#GOD FUCK WHY DON’T WE JUST HAVE LINGUISTICS AND LOGIC CLASSES ALL THROUGHOUT THE YEARS ADOLESCENTS SPEND IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

[electronsprotonscroutons]

something seems to have happened with the rise of tiktok, where people are doing a different form of linguistic analysis that fails to acknowledge the language of law. it appears to me that when considering the language used in online social interactions, people forget these interactions don’t just exist in isolation. logic can and will be used against you. words have very real and concrete meanings while also being inherent abstractions. every time some influencer says sewer slide or seggs to bypass the Al Gore rhythm, it is imperative that you put on your thinking cap and remember the power that words hold. remember how that power can be used to hurt you. know you can use that same power to protect yourself.

hey in case you didn't know trans inclusive terminology in healthcare is not about protecting peoples feelings, it's to stop insurance companies from going "well it says here that hysterectomies are a procedure performed on WOMEN and you keep insisting that you're a MAN so we do not in fact have to cover that have a nice day and eat shit"

[rallamajoop]

How (not) to say ‘fuck’ in Etruscan (and other things I cannot believe I spent so much time tracking down for a throwaway joke in a Witcher slash-fic)

Buried in chapter 4 of my fic Something Nice is a joke which, as much as it amused me, no-one else is going to get unless I explain it. So here we go.

For the last few people in this fandom who haven't heard yet: The Witcher 3's vampire-language is Etruscan. To my knowledge, there's never been an official statement from CDPR to confirm this, but the evidence (ie. that basically all the vampire vocab can be found in online Etruscan sources) seems pretty solid. To explain why this made me go oooooh that's so NEAT, we need a little context.

Context!

The Etruscans (in my admittedly far-from-expert understanding) were a people who lived in Italy back before the Romans got around to conquering-slash-assimilating the rest of the peninsula, and the language they spoke is one of the most frustratingly mysterious of the ancient world. Most dead languages are at least related to something modern linguists have a decent handle on, but Etruscan seems to have been related to almost nothing else spoken – it may even have pre-Indo-European roots (a whoooole other tangent I am in no way qualified to cover).

Surprisingly, we do owe our modern Latin alphabet in part to the Etruscans, since the earliest Roman alphabets were adapted from the Etruscan (who got it from the Greeks, who got it from from the Phoneticians, and so on). The Etruscans may even be the reason we're stuck with so many weirdly redundant K-sounds (not only K and C, but X and Q, which are really just 'ks' and 'kw' with an overblown sense of superiority).

But being able to sound out every surplus K-word from an Etruscan inscription isn't much help nowadays when there are no surviving Etruscan dictionaries to tell us what it actually means – not even a decent Etruscan Rosetta stone to give us a push-start. So while modern linguists may rattle off Ancient Greek fluently or puzzle out Egyptian hieroglyphs from thousands of years before the Etruscans even had an alphabet, the Etruscan vocabulary available to us nowadays remains embarrassingly limited. Bits have been figured out from context or thanks to loanword exchanges with their neighbours (plenty of ancient Greeks and Romans certainly spoke Etruscan, even if they failed to write it down), but a lot is still as mysterious to the experts as it would be to you and me.

So why to I love the idea of using Etruscan as the Witcher’s vampire-language so much? Basically, if you want a language that will sound both old and reliably alien to anyone listening to it – be they the mainstream English-speaking market or the original Polish-language audience – Etruscan is a damn good call. You're not going to have much vocabulary to draw from, but it's not like there's a lot of vampire-chatter in the game anyway. It's a cool little easter egg for fans nerdy enough to try and figure out what they're saying.

