T-30 and counting

[truepenny]

3,186 words.

For once, that thing where you sleep on a problem actually worked. I woke up at 5:45 this morning (I think something in my dream woke me, because I thought it was the sound of a cat interfering with the wastebasket, and there was no such cat. A dream cat interfering with a dream wastebasket?) and couldn't get back to sleep. But I could get a start on the scene that was driving me nuts yesterday. I've been writing relatively steadily (for my values of "steadily," rather than, say, Bear's) ever since, and have now finished the scene.

Loud huzzahs.

Mean things: Everybody's worldview is now higgledy-piggledy.

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Everybody's worldview is now higgledy-piggledy.

You fill me with a reprehensible desire to write double-dactyls about Felix and Mildmay.

(For instance,"Felix and Mildmay" is, itself, a double-dactyl line, unless I'm pronouncing either or both of the names wrong.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Mildmay's name is technically a whatchamacallit, the opposite of an iamb, but pronounced with sufficient diphthong (as I pronounce it and as he would pronounce it) can certainly pass as a dactyl.

In other words, yeah. Open season on double-dactyls.

[kate_nepveu]

1) Yay words,

2) I would love to read other people's double-dactyls (I have less than no talent for that myself),

3) as shown by the fact that I have to ask, "how _do_ you pronounce Mildmay's name if it's not iambic," instead of understanding from your description above.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The i in Mildmay is long. Ergo the stress is on the first syllable.

Also, one of the remnants of my own mid-south accent (which is what Mildmay's dialect is based on, the kids I went to high school with) is that I cannot pronounce "mild" without diphthonging the i. my-uld. (I actually have trouble believing anyone can pronounce "mild" as a single syllable, but I'm willing to be persuaded that's an idiolectical solipsism.)

I suspect the real world persons whose given name was Mildmay (e.g. Mildmay Fane, a Cavalier poet of surpassingly mediocre talent) pronounced it with a short i. But the back formation I made up (I had to do something since in Mélusine there is no month of May) points emphatically and inarguably to long i.

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks.

I don't know if I pronounce "mild" with one syllable or two, and now I'm all self-conscious about it. You have my permission to come up behind me at a con, shove a flashcard at my face, and say, "quick, say this word!"

And a short i would be like what, military? That would be really weird. Also asking to be called Mold-may.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was pronouncing it with a short I until I reached the explanation for what the whole name meant - and I still do when I'm not thinking hard -- because until I reached the explanation, I was dividing the syllables Mil-Dmay, and the two real world words that were in the name went over my head. (Whoosh!) (DM looks harder to say than it is, at least in my accent. Partly because the D becomes very soft, almost gone, when I'm not thinking about enunciation.)

I also tend to write with the mentality that if it's a secondary world, I'm translating every word from a foreign language. Since a lot of other writers do the same, my brain consigns a construction like Mildmay (Or, in my own story, Farrain) to "nothing to do with the English words" and thus doesn't take them into account when deciding pronunciation. You'd think some of the other language usage would ahve clued me in sooner in Melusine, but...

(And, for how to pronounce things, I also have French, Welsh, Finnish and scraps of Swedish to draw on. Not that I can **speak** any of those, but the one thing that sticks when I attempt to learn a new language seems to be the gist of the alphabet and pronounciation rules ... and listening to their music reinforces it.)

[kate_nepveu]

Ah, if the D isn't being emphasized, I can understand it better. Thanks.

[(Anonymous)]

To settle an argument my boyfriend and I are having, how is 'Kethe' pronounced? I maintain it's 'Keth', and my boyfriend thinks it's 'Keith' which I mean sounds like some cockney geezer who hangs around on street corners offering people drugs, so I really hope it's not Keith.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It's two syllables (the final e is pronounced).

I've always pronounced it with the e's long--kee thee--but sitting here thinking about it this morning, I am suddenly suspicious that I may be wrong, and it's actually keh theh, which is how it's pronounced as part of the name of Phi-Kethetin.

So, um. I'm sure about the two syllables, but other than that apparently scholars disagree. :)

[smills47.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pronunciation guide!

On the subject of names, here's a truth-emulates-fiction squib. Recently I came across a name in an article (British newspaper) that made me say Wait a minute -- surely that's a character in a Sarah Monette novel! But no, there really is a person named Darius Guppy.

[(Anonymous)]

Aha wonderful, thank you! My bf and I are enjoying your books very much by the way.