#but it consolidates a lot of information in a single place for english readers so | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

script-a-world · 5 years ago

Text

Google Form Ask: I'm working on a fantasy set in kind of an alternate earth that has various nation-states representing various cultures, so I have an idea for one to be a Chinese representation, North African/Middle Eastern pre-Islamic rep, Mediterranean (likely Greek) rep, and various European areas. The nation-states are all under the overarching rule of a monarch in the head nation state. Most of the language for the nation-states in my early draft was based on color names in AngloSaxon (which relates to the colors of their standards, etc), but if they're based on these other nations/cultures, would it be appropriate to come up with names for them in the language in which they're based? (ie a Chinese name, an Arabic name, etc) but having all political language be in that AngloSaxon name they were originally given? (i am white so that's really why i want to be sure i'm giving accurate rep here)

Constablewrites: When languages intersect, the powerful set the standards and the powerless adopt and adapt. It’s such an inherently political process that it can provide some valuable insight into the history of your setting.

The origins of English as a bastard language come from the Norman Conquest, when the French ruled England, and their language was the language of court. But the peasants had no reason to learn that language and continued speaking English. It was the noble class (who had to operate in both worlds) and the merchant class (who wanted to live like nobles) who drove the hybridization and the development of Middle English, and the choices of which language to use for what reflected their class concerns.

For instance, the dirty, farty animal tended by the peasants remained a Saxon cow. But slaughtering it and serving it at table was reserved for the gentry, and accordingly at that point it became boeuf (beef).

One language can be imposed on another people from above, like how the ruling class uses their own words for the mechanisms of government. It can also come from below as people aspire to the ruling class. (Think of the dude who uses overly long Latinate words for everything, even when they’re not really accurate, just to show how educated he is.)

The setup you’ve described is inherently colonial: your Anglo-Saxons conquered everyone else, and hung onto that land for long enough that their language took root. (Note that it doesn’t have to be like that in the present. See Spanish in Latin/South America, or English and French in Africa.) Place names would largely still be in the native language, since those don’t naturally evolve in the way that names for people, things, and actions do. How much else survives of the native language depends on your history and politics: if the lower classes had no need to learn the language of the elite and the upper classes didn’t really care how the peasants spoke, that implies the sort of conquest whose attitude was “your taxes go to us now, otherwise just keep doing what you’re doing and try not to riot k thx” and you’d see that in their other policies. If the ruling classes were actively trying to spread their own culture, that would require stamping out the existing way of life and having a much lower tolerance for the native language. Historically, the latter has been much more common. In those sorts of scenarios, perpetuating the native language, even just in personal names, becomes an act of resistance. If you want to see how this plays out, look at the history of indigenous languages--well, basically anywhere, but especially in North America, and also the evolving debate in immigrant communities about given names and what language is spoken in the home.

There’s nothing wrong with creating this kind of setting, but be aware that presenting it in a neutral or positive light makes just as much of a statement as digging into its flaws. If you don’t want to take that on, or if this doesn’t sound like at all what you were going for, you might need to adjust the approach to language accordingly. A creole or pidgin language ([this Quora article] elaborates on the difference) implies two cultures coming together on a more equal footing. You can also rely on the [translation convention], which says that everything is in English except the names not because the world’s English-equivalent is that dominant, but because you’re writing for readers who speak English and you want them to understand. In that case, you’d use other cues to establish how the cultures manifest and interact with each other.

Feral: If I may, I would like to interpret this question as, “I think my story has elements that are problematic, can you help me identify them?” Because the potential issues I see in the small amount of information given in this ask are much more far reaching than “can I use a real life language as the basis for a fantasy language/naming-system?”

