakuka no shougun) / ミマール・ゼキ (mimaaru zeki)

Pronunciation: MEE-mahr ZEY-kee

Deve İlkay

Japanese name: 駱駝の将軍 (rakuda no shougun) / デヴェ・イルカイ (deve irukai)

Pronunciation: DE-vay EEL-kai

Abbas

Japanese name: アッバス (abbasu)

Pronunciation: AH-bass

Ahmet

Japanese name: アフメット (afumetto)

Pronunciation: AH-met

Roxelana

Japanese name: ロクセラーナ (rokuseraana)

Pronunciation: ROCK-say-lah-na

#shoukoku no altair #shokoku no altair #trivia #reference

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the-caravan-languages · 6 years

Text

Lesson 1 + 2: alphabets

Welcome to the first Farsi/Persian lesson! We’re gonna be kicking it off with the script and spending a good bit of time on that. Throughout there’ll be a lot of example words to demonstrate the script: don’t feel obligated to memorize any of these yet, but you can pick some of the important ones and try to learn them as you go. Also, note any pronunciation approximations I give will be according to American English, not British English. Anyways, onto the actual lesson.

While we tend to use the term “alphabet” to refer to any system of writing, it also has a more specific meaning, which is a system in which both consonant and vowel sounds are written with separate individual letters. Persian, however, is an abjad, a writing system vowels are either not written at all or optionally indicated. That would be a pure abjad, one where all vowels truly could be left out. However, all abjads in use today are impure abjads, meaning that there are some vowels that must be indicated.

There are 2 more things to know about the Persian script: it is written right to left rather than left to right, and letters connect with each other much like English cursive.

To start off, we’re going to learn the first 5 letters. Here are those letters in alphabetical order:

ا ب پ ت ث

We’re going to begin with the second letter of the alphabet, ب, called “beh” /be/. It makes the same sound as the English letter “b”.

And now, the first letter of the alphabet: ا, called “alef” /ælef/. This generally makes the sound â /ɒ/, much like the “a” in “father”

Since we have our first consonant and our first vowel, we can combine them together and make a syllable.

So, ب + ا gives you this:با

Remember how I said Persian works like English cursive? The form that I just taught you for those 2 letters is called isolated form, referring to the letter standing alone.

There are 3 more forms, however: the initial form (coming at the beginning of a word), the medial form (coming in the middle), and the final form (coming at the end).

In the word above, we only see the initial and final forms on display: ب has the initial form بـ, and ا has the final form ـا.

Combine them together, you get با bâ, which means “with”.

Now it’s time for your third letter of the alphabet, پ “peh” /pe/. This is pronounced just like the English “p”, and is very similar to the previous letter except that it has 3 dots at the bottom instead of one.

This goes for all its forms, too; the only difference between the various forms is that پ has 3 dots. So, this means that combining پ and ا gives you پا pâ “foot”.

Then there’s the third letter, ت teh /te/, which makes the sound “t”. By now you’ve probably noticed a pattern, and have assumed that this letter has the exact same forms as the previous two besides the number and location of the dots. That’s actually correct by the way, I wasn’t trying to lead up to some sarcastic surprise reveal. So yeah, your example word is تا tâ “until”.

Then you have ث “seh” /se/, making the “s” sound.* You get the drill by now, and the word ثا doesn’t exist.

Now, what if I told you I could teach you 3 more vowels without showing you another letter? You may think I’m crazy, but let’s go back to what I said about vowels being optional: some vowels, such as alef which I showed you above, are mandatory.

You can’t just write ت and hope people read it as tâ “until”. The vowels that are optional are indicated by diacritics rather than by separate letters, and I’m going to teach you the 3 main ones.First, there’s the diacritic representing the “a” in the word “bat” (/æ/). It’s written like so, as a horizontal line slanted to the top-right above the letter:بَThis is read as “ba” /æ/, which isn’t a word. But we can actually make a word if we put this together with what we just learned!

Now that you know this vowel marker, you can read the word for “fever”:تَب

There are 2 more of these vowel diacritics I want to teach, representing the sounds “e” in “bed” and something similar to the sound “o” in “toe” respectively (with the “something similar” part: if you say the word “toe” to yourself, you’ll notice that there are actually 2 vowel sounds.

In Persian, however, this “o” sound doesn’t glide into another vowel at all).بِ بُ(In case it isn’t clear: the one below the ب is “e”, the weird squiggly one above is “o”) Now that you know these all, there’s one more rule to cover: you know how I said alef generally corresponds to the sound â? Well you see, at the beginning of the word it’s actually silent and essentially a placeholder for these vowel markers. This is because in Arabic, it’s not a pure vowel marker and in fact stands for the glottal stop /ʔ/.

