Frequently Asked Questions - Language

You do know the past participle of “to get” is “gotten”, don’t you?

Only in America, and not even universally here. While I generally greatly prefer American English to British, I find this conjugation to be crude and even hickish-looking, and since I have no editor to answer to, I choose to eschew it.

Why don’t you always include the “of” in phrases like “couple [of] apples”?

Language changes. It was once considered proper to say things like “two millions of pounds”; that construction now looks hopelessly awkward and antiquated.

When I’m writing Mackenzie, I use “couple” with the understanding that it’s an idiomatic substitution for the word “two”. It’s really not that uncommon in spoken language, even if it’s mostly avoided in formal writing. It’s perhaps less common in those English-speaking locales where nobody looks at you sideways if you say “coupla”, but even then, common use reflects the utter uselessness of the appendage “of”.

ELLIPSES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

That’s not a question.

I write Mackenzie’s narration with so many ellipses because it reflects the way she thinks, with frequent pauses while she gathers her thoughts. Because she’s the notional writer, this is also how she represents such things as pauses in other people’s speech.

Why do you defend the above choices and then not use them in More Tales of MU?

Because Jamie is a different character and does not think or write the same as Mackenzie does.

How can characters refer to things like “Thursday” when that literally means “Thor’s Day” and no Thor in their pantheons? How can Two wear “alice bands” when there’s no Alice In Wonderland to inspire them?

These aren’t the only such question like this that get asked, but I use them as representative examples. I understand why certain words and phrases jump out as being “wrong” for the world, but… every word’s etymology from our world would be inapplicable, not just the ones that obviously relate to specific myths or stories. Even the words “the” and “words” are just as out of place in the mouth or mind of Mackenzie as the word “Thursday.”

The short and simple answer is that if they were real, the characters would obviously not be speaking English in the first place and the work is therefore being “translated” from their native language of Pax (the name itself also being a “translation” from High Draconian) for our benefit. This was the conceit that J.R.R. Tolkien used in his work; he pretended that his fantasy stories of Middle-Earth were actually being translated from The Red Book of Westmarch.

Similarly, you may find it convenient to pretend that this story is being translated from that eldritch book of lore, The Redbook of Last March:

Why do you not capitalize the “alice” in “Alice band”?

It’s a way of representing that the equivalent word in Pax is a common noun.

Why “translate” the days of the week but not the months?

Because the days of the week come up every day but the month only changes once a month. I strongly considered using “native” names for the days of the week, but realized very quickly that this would become confusing to the point of tediousness with the characters’ schedules being such a frequent topic of discussion.

If the characters aren’t speaking English, how do puns like “Two’s Day/Tuesday” work?

A really good translation doesn’t just transcribe each word literally; it does so in a way that preserves as much of the feel of the work as possible. In fiction, this means sometimes replacing a reference or joke that would be “lost in translation” with something that fits better in the new language. Characters in Harry Potter, for instance, are given new names in the foreign language editions in order to preserve their names’ hidden meanings.

Sometimes your characters quote Shakespeare.

That’s not a question, but sometimes they do make allusions to the Bard. Notably, Steff tells Mackenzie that there’s a divinity that shapes her “end” and Marlot tells Jamie that she thinks the “lady” protests too much. See the answer above: in the original text of The Redbook of Last March, they’re not actually quoting Shakespeare, but making reference to some work that would be well-known to the original audience but lost on those of us in this world.

On a more serious note, Shakespeare’s influence on language is unavoidable. Even ignoring the fact that the song itself exists in our world, Two and her friend Hazel couldn’t very well talk about the “song about the alligator” without the Man Himself coining that word. It seems silly to try to avoid familiar quotations from the Bard while using words introduced by him.

Why do you call the language “Pax?” Doesn’t that mean “peace?”

It does. Disparate nations that were conquered (or “pacified”) by the Roman Empire were said to be under the Pax Romana, as they theoretically enjoyed the protection of the Roman legions and were united to some extent in language, culture, and religion. The same is true of both the Imperial Republic of Magisteria, and the Old Imperium it split off from during Magisterion’s War. With the common language being one of the most obviously identified factors of the Imperium’s unified culture, people began to refer to the language itself as the Pax Imperium, or Pax, for short.

What are High and Low Draconian?

They are human tongues derived from the much older and more complicated language of dragons. High Draconian occupies a similar place in society as Latin does in our modern world, and is generally represented as Latin. Low Draconian is the “vulgar” or “common” form of the language, and accordingly, is represented as Italian.

“Elven” or “elvish”?

“Elvish” is the human term for the language elves speak. “Elven” is an adjective. The elven people speak elvish.

“Yokan” or “Yokano”?

One’s the island, the other’s the language. The people of Yokan speak Yokano.