Pet Peeves

[Mfitz]

Sawyer tends to be preachy and he almost always casts Americans as the bad guys. It is interesting to read his stuff and see the Canadian view of the US but the consistancey his preachyness ruined he otherwise fairly brilliant Hominids series for me.

I agree about Heinlein.  He is so obvious in his political preaching and even as a kid I thought his politcs were nieve.

[wakela]

French.

I studied Spanish in high school, so when an author throws in a little expression in French I don't know what it means or even how to pronounce it.  It might as well be ASCII garbage.  The author is including an expression that he knows for sure many of his readers will not understand.  It just seems rude to me.

[wakela]

I know this is a standard thing, but it still bugs me, and I can't help it. 
When writers use "the" instead of "a."  For example starting a story with "Plumes of fire erupted from the great ship as it landed."  I don't know what ship he's talking about, so "the" feels phony.  It feels like a trick.

I know that prizewinning writers do this in prizewinning stories, so maybe it's just me. 


P.S. "Prizewinning" is one word? 

[Tango Alpha Delta]

French.

I studied Spanish in high school, so when an author throws in a little expression in French I don't know what it means or even how to pronounce it.  It might as well be ASCII garbage.  The author is including an expression that he knows for sure many of his readers will not understand.  It just seems rude to me.

You can do what I do when I run across a faux-French word: pronounce it "oungh" and add that horrid, snotty back-of-the-throat French laugh, like the chef in the "Les Poisson" scene of Little Mermaid.

It doesn't improve the story any, but at least you're laughing after you do it, instead of cursing the author for annoying your sensibilities!

(For the record, the French actually laugh like that about as often as the English say, "Good show, ol' chap."  I am merely suggesting this technique as a kind of mental 'Sumo' trick for avoiding unnecessary tension.)

[Mfitz]

French.

Moi aussi.   

Seriously, I was bilingual in French as a child, but in about 5Th grade I realized they spelled things differently than English, it was one of the major traumas of my childhood.  Spelling and I aren't friends in any language and the though of having to know two ways to spell everything was about the worse thing I could imagine at that age. I had weeping bouts over it for days. My relationship with French was downhill from then on until I had such bad French Prof in college that I've pretty much lost all the French I had left.

[Anarkey]

French.

Just French?  Not foreign languages in general?  So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?

[Mfitz]

Yep pretty much just French

[wakela]

French.

Just French?  Not foreign languages in general?  So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?

Well, with any other language the writer usually does a little translation for you.  But for some reason they usually don't when using French.  I just had a  big SF reading blowout weekend, and it happened to me twice. 

[Russell Nash]

French.

Just French?  Not foreign languages in general?  So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?

Well, with any other language the writer usually does a little translation for you.  But for some reason they usually don't when using French.  I just had a  big SF reading blowout weekend, and it happened to me twice. 

German

They also do it with German. They never use it properly. I always end up going, "that's not right is it?" Then if my wife is still awake, I have to read it to her and ask what they mean. She normally says it doesn't mean anything the way it was used.

[FNH]

Yep pretty much just French

Of course the French are the natural enemy of us, the British, and so the use of thier language in an otherwise English book does tend to wound.

I dont expect anyone from the colonies to understand, you were of course, allied with them at one time, so your feelings on the matter are likely to muddied.

(I live in denial, so any mention of any world war alliances will strictly be ignored  )

[Anarkey]

French.

Just French?  Not foreign languages in general?  So if there's Russian or Arabic or Thai, that's ok?

Well, with any other language the writer usually does a little translation for you.  But for some reason they usually don't when using French.  I just had a  big SF reading blowout weekend, and it happened to me twice. 

So, wait, do you mean a bunch of dialog, like in Elizabeth Bear's Hammered? Or do you mean those French phrases that have pretty much migrated to English, like "laissez faire", "le mot juste" and "l'espirit d'escalier"?  I'm kind of fascinated by this annoyance.

[SFEley]

Of course the French are the natural enemy of us, the British, and so the use of thier language in an otherwise English book does tend to wound.

Of course you did get your revenge on them by stealing half their language and refusing to give it back...

(To which the French responded by locking down their language so thoroughly that now no one can touch it, even for maintenance.)  >8->

[wakela]

I dont expect anyone from the colonies to understand, you were of course, allied with them at one time, so your feelings on the matter are likely to muddied.

Hardly muddied.  We love the French.  Why, Napoleon is my middle name!

...oh, wait, it's yours.

[wakela]

So, wait, do you mean a bunch of dialog, like in Elizabeth Bear's Hammered? Or do you mean those French phrases that have pretty much migrated to English, like "laissez faire", "le mot juste" and "l'espirit d'escalier"?  I'm kind of fascinated by this annoyance.

"laissez faire" I can do.  I also can handle "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez" only because I'm from Louisiana.  But I have no idea what those other two expressions mean or how to say them.  I was also annoyed when suddenly New York was up to its derriere in Pret a Manger restaurants, and that Pret a Manger is not pronounced Pret a Manger.

I haven't read Hammered.  Does she write paragraphs of non-English dialogue?  That sounds insane. 

And it has nothing to do with French culture.  It's that the author is using a language that I don't know.  Pronunciation is part of it.  When Spanish or Latin goes unexplained at least I can create an image of a character making those sounds.  But in the case of French I have to make an English approximation which sounds terrible and I know is wrong.  Maybe all this makes me feel stupid, like it's something I should know.

It would be easy to say that the author is showing off that he speaks French, and it's my uneducated fault if I don't understand.  But I think the author believes that almost all English speakers know these phrases.  Maybe they do.

Is it an American thing?  Are British more familiar with the language? 

And I don't think I'm a stereotypical uneducated American bumpkin.  I live in Japan now and speak passable Japanese.  I can even read some of it.  If I were writing a story and slipped some J in there, it would be presumptuous of me not to explain it.   And it would be ridiculous to write in kanji. 

[wakela]

Hah!  Found some.
--insert throaty French