Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
THIS is how you do grammar-nerdery, instead of policing people’s grammatical errors
ALSO, historically, thy/thou/thine/etc was the informal form of the more formal you/your/yours. So speaking to your friend, you’d say “Thy duck is confident!” but speaking to the Queen, for example, you’d say “Your duck is confident, your majesty” (assuming you were allowed to speak to the queen)
Map of Native American etymologies for “horse”. There were no horses in the Americas before the colonists arrived. Native Americans quickly developed new words for this strange animal, often associating them with dogs, their one other domestic animal before contact with Europe.
In Inupiaq its tuttuqpak, which means “big caribou”, which I’ve always loved. But I didn’t realize that the Creek, Choctaw, Cheyenne, and Shawnee etymologies were so similar! I love how associative animal names tend to be, like how “catfish” were named for their whiskers. What’s important about horses? They’re domesticated, they resemble other American ungulates but only have one toe, the Spanish and the French brought them (so you might as well use a loan word) and they’re quite useful for various tasks. It sounds goofy, but that’s how humans think, and its how we categorize animals- by their relationship to us, their appearance, where they’re from, and how useful they are.
Yeah our tribe used Cavaayo, from spanish caballo, because the Spaniards were the ones who brought them.
There’s actually a really endearing Lakota story about the discovery of horses tbh. But the only comparison anyone was able to link them to was dogs…just large, really fuckin weird dogs.
Heheh, looks like a lot of other people thought the same way. All we know with our tribe is we saw them, realized there were ways for a person to move faster than they could running, and our eternal hunger to GO FASTER was born- to this day we’re obsessed with cars, motorcyles, anything to feel the wind in our hair and Go Fast.
I’m not sure how this quite compares to other tribes, but when we moved about, we would place things to haul the fabric and wood between dogs, and they would pull it. So, naturally, horses meant BETTER at pulling stuff around, and less worn out pups. Clearly a decent choice.
Traveling with Humans was, or rather is, a dangerous prospect. Freelance Freighter captains quickly learn that it is usually best to keep your human away from anything that can, could be made to, or might explode.
Hauling volatile chemicals? Heck no!
Mining equipment? That’s just ASKING for trouble!
Precious metals? Why not just let the pirates know you’re coming and save some time?
Logging equipment? Like, to record data? Seems harmless enough. Even fledgling colonies need some way to keep track of goings on.
Havenworlders quickly learn that there are two very different types of logging and when the pirates come, the significance of the most intimidating tool/weapon ever created by humans.
The Chainsaw – Paladin
Just as Humans have many words for the same thing, they also have one word for many things. Sometimes, the same-sounding word may have a different way of spelling in their own language that makes everything perfectly clear. Alas, such fine details don’t make it to GalSimple manifests. Always pay attention to the units. It might save your life.
For instance, the Human soft dessert or the hair treatment comes in volumetric units. The wide-horned cold-climate ungulate comes in ‘heads’. Unfortunately for Hox, units of measurements do not always help when there is a difference between creating journals and cutting down trees. Not even when such items come in shipping containers.
The Humans escorting the cargo didn’t bother him, they kept to themselves and didn’t try to pack-bond with him and that was the way he liked it. So when the pirates attempted to attack, Hox warned them about the Humans, told them about what he assumed to be journaling materials, and let nature take its course from there. He expected a brief tousle between pirates and Humans, followed by some minor property damage that could easily be paid for by the bounty on the pirates’ capture.
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I always believed that humans were these unstoppable beasts, until I met one of their infants. – Anon Guest
Elsewhere Station. Here there be Humans. Seryk watched hir step. Ze only wanted to hire one human for the exploratory mission and this was one of the Edge Territory stations where they were reputed to swarm. So far, Seryk had seen numerous Edge species, but few Humans.
Those who were present were busy at other occupations. Seryk searched for hours, but found few willing to work for hir. The few who did want to work for Seryk and hir crew lacked the qualities that hir team was looking for in a Ship’s Human. The entire day was a vortex of disappointment and discouragement, which found a brief respite in the station’s biggest park.
Seryk found some amenable foods and a perch to rest on while ze ate. It was true that the Humans were unstoppable, as ze hadn’t been able to stop a single one nor interest the wanted ones enough to join their expedition. It was there, when Seryk was in a calming, nigh-meditative state, that ze met the extreme of under-impressive Humans.
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One would think, what with all the diverse languages in the Galactic Alliance, that comedy would not be a shared experience. Those people had not counted on two things: the ability of humans to make fun of themselves, and the ability of other peoples to find humans ridiculous.
Observational comedy, as it turns out, is almost universal.
“You want something manhandled to death, you make sure there’s a human around, and then hang a sign that says, ‘do not touch’.”
From the Dictionary of Confusing Slang on the free infonet:
Face: (n)
1. Application of stage makeup for a performance (theatrical)
2. Application of makeup for business (civilian human female, pre-Shattering)
3. Painting on protective boards to make a construction site more appealing at street level (construction)
English is also a loose cannon cop-on-the-edge who doesn’t play by the rules and will do horrible, horrible things if it solves the short-term problem in front of him. – @recklessprudence
There are moments when words escape the speaker. Rational thought, too, takes a temporary holiday and necessity mothers a great deal of illogical invention.
“I need a new…” the next word fled to the furthest reaches of Kathmandu. “…um…” What was the dang word for it? People were staring. She needed to make up something in a hurry. “…food… spear…”
“I think you mean ‘fork’,” said her friend, passing her one.
