Author: J.S. Bangs

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Mark Liberman has a post up at Language Log discussing Ian M. Banks’ Culture novels, and in particular his “upper case phoneme”.

I’m a fan of Ian M. Banks’ Culture novels, but I’d like to suggest, respectfully, that they might be improved in their approach to matters linguistic. As an example, on p. 470 of his recently-released novel Matter, we learn that “Marain, the Culture’s language, had a phoneme to denote upper case”.

Linguists would usually call a unit that denotes something a morpheme (or perhaps a word), not a phoneme, even if it was only one phoneme long. (In fact, we sometimes find meaningful units whose effect on pronunciation is just a single feature.)

In addition, it’s odd to find a morpheme that signals something essentially in the realm of writing, like alphabetic case; and also to find that Marain still uses upper case in (some of) the same ways that English does.

I’d like to suggest, respectfully, that Liberman is being way too nice. The quoted passage from the book makes it pretty clear that what Banks means: the Marain language has the ability to indicate aurally that something is a proper name or otherwise an Important Word. But Banks calling this an “upper-case phoneme” is a basic mistake on two levels. First, he seems to have confused phonemes and morphemes, and second, he has confused a property of written language with spoken language. Liberman suggests a few interpretations of “upper-case phoneme” that would be linguistically defensible, but they’re increasingly implausible. No, what we have here is the linguistic equivalent of making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs: an absurdity brought on by the fact that the writer didn’t know what he was talking about.

Of course, none of this really matters, and my irritation is, I’m sure, tiny compared to the irritation of a physicist trying to watch Star Trek. But it would be nice if people using linguistic vocabulary would at least try to get it right.

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Here’s something I never knew:

Galland did more than merely translate: he shaped the text into what became a more or less canonical form; as a result the Nights are as much a part of Western literature as of Arabic. To Western readers, the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sindbad belong to the core of the Nights and are among the best-known tales; but they did not belong to the Arabic text until Galland added them. There is, in fact, no known Arabic text of the Aladdin and Ali Baba stories that predates Galland, and elements in the story of Aladdin suggest that it may have been a European fairy tale rather than an Arabic one.

This is via Language Hat. Click through to the original article for more fascinating tidbits.

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I find that I fully agree with David Levine’s analysis of the cultural appropriation imbroglio. Because it’s basically the same thing that I said when a similar brouhaha came up last year.

I heard about the supposed firestorm late, after the major participants had already had their say. The only thing that I want to add is that the original Elizabeth Bear post is actually a fantastic piece of advice for writing the Other.

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This may be one of the best science fiction short stories in the form of a music video that I’ve ever seen. It’s got everything!

Androids? Check.
Outlandish costumes? Check.
Social commentary? Check.
Awesome dance moves? Check.

The only thing I can’t figure out is why the future cops arrest the umbrella-wielding vampire (I think that’s a vampire, anyway) in the middle of the show. (Yes, this really happens. If your reaction to the phrase “umbrella-wielding vampire” is OMG AWESOME, then you’ll like the video.)

I’ve embedded it below, but you might do yourself a favor and click through to get the high-definition version.

HT: Eve Tushnet.

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This has been around the blogosphere a couple of times, but I finally took a look, and it’s as good as promised.

Dirk Benedict, the man who played the (male) Starbuck in the original Battlestar Galactica, has written rant against the sissified, womanly reimagined Battlestar Galactica. The rant itself contains gems like this:

“If Dirk doesn’t quit playing every scene with a girl like he wants to get her in bed, he’s fired.” This was, well, it was blatant heterosexuality, treating women like “sex objects.” I thought it was flirting. Never mind, they wouldn’t have it. I wouldn’t have it any other way, or rather Starbuck wouldn’t. So we persevered, Starbuck and I. The show, as the saying goes, went on and the rest is history for, lo and behold, women from all over the world sent me boxes of cigars, phone numbers, dinner requests, and marriage proposals.

As a lifelong heterosexual and advocate of heterosexual rights, let me say that I am deeply offended by the conflation of heterosexuality and womanizing.

Wait, it gets better:

I’m not sure if a cigar in the mouth of Stardoe resonates in the same way it did in the mouth of Starbuck. Perhaps. Perhaps it “resonates” more. Perhaps that’s the point. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is this…

Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Hans Solo as Hans Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women “hand out” babies. And thus the world for thousands of years has gone’ round.

Wow. I mean, wow. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. And I’m even sympathetic to the point he might be trying to make, which is that men and women have significant differences and you can’t just swap one for the other. But of course, the new BSG doesn’t do that: the neo-Starbuck’s femininity is important to her character, what with her having been sent to a pregnancy farm and thinking she was a mother for a while, among other things. Benedict is right that a female Starbuck could never have been what the old Starbuck was, but he acts like that’s a bad thing.

Anyway, the real gem is the comments, in which many of his commenters point out that he’s a whining ninny upset that he didn’t get a role in the new BSG. My favorite is this one:

Dude, Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck has a much bigger pair than your femme, hairbrushing, mirror-loving pipsqueek ever did.

FTW!

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A great quote from R.A. Lafferty, one of the old great SF short-story authors.

Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.

Pillaged from this comment thread.

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Back from a wonderful holiday in Colorado, which was inexplicably less snowy than the Seattle. (Snowpocalyptic Seattle: A ghastly wasteland covered in a mysterious white powder, rendering vehicles ineffective and striking terror into the hearts of everyone who dared venture outside.) I got to see my brother and his wife and their new baby, which was the highlight of the trip, plus I played Rock Band and Wii Sports.

(Aside: my parents bought a Wii. What kind of world is this where my parents buy video games for themselves? I may have more to say about this later.)

However, the first piece of fiction that I want to commend to you all is Sisters of the Blessed Diving Order of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew. The title does not contain a typo. Read it.

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So you remember my NaNoWriMo novel? The one I wrote approx 55K words of in under a month? The one whose count is still shown on the sidebar?

It’s DONE.

I put the last period on the first draft this afternoon. I had to spend a few minutes after that stitching some things together, as the last chapters had been written with drafts on two different computers, but that’s done, too. The version that I just saved is now officially Draft One. Celebration time!

Here’s what it looks like:

The Failed Apostle

Letters: 471,988
Words: 82,587
Pages (manuscript format): 378
First sentence: The dossier called him a difficult case.
Middle sentence: “I’ve never seen a device like this one.”
Last sentence: “We should move,” he said. “We got a long ways to go.”
People intentionally killed by the protagonist: one
Fictional animal species introduced: three
Stab wounds inflicted on major characters: four
Pages of tedious exposition that will be cut from the final draft: Oh, probably twenty or so
Pages of repetitive dialogue that will be cut from the final draft: At least ten
Most overused synonym for said: “whispered”
Most inexplicably popular adjective: “yellow”
Level of irritation with current draft: high
Required vacation time from writing before returning to revise: about a month

In the meantime, bottoms up!

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The entire city of Seattle has been paralyzed by record-breaking snowfall! It snowed enough of Wednesday night to keep me home for the next two days, then Saturday (last night) we were hit by a legitimate blizzard. Or at least the closest thing to a blizzard that I’ve ever seen in Seattle. And what do we have right now?

The view from my window
The view from my window

I love snow!