Translations and Sources

You aren’t going to find a lot of great Etruscan language sources on the web – few of the easily-discovered online sources on Etruscan vocab appear to have been updated within the last ten years, and lord knows how consistent some of these are with current scholarship (let alone how sure linguists can be about anything with a task like this). All the same, have some links you may find useful:

Etruscology – Brief, but more readable than most

Lexicons.ru Etruscan Glossary – Probably one of the best collections of many terms in one place

Maravot.com Etruscan Language pages – Hard to navigate, but gosh there are a lot of vocab here I have not seen elsewhere

Old, Tripod-hosted Etruscan Glossary – I think these are mostly just the same terms from the Lexicons page, but in harder-to-use format

Etruscan word search – Decent, but not the most extensive vocab

Introduction to the Etruscan Language – Looks to be from Maravot.com, but in pdf format

Paleoglot.com’s Etruscan tag – Blog by an actual linguist who regularly discusses Etruscan material, and who even created their own translation applet! – which was, unfortunately, in flash, and is thus no longer usable. (There is a certain irony that even the tools available online to help you understand Etruscan are written in a language that is now no longer supported or understood by any modern browser.)

Not that translating what’s in the game is going to be easy, oh no. Take, for example, the oh-god-please-don't-kill-me ceremonial greeting Geralt has to offer to the Unseen Elder to survive that meeting – "Eclthi, lautni ama".

'Eclthi' is apparently a "demonstrative (locative)" (’here’, ‘there’, etc). "Lautni" is trickier – it means a freed slave, but may also imply a familial relationship or a client of sorts, while the root “lautn” apparently designates simply “possession.” House slaves in the ancient world were often considered part of the family, and freed slaves were an important class in many ancient cultures, who often maintained relationships with their former masters, so you can see the internal logic, but what sense was the Witcher using it in? It’s hard to know.

"Ama" is possibly worse – most translations seem to have taken it as "to be", but sometimes also “to love”, or even "now" or  "meanwhile." Then you hit the question of Etruscan grammar, and I have no idea where I’d even start. So, with a little creativity, you could probably translate that phrase as anything from "take this and consider me a friend" to "meanwhile, this is family" to "a demonstration of love from your slave." I mean, you've got the same general theme going there regardless, but there's a lot of ambiguity in the inflection.

For what it's worth, I feel garasham's translation efforts are easily the most convincing I've seen – they have the above line as “Here I am a slave / a friend / kindred” FWIW. (Mind you, given the wiki doesn't even try to do more than offer you one possible meaning for each word, there's not exactly much competition out there).

So, bringing this all back to that fic and how to say ‘fuck’ in Etruscan...

I've already gone to the web's Etruscan dictionaries once while I was writing Forget-Me-Not, seeking inspiration for a 'real' name for "the Queen of the Night" from the first Witcher game. Neither 'queen' or 'night' got me far, but the Etruscans did apparently have a goddess of the moon called 'Aritimi, Artume or Artames', which worked pretty well. If anything it's almost too close to the better-known Greek goddess Artimis, who was obviously a relative (ancient cultures bleed into each other even when they're not bleeding all over each other, nothing new there), but I'm not going to be picky.

However, being a) a giant nerd, who b) writes a lot of smut, and c) is no more mature deep down inside than the rest of us, I couldn't resist seeing if I could find some slightly more obscene vocabulary. Did the Etruscans have a word for, say, 'fuck'?

Alas, if they did (and I mean, they totally did, c'mon), the web wouldn't tell me about it. Nor could I find much else relating to sex or genitalia (male or female), or even a decent word for 'thrust'.

On the flipside, there were a couple of different terms meaning 'plough'. And anyone who's played – well, any of the games, but especially Witcher 2 – would probably realise exactly why that filled me with so much glee.

Speaking of which, here, have a picture which is in no way related:

The fact that the various Etruscan terms meaning ‘plough’ could also apparently be translated as things like “to worship“ or “to act through movement, including ritual acts,” or that an important mythological figure was “a prophetic child who sprang from a freshly plowed furrow” was in no way discouraging.

The word I ultimately picked was 'esari'. Admittedly, variations on the prefix ‘ar-’/‘ara-’/’aras’ were much more consistently attested to throughout the various online Etruscan dictionaries as ‘terms meaning plow’, but figuring out how to convert an Etruscan prefix into a satisfying word is officially where even my enthusiasm for all this nonsense gives out. Esari was, by comparison, already a much more solid-sounding term, so let’s go with that.

