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Well, I am beavering away on a story and have come to an impasse regarding how to spell some words. The premise of the story is that it is written with the primary protagonist doing some of the naration, and she is from Worcester, UK. So, I've been trying to write using correct UK spelling and must admit that at least in this last chapter, I am mucking it up.
I've come within a few miles of the UK, having flown over enroute to Kenya, but that is all I have.
So, the words in question are: Fairy or Faery, and Djinn as opposed to Djinnarians. I seem to have fallen into a lingual black hole on these things, and would love for someone to help me.
In the course of the story, she and her companions briefly land in Wales, then move on to Worcester, and then to Northern Scotland and the Shetland Islands. If someone would like to sweeten up my mangled Welsh and Scots, it would make me feel much less foolish? Or not.
Much peace
Gwendolyn
Comments
Fairy, Fair E
Fairy is what I would say here. Faerie is more of a Celtic kind of thing, understood by us though.
As for the other, we'd say Genie rather than Djinn, though again we'd know what you meant.
Hope this helps.
Penny
A good dictionary should give
you UK and US spellings. However, unless it's very specialist like the Shorter Oxford, it won't give you vernacular stuff, which can vary quite a lot round this Sceptred Isle. As for Welsh and Scots, each dialect varies so much, North and South Wales are very different, as are east and west, The north east of England is different from the north west, and Lowland Scots or Lallans is different from Hieland, "D'you have the Gaelic?"
You might be better using standard English throughout, at least your readers will understand what everyone is saying. You can always talk about lilting or grating accents.
Angharad
Angharad
Re: UK Spelling
Personally I would use Fairy in a modern context. Faery I would regard as an old English spelling and would only use it if in a historic setting or if I wanted to sound quaint.
I have never come across the the terms 'Djinn' or 'Djinnarians' and if it wasn't for Penny's comment, I would have no idea what it meant without looking it up. Genie is the word in common usage. The Genie from Aladdin's lamp being a well recognised pantomime character.
If you have your spelling and grammar checkers set to UK English you should be Okay for the most part. Spelling isn't always noticeable, what can easily stumble you, which I found out when trying to write a story set in the US, is how you phrase things. From what I can remember from your Lt. Katia story, you don't seem to have a problem with this.
As for local dialects and variations, I'm from the east coast, as far away as you can get from Wales and Worcester, so I can't advise. Wikipedia may be able to help on this if you can't find anybody local to help. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_English_language
D.L.
Ir's not Olde English!!!
'Faery', I think, would be considered Middle English, such as would be used by Chaucer, circa 14th century CE; or Elizabethan English, circa 16th century CE. True Old English would appear in such works as Beowolf, circa 8th-11th century CE.
I have enjoyed reading Chaucer in the original, non-translated form. It takes some effort, but it can actually be quite fun. It also shows a language in transition, forming itself around the Celtic, French, Latin, Germanic, and other tongues that gathered in that unique place. This is a time when the reason you spelled 'drought' that way is because that's how it was pronounced... when Aprille had two syllables... and so did olde. It was a time when the 'thorn' was part of the alphabet (and when movable type came to England they used the 'y' as it was closest in appearance.)
Beowolf in its 'original' form is something only for scholars. I can't make heads or tails of the original. For example, how much of this can you decipher? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beowulf.firstpage.jpeg
Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine. But I happen to like Middle English and my hackles rise when I see it mis-named.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Paranormal Fiction...
...quite often uses exotic spellings to differentiate the "normal" or "mundane" uses of words like "genie" or "fairy" from the "magical" or "occult" meanings. This also helps to avoid unfortunate connotations which surround words like "fairy" or "genie" and allow the story to shed the everyday world as much as possible. Thus, Faerie, or Djinn, being exotic, don't instantly bring to mind either dapper gentlemen who lisp or garage door openers.
So a large part of Poul Anderson's "world-building" in his paranormal adventure stories, Operation Chaos and Operation Luna is the creation of a large vocabulary of specialised words like "goetics" (magic) and " 'chantments" (enchantments). Their space programme uses countdowns in Latin. Some are more successful than others. "Broomotel" sounds a little odd, for example, but perhaps that's just my ear. Why not "botel?" (They fly around on brooms and don't have cars or "motors.")
Using "interesting" or "unusual" words is often part of an author's style as well. One doesn't read James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, for example, or even Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and expect to see nothing but Basic English.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Spelling for World Travellers
Every word processing programme (and many web browsers) that I know of comes with an assortment of dictionaries on its installation disc, or there are replacement dictionaries available online. To make them work, you may need to change the "localisation" settings to make UK, Canadian, Australian, or other variety of English your default keyboard setting, because many such "add-ons" change their behaviour depending on what your keyboard is set to, which makes a sort of sense when one comes to think of it.
In Firefox, you have to have the proper dictionary add-on loaded, and then right-click in any multi-line text input box (such as the one used to enter blog posts or stories) look down to "Languages" and select the sort of English one prefers.
As pointed out by others, this doesn't help much with pure localisms, because context is everything. You might not want to have a Hasidic character in New York, for example, greet people with "Boy, howdy!" even though it's an authentic American English expression.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Location, Location, Location
So, landing briefly in Wales - I'd assume Cardiff would be the most likely spot (although to the best of my knowledge, there isn't a secret complex under Roald Dahl Plass accessed by a fake flagstone), then head to The Faithful City (so named because it remained loyal to Charles II right up to the end of the Civil War, which ended on what is now the outskirts at Powick) via the M50 (so avoiding the Severn Bridge).
