[projectaon] Re: Drakkar v. Drakkarim
- From: "David Davis" <feline1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:24:35 +0100
No I disagree (unless I'm missing something) -
"Scots" and "Scottish" and both valid, interchangeable, adjectival forms,
when referring to generic collective/plural things from Scotland.
e.g. "Scots Law" or "Scottish Law",
"They are Scottish" or "they are Scots",
so in the sorts or sentences Jon gives examples of below,
it would be perfectly valid to write either
"Scots assault-troopers" or "Scottish assault-troopers"
"Scots warriors" or "Scottish warriors"
"a Scots patrol" or "a Scottish patrol"
the only special case I am aware of is whisky,
where the form "Scotch" is used! :)
I don't see a problem with Drakkar and Drakkarim being used
interchangeable as they appear to have been.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon Osborne" <outspaced@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2008 10:22 AM
Subject: [projectaon] Re: Drakkar v. Drakkarim
Hi all
David Davis wrote:
I've never felt this needed to be "standardized" - a direct analogy is
provided by the adjective "Scots" and "Scottish",
which are completely interchangeable, both correct, either can be used
to give whichever flavour the writer or speaker wishes.
Not really; a vaguely closer analogy would be Scot (singular) and
Scottish.
If you then compare: He is a Drakkarim / They are Drakkar--He is a
Scottish / They are Scot.
It don't work right. ;-)
We are fortunate enough to have an overview of the entire series, so these
discrepancies are more obvious to us. Editing the books on an individual
basis back in the 90s, when computers has nowhere near the RAM or raw
power home PCs have these days, precluded running searches on multiple XML
files to discover such problems!
Jonathan Blake originally wrote:
The effects of a decision on Drakkar v. Drakkarim could be large:
"Drakkarim" is used at least 600 times in the books and "Drakkar" is
used at least 175 times. So lets get this right the first time. :) Let
me state the problem.
The problem is that these rules aren't followed consistently. We see
things like "a Drakkarim warrior" or "Drakkarim assault-troopers". If
the rules (that I personally prefer) were followed, these would be "a
Drakkar warrior" and "Drakkar assault-troopers".
Which should be the adjective form equivalent to "French" or
"English": Drakkar or Drakkarim? Standardizing this either way would
require a lot of changes. I wonder if we should tackle this now or
after all the books are all available to the public.
Another benefit of having all the books in XML format is that this sort of
global decision can be made and implemented. Really, we might as well try
to pull this in along with the rest of the editing. Once we get up to
speed on it, it should be like the arrow/Arrow bow/Bow on to/onto issues
that seem to drag for a time but get cleared up quite quickly once things
get moving.
Looking through the first 8 books, my untrained eyes can only see these
four potential misuses of the terms:
Book 2:
(er) 326, 326 (Caption): black-clad shape of a Drakkarim warrior ->
black-clad shape of a Drakkar warrior
Book 5:
(er) 304: Drakkarim reinforcements -> Drakkar reinforcements [??]
Book 8:
(er) 1: an army of Drakkarim warriors -> an army of Drakkar warriors
Assuming I've understood and these are all correct (i.e. correct = a
Dakkar patrol _or_ a patrol of Drakkarim), we might as well alter these
before we re-release Book 8 (and 1-7).
--
Simon Osborne
Project Aon
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