Home » Discussion Forums » Blog Post Discussion » Bells and Language
| Bells and Language [message #1258] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 18:20  |
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Bells and Language
Smooshes!
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1264 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 18:50  |
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Love this post. I find the 'hearing' fascinating, especially when it translates to music as well. Music does tell stories, even without lyrics. Maybe especially without, since the stories people hear might be different...but similar. Movie soundtracks work for a reason!
I can't wait to hear what you're working on in Finale, Robin, and the stories your music tells.
This talk on Damarian language is making me realize it's been way too long since I've read Sword and Hero. They're some of the first genre books I read and helped me fall in love with SFF. I think it's time for a reread.
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but I believe in the sound the bells make being to the greater glory of something greater than human, and if the Christian god likes the noise they make that’s a mark in his/her/its/their favour, and common ground.
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A quick search of biblegateway.com says yes. (Hope that link works. Looks like it should.)
Smooshes!
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1270 is a reply to message #1264 ] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 19:22 |
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 Robin
Messages: 6007
Registered: September 2008
Location: England |
Senior Member
[Hellgoddess] |
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| jmeadows wrote on Wed, 15 October 2008 18:50 |
Love this post. I find the 'hearing' fascinating, especially when it translates to music as well. Music does tell stories, even without lyrics. Maybe especially without, since the stories people hear might be different...but similar. Movie soundtracks work for a reason!
I can't wait to hear what you're working on in Finale, Robin, and the stories your music tells.
********** [Sorry, I don't understand how to quote INSIDE a quote without becoming part of the quote . . .] Just remember I'M NOT A REAL MUSICIAN. What I'm writing are weird little morsels of facsimile music. :) Since I signed off on this entry, I decided I didn't have enough brain for real work so I've been Inputting Finale, which is rote stuff I'm trying to *drive into my brain HOW TO DO.* And the thing I've been inputting is Bag #2: Bagatelle, subheading Nothing Like Beethoven. :)
This talk on Damarian language is making me realize it's been way too long since I've read Sword and Hero. They're some of the first genre books I read
************ Oh cool! :)
and helped me fall in love with SFF.
************ Oh, cooler! :)
I think it's time for a reread.
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but I believe in the sound the bells make being to the greater glory of something greater than human, and if the Christian god likes the noise they make that’s a mark in his/her/its/their favour, and common ground.
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A quick search of biblegateway.com says yes. (Hope that link works. Looks like it should.)
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************ Well if that's ALL it can come up with it's a bit sad. And I don't really feel bells need a lot of pomegranates to get their point across. . . .
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1280 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 19:50 |
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Susan from Athens
Messages: 817
Registered: October 2008
Location: Athens, Greece |
Senior Member |
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I love how you start answering my question (and I can't tell you how gratified I am that you chose to address it or how truly fascinated I am by the resulting thesis):
It’s mostly by ear, I’m afraid–which is to say not terribly discussible–which increasingly appears to be the way I do everything.
and then you go on to explain and discuss most clearly. By ear is a wonderful explanation, because the language does "sound" right and as Black Bear's wonderful cartoon indicates we have all battled our way through forrests of boringly complex, incomprehensibly sounding pseudo languages. This does sound right.
I can’t remember if I deliberately chose the to-our-ears backwards addition of a vowel to make a noun gender masculine, for sol and sola, or if that ‘came’ the way the names for Mathin and Tsornin and Narknon did. I was writing SWORD in my early unreconstructed feminist phase, however, and it’s the sort of thing I would do–mix it up for the sake of the mixing.
I'm glad it's not just me it sounds different to. I often find that Greek which is most masculine oriented as a language (worse even than French) needs pulling up by its hair to sound decent and you have to really work with it to translate it into English, particularly anything that is in the least gender or racially sensitive (and then have to spend a large chunk of time explaining to your client why you had to make those changes and how unacceptable it would be in English to say it as it is in the original).
So it sounding difficult in my ear was not just me and Greek. But it I like the fact that this is still a minor thing that slightly gets you out of your comfort zone and thus makes you think about things you take for granted rather than bashing you over the head to make its point.
Thanks for another fascinating post and I hope the computer troubles clear up. I feel for you because mine is giving signs of incipient breakdown or was for a few days. I took some steps and things seem to have improved, but this could also be the calm before the storm.