Constable has already pointed out various scenarios throughout real history, so I won’t repeat all of that. But I do need to emphasize one thing:

What you’re describing is colonialism. And it is bad. It is, in fact, evil (if evil exists). We shouldn’t have to say this in 2019. It is completely okay to have colonialism in your worldbuilding; it’s a thing that exists in the real world so it can exist in fiction. But here’s the thing: once more, it’s evil. The Anglo-Saxon imperial power you are describing is evil. They have done an evil thing that the real world analogous cultures actually did do and the effects of which are still very very real and felt by the real world cultures you're having your fictional versions subjugate. Which means they can’t be the good guy. If they are, in the context that you are writing in, your worldbuilding is fundamentally racist. And I know from the very fact that you are asking for help that this is the farthest thing from what you want for your world and your story. But if this is the case, then the only thing you can do is raze the world and start again.

Another thing in your ask that jumped out at me is the phrase “pre-Islamic Middle Eastern/North African rep.” I assume you’re going with pre-Islam for one or both of two reasons. 1) This is a “sandals and sorcery” setting that would take place in an analogous time period to pre-Christian and pre-Islam; your reference to Greece being the inspiration for the “Mediterranean” culture makes me think that pretty much all cultures are being referenced in the BCE (which would be between 500 and a thousand years before the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, so keep that in mind). 2) You’re concerned about representing an Islamic culture sensitively.

Here’s the thing: there’s no such culture as the Middle East, and definitely not Middle East/North Africa, pre-Islam (one can argue that there’s no such thing as the Middle East pre-WW2, but I do not have time for that argument). The spread of Islam is responsible for whatever homogeny there is between the cultures, and even today, there is not one single culture in the Middle East (a political designation, hence the post-WW2) or in North Africa. There are many cultures between the different countries and between the different ethnic groups within the same countries. Arabic would only be an appropriate reference language if your reference is pre-Islam Arabia, not the whole Middle East, because again Arabic spread through Islam – different places have different native languages which are still the common use languages.

It may just be in the limited space you had for the ask, but the way you’ve represented your worldbuilding makes it seem like your inclusion of these other cultures is more of a check-list style, no-can-call-me-racist-because-I-mention-other-cultures-that-are-different-from-mine attempt than an actual desire to have representation.

Moving onto what is not really problematic in your ask but is confusing… I just don’t understand what the whole color thing is about. That’s not how countries are named. Where do these standards come from? Did all the cultures just happen to have single colored standards that they used to identify themselves pre-invasion/colonization? Or did the Anglo-Saxon culture literally conquer the world through the cunning use of flags [video]?

I would check out this Wiki article on the etymology of country names in English. A good example of how English names for countries do come about is in the name for Japan. Japan is the Anglicization of Marco Polo’s Italianicization of the Shanghai accented pronunciation of 日本, “jitpun,” which has been Japan’s name for itself since the end of the 7th century, is pronounced “nippon” or “nihon” there, and means “land of the rising sun.”

Hello Future Me has a fantastic video on how to go about replicating both native placenames and colonial placenames in your worldbuilding.

Finally, as far as your actual question goes, can you use a real language from a culture not your own to name places in your world? I think you need to do a lot of researching and a lot of revisiting your worldbuilding before you can make that call.

Tex: You have an... interesting collage of places listed. Some of them go into more detail than others - I'm curious why you've picked what you did, and to the depth that you've chosen. Given the Ango-Saxon bias I'm picking up on, can I assume that you're basing the head of this government in England/the UK? If so, I'm also curious to know whether this alternate world is the consequence of a diversion point in our own history (e.g. someone lost a war that let the UK steamroller everyone into the Commonwealth), or if previous other world powers are for some reason less effective at consolidating their powers and conquering their neighbors than the UK (I'm going to keep assuming UK for simplicity's sake in my answer, but feel free to plug in whatever works for you).