Anyways, if you want to represent the vowel sounds “a”, “e”, and “o” at the beginning of a word, you write them asاَ اِ اُrespectively. If you want to actually represent the sound â at the beginning of a word, you add a little doo-dad to the top of alef and get آ, this special new alef being called “alef madd”.

Remember that these vowel diacritics are optional: they are mainly used in children’s books and materials for learners, and in actual native text you have to know from context which vowel sound is meant. It’s a pain in the ass, but you get used to it.

But anyways, now that we have our 3 vowel diacritics, alef, and a couple of consonants, I can talk about the medial forms that I forgot to explain. For this, we only really need to look at ب:بببYou can see the ب has the medial form ـبـ. Seeing as we know the other letters are formed simply by substituting the dots, I trust you to figure out the medial forms of them yourself.

And with that, the first lesson is over! Don’t relax though, make sure to quiz yourself on all this.

READING PRACTICE: transliterate these gibberish words بُث، تات، تِب، بات، ثَت، آثِت پُت، پُبَت، بِاپَتِب*

This is just one letter of multiple that represents the sound “s” and is not in fact that one that’s used when adapting foreign words to Persian; you’ll learn 2 more later. The reason that there are 3 letters for the “s” sound is that 2 of them actually represented different sounds in Arabic that Persians just pronounced as an “s” to make life easier. ث happens to be one of those letters with a different sound in Arabic (that being the “th” in “thick”). ——————————————-

Welcome to lesson 2! This one will probably be a lot shorter than the last lesson, just because there’s less to explain.

So, now we’re gonna move to a new letter shape, and in that letter shape we’re gonna be learning 4 new letters:

ج چ ح خ

Once again, these are presented in alphabetical order. We’re gonna start by learning the third letter here, ح, called “he”. This makes the “h” sound, and like ث is mainly used in Arabic loanwords. It has the following forms:

ح حـ ـحـ ـح

Something important to know is that while in English an “h” at the end of a syllable (“ah”) is silent, this letter is always pronounced.

Now with that, the forms other 3 letters should come very easily to you. In fact, we could just do a speed round and cover them all here! Alright, so the first letter in alphabetical order of the ones I’ve presented to you is ج, called “jim”, and it makes the same sound as the English “j”. Then there’s چ, called “che”, which makes a sound very similar to the “ch” in the word “chips”, with one key difference - aspiration. Aspiration is a puff of air released after pronouncing certain consonants. For example, hold your hand out and say a “t”; you’ll probably feel something. In Persian, like in English, the consonants “p”, “t”, and “k” are followed by aspiration, but unlike English the consonant “ch” is aspirated too. So practice following your “ch” with a puff of air and you’ll be good. Anyways, this letter is one of the 4 that’s present in the Persian alphabet but not in the Arabic one, so you’ll only see it in native Persian words and some Turkic loans that snuck their way in.

And skipping ح we get to the last letter in this lesson, خ, called “khe”. This makes a sound similar to the “ch” in the word “loch” or the German pronunciation of “Bach”. It occurs extensively in both native Persian words and Arabic loanwords, so you’re just gonna have to learn to pronounce this one.

Now, because I’m bored while writing this and need something to lengthen this otherwise uncomfortably short lesson, I’m going to teach you some more diacritics. These aren’t vowels, they just mark additional information that might be useful. First off, we’re gonna learn a w-looking marked called the “tashdid”:

بّ

This marks what’s called “gemination” in linguistics, but can be described pretty simply as holding a consonant for a bit longer than usual. For example, say “bad dad” and notice how that “d” in the middle is held. In Persian, holding consonants like this can actually differentiate between words! For example, there’s mâde “female” and mâdde “material”. The tashdid also does some weird stuff when you combine it with the short vowel diacritics: when you add “a” and “o”, they go above the tashdid as you would expect. When you add “e”, however, it goes below the tashdid but still above the letter rather than just going below the letter itself as it usually does.

اَبَّت، اَبِّت اَبُّت

Because it’s basically impossible to read diacritics on an Arabic computer font, from right to left those read “abbat”, “abbet”, and “abbot”.

Next up, there’s a circle looking thing called the “sokoon”, which marks the absence of a vowel of any kind. You don’t see this too much in Persian, seeing as you can just as well mark the absence of a vowel by… well, just not putting vowel diacritics or not using long vowel letters. Still though, it’s worth at least knowing and it looks like this:

بْ

I’ll put it in at least one word in the reading practice, but still, it definitely takes the back seat to the letters you just learned and the tashdid.

