Re: CHAT: what fruit bat?

On Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 08:15:09PM +1100, Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Joe Hill wrote:
>
> > No, Djelibabi is egypt, Tsort is rome.
>
> >From _The Discworld Companion_:
>
> `*Tsort.* A desert kingdom on the continent of KLATCH. A neighbour of
> DJELIBEYBI and an historical enemy of EPHEBE. Tsort is known for the
> silent marshes of the Tsort river [sic] and the GREAT PYRAMIDS... The
> ancient city of Tsort was put to torch by, it is thought, the armies of
> Ephebe...'
>
> If I'm not very much mistaken, Ephebe is greek. I admit I don't know my
> history very well, but I don't think the Greeks ever put Rome to torch (or
> destroyed it in any other way). And I can't remember the Pyramids of
> (ancient) Rome, either. ;). But yes, Djelibeybi is _also_ egyptian.
>
> Tristan
No pyramids in Tsort afaik, the pyramids are in Djelibeybi ("child of the
river Djel") a fertile river valley much like ancient Egypt which is
the main subject of the book "Pyramids". Djelibeybi separates Ephebe
(more or less Ancient Greece) from Tsort which seems to be a conflation
of Rome and Troy (fair enough seeing as the Romans claimed to have come
from Troy). Ephebe features mainly in "Small Gods" where it's pragmatic
approach to knowledge is contrasted with Omnian fundamentalism. Small Gods
and I think Pyramids both seem to be set some centuries before most of
the other novels. In one book (Eric, I think, not one of his best)
Rincewind gets blatted backwards and forwards in time and at one point
finds himself at the Discworld's equivalent of the Trojan war, which is
between Ephebe and Tsort.

Klatch is everything vaguely Arabian Nights, in Jingo the phrase "Shove it
where the sun don't shine" is rendered in Klatchian and looks quite like
Arabic, from memory " ... la ... ash shams"

Uberwald is everything vaguely Brothers Grimm and Hammer Horror. According
to Nanny Ogg, the foreign (presumably Uberwaldisch from the context) word
for "bat" is _der flabbergast_. I would etymologise this as a deriative of
*flabben* : to flap and *gast* : spirit, ghost.

"Imp y Celyn" means "shoot/descendant of the holly" in Welsh (although I
have to admit I've never actually encountered the word _imp_ in a Welsh
text. The character (in Soul Music) resembles Buddy Holly but comes from
Llamedlos, a land of coal mines and perpetual rain (surprise, surprise!)
At the climax of the story he puts aside his "thaumic guitar" and plays
a native heart-rending song on his harp. This is called (from memory)
_Sioni bod da_ which is an attempt to put "Johnny be Good" into Welsh.
Good try, but _bod_ is the infinitive/verbal noun, and what was required
was the 2s imperative _bydd_.

In all the above it looks as though TP is probably using Earth languages
to stand in (more or less) for the Diskworld tongues, so that an English
speaking reader gets the same sort of sense of familiarity/strangness from
the names that a Morporkian speaker would. Just as JRRT uses English to
stand for the Westron and Old English (more or less) for the Rohanic
speech. I suppose the same goes for his "Latin", is this actually Latin or
just "Nil illegitimo carberundum" sort of stuff?

Where he does have a truely alien language is in his Dwarfish, which seems
to have been loosely inspired by JRRT's Dwarvish. Eg. "P'akga, a p'akaga-ad"
'It is the thing and the whole (of the thing)'. An orthodox Dwarf performs
the _Y'grad_, observes the _j'kargra_, and knows how to correctly _krazak_
his _g'ardrgh_.

My impression is that Pratchett comes up with languages and cultures by
inspired intuition, but then works hard to gradually rationalise the
results into a more or less coherent whole. That fact that the result is
a bit untidy around the edges imho makes it feel more real rather than less.

Oh, and he should get the prize for the most minimalist of conlangs, should
he not? Ook? Eek!

Keith

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