There is a bit of an issue with your current set-up, assuming real-world, real-history parallels. The most immediate of which is that humans are quite simply very good at organizing themselves into societies as soon as they've got that sedentary lifestyle (i.e. agriculture) down pat, and this can and has happened in every found and currently living human settlement, with rare exceptions. Statistically speaking, empires are an eventuality, especially given the right combination of genetics (De Neve et al, 2013; Li et al., 2012) and circumstances (The Creativity Post; Zhang et al, 2009; Halverston et al., 2004; Hunt et al., 1999) to launch a would-be leader into capably instituting a strict hierarchy with a penchant toward warfare. Please let it be known that expanding borders is typically a bloody process, because other people get upset if you take their things without permission - namely, their land, food, and women.

(I name "land, food, and women" because 1.) land is a place to grow food, bury your dead, and obtain water, 2.) food is necessary to not die, and 3.) women ensure the existence of the next generation and thus perpetuity of your society/ethnicity. These are integral, and missing even one of them can immediately - or very, very quickly - lead to the downfall of your civilization. The rest are frills that build upon these three components.)

The reason why I'm curious as to the places you've picked is because every single one of them has at least established a kingdom, if not an empire of their own. For the practical reasons of warfare, these are difficult governments to topple and replace with your own (particularly if you're culturally distinct from them, but that's a slightly different topic). Wikipedia has multiple lists about empires across the world: List of largest empires, Colonial empire § List of colonial empires, and List of empires. I’m going to toss in List of people known as “the Great”, to round things out.

The issue, from a would-be conqueror's perspective, in attaining governance of these places is their armies and ability to call upon allies due to their accompanying diplomatic prowess. In order to be formidable, you need an army of your own that's capable of overcoming such an obstacle. If you're canny, you can trade some brute strength for things like economic manipulation and various degrees of diplomacy that probably delve into things like assassination (China and Rome were big fans of these methods to one degree or another).

Pick a region and an era, and you'll find someone that's done exactly that in varying ratios at least once. Sun Tzu's The Art of War comments about warfare to degrees of honorability and the effectiveness of the different grades depending on the situation; familiarizing yourself on that book will help you greatly in laying the foundation of how your world came to be, if you haven't already done so. The history of your world will most definitely set the stage for any era coming after it, particularly if you're writing for a post-"unification" era.

Now, nation-states are a relatively new concept, particularly because they're a combination of two distinct ideas - the nation and the state (this might appear a bit obvious, but please bear with me). Nations have existed for ages because they're defined by a homogenous ethnic group congregated in the same general area - they are typically grouped by a shared bloodline and culture.

States are different in that their primary association is in an organized government that may or may not be constrained to a single ethnicity - borders exist here, whereas in nations borders hold a more ephemeral placement (the people are the border, rather than geographical markers or lines on a paper).

As such, states are a newer concept than nations, and tying the two together generally leads to a majority ethnicity that is frequently enforced by genocide in order to maintain status quo (Wikipedia); this is, incidentally, where laws protecting minorities originate from, a subject of which can and often is used as political leverage for a variety of motivations.

I will also note that nations, being ethnically-oriented, have their people as their borders. As you can imagine, history in a few continents has proven that "rights" to land have been attempted by spreading out an ethnic group via practices such as immigration, inter-marriage with other nations, and purchase of land. You can see inhibitory reactions in legislation via things like restrictions on religions (forbidding the practice of certain religions), clothing (forbidding or dictating types of clothing - frequently on both class and gender lines), marriage (enforcement of social classes), and language (forbidding of languages and dictation of a national standard).