READING PRACTICE: transliterate these mostly gibberish words

حُبّ، پاچ، ثُچَت، جُخ، آخ، اَخَبْ، تِجَّح

#persian #langblr #farsi #mino #luke #mitra #caravanlanguagesfarsi

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phoenixfeatherquillwriting · 6 years

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Name Game!

I was tagged by @no-url-ideas-tho and @micastarsandmirrors! Thank you so much friends and sorry it took me 30 years to get to this ahhhh!

ANYWAY, my naming style is very....eclectic? Sometimes I make them up, sometimes I take existing names and tweak them, sometimes I take an existing name and add it to the language I’m making with a different meaning, and sometimes I conduct an exhaustive search for a name that’s JUST RIGHT (meaning and sound and all that.) I make it way more difficult than it needs to be. Sigh.

I have way way way too many OCs so I’ll just list the ones I usually post about here, but if anyone wants to, you can tag me again becuase I certainly have way more.

The OCS

Liz Desslin-I always start my lists with her and I have no idea why. She’s been with me for a few years now, I would say since 8th grade~freshman year. At that time I was really into the TV show Victorious and the earliest iteration of Liz’s character was inspired by one of my favorite characters, Jade. The actress who played her is Liz Gillies so I took her name and gave it to Liz. I then lengthened it to a longer made-up name for my language, but she doesn’t like it and doesn’t let anyone call her that, so I won’t mention it. My surnames usuallly don’t mean anything, I usually just mash together sounds until I get something I like or use a generator.

Beth Pemmer-She’s been around a little longer than Liz and has had about 3 name changes so far, poor thing. I think “Beth” came up because some of my favorite book characters as a kid were named Elizabeth and I just looked into variants. Like Liz, I extended Beth’s name a little to fit my language, so her full name is actually Bethki, but everybody just calls her Beth.

Tavi Simorian-I actually made up the name Tavi, only to discover years later that it’s a real name sometimes used as a diminutive of Octavia. By then it was too late to change it, so she’s just stayed “Tavi.”

Jewels (J) von Delmont-J is my oldest OC in terms of creation date. Becuase she’s ~10-sh years old or more, I don’t really remember where her name came from. At that time, I did have a couple of other OCs with gem related names, so I think Little Dove was trying to continue the theme and didn’t like “Jewel” by itself and added an s. I later rationalized my dumb decision to myself by saying her parents named her after the Crown Jewels of England. Most of her friends just call her J. The prefix “von” in her last name is the prefix of nobility in her country.

Rose Angelle-I wanted this utter sweetheart of a character to have a sweet name. She’s a true romantic at heart, and approaches all she does with love. Roses are traditionally associated with love and romance, so that’s what I chose. Her surname is a reference to the fact that I killed her off in one of my early drafts and I wanted to foreshadow that she was destined to be an “angel.” (Her last name is pronounced slightly differently than the word angel but I don’t know how to phonetically convey it so...*shrug emoticon.*)

Azura Jackson-I knew a girl named Azure when I was in like 6th grade, when my fascination with names and their meanings was beginning. I always thought her name was pretty, so I looked into variants and found this. Since Azure is a shade of blue, it’s also a refernce to the fact that her favorite color is indigo and she loves being out under the blue sky in her garden. (The fact that Rose has a flower name and is her best friend was an unexpected bonus.)

Ash Gutierrez-Ash is my newest OC, and from the start I knew I wanted them to be nonbinary. This lead to an extensive search of names for nonbinary folks, and this is what I settled on. I believe that Aris helped Ash pick their name when they fully came out and wanted a less feminine name. It proved to be a useful jumping off point for their character, as I promptly gave them pyrokenetic magic right after I named them.

Katri Newsome-Also relatively new to my brain, Katri got her name for its meaning: the translation to English is “knowing.” The English version is usually considered to be Kendra, and although her family calls her that (as is common in the region she’s from), she prefers Katri. Until recently, only Aris knew this and abused by her wishes. Her name is somewhat ironic becuase for a good portion of the story, she doesn’t know about the illegal activities her mentor Aris is up to. But in another way, it describes her character because she’s ever-curious and understands Aris in a way that the vast majority of people do not.

Aris Portokalos-Aris went through a name change or two as well, and I finally settled on this one becuase I liked the sound of it. It sounds similar to Ares, Greek god of war, and Aris is a fighter through and through. I heard her surname in a movie once and just randomly decided that was the one for her.

Thank you again for asking and sorry for this extremely long post!

#ask games #name game #dove’s useless ocs #oc: liz #oc: beth #oc: j #oc: tavi #oc: rose #oc: azura #oc: ash #oc: katri #oc: aris #dove talks #mine #micastarsandmirrors #Liv #thank you again for tagging me #writer friends

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