“I have always imagined heaven to be a kind of library.” –Jorge Luis Borges
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1285 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 20:13 |
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L.R.K.
Messages: 1081
Registered: October 2008
Location: Sweden |
Senior Member |
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This post was so interesting - and exciting!
So much to think of, ponder and - so to speak - digest.
In one way, I feel so sorry for you - are people already
demanding a sequel to "Chalice"? Does it make you nervous writing "Pegasus" that as soon as it's available people will expect a sequel to that too? Have you said anything about "Albion"? (If you have mentioned more than the name, I've missed it.)
I understand what you mean when you say that you can only write what you are given; it is/was the same way for me. Except that I was never given a plot! - only glimpses of scenes and/or dialogue; sometimes I didn't even know who the people were! It was like a rather fun puzzle to piece things together. (Of course, my book has no plot - it's more like a collection of short stories/sketches featuring the same people - "people" also meaning the furry/feathery - or people around them.)
I wonder if the Damarian might have a slightly Persian feel to it? Of course, I don't know Persian, so I might be completely talking through my hat; Urdu is made up basically of four languages: Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Sanskrit and I might be utterly mistaken as to which are the Persian parts! (A fun thing for me, was when an Iranian girl, who was visiting her sister here in Sweden, was asked what she had done/seen and she answered something something "kishti" something something "jazira"; "kishti"=boat & "jazira"=island.)
Oh dear, that's my taxi-driver husband home for his dinner - I have no time to check what I've written - hope there are not to many & awful mistakes! 
Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1288 is a reply to message #1268 ] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 20:16 |
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Maureen E
Messages: 111
Registered: October 2008
Location: Indiana, USA |
Senior Member |
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| Robin wrote on Wed, 15 October 2008 19:15 |
| Black Bear wrote on Wed, 15 October 2008 18:34 |
Great post, Robin, the language stuff is fascinating. Not least because I tend to get irritable with authors who make up words for making-up-words-sake--a category which you emphatically do NOT fall into. Susan's put her finger on it--you're giving us glimpses of a sound and a language, which is a very different thing than just tumbling out some random jumbles of unpronouncable letters to remind people that they're reading a fantasy novel... Very cool.
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Oh good. Thanks. I agree about Fantasy Words made up to be Fantasy Words. You need a sense that they come from somewhere. It's like landscape: you can only believe in the tree if you believe the ground it's growing in.
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There's a Tolkien quote somewhere which I am going to butcher because I was an idiot and didn't write it down. But it goes something like this: You can certainly have a blue sun in a story. But there must be a reason for the sun to be blue and the reason must make sense in that world.
Very challenging, in my opinion, and something people struggle with on occasion.
I've been taking Russian for five semesters now and I've noticed that my understanding of English grammar has gone up quite a bit. I know know what the difference between a direct and indirect object is, for instance.
[Updated on: Wed, 15 October 2008 20:17]
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1309 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 22:52 |
Aerin Starwalker
Messages: 9
Registered: October 2008
Location: Between Hither and Yon. |
Junior Member |
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I know my God (teh Christian God, who is male, BTY) loves music, and bells make beautiful music. There must be a reason all the old fancy churchs have them. Yo won't find them in use in the Old Testament much, the Israelites were nomads after all.
But religion aside, bells just lend such grandour to anything, they make things seem more important to you. They make such an uplifting sound, or sounds.
I think that having giving your lands or worlds their own language adds such a nice depth to said land or world. And Robin's very lucky to be able to hear such things. We can't all be Tolkiens, who write stories to showcase their languages!
And now I too, wish to go read Hero again and Sword again. And I have no time to do so. Bah!
[Updated on: Wed, 15 October 2008 22:53]
When dropped, small things run and hide.
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1310 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Wed, 15 October 2008 23:06 |
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SoItGoes31
Messages: 34
Registered: October 2008
Location: Davis |
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Two things. First, I'm kind of sad that bells are going to factor so large because right now my feeling towards bells and bell ringing is 'that's kind of cool.' I don't have any particular enthusiasm for them. The problem here lies in the fact that I will inevitable read the book as soon as it is out, and most likely end up with an "OMG BELLS ARE THE COOLEST THING EVER MUST GO OUT AND RING" attitude afterwards. And there just aren't enough hours in day for that. If there wasn't going to be a book I could remain in blissful semi-ignorance. I still haven't gotten around to taking riding lessons now that I'm back at school.