What you’re describing is colonialism, and with a check-listing tilt that comes across as disrespectful to the cultures you’ve picked out, but I hesitate to call it “evil” because that ascribes a morality that’s inherently tied to particular cultures. Homogenization has certainly displayed benefits in the form of accessibility:

Ancient Egypt, while not strictly speaking an empire, has a mostly continuous lineage with flourishing arts, social development, and many cities were considered cosmopolitan because of contemporary tourism

The Persian empire had a fantastic postal system because of their extensive network of paved roads

Imperial China saw not only the development of a new language, but also the advancement of literature, philosophy, and physical arts such as architecture, pottery, and painting

The Huns developed trade routes across multiple continents which benefited not only goods but intellectual progress

Alexander the Great brought along an entourage of intellectuals and artisans to assemble a compendium of knowledge across his empire that was disseminated as far as possible

The Romans achieved many things - not least their advances in architecture and literature

The Mughal Empire in India was a world leader in manufacturing during its time, and many artworks during its time are considered cultural classics

The Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires both unified large swathes of Europe and other regions of the world

So while colonialism in its many forms does function as an eradication of culture, it also has a tendency to promote stability, relative peace due to a common background, and a marked increase in literacy and the arts - culture, in other words, becomes more intricate because there’s now an opportunity to do so.

Unfortunately for many would-be colonizers, this works best with respect toward the original inhabitants of a land, because otherwise it just devolves into more war. These wars, because they’re culturally- and ethnically-based, are often bloodier than ones fought specifically over resources, because trade negotiations cannot be offered as a common ground where lasting peace can be found.

In order to not have a dissolution of empire like was found when Alexander the Great died, common ground must be found as a unifying factor - genocide doesn’t endear you to anyone, and fosters resentment that’s taken advantage of whenever bureaucracy at the top of the chain fractures. For your instance, the colour names likely won’t work, because it’s imposing a cultural norm that might not match up with the sub-administrations, and it comes across as a patronizing pacification to suggest merely translating it.

“i am white so that's really why i want to be sure i'm giving accurate rep here” - This, combined with your broad strokes of stereotyping, is the checklisting that Feral mentioned. Checklisting is inherently disrespectful to the source cultures, and you would be better off removing them entirely if you find yourself struggling too much with including them as equal in terms of cultural richness and longevity of existence (and for the most part, the ones you’ve skimmed over in your list are older than the UK, so it currently says unkind things of your perception).

Citations

De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel et al. “Born to Lead? A Twin Design and Genetic Association Study of Leadership Role Occupancy.” The leadership quarterly vol. 24,1 (2013): 45-60. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.08.001

PDF - Halverson, S. K., Murphy, S. E., & Riggio, R. E. (2004). Charismatic Leadership in Crisis Situations: A Laboratory Investigation of Stress and Crisis. Small Group Research, 35(5), 495–514. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496404264178

PDF - Hunt, James G., Kimberly B. Boal, and George E. Dodge. "The effects of visionary and crisis-responsive charisma on followers: An experimental examination of two kinds of charismatic leadership." The Leadership Quarterly 10.3 (1999): 423-448.

Li, Wen-Dong, et al. "Do leadership role occupancy and transformational leadership share the same genetic and environmental influences?." The Leadership Quarterly 23.2 (2012): 233-243.

Zhang, Z., Ilies, R., & Arvey, R. D. Beyond genetic explanations for leadership: The moderating role of the social environment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110(2), (2009): 118-128.

#pylons #cultures

53 notes · View notes

loadoutlet812 · 3 years ago

Text

Time Clock 1

Time Clock 120v Not Digital

Reset Clock 1

I love Time Clock Wizard! Their service department has impressed me the few times whenever I've needed to contact them - they even incorporated a change in the interface that I had submitted and has also sent a thank you note. Time Clock Wizard is an integral part of my service business. I am really very happy using these services!!

Electronic time clock

A time clock, sometimes known as a clock card machine or punch clock or time recorder, is a device that records start and end times for hourly employees (or those on flexi-time) at a place of business.

Free employee time clock app. Clockify is the most popular free online time clock app for employees. With it, employees can clock-in and clock-out using an online timer. Great for tracking employee attendance, seeing who works on what, and exporting data for payroll or billing. Get Started — It's Free! Available for web, desktop, and mobile.

Time Clock Wizard Provides Business Owners Accurate Employee Management Tools. Start Your 14-Day Trial. Get Started Now, It's FREE!

