This Week in Google Alerts: story with Gaiman

David Stockhoff · 19 Feb 2011, 16:27 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:27:19 -0500
Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: story with Gaiman
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On 2/19/2011 8:14 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> From: "David Stockhoff" <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>
>
>> Funny that the guy who complained about Wolfe's use of Latin calls 
>> himself Lepton. I am assuming he is not actually Greek, yet he 
>> resurrects this archaic language and reuses its dead, worn-out words. ;)
>
> I suppose he might say that 'lepton' is now an English word, 
> signifying a member of a family of sub-nuclear particles, the best 
> known of which is the electron.
Exactly. He's guilty of the crime of which he accuses Wolfe.
>
>
>> I was interested to read this thought:
>>
>> "Yes, I know what Latin is. What I'm saying is that the sword is not 
>> actually called Terminus Est. It's name is actually in English, which 
>> to Severian and the other characters is an ancient and defunct 
>> language. If Wolfe gave us the actual name of the sword, it would 
>> convey to us the meaning but not the sense. So Wolfe translates it to 
>> Latin."
>>
>> We've had some debates about names and languages used (towns on the 
>> Whorl, etc.). But I am not sure anyone has proposed that the dead 
>> language is actually English, even though this would explain some of 
>> Severian's linguistic explanations, among other things. There is 
>> probably a limit to how literally one can take the idea, but 
>> generally sense it works well and yet is not obvious. And of course 
>> it's another puzzle of the simplest and most confounding kind.
>
> I read that too.  My first thought was that it was not English, 
> because English is clearly referenced by Thea in her speech about 
> "when the damn men went to Verthandi".  In the ancient language of the 
> dawn men, "Present" means both "Now" and "The Gift".  She is baffled 
> as to how anyone could use a language so confusing.
>
> But still the question arises as to whether "Terminus Est" may be 
> written in that ancient language, rather than some other.  On the face 
> of it there is no firm reason why it should not be English, but I 
> don't really believe it. Latin is part of the public consciousness of 
> the modern world - most people could not read it but few would not 
> recognise it. And it is a close ancestor of English - we use many 
> words derived from it.  The language Thea speaks of seems older, and 
> at least as incomprehensible as Egyptian hieroglyphics are to us.
>
> So I don't think it is English, but I don't think it can be 
> definitively ruled out. I don't know if I'd call it a puzzle as such, 
> though.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
I have 2 thoughts in response to that:

---if Latin is so close to English, especially from 20,000 years on, 
then why try to distinguish them at all? They are both the language of 
the dawn men. And it is the dawn men, after all, who used Latin and 
Greek and English---the language of physics---to invent rockets and 
space ships and colonize the stars.

---Thea's story, to me, is proof that the language she speaks of is 
English---although for all I know the same pun exists in other 
Germanic/Latinate languages, and the only reason the actual word 
"present" is used is that the book is published in English (the Star 
Trek rule, in which all languages are presented as English). If that's 
true, then the answer is not so clear and yet a little less important.

It may not be a puzzle in itself, but plainly there are plenty of 
linguistic riddles and such in the book.


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