Well of Souls Forums

Arioch wrote:

Whale wrote:So, there was some discussion and criticism about the comic on another forum earlier, and although I have a vague feeling these points may have come up here before, I believe there's stuff worth discussing here. Thoughts/comments?

Alex is the protagonist of the story (not Humanity as a whole). In the early going, he's a fairly passive protagonist, and the only decisions he can make are how to react to events that are entirely out of his control. This does serve a narrative purpose; when there is a new and alien world that must be explained to the reader, it's a useful tool to have the protagonist learn as the reader learns. While the protagonist is still clueless about his surroundings, he's not going to be a very effective agent for driving the plot, and so often his actions are restricted in the early going... you can see this pattern used in worldbuilding-heavy stories like Gulliver's Travels, Shogun, or even Lord of the Rings. As the protagonist gets his footing in this new world, he has more opportunities to make meaningful decisions that drive the plot.

Alex's role as a representative of Humanity can be compared to Frodo's role as a representative of the Hobbits (if you will pardon the impertinence of such a comparison); Frodo is largely isolated from his own nation for most of the story, and the Shire is something he must work to protect, rather than expect help from. Anyone who was trying to work out how the Hobbit armies were going to play a decisive military role in the War of the Ring was barking up the wrong tree.

ShyAndFearful wrote:I just CAN'T WAIT for Beryl to start learning English spelling rules. [...] So, theoretically, if Beryl wouldn't be a recorder she is, she would have a really hard time just trying to accept the fact that letters don't always sound the same (Just like I did).

SVlad wrote:Is it grammatically correct in English to ask "Can you not?" instead of "Can't you read?" Or is it again wired Loroi (lack of) grammar?

SVlad wrote:Is it grammatically correct in English to ask "Can you not?" instead of "Can't you read?" Or is it again wired Loroi (lack of) grammar?

Arioch wrote:

SVlad wrote:Is it grammatically correct in English to ask "Can you not?" instead of "Can't you read?" Or is it again wired Loroi (lack of) grammar?

I don't use contractions for Loroi speech; it's a stylistic thing to help differentiate how they and Alex talk.

"Can't" is a contraction for "can not", so just removing the contraction would leave "Can not you read?", which is pretty awkward.

"Can you not read?" is a style of speaking that is more common in British English than American English, but it's quite correct in terms of grammar.

ShyAndFearful wrote:p.s. Pardon my English.
p.p.s. And my punctuation (It's a little bit different in Russian)

I just CAN'T WAIT for Beryl to start learning English spelling rules. I'm Russian (Belarussian actually, but it's practically the same thing) so here is how it was for me:
- Wait, why do they have "C" that may sound like "K" or "S" if they already have both these letters in a divided format?! Why do they even have it then?!
- Wait, the "e" isn't spelled if it's in the end of a word?!
- Wait, why the "y" sounds like "ee"? We already have "i" that sounds like "ee"!
- Wait, the "I" pronounced as "ee" in "sin", but as "ai" in "mile"?!
And many, MANY MORE. But it's 1:07 in the morning and I want to sleep.
It's not even the rules that are scary it's how many exceptions to these rules there is.
Long story short: I never learned them! Instead I had to memorize how each word is written and how it's spelled. SEPARATELY. Like I was learning some sort of Chinese characters and not words that are written with alphabet.
This is why I have problems trying to transliterate words.
Even the native speakers didn't know how to pronounce: Loroi or Laroi?
That's even more painful to me, since Russian alphabet, despite it's sounds are hard to pronounce for you, is very univocal when it comes to spelling. Meaning, if you see a letter "i" in a word, it will always sound like "ee". Just like in Trade. So, theoretically, if Beryl wouldn't be a recorder she is, she would have a really hard time just trying to accept the fact that letters don't always sound the same (Just like I did).

Absalom wrote:Just to dig the thorn in a bit more, many of our words used to have much more reasonable spellings... before the sounds changed. "Knight", for example, gained it's approximate spelling during a period of time when the k and g were actually pronounced, but then the pronunciation changed without the spelling doing the same, so what was "knight" became "niht" (meanwhile, as I understand it William Shakespeare's will spells his name five or six different ways despite being the only pieces of paper that we actually know he physically touched: all known copies of his plays are either unauthorized from-memory copies, or printed after his death).

DevilDalek wrote:After this Beryl. .we shall move on to Welsh....



Come to think of it,I wonder what she would make of the fact that humanity has so many languages..

That humans are a tribal race who has spend most of his history confined to the same planet and only recently expanded to others?

Krulle wrote:And that we may still not have a common government....

Absalom wrote:It could also be used to claim that Humanity is a variably-fractious species that goes through cycles of homogenization and heterogenization.

raistlin34 wrote:

Absalom wrote:It could also be used to claim that Humanity is a variably-fractious species that goes through cycles of homogenization and heterogenization.

I wonder if there is anything Humanity may unanimously agree about.