In mechanical time clocks, this was accomplished by inserting a heavy paper card, called a time card, into a slot on the time clock. When the time card hit a contact at the rear of the slot, the machine would print day and time information (a timestamp) on the card. One or more time cards could serve as a timesheet or provide the data to fill one. This allowed a timekeeper to have an official record of the hours an employee worked to calculate the pay owed an employee.

The terms Bundy clock, bundy clock, or just bundy(1) have been used in Australian English for time clocks. The term comes from brothers Willard and Harlow Bundy.

History(edit)

Origins(edit)

Early time clock, made by National Time Recorder Co. Ltd. of Blackfriars, London at Wookey Hole Caves museum

Bundy clock

An early and influential time clock, sometimes described as the first, was invented on November 20, 1888, by Willard Le Grand Bundy,(2) a jeweler in Auburn, New York. His patent of 1890(3) speaks of mechanical time recorders for workers in terms that suggest that earlier recorders already existed, but Bundy's had various improvements; for example, each worker had his own key. A year later his brother, Harlow Bundy, organized the Bundy Manufacturing Company,(4)(5) and began mass-producing time clocks.

In 1900, the time recording business of Bundy Manufacturing, along with two other time equipment businesses, was consolidated into the International Time Recording Company (ITR).(6)(7)(8)(9)

In 1911, ITR, Bundy Mfg., and two other companies were amalgamated (via stock acquisition), forming a fifth company, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), which would later change its name to IBM.(10)

The Bundy clock (see image left) was used by Birmingham City Transport to ensure that bus drivers did not depart from outlying termini before the due time; now preserved at Walsall Arboretum.

Time Clock 120v Not Digital

In 1909, Halbert P. Gillette explained about the state of the art around time clocks in those days:

IBM time clock

Time clocks.—Such an appliance which may not, in general, be used in the field, but which is of immense value in the office and particularly in a shop, is the time clock. Various forms of time clocks are in common use, two types of which are illustrated. (The first) is a time card recorder, which is a clock so made that it will automatically stamp on a card inserted in a slot in the clock by the workman the time of his arrival and of his departure. The cards are made to hold a record covering the pay period and need no attention from a timekeeper or clerk until the termination of this period. Parallels network & wireless cards driver download for windows 10. The record of the men's time can then be compiled very readily by one who need not be a skilled mathematician or time clerk.

The time clock system has been developed very highly in shops for keeping track of time used in completing any job by workmen, but as this in a way is not in the realm of field cost keeping, it will not be entered into here.

Another form of time clock (..) has the numbers of the employees fixed on the outer edge of a disk or ring and a record is made by the employee who shifts a revolving arm and punches his number upon entering the office and leaving. The working up of employees' time then becomes simply a matter of computation from printed figures. These two types are made by the International Time Recording Co. of New York.(11)

An example of this other form of time clock, made by IBM, is pictured. The face shows employee numbers which would be dialed up by employees entering and leaving the factory. The day and time of entry and exit was punched onto cards inside the box.(12)

Mid 20th century(edit)

In 1958, IBM's Time Equipment Division was sold to the Simplex Time Recorder Company. However, in the United Kingdom ITR (a subsidiary of IBM United Kingdom Ltd.) was the subject of a management buy-out in 1963 and reverted to International Time Recorders. In 1982, International Time Recorders was acquired by Blick Industries of Swindon, England, who were themselves later absorbed by Stanley Security Systems.

The first punched-card system to be linked to a Z80 microprocessor was developed by Kronos Incorporated in the late 1970s and introduced as a product in 1979.(13)

Late 20th century(edit)

In the late 20th century, time clocks started to move away from the mechanical machines to computer-based, electronic time and attendance systems. The employee registers with the system by swiping a magnetic stripe card, scanning a barcode, bringing an RFID (radio-frequency identification) tag close to a reader, entering a number or using a biometric reader. These systems are much more advanced than the mechanical time clock: various reports can be generated, including on compliance with the European Working Time Directive, and a Bradford factor report. Employees can also use the system to request holidays, enter absence requests and view their worked hours. User interfaces can be personalized and offer robust self-service capabilities.

