You say potato, I say... well, you get the point. We all have words in books we pronounce in books. For example, with the word Idris, I say Id-ris while some people say Eye-dris. It all depends, and according to Cassandra Clare the same goes with one very important Shadowhunter tool.
"Okay, the thing is stele is an actual word," Cassie said. "In general it’s used to describe a stone monument with an inscribed surface. When I was trying to come up with the name for the Shadowhunters’ drawing implements, I had a whole list of possible words. I picked stele because of the connection to antiquity, the connection to inscriptions and writing, and because it sounded in my head a bit like “stencil.”"
She also seems to have the same debates with her own friends. "The other thing is that fantasy words and readers have a long history —I had an argument with my friend Christopher Rowe last week about how to pronounce Dunedain. Upshot: neither of us knew. We agreed that the best way to pronounce it is however we always pronounced it in our heads. I am fine with people pronouncing stele any which way. Steely, steel, stellay (what I say.) I think in the film they say stellay. But you should not feel like you need to be restricted by films or audiobooks. You can look it up,or pronounce it how you like, since a stele in the books is not the same thing as a stele in real life."
So, there you have it. "Stellay" is the pronunciation used for stele in the movie and books, but it's really up to the reader to determine how they want to say it.
Okay maybe as a writer myself who likes to fudge things in my own way I shouldnt throw stones but the anthopologist in me just cant quite get past this. I see the word stele and I see big monuments...I cant help it...that by definition is just what a stele is in the archeological world...and the reason for making the choice to use it any way as a writer just feels....mmm...not quite good enough. When im in the same situation I change the spelling just to avoid people picturing the wrong connotation. Example: when I write of "demons" I do not mean infernal beings but harken back to a much older definition and as such I spell it always daemons. What most people imagine as demons I call fiends or other names. I am very much enjoing the book but the word stele just feels like a poor choice. It in fact jarrs me a bit each time I see it so I cant quite get fully emerced and thus is something its wise to consider when writing. At the sam time though you get 1000 brownie points for doing your homework.
ReplyDelete(Please forgive all spelling and punctuation errors....typing on a tablet is cumbersome.:) )
Not quite good enough? It's a fantasy story with whatever fake words she wants to use. If anything, picking a real word but used in a different context is outrageous better than just calling it a Boobashoop or some other nonsense term, the way that J.K. Rowling does.
DeleteNot only does it sound more real but it also fits perfectly with how language evolves. There are countless examples in language where terms meaning one thing were extended to other things many years later because of a minor, direct or indirect similarity. Look at something like spinster. It was literally a profession where a person worked diligently spinning wool. Over many years it was identified as a job commonly done by women who weren't married and eventually grew into a pejorative term for women who likely would never marry because they're undesirable.
Look at the word bug. For most of history it meant a small insectoid creature. Now it also means defects in mechanical devices because they're generally perceived as small and irritating. Shall we find whoever first used this term (Thomas Edison himself used this term regularly) and inform them that it won't suffice because that's not what you think of when you hear the word bug?
Piggybacking on that, the word computer was first used to refer to a person who calculated dates between different types of calendars (Julian to Gregorian). Imagine if we lived in a world without the concept of modern computational devices and someone claimed the idea of a "magical device" that could store data and do countless other things in an automated manner being called a computer was just "not quite good enough" because that's not what computer means.
Obviously these are just three examples, but you get the point. Language evolves and it makes a hell of a lot more sense for a Stele to have its etymology based in something real than just be a completely fictitious word. It grounds it more.
Also, you choosing to spell demon as daemon because you think it's somehow more clear or better is just.. not quite good enough. Obviously you can do whatever you want, but it's not objectively better in any capacity. And, quite frankly, you're just wrong anyway. The words demon and daemon mean the exact same thing. Demon is just the middle English spelling while daemon is the Latin spelling that eventually became demon. They don't have different denotations.
i disagree.
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