Why go to all this trouble anyway? Well, the honest answer is “entirely for my own amusement”, but the nominal excuse comes right back to “so I could give Regis and Geralt this little exchange during a sex scene.”

"Unless you have any particular objection," said Regis, moving to straddle Geralt's body, "I thought we might engage in some esari... hm, what was the equivalent term in your language again?" The vampire leaned in close to Geralt's ear as he made a show of remembering his answer, "Ah, yes—I thought I'd fuck you."

Never let anyone tell you you never learnt anything from porn!

[badbookreviewclub]

Empress Theresa, Chapter 2

If you haven’t read the chapter 1 review, I highly recommend you do so. You can find it here: Empress Theresa, Chapter 1  Should you choose not to, this could get confusing, though the book is already confusing enough as is, so who knows, it may make sense.  This should be the last time that I copy over my tweets directly, so reviews on here should be far more competent.  It took a full week, but I was finally able to get through chapter 2. It was significantly shorter than chapter 1, which in its own way, made it better than the first chapter. However, that doesn't mean that it was good. In general chapter 2 is going over Theresa's high school and middle school life. This means that Norman has to cover things that a high school and middle school student should experience. However, Norman really only covers two things. 1. The Boy's Baseball Team 2. Cyberbullying Theresa gets recruited to the boy's high school baseball team when she's in middle school. She's about 12 years old when she gets recruited and the best I can make out is that this is her last year of middle school too (9th grade). Call me a liar if you want, but I haven't... ...ever met a 12-year-old in 9th grade. For fuck's sake, I was 14 in 9th grade and I have a late birthday in the (United States) school year. Norman claims that Theresa is so young because she skipped a year in school, but I think there's more to it than just skipping a year. Anyways, Theresa joins the high school boy's baseball team. The reason that Norman gives for this is a bit confusing because he jumps back and forth between her being a 'great pitcher' and 'living in a small town, so they didn't have enough boys to recruit for the baseball team.' Because she's on the baseball team, she starts getting cyberbullied and this is where you see just how out of touch with reality Norman is. For some reason, despite that it's a high school baseball team, Theresa is on television all the time. All. The Time. And because... ...of this, Theresa gets cyberbullied. "Anonymous strangers" make entire websites dedicated to cyberbullying Theresa. Yes, they make entire websites. Not only do they use an online forum, or bully her on "the social medias," as Norman likes to put it, but they make entire... ...websites just to show the world how much they truly hate Theresa for being on the boys baseball team. They claim that she must have slept with the coach or was making out with everyone on the boys baseball team but here's the thing; Theresa is still a minor. She's not any older than 13-16 here. This are absolutely absurd accusations to be making to a 13-16-year-old. Even more so that the coach would sleep with her so she could get on the team. That's an accusation of pedophilia. If a rumor like that was floating around, I... ...highly doubt that nothing would come of it. But, Norman doesn't cover this at all. In fact, all of the people on Theresa's team, including the coach, are faceless cardboard figures in the background. The only person in this story that matters is Theresa, and yet, Theresa... ...is just as much of a cardboard figure as the rest of them. It's maddening. But nonetheless, the criticism and 'cyber-bullying' is really starting to get to Theresa so the principle of the school has a teacher sit down with her to try and cheer her up. What we get is a long as fuck and very repetitive monologue from the teacher who then goes over an amazon ad for a doggy door that is explained in so much detail that it's confusing and puts meaning where there is none. Kind of ironic that it does that when I seem to be... ...doing the exact same thing with this book. If you're curious, I did find the ad so you could watch it yourself if you wanted to: video Aside from Theresa's omniscient Trolls who know what all her moral values are and that she has straight A's, we basically just have Theresa's ego stroked more as Norman desperately tries to prove to the reader just how amazing Theresa is. She really isn't and it comes off... ...as narcissistic and unbecoming, especially because Theresa is supposed to be writing this as her autobiography. The other thing that you get from this whole meaningless section of the book is that Theresa blames the cyberbullies parents for not