Electronic time clock machines are manufactured in many designs by companies in China and sold under various brand names in places around the world, with accompanying software to extract the data from a single time clock machine, or several machines, and process the data into reports. In most cases local suppliers offer technical support and in some cases installation services.

More recently, time clocks have started to adopt technology commonly seen in phones and tablets – called 'Smartclocks'. The 'state of the art' smartclocks come with multi-touch screens, full color displays, real time monitoring for problems, wireless networking and over the air updates. Some of the smartclocks use front-facing cameras to capture employee clock-ins to deter 'buddy clocking' or 'buddy punching', whereby one employee fraudulently records the time of another. This problem usually requires expensive biometric devices. With the increasing popularity of cloud-based software, some of the newer time clocks are built to work seamlessly with the cloud.(14)

Types(edit)

Basic time clock(edit)

A basic time clock will just stamp the date and time on a time card, similar to a parking validation machine. These will usually be activated by a button that a worker must press to stamp their card, or stamp upon full insertion. Some machines use punch hole cards instead of stamping, which can facilitate automated processing on machinery not capable of optical character recognition.

There are also variations based on manufacture and machine used, and whether the user wants to record weekly or monthly recordings. The time cards usually have the workdays, 'time in', and 'time out' areas marked on them so that employees can 'punch in' or 'punch out' in the correct place. The employee may be responsible for lining up the correct area of the card to be punched or stamped. Some time clocks feature a bell or signal relay to alert employees as to a certain time or break.(citation needed)

Fraudulent operation of time clocks can include overstamping, where one time is stamped over another, and buddy-punching, where one employee records time for another. In extreme cases, employees can use buddy-punching to skip entire days of work or accumulate additional overtime.

Self-calculating machines(edit)

Reset Clock 1

Contactless magnetic time clock card

Self-calculating machines are similar to basic time clocks. Nevertheless, at the end of each period the total time recorded is added up allowing for quicker processing by human resources or payroll. These machines sometimes have other functions such as automatic stamping, dual-colour printing, and automated column shift.(citation needed)

Software based time and attendance systems are similar to paper-based systems, but they rely on computers and check-in terminals. They are backed up with software that can be integrated with the human resources department and in some cases payroll software. https://loadoutlet812.tumblr.com/post/657433190171017216/download-sealevel-port-devices-driver. These types of systems are becoming more popular but due to high initial costs they are usually only adopted by large business of over 30 employees. Despite this they can save a business a lot of money every year by cutting down errors and reducing administration time.(15)(citation needed)

Mobile time tracking(edit)

With the mass market proliferation of mobile devices (smart phones, handheld devices), new types of self-calculating time tracking systems have been invented which allow a mobile workforce – such as painting companies or construction companies - to track employees 'on' and 'off' hours. This is generally accomplished through either a mobile application, or an IVR based phone call in system. Using a mobile device allows enterprises to better validate that their employees or suppliers are physically 'clocking in' at a specific location using the GPS functionality of a mobile phone for extra validation.

Biometrics(edit)

Biometric time clocks are a feature of more advanced time and attendance systems. Rather than using a key, code or chip to identify the user, they rely on a unique attribute of the user, such as a hand print, finger print, finger vein, palm vein, facial recognition, iris or retina. The user will have their attribute scanned into the system. Biometric readers are often used in conjunction with an access control system, granting the user access to a building, and at the same time clocking them in recording the time and date. These systems also attempt to cut down on fraud such as 'buddy clocking.' When combined with an access control system they can help prevent other types of fraud such as 'ghost employees', where additional identities are added to payroll but don't exist.