![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potboyvia https://ift.tt/2KdJn1Z
gamebird:
ms-demeanor:
mikailborg:
pervocracy:
nudityandnerdery:
ms-demeanor:
storywonker:
so, uh, open writing question:
how do we feel about using the word ‘doppler’ in a secondary world where Christian Doppler didn’t exist?
Anything you can’t explain a wizard did it.
Christian Doppler didn’t exist but perhaps the D’opplr School of Physical Forces does exist in this universe and has theories about sound and magic? (though you’d still just call it doppler and drop backstory if someone got snarky?)
However.
I’ve been going slowly crazy for years over X-Wings and Y-Wings and now Poe spelling out “Hux” because OKAY does Basic have letters shaped like X’s and Y’s and are they pronounced the same way and why doesn’t the rest of the Basic orthography match that and OH apparently people like me kept asking that question so they made up a totally separate “high” alphabet to explain it and basically if you examine the worldbuilding in Star Wars for even half a second it falls apart -
So I guess the answer depends on how nerdy and obsessive you expect your readers to be.
As a nerd, I frequently have a similar problem when it comes to writing a character loving french toast in a world where there’s no France.
If one is to start following that path, which I don’t recommend, you’ll have to consider that your world probably didn’t have a Greece or Rome, but removing every word with Greek or Latin components from your story is likely to cripple it pretty badly.
See, and if it’s something I can write off as a translation thing - okay there is probably a variety of bird that is similar to falcons on Bespin or whatever and canonically there are ducks in the EU like, okay, okay okay, I can handle that.
But Y and X and A are specific shapes that correlate to one very specific character set, that’s different.
(So if the doppler thing is briefly mentioning the doppler effect that’s like “okay, this is a translation” but if you’re digging into the science of DB reduction as sound moves away from a listener as important background to a plot point then you’re gonna end up with nerds sniping - thus the explanation of “a wizard did it” as a handwave to appease the nerds)
(But also please remember that Tolkein nerds are A THING; learning a language from the ground up is not a barrier to a certain kind of nerd enjoying a story)
I’m here for the Star Wars take on it. :D
gamebird:
ms-demeanor:
mikailborg:
pervocracy:
nudityandnerdery:
ms-demeanor:
storywonker:
so, uh, open writing question:
how do we feel about using the word ‘doppler’ in a secondary world where Christian Doppler didn’t exist?
Anything you can’t explain a wizard did it.
Christian Doppler didn’t exist but perhaps the D’opplr School of Physical Forces does exist in this universe and has theories about sound and magic? (though you’d still just call it doppler and drop backstory if someone got snarky?)
However.
I’ve been going slowly crazy for years over X-Wings and Y-Wings and now Poe spelling out “Hux” because OKAY does Basic have letters shaped like X’s and Y’s and are they pronounced the same way and why doesn’t the rest of the Basic orthography match that and OH apparently people like me kept asking that question so they made up a totally separate “high” alphabet to explain it and basically if you examine the worldbuilding in Star Wars for even half a second it falls apart -
So I guess the answer depends on how nerdy and obsessive you expect your readers to be.
As a nerd, I frequently have a similar problem when it comes to writing a character loving french toast in a world where there’s no France.
If one is to start following that path, which I don’t recommend, you’ll have to consider that your world probably didn’t have a Greece or Rome, but removing every word with Greek or Latin components from your story is likely to cripple it pretty badly.
See, and if it’s something I can write off as a translation thing - okay there is probably a variety of bird that is similar to falcons on Bespin or whatever and canonically there are ducks in the EU like, okay, okay okay, I can handle that.
But Y and X and A are specific shapes that correlate to one very specific character set, that’s different.
(So if the doppler thing is briefly mentioning the doppler effect that’s like “okay, this is a translation” but if you’re digging into the science of DB reduction as sound moves away from a listener as important background to a plot point then you’re gonna end up with nerds sniping - thus the explanation of “a wizard did it” as a handwave to appease the nerds)
(But also please remember that Tolkein nerds are A THING; learning a language from the ground up is not a barrier to a certain kind of nerd enjoying a story)
I’m here for the Star Wars take on it. :D