Secondly, on the same note, I have read Chalice (surprise, surprise). Several weeks ago, actually, but I only just got around to posting. Important background detail: I have always hated honey. Hated it. Passionately. Since I was but a wee little lass. But after reading Chalice I thought to myself 'well, honey is pretty cool stuff, and I haven't tried any in years.' So I decided to give it another try, and it turns out that honey is, in fact, the greatest anything ever. So now I owe Robin thanks for both the honey and the riding lessons.
Speaking of religion, you should check out the Baha'i. If I were going to be religious, I'd be Baha'i. Here's the very basics of it: http://info.bahai.org/bahaullah-basic-teachings.html
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1319 is a reply to message #1311 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 00:57 |
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As a linguistic geek, I've always loved how the Damarian language gives the impression of being an actual language that is actually spoken and not just "oh, I ought to throw some native vocabulary in here" on the part of the author. I also absolutely adore the scene in Blue Sword where Harry learns the language*! My favourite scene in a book probably ever. Also, the way the words are used because there simply isn't a concept which directly translates rather than to show off your language-smithing skills.
*My greatest annoyance with any work of fiction ever was the Disney Pocahontas movie where they meet and magically speak the same language! Arg! No! The thrill of the movie up until that point was waiting to see how they'd handle the fact of speaking different languages!
"The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel."
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1324 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 03:31 |
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About a month ago, on a Tuesday evening at 8pm I left work and walked across the city center (which happens to be called Cathedral Square) and there is a Cathedral there. And someone (several someones more likely) were ringing the most impressive peal of bells.
I listened for about 15 min while I walked back to my car in surprise - I didnt know they did bell ringing there (they chime the hours but I thought it was automated) and it was FANTASTIC and I thought of Robin, and how much you would have loved hearing it.
And it was special because with reading Robins blog, and hearing more about how bells are rung, I could *appreciate* it more than it just being a nice sound, and for some reason that made me feel good.
So I look forward to your Bells book!
And FWIW I find the concept that people hassle you to write sequels or other books about x quite astonishing (because I would be dumbstruck with awe should I ever actually be face to face with any author LOL).
I *love* your books and they have given me such pleasure and enjoyment (and continue too) and it sounds all fangirl and gushy but its just how they make me feel. There is good reason why Blue Sword is my no#1 comfort read - its got me thru some dark patches.
So I look forward to any new directions you take us in with anticpation!
(and I have a new convert - I have a bee mad friend who I leant Chalice too and she is asking for more to read)
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1334 is a reply to message #1270 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 06:18 |
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| Robin wrote on Wed, 15 October 2008 17:22 |
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but I believe in the sound the bells make being to the greater glory of something greater than human, and if the Christian god likes the noise they make that’s a mark in his/her/its/their favour, and common ground.
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. . . and pipes, too. They are also mentioned in the scriptures, having been created some 5 centuries BC.
I'm going to add my vote to the majority here, to say I loved the language bits in Hero and Sword, being a student of multiple languages, and this blog entry was absolutely fascinating! It's so interesting to get a glimpse into how you write/learn languages/create stories. Thanks, Robin.
I re-read Blue Sword on a yearly basis and don't mind if there isn't a sequel because the original is so good.
Scar
"People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around."
T.P.
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1338 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 07:08 |
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you guys just reminded me that at church sometimes my daughters ring the church bell to tell people that the service is starting. i am just so used to the bells ringing at the church hour that i did not think about it untill this blog.
Bonnie Holmes the faster ahead I go, the more behind I get
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1341 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 07:54 |
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AJLR
Messages: 2566
Registered: September 2008
Location: England, UK |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
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Robin said: | Quote: |
You may remember I said that PEGASUS seems to be running long?
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This gives me great joy! Even though - and this is obviously entirely guesswork - in that case it's probably not going to be available to us McKinley-junkies until Christmas 09?
