Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Misfit Angel]

So, where is everyone on this? I feel like I've installed an elevator between #5 and #6 and I'm constantly flipping through them, though I'm on the verge of approaching #7. Summer's around the corner, the back garden is getting fixed up and I might just waste some time out there with a book in my hands.

Edit: thinking about it, I also feel like I've already done #9, since I was the one who first taught my niece how to read. Boy was her mother angry that I "stole" that from her

 

[Time Breaker]

Probably somewhere around #1... If it's not a graphic novel of some sort, I'll only occasionally pick one up to flip around, but I haven't read through a book in years (I last left off in the middle of The Hobbit, which is, of course, a novel). That doesn't have an effect on my liking of books, though; I can enjoy them a lot of they're good! I just need to get into reading them more.

 

[canisaries]

i'm a #0, i haven't even discovered books
i really don't read anything physical unless it's school books

 

[Kharixi]

Between #1 and #2 because I like books.
(although I mostly only read comic books and manga lol)

 

[Beth Pavell]

Oh, Stage #8, easily. Though I'm pretty sure I went right from #4 to #8

You know you're far gone as a bibliophile when you start buying books just because they're beautiful. When I worked in a bookshop a couple of Christmases back I tended to forget that to most people that's not really a selling point

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Going through a cycle from 2-7. I got Wings of Fire: The Dark Secret today.

 

[diamondpearl876]

I'd say #7, since last year I was totally uninterested in reading anything, and now I'm finding myself reading 3 novels at once plus all the fics I follow. I can't stop. XD

 

[canisaries]

so... i'm going to name a fic after a greek word, agiasmós (ἁγιασμός, sanctification), but i've also come across the transliteration "hagiasmós". does anyone here know enough greek to know why there's two options? i found "hagiasmós" on a bible lexicon site which looked pretty in-depth. i wonder if it's some kind of older version? in that case, i could maybe go for that one instead, since the religion in the fic is pretty ancient. using the original greek letters is not an option, i'm worried it'll break reddit lol

also i recently found out that everyone on my main reddit apparently read "agape" as the english word (which would make no sense as a fic title), so i'm thinking of adding the greek accents and whatsits. another transliteration question: is it "agápe" or "agápē"?
this sure would be a lot easier if i knew what the accents actually did, but i don't speak any language that uses them

 

[Misfit Angel]

I'm no expert on the Greek language, Greek history, or even the evolution of words over time, but based on what I see on this page, I'm guessing hagiasmós was the original ancient Greek pronunciation of the word, as indicated by the 5th century BC Attic pronunciation. It lacks the "h" sound in the 4th century AD, under Koine Greek, which was the dominant dialect of the Greek language adopted by Alexander the Great's armies during his numerous conquests. When he conquered areas, he forced his language upon them.

It should be noted that Alexander's conquest was in the 3rd century BC, so under the original Koine Greek he brought to new areas, it may have held the same pronunciation as before. But as time progressed and the other cultures adopted the Greek language, pronunciation may have been muddied by different accents, languages, etc. By the 5th century AD, the reference point for Koine on that page, the new pronunciation which lacked the "h" sound, may have been adopted by the Greeks or even done themselves as a way to simplify their language.

Of course, this is all speculation based on ~20 minutes of minor research. The fact that scholars still aren't sure of where different dialects and versions of the Greek language came together on a timeline should add to the dubiousness of my claims. However, I think it's a fair bet that hagiasmós is a more archaic term and if you're looking for age, that'll probably be the word to go for. It's a detail that would probably be lost on the casual observer, anyways.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

also i recently found out that everyone on my main reddit apparently read "agape" as the english word (which would make no sense as a fic title), so i'm thinking of adding the greek accents and whatsits. another transliteration question: is it "agápe" or "agápē"?

I'm not an expert, but I think "agapé" would be the best way to show people how it's pronounced.

