Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Qui potare non potestis, ite procul ab his festis.
A German metal band (taking their name from the medieval dancing manias and featuring bagpipes) takes a medieval Latin drinking song and sets it to Bach’s Toccata and Fuge in D Minor.
Tanzwut – Toccata (the song begins at 1:50 if you’re impatient)
I can not think of a single thing about this that is not awesome.
Nocturnal ramblings
The phrase “Stitch Cloud and Cleanse Feather” popped into my head as I was falling asleep last night. I have absolutely no idea what it means (well, a cleanse feather could be some kind of feather that cleans things I suppose) but I like the way it sounds.
You see, now it’s quick and easy for me to blog things you’re going to get a whole mess of pointless Twitter-like entries like this…
Making up words is fun!
Back in the 1940’s a Greek city planner by the name of Constantinos Doxiadis came up with some very useful words for science fiction writers. He wasn’t actually trying to help out the sci-fi field, it just happened that his terms to describe cities larger than any ever seen on Earth are exactly the kind of thing you need to spice up your space-opera epic. The words in question are “Eperopolis” and “Ecumenopolis”, meaning respectively a city that takes up an entire continent (think perhaps of Mega City One from Judge Dredd) and a city that takes up an entire planet (such as Trantor from Asimov’s Foundation series, Coruscant from Star Wars or Holy Terra from Warhammer 40k).
Now that’s well and good, but what if your city takes up more than a single planet?
At this point I’m sure everyone’s going “Well how does that work? How can a city be larger than the planet it’s on?” and that’s a fair question. A single city spanning more than one planet just isn’t possible. Unless the civilisation that built it has technology allowing cheap, reliable, instantaneous interplanetary travel. Think about it. You wake up in your apartment in Earth City, get ready for work, walk down the street to the local Portal, and step through to Mars City, where you catch a hover bus to your office. If travel between the two ecumenopoli is so quick and easy they’d function as a single entity.
So what to call such an interplanetary urban conglomeration?
I suggest an Iliopolis, from rather dodgy Greek for “Sun City” – that is a city on multiple planets orbiting the same star.
Well, that’s fine, but what if the technology can stretch to cities across multiple star systems? Well then let’s call it an Asteriopolis (Star City). A city spread across multiple planets in multiple star systems.
Beyond that it’s asteriopoli all the way down (or up). You could probably come up with a term for galaxy spanning cities, but since we don’t even have a single eperopolis yet I think the problem can wait a while. Fans of scale may want to talk about Megasteropoli for cities that span a hundred or more star systems, but that’s as far as I’m prepared to go.
Iliopolis and Asteriopolis. Use them today!
I’m sick of people ‘loosing’ their stuff. What, you had it tied up and then let it go?
If you can’t tell the difference between “lose” and “loose” then you’re an embarrassment to humanity.
That is all.
The recrudescent malkins of the calid garde-manger
Last week I stopped into the second hand bookstore that’s opened down the road and purchased the copy of Titus Groan that’s been taunting me in the shelf by the window. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy is something I’ve meant to read for years so I figured that with a copy of the first book so convenient I might as well get on with it.
The somewhat eccentric bookseller (despite being a new establishment the store is doing a very good job of being rambling, cramped and musty with a slightly gnome-like proprietor – the way all bookshops should be!) reminisced about the first time he read the book while looking for my change. He told me not worry about words I couldn’t understand because I should be able to figure out most of them from context.
As such I was somewhat primed to watch for words I didn’t understand, and have kept a list of them as I go. I’m about halfway through and have hit six of them so far, which I think is pretty good going. The list (and the definitions) are as follow…
Recrudescent – My first reaction to this word was that it could mean almost anything. The actual definition is “breaking out again” or “renewing”.
Calid – I guessed that this means ‘clammy’, it actually means ‘hot’. Which makes sense when you think of the words ‘calorie’ and ‘calorific’ or perhaps the Italian ‘caldo’.
Fumid – I assumed this meant ‘full of fumes’, which in fact it does. Excellent!
Garde-Manger – My sketchy knowledge of French, combined with context, led me to assume that a garde-manger is a pantry. It’s actually a cool and well ventilated area of a kitchen used for the preparation of cold foods – although it seems more commonly used to refer to a chef that works in such an area.
Ichadbod – I am of course familiar with the name Ichabod, but in the book it’s used to describe a semi-ruinous section of the castle. I can’t find a definition online supporting this use, but I presume it’s a reference to the Hebrew meaning “the glory is departed”. Nice one Mr Peake!