Therefore, your character would probably go nowhere near Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (the Anglesey village whose name was substantially lengthened in Victorian times to boost tourism with the coming of the railway) - and probably wouldn't visit many other places she'd have trouble pronouncing :)
Having said that, even English placenames can cause problems for overseas visitors. Worcester (Wu-stir), Leominster (Lem-stir), Shrewsbury (depending on who you ask, Shrews-berry or Shrows-berry), Malvern (usually Moll-vern, although I've heard Mall-vern), Towcester (Tow-stir - so the same pronunciation as the bread grilling device!) - then just when you think you've got to grips with the pronunciation scheme, there's Cirencester (Siren-sester) and Kidderminster (Kid-er-min-stir).
Of course, as your story's written and not an audio book, you don't have to worry too much about pronunciation :)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Try Norfolk
We have the following pronunciations:
Faery, Fairy, Djinn, Djin Me speller ant workin.
Good luck.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Djinn is the commonly
Djinn is the commonly accepted 'true' spelling of what became 'Genie'
Fae, Faerie became fey and fairy (Migrated from the French).
If you're using older spellings, you'd use Faerie (As in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene)
The biggest problem I had with that Beowulf printing was the lettering; I couldn't make out enough of the letters to really tell more than half the words. Heck, that's a problem with handwriting from the late 1700's, let alone that far back.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Hark, hark, faire maiden!!
I really like it when people speak to me in the language of that era. Yes and the gowns with unmanageably long sleeves and the tall peaked hats with the flags on them. Having lived in a old, freezing house for a while, I finally come to understand the need for very long sleeves. Why it's to keep the faire maiden's hands from frost bite! The very full skirts with arm loads of petticoats are for the same purpose. After all, no gentleman would want his concupbine to have frosty nether parts, would he?
Gwendolyn
Beowulf Printing
There were also several letters in Old English that no longer exist in the current twenty-six letter alphabet, the Yogh Ȝ (which looks something like a "3," but isn't), Eth Ð, Thorn Þ, Wynn ƿ, the Long S ſ (which lasted well through most of the Eighteenth Century, so one sees it in printed copies of the Declaration of Independence and suchlike: becomes neceſsary to….), a Digraphic "AE" Æ with a special sound, complicated by the fact that many early English calligraphers and printers learned their trade (or purchased their fonts) in non-English contexts and locations, so substituted either what they knew or had available, which is exactly why people take tea in "Ye Olde Tea Shoppes" all over the place, because the "Y" wasn't used all that much in English, so it was often substituted for Eth Ð and for Thorn Þ, which were often not available. Although the signs are spelled with a "Y," they're meant to be pronounced with an Thorn Þ, so 'Þhe Olde' is pronounced 'The Olde,' just like it is now.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Gabhaibh mo leisgeul!
...Not to be too particular, but in the Shetland Islands we say (those of us who can actually talk),
Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
An especially heavy blow...
This ransacking of our alphabet store has affected us to this day, causing at least a fifteen percent drop in productivity, because we're stuck with digraphs (two letters stuck together) for many common sounds, and just think how easy it was, instead of resorting to elaborate circumlocutions, for Beowulf to text to Grendel, :-Þ
Although, to be perfectly fair, that's exactly what started the quarrel.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Fun with language and differental spellings?
Well, to splain things a bit, I decided upon Djinn for the evil antagonists because in Arabic the jinn are the evil angels of the Shaitun. (Satan) Just a little fooling around there. Then I desparately needed a device to save the good guys from the Djinn, so I thought it fitting to get them from a most unlikely place; Right under their noses. Having seen the discussion, I think the word Faery will suit my purposes more, as they were once on earth, but gave up on us because of our primitive nature. And that fits very well with my present opinion of humanity, considering world banking, and building nuclear power plants in quake prone locations.
Hmph.
Gwendolyn
Hmm
For me, fea etc would be for dealing with elves and celts and such and fairy would be tinkerbell.
Similar for djin and geenie. One is a magical creature from arabian legend the other hassled Larry Hagman. :)
But, but this is not majik !
I am stretching my poetic license so far, it is apt to tear, I'm afraid, oh dear !
I was just reading someone's story where the author said that when science gets to hard to understand, they call it magic, and I completely concur with that idea. Else, why would some fool insist that the world is flat, only to be proved wrong later in history. So, I expect some to snort in derision when my latest offering is um offered up. :)
Gwendolyn
Welsh and English
Happy to run an eye over it. Remember that the Shetlands was not a Gaelic area, but a Norse one, and the local language was Norn. I have sent you a PM with some more details.
For a quick split on the OE/MiE/MoE split, it goes as follows:
Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon, was an inflected language, where words changed their endings to denote their place and function in a sentence. Rather like Latin does.
Middle English was a product of the Danelaw. English vocabulary, in the main, lost its inflections (word endings) and gained prepositions and conjunctions. In simple terms, nouns stopped changing and were separated by words like 'at' and 'in'
Modern English is largely a product of the printing press, and the standardisation of language that came with it.
All the Norman-French really gave to English was a huge boost in vocabulary. The main change in structure was entirely down to the Danes.
One odd story is what is called the Great Vowel Shift. Words in the South of England changed their pronunciation, though some lived on as they were before. That meant that the spelling had to change. The word 'burn' in Northumbria, meaning a small stream, is pronounced 'born'. The same, original, pronunciation lives on in the South as 'bourne'.