 

[AceTrainer14]

On that lovely drawing EP shared, I saw this interesting article today and thought it was a great coincidence. Does anyone here read e-books? I have never ever considered it, I have always loved the feel of a book plus having a huge pile of them next to my bed is a good encouragement to actually read them. I feel if I had everything loaded onto an e-book I'd never get around to anything new and would simply stick to the ones I still have.

I have noted recently that my sister, who a year or so ago swore by her e-book and read everything on there, has suddenly started buying a lot of books again. Only personal evidence I have of people swinging towards the physical as the global trends seem to have suggested.

 

[Misfit Angel]

I've considered it, even looked into ways of getting stories from here into a format acceptable by my tablet. One thing that's stopped me is that my tablet isn't very e-book friendly and I really don't have the wiggle room in my finances to justify getting something like a Kindle.

 

[Beth Pavell]

*Puts on linguist's hat

At last, university education has a use. With transliterations, you'll usually find the small differences are down to making judgement calls on the sounds - phonemes, to use the technical term - involved. Of course it doesn't help that people's accents can muddy the waters (Which is why you should always take comments like: "I'm Indian and x is pronounced like y" with at least a pinch of salt). The best you can really do to untangle it is see if you can find an audio clip of the word and make up your own mind.

In regards to the other matter, it's the difference between using a loanword (i.e: incorporating a foreign word into English as an English word) andd codeswitching (Swapping from English to a foreign language). There aren't any rules on it (If there were we'd have fiance and anime or fiancé and animé), but I think it's entirely acceptable to ignore diacritics (Accent marks) with words that have no easy English equivalent: agape, schadenfreude, zeitgeist, hygge, komorebi, etc. Diacritics just give you clues as to how to pronounce the word, which English almost never does. Sorry foreigners.

 

[canisaries]

the thing with agape is that it seems that "agape" without any accents nowadays is used to primarily refer to the brotherly love between christians, but the original meaning would mean a number of things, one prominent one being the love between a man and his god. and the problem's not really in the pronunciation, just the confusion with the "agape", as in, "mouth agape". i think i just need some speshul letters in there to show that it's a loanword, but i'm worried it'll look pretentious or alternatively i'll get it wrong, and being the grammar gestapo officer i am, i hate being wrong ;P for now, i think i'll take the middle road and use agápe. and use hagiasmós for the other fic. it'll give more clear google results if and when people google it anyway lol

yeah, i'm not very experienced with different transliterations, given that i'm finnish and the finnish language is rather unique in the sense that the written language is very, very straightforward: every single letter corresponds to a single phoneme (save for about 3 or 4 exceptions) and so loanwords are often just phonetic versions of the original word with possibly an "-i" in the end for easier pronunciation (finnish only has a dozen or so words that actually end in a consonant). syllable stress is a completely lost concept, since all finnish words have the stress on the first syllable, making the language pretty monotone.

 

[Beth Pavell]

You can be as obsessed with grammar as you like, the plain fact is there are no rules - in English, anyway - on using diacritics with loanwords. That it's a loanword should really be self-evident - I've never really seen any point in marking out loanwords or codeswitching with italics, for that matter. It's unlikely, in the case of agape, that it's going to cause confusion, but I suppose it is a possibility. The only other reason I can really see for making the distinction would be stylistic, if, for whatever reason, you wanted to be clear that you were codeswitching and not borrowing

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

@Beth Pavell
I've always wondered why words like anime don't have accent marks in English... my first instinct usually tells me that they look slightly wrong without them.

Oh, and since this is the first time I've posted here, I suppose that I should introduce myself. I'm Bakuphoon, and I've finally decided to post here after lurking around this section for a very long time. I'm not quite sure what finally pushed me to actually post here after so long, but in any case, hello everyone!

On that lovely drawing EP shared, I saw this interesting article today and thought it was a great coincidence. Does anyone here read e-books? I have never ever considered it, I have always loved the feel of a book plus having a huge pile of them next to my bed is a good encouragement to actually read them. I feel if I had everything loaded onto an e-book I'd never get around to anything new and would simply stick to the ones I still have.