Malkin – From context it was clear that this means ‘cat’.
Expect an update to this list when I’ve read some more – assuming I run into any other new words that is.
It’s new word time!
Nimboid – adjective – Highly musclebound, of low intellect and prone to violence, often as the result of hormonal imbalance (see nimboidism).
My brother and I invented the word ‘nimboid’ as children after seeing a TV news article about the z-movie classic A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell and mishearing the title. We didn’t necessarily formalise the definition, I just always figured – after assuming one of the musclebound freaks show in clips from the movie was the barbarian of the title – that this is what it meant.
Go on! try it out next time you pass a rugby league player!
Tune in tomorrow for 40 ways to spell ‘Jukambal’!
Cam-ell-eri, Camel-Duahi, Camelleri, Camilerei, Camlerey, Cammealroy, Comleroy, Cum-milroy, Cumilri, Cummeroy, Cummilroy, Gamilaaray, Gamilaroi, Gamilray, Gamilroi, Ghummilarai, Gumilori, Gumilray, Gumilroi, Guminilroi, Gummilray, Gummilroi, Gunnilaroi, Kaamee’larrai, Kaameelarrai, Kahmilaharoy, Kahmilari, Kahml Duhai, Kamilarai, Kamilari, Kamilaroi, Kamilary, Kamileroi, Kamilrai, Kamilroi, Kamu-laroi, Kamularoi, Kimilari, Komleroy, Koomilroi.
I hope this has been enlightening. Please come again.
Attacking perfectly good authors for fun and profit.
I’m currently re-reading Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue. It’s very entertaining, but if the rest of the book is as bad as his information about Australian English, well, I wouldn’t put much store in any of it.
(Disclaimer: It was published in 1990, so some of the inaccuracy can be attributed to the passage of time. But still.)
Bill confidently asserts that Australians use “labor” rather than “labour”. Well, if he’s talking about the Australian Labor Party then he’s quite correct. But if he’s talking about any other instance of the word, well, sorry Bill, it’s “labour” all the way.
He also brings up that hoary old chestnut “Cobber”. Well, I don’t know, maybe people still call each other “Cobber” deep in the hills of Tasmania (cue albinos plucking at banjos) but the rest of the country abandoned the word in about 1955. The only place you ever hear it is from tourists trying to show how “Aussie” they are, or from comedians being ironic. “Cobber” no. “Mate” yes.
Along with “Cobber”, Bill also mentions “dinky-di”. No one has used this phrase since 1982.
He also misses one of the most important and defining characteristics of regional Australian language – luncheon-meat. It’s possible to determine with reasonable accuracy where an Australian comes from based on what they call a sausage of highly processed pork. I for instance call it ‘polony’. If I was from Queensland however it would be ‘luncheon’. In Tasmania it’s ‘belgium’. In South Australia it’s ‘fritz’ and in Victoria it’s ‘devon’. This distinction is axiomic in any discussion of Australian English, but Bill makes no mention of it.
So yeah. I think that’s enough savaging of a highly entertaining book for today 🙂
PS: How could I forget one of his worst offences against the Australian tongue? We eat biscuits here not f’ing cookies!! Bah!! 🙂
Sharing the love
“Where do you live?”
“Innaloo”
“Well, better than Upper Swan“
Prescriptivism R Us!
The first syllable of Albany rhymes with pal, Sal or Mal. Not Paul, ball or Saul.
Castle rhymes with parcel not hassle (ok, you can probably debate that one, but the way some people – mostly Eastern-Staters – pronounce it makes me grind my teeth ;))
The first syllable of Derby rhymes with her or sir, not car or bar. This doesn’t just apply to the town, it extends to sporting events (such as the Western Derby) and probably even to the hats – if anyone had any reason to discuss them.
Exmouth is pronounced Ex-mouth not Exmuth as it would be in England.
Fremantle can be pronounced as either FREE-man-tle or fre-MAN-tle but is often just FREE-oh.
Joondalup is JOON-da-lup not joon-DAR-lup.
Mandurah is MAN-ju-ra not man-JUR-ra.
(Yes, the pronunciations would be much more precise if I used the IPA, but this post is a rough guide aimed at the general public who wouldn’t recognise the IPA if it danced around in front of them wearing a shirt reading “Hi! I’m the IPA!”. So there! :))
(Also: Woooo!!! Post 600!!! :))