raising them right. What can be summed up as Theresa's parents are good role models in her opinion is then dragged out in a much wordier manner. "My parents gave a good example of the kind of people to be. I'd have to write a book about them to explain." You're writing a book right now. Explain. Or better yet, space it throughout the book. Lessons that your parents taught you when they apply rather than just in one big go. However, Norman was far too lazy to actually do that or have any sense of planning and continuation of subplot throughout the book, so that's not... ...going to happen. Aside from that we also get this banger of a sentence. "It's enough to say I wanted to be a woman like mom and I wanted a husband like dad." Now I know Norman didn't mean it this way, but it sounds an awful lot like Theresa wants to bang her dad, in... ...context or out of context. Blah blah blah we get more boring stuff until it skips to her senior year of high school where she's still 16. She's supposed to be turning 17 in high school so I assume she has an early birthday? That is if Norman still remembers that. Theresa meets Jan Struthers, who I can't remember if I covered or not before because there are so many fucking people in this book who are completely pointless and disappear whenever Norman just forgets about them or doesn't want to keep them in the book anymore. Going back and looking through my tweets, I did indeed cover who Jan Struthers was. For anyone who forgot like me, she's the lady from the government who is in charge of watching Theresa and has been since Theresa was 10, despite being absolutely horrible with children. Anyways, Jan meets Theresa in a Burger King so they can talk about HAL. Despite being in such a public place, Norman gives the reasoning that it's a good place because "the noise gave privacy as good as the Sahara Desert..." I don't know about you but it's really easy... ...to eavesdrop on people in public. Especially in Burger King. Not saying I've done it before, but I've definitely done it before. We find out more about how they found out about HAL and Theresa and the operation that was created to watch Theresa and search for HAL. If you're curious, the operation is literally called the Office of Orbital Phenomena Surveillance, or OOPS. Yes, fucking OOPS. This book was a fucking OOPS. Apparently, the reason for creating the office was, and I'll put it in Norman's words here so it makes sense; "It was supposed to keep track of all the space junk we put into orbit. Its real purpose was to watch for anything going on anywhere in the world that would later be something HAL was doing." The group is called fucking OOPS. Office of Orbital Phenomena Surveillance.  I don't know about you all, but space trash is not a phenomenon. This is just kind of piss poor logic on Norman's part and a weak excuse for him wanting a good acronym for the group. Surprise Norman, we kind of already have a group like that. The CIA. They already...  ...investigate shit like this. But you do you, Norman. You do you. Blah, blah, blah, we get introduced to like 3 more presidents in the span of two paragraphs which is confusing as shit, but alright. "I hadn't heard a peep out of HAL in the six years since he merged with me." So Theresa assumes that HAL is sentient despite the fact that HAL has given literally no indication of sentience. This is a theme that at the very least continues on from chapter one, even if... ...it makes absolutely no god damned sense. Norman brings back in the idea about how HAL makes Theresa put out an absurd amount of heat despite the fact that nobody around her seems to notice that she puts out an absurd amount of heat, which is more absurd logic. Apparently there's a column of disturbed air above Theresa that goes into space an this is how they tried to see if there were any other HAL's on the planet (there aren't). We also get another one of my most hated lines in this book when Theresa asks how much... ...the satellite cost that they sent up to look for more columns of disturbed air. "a hundred million" This is terrible grammar for one, and when someone says it out loud, it sounds wrong too. "One hundred million." is better in every way shape and form and nobody... ...can convince me otherwise. Anyways, Theresa says that they can give her 'a hundred million' and she'll give them HAL. She can't even fucking do that at this point. She doesn't even know if she can do that so why is she offering it? Besides, Jan never even responds to it... ...in the slightest. It's a fucking pointless line in this stupid fucking pointless book that I'm covering because I guess I just love to torture myself with terrible literature before I have to go and read a good book for my history classes. Moving on though, Jan goes into how Theresa needs to get a broad education just in case she ever needs to be the alien