On being a native speaker of a fictional language
Monday, February 1st, 2010 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniYesterday, I spent a lot of time on the couch (ably assisted by Hexapuma, who's really getting into this nap-on-Sharon's-papers business; and Mozart, on window-watch) reading what there is of Ghost Ship to refresh myself (again) on what the story is about and how much I've told so far (day-job noise keeps drowning out story-signal). In addition to the foregoing, my mission was to circle all the weird words (English), ship names, planet names/designations, names of trees and houses, names and nicknames of people, and of course all the foreign words (Terran and Liaden, mostly), so that I can once again make a Big List for the use of the copy editor.
One of the things that I noticed, as I was red-circling things, was that I've been speaking Liaden for so long that I no longer register words like melant'i, cha'trez, van'chela, relumma, nadelm or ge'shada as "made up" when I'm writing -- which is to say, I don't remember to underline them. This is a problem. Underlining signals the typesetter that this wordhere is "foreign" and should be set in italics.
Hmmm. Now, I'm wondering, pursuant to our earlier discussion in this journal regarding the copy editor's bible, if it would be useful to readers if we whacked together all these Weird Words of the Liaden Universe® -- and Beyond! lists we've made over the years into a chapbook. Such an undertaking would necessarily include spoilers, so maybe that isn't well-thought, after all.
In any case, I'm guessing I'll need to go through the 'script when it's in clean-up phase, and just search on each Liaden word in turn, to make sure they're properly underlined.
*adds to the finishing list*
One of the things that I noticed, as I was red-circling things, was that I've been speaking Liaden for so long that I no longer register words like melant'i, cha'trez, van'chela, relumma, nadelm or ge'shada as "made up" when I'm writing -- which is to say, I don't remember to underline them. This is a problem. Underlining signals the typesetter that this word
Hmmm. Now, I'm wondering, pursuant to our earlier discussion in this journal regarding the copy editor's bible, if it would be useful to readers if we whacked together all these Weird Words of the Liaden Universe® -- and Beyond! lists we've made over the years into a chapbook. Such an undertaking would necessarily include spoilers, so maybe that isn't well-thought, after all.
In any case, I'm guessing I'll need to go through the 'script when it's in clean-up phase, and just search on each Liaden word in turn, to make sure they're properly underlined.
*adds to the finishing list*
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Computers can occasionally be useful
Date: 2010-02-01 05:25 pm (UTC)I would really think that the folks at Baen would be happy to take a separate list of "italicize all these words" instead of making you go through and do each one. (Or, if you're interested in automation to take such a list and a document as input and produce an underlined document as output, lemme know...)
I don't know about a chapbook, but I do suspect that if you took the time to amalgamate all the Liaden Dictionaries, Glossaries, and Suchlike, your copy editor might Thank You Vociferously, so it seems like a good thing to do when you next have a dozen consecutive fortnights off :).