[Updated on: Thu, 16 October 2008 07:55]
"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1346 is a reply to message #1258 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 08:25 |
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I am - interested? that people get upset when there are loose ends in your/Robin's stories. One of my own special pet peeves is when authors go through and create this marvelous world, and this exciting adventure with fantastic characters!...and then frantically spend the last 20 or so pages carefully winding everything down to a neat and tidy ending where everyone gets their wish.
Life doesn't work that way! Stories shouldn't work that way! So I actually really enjoy the loose ends.
Also - don't know if this is true. But. When I was in Russia, the guides told me that in the Russian orthodox church there is a belief - myth? - that bells are a way of speaking directly to God. And that different rings and sizes of bells say different things to God. I think I recall that the bigger the bell, the more God would listen? But this should be looked up. I am often wrong and/or crazy.
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1350 is a reply to message #1346 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 10:27 |
Jennie
Messages: 6
Registered: October 2008
Location: Manchester, UK |
Junior Member |
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Oh god, my love for XKCD knows no bounds. He also has a fun "blag" to read.
I love the bells; I love what we've read of Bells, and I love hearing about Connie, and Jennie, and Roland and the various inhabitants of the barn. I'm getting married next week and have arranged to ride the three days before because I am delusional and think I won't be too busy. Of course, I've also arranged (I think) for someone to go to your book signing for me as a wedding present. He will be bearing Chalice. We get back one day too late from our honeymoon. (It is important to note that I nearly asked my soon to be husband how difficult it would be to make sure we could make it...before the reality of ticket changing penalties raised its ugly head).
Great entry--I love reading about the writing itself, and as someone who is quite obsessed with words and language, the richness that yours brings to the stories you write is one of my favorite things.
She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. ~ Louisa May Alcott ~
unabridgedopinions.blogspot.com
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1358 is a reply to message #1339 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 11:58 |
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| Robin wrote on Thu, 16 October 2008 07:48 |
[stopping now before I drift off into a sibylline alternate reality . . . ]
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Oh, please keep going!
[Updated on: Thu, 16 October 2008 11:58]
Smooshes!
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1409 is a reply to message #1408 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 19:34 |
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Susan from Athens
Messages: 817
Registered: October 2008
Location: Athens, Greece |
Senior Member |
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| Robin wrote on Fri, 17 October 2008 02:29 |
GEEZUM GODS WOMAN. I won't get it turned *in* till this time next year, if I'm/we're LUCKY. PUBLISHING it takes ANOTHER YEAR. We're hoping for 2010, okay?? FIRE is *next* autumn (we hope).
[goes quavering off into a corner to collapse in a heap]
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There, there, Robin. No pressure (give her some space her fellow forum attendees. Let the woman breathe). We want books, but in order to get books we need you to be fully functional. Care about you as a person? No, why should we ? We care about the books! More books! Soon! But NO PRESSURE! Take your time... For the next few seconds you will be PRESSURE FREE!
[Updated on: Thu, 16 October 2008 19:35]
“I have always imagined heaven to be a kind of library.” –Jorge Luis Borges
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1415 is a reply to message #1408 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 19:52 |
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| Robin wrote on Fri, 17 October 2008 00:29 |
...[goes quavering off into a corner to collapse in a heap]
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Okay, who broke Robin???
*breaks out the smelling salts and emergency chocolate*
Don't worry about the dust bunnies, they're just here to guard the treasure.....
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| Re: Bells and Language [message #1420 is a reply to message #1268 ] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 20:17 |
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[quote title=Robin wrote on Wed, 15 October 2008 20:15]| Quote: |
Oh good. Thanks. I agree about Fantasy Words made up to be Fantasy Words. You need a sense that they come from somewhere. It's like landscape: you can only believe in the tree if you believe the ground it's growing in.
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From a cultural landscape perspective (it's what I do, cultural landscape history and eventually, landscape architecture), I really like your way of describing what I would call a "sense of place." It's a simple enough phrase, but any cultural landscape historian/geographer attaches a sort of mystic reverence to the idea of "place", because it is so intangible and yet clearly the most important aspect of any landscape (the whole is more than the sum of its parts).
Just plugging in language or fantastic creatures and epic geography into a plot does not a good fantasy make. They have to be essential to the story - so I really loved hearing how the characters and the language and the story all announce themselves in your head.
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