ambassador. She really doesn't. She just needs to double major or have a major and a minor in two things probably, Linguistics and Foreign Affairs. But no, instead Jan says that "You might need the knowledge of Thomas Jefferson, and the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln." Apparently, these are our brightest minds in history. Like not to bash on the two of them, they did a lot in the foundation and the forming of the USA... ...but what about the brilliant philosophers of the past? What about the leading and brightest minds of today? What about the scientists of the past who revolutionized how we think and act today? There's more to what formed history than just the people in America. In fact, the... ...presidents of the United States pulled from the philosophy and the knowledge of histories most prominent figures of the Enlightenment. They just helped to spread the word. But how could I expect Norman to know that? It's not like it's taught in every single school... ...in the United States or that all it takes is the fastest Google search to ever happen to find out about that. But I heavily digress. We move on from the meeting and Theresa gets a note in her mailbox that only has her name on it, meaning that someone slipped it... ...into her mailbox while she was away at school. The letter asks where Jan Struthers is and if Theresa can meet him [Jeremy Benton] at the Framingham Library. Theresa tries to email Jan to let her know about it at "janswatchers at snoop.gov" That is exactly... ...how it was worded in the book, not as "janswatchers@snoop.gov". Anyways, the email doesn't go through because I suppose it just doesn't exist anymore. We find out that Jan is missing and the blame is put onto the NEW president who gets brought in with 0 context. They assume that President Martin got rid of Jan because she 'knew too much' or she said something that he just didn't like. We find out that Jeremy Benton is the P.A. to Prime Minister Peter Blair in England. And oh yeah, Theresa brings Father Doughnut back into the fray. Blah, blah, blah, we get this brilliant line; "Seeing you close like this took my breath away. Do you realize the effect you have on people?" from Jeremy to Theresa (who is still 16/17 at this point). We get another of my most hated lines in the book, "I'm beginning to." More bad an inconsistent writing. Apparently, HAL showed up when Theresa was 3 and not six months before she was born. Jan sent all the information about Theresa before she went missing to the Canadian Prime Minister and the Canadian Prime Minister sent that information... ...to the British Prime Minister. Blah, blah, blah more pointless repeating shit. Jeremy offers Theresa and her family a home in England along with new identities (which is 0-100 real quick) all because they think that President Martin made Jan disappear. Father Dick Doughnut jumps in and says that the Holy Father is interested in Theresa's case and wants to offer her a place and protection in Rome. Speaking of Father Dick Doughnut, the meeting with the cardinal that he promise to Theresa never actually happened. Jeremy suggests they bring Theresa's situation to the public, and Theresa agrees though she doesn't exactly completely agree because she thinks that it will ruin her life. Despite wanting to bring it to the press though and agreeing that it would be a decent enough idea... ...she still doesn't want to tell her parents because "one mistake on their part and my future was ruined before I had it." I just... I can't at this point. I'm only two chapters in and I just can't. Besides that, we get the most confusing diatribe ever and I'm going to subject you all too it because I had to suffer through it and still don't know what it's trying to say. "I'd learned that somebody with eloquence may not have seen his powers of understanding receive... ...any aid from education. Ignorance and deficiency of mental improvement could still remain. There's some quirk in their personality that keeps them from becoming wise. The President gave great orations but he was a babe in the woods when it came to dealing with me." If you understood any of that please let me know because even after typing that out I'm still not entirely sure what Theresa is trying to say. I think she's threatening death on him for making Jan disappear, but I'm not sure. and at the very end of the chapter, she says; "If HAL wanted me to do something good I was ready, if it was something bad, I wouldn't do it. President Martin should have left things alone." However, when I first read this I read it as her saying that she wouldn't do the... ...bad thing alone. Which made her sound like she really was going to gather a group a murder President Martin. However like I said not even two tweets ago. It really does sound like Theresa wishes harm on President Martin, with or without HAL's influence.