Okay, this just came in a post and before that I had found myself really hung up on a word or two so I just wanted to get people's opinions and input. I know there are certain "Terran" phrases that just don't work on Pern. Was curious if anyone had similar challenges or suggestions?
1) Recently I a found myself wanting wanting to use the word "godsend" in a post, but obviously that doesn't work for Pern. Ended up re-writing the entire couple of phrases and was never really satisfied. "Boon," wasn't quite right. Might have gone with, "blessing," but that wasn't quite the connotation I as looking for and neither was, "asset." Any other ideas?
2) Wanted to refer to someone as angelic and again that didn't work. The idea was to encompass (in a feminine way) the ideas of kind, self-sacrificing, and virtuous while also being attractive on some level that wasn't exactly beautiful. Again, just rewrote it to try to get my point across, but was stuck on the "word."
3) I wanted to use the word, "impish,' and although this word might have survived the "cut" so to speak wasn't really sure. Not only religious terminology but also folk verbiage would probably have been limited in the transition to Pern (Imp, Fairy, Elf & etc). However, there is so much language that develops that we actually become ignorant of the background so some things might have actually filtered through.
So I was curious if anyone else had this issue with purveying meaning without using "too" Terran verbiage or vernacular and some of your solutions. Or have there been any Terran phrases that kind of get "stuck," in the translation. I realize all of our members are not native English speakers so this could further compound the matter. Just a curiosity to me...
I've seen the phrase 'the birds and the bees' turned into 'the avians and the vtols'
That's a good one! I used VTOL's wing instead of butterfly's wing in a post just recently. Another on I got caught up on recently was miles. Wasn't 't sure if that was appropriate Pernglish.
Even the strictest of Pern fandom clubs that I've seen (I am including the Dragonriders of Pern club in that since, in my opinion, they are the most conscious of being "in canon") use the word "miles" to determine distance. I think it has just become a norm for Pern fandom that some words are used even though we can't say they ever really appeared in Anne McCaffrey's world. Otherwise we'd be incredibly confined when it came to what words we could and could not use.
I think Triad especially can have more leeway with Pernglish. The webpage says, "AIVAS' plan did fail, but a 1200 turn Interval made the world nearly forget Thread existed. With technology levels similar to 1800's Earth, not everything taught by the ancient machine has been lost, even with the return of the old menace."
AIVAS would have introduced a lot of education to the Pernese, including old terran terms and vernacular, I would think, meaning our 10th Pass folks might know more words than those in the 9th Pass that Anne wrote about.
But... that's just my two cents :D
Well when it comes to weights and measures.... if you've read the books written by Todd and Anne together, they use a mixture of imperial and metric, kind of like I do because we're not fully metric in the UK, and probably it's the same in Ireland.
I'm sure I saw distances in kilometres in one point, but then miles or dragonlengths. And weights in grammes, kilos, but then in stones (for you in the US/Mainland Europe 2.2lbs=1kg, 14 lb=1 stone)
DLG doesn't give anything concrete either way. So my feeling would be that certainly some elements of both the metric and imperial system would be in use (although they may not call them that) and if it's really important to your post, agree beforehand what terminology you want to use.
And if in any, and I mean any doubt, ask the council
Very good questions!! I do personally try to monitor what I post so that I don't mention 'bees' as they didn't survive on Pern. Or even something like "can of worms" I've recently changed to "basket of tunnelsnakes".
Some of it is personal choice and some things like religious terminology or magic... can't be used.
But like Emma said, when in doubt, ask the council.
It's actually easier for me to find "pernese" equivalent for finnish idiom or saying than to find the correct english idiom. I can just make them up. :) (I spent way too much time googling english equivalent for "hyppiä nenille" and then gave up and tried to express it some other way.
What really bothers me that words like week and years slips into posts. Pernese have sevendays and Turns, people (yes I'm nitpicker for details.)
How long is dragonlenght? (of course, I've also have trouble with miles and feets and ounces, pure metric here *waives*)
I can't see why couldn't you use word like impish, the origings may be lost but meaning could remain same. Angelic is more problematic. I've used words like bless, damned or cursed/jinxed despite their religions implications.
Oh I'm old enough to be confused by it all... I fill my car with litres of diesel, but measure how far I've gone in miles. I buy a pint of milk, but a litre carton of fruit juice....
I just re-read the harper books and in one weeks instead of sevendays and seconds were mentioned. :-)
I think we can get away with using "blessed", "cursed", "damned", etc in some cases. A Lord Holder called Thella and her burgeoning gang "that unholy trio" to a dragonrider.
I definitely think some words can be used without a religious background (such as "I'll be damned" or "She smiled impishly.") because of the Pernese peoples belief in "ghosts"--
Ghost
There are two definitions of Ghost on Pern. Falling stars are believed to be the ghosts of dragons who have gone between forever (source: Skys of Pern) and in Dragon Kin, some of the kids are concerned about a place being 'haunted', so they do have some people who think there are ghosts. Source: Pern World (http://pernworld.wikidot.com/help:dictionary)
So to me this says to me that if you can non-religiously believe in ghosts on Pern then you can probably say blessed, cursed, damned.... and honestly, you could probably even used "godsend" because according to the British Dictionary the definition is - "a person or thing that comes unexpectedly but is particularly welcome" aannddd since there is no god or God for our Pernese they would think nothing of the letters "god" being in this word.
You could say eggsend or dragonsend instead of godsend.
Oooh...I like those! I'll keep those in mind.
Quite fun to read everyone's input, too.
Wait - ghosts are a go!? That's so neat!
On topic though - I also struggle filtering out the non-Pernese words. I like 'dragonsend' a lot.