I like the idea of e-books, especially on something like a Kindle where it looks amazingly close to an actual book. But at the same time, there's something about sitting down in a nice chair or on a couch with an actual physical book that I've always kind of been attracted to (and not to mention: that book is actually yours, versus being stuck on a computer device). But then again, maybe that's just more of a reflection of the joy of reading rather than what you're actually reading on, since I often get the same kind of feeling when I read fanfiction in the same places on my phone, or even on my large and heavy laptop.

Speaking of fanfiction... a fanfic is basically an e-book by its very nature, right? Wouldn't it be great if we were able to read fanfics on something like a Kindle? It would feel a lot more like reading an actual book, and it would also probably be a lot more comfortable than straining our eyes on a huge backlit computer screen or on a tiny phone. I've heard that there are ways to get outside content on something like a Kindle, but it would be great if there were a way to read fanfiction natively on a Kindle like any other book.

 

[canisaries]

You can be as obsessed with grammar as you like, the plain fact is there are no rules - in English, anyway - on using diacritics with loanwords. That it's a loanword should really be self-evident - I've never really seen any point in marking out loanwords or codeswitching with italics, for that matter. It's unlikely, in the case of agape, that it's going to cause confusion, but I suppose it is a possibility. The only other reason I can really see for making the distinction would be stylistic, if, for whatever reason, you wanted to be clear that you were codeswitching and not borrowing

the reason i want to get it right is not for english' sake, but for greek's. as someone who's witnessed such atrocities as "star wars: masters of 'teräs käsi'" and everything involving an ä or å written as a or ö as o, i know how stupid it looks to a native when someone who loans does no research and names something something just to make it "sound cool" and gets things abysmally wrong. maybe most natives wouldn't care, but if i'm this angered, then someone else will be too and i'll feel their pain.

also the english adjective "agape" just makes me uncomfortable. it has nothing to do with the fic and sounds like it's got more to do with something i'm probably better off not discussing on this site.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Speaking of fanfiction... a fanfic is basically an e-book by its very nature, right? Wouldn't it be great if we were able to read fanfics on something like a Kindle?

You can download epubs(?) on Fimfiction, and there's also Kindle Worlds.

Something that confuses me: the FAQ says it's capitalised Fimfiction, but the title that appears in tabs is spelled FIMfiction.

That being said, I second fanfics on Kindle. I find it really hard to read ScytheRider's super-long fanfics against a long, white void.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Speaking of fanfiction... a fanfic is basically an e-book by its very nature, right? Wouldn't it be great if we were able to read fanfics on something like a Kindle? It would feel a lot more like reading an actual book, and it would also probably be a lot more comfortable than straining our eyes on a huge backlit computer screen or on a tiny phone. I've heard that there are ways to get outside content on something like a Kindle, but it would be great if there were a way to read fanfiction natively on a Kindle like any other book.

Fanfics are basically e-books, yeah, and you can read fanfic on a Kindle. I only use my Kindle to read fanfic now, and free PDFs of books I've found if I don't have the money to invest in the real book at the time. If you have a Kindle, you can use this app to send Word documents or other kinds of documents to your Kindle. What I do is copy/paste the fic I want to read into a Word document and send it to my Kindle. It's not an official e-book, no, but you can make notes and highlight things like the real thing, which can help with reviewing fics.

It's made me a lot more motivated to read fanfics, because my eyes get strained very easily by the computer and you can basically read fanfic anywhere you want, even without internet access.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

@diamondpearl876
So it is possible... cool! The only problem is that this would be rather difficult for stories from FF.net, which doesn't allow copying to the clipboard for some reason. It would also be great to have an app or site feature that converts fics into Word or PDF documents automatically, especially for long, 100,000+ word fics on sites with lots of extra content and formatting. I'd develop one myself if I had the know-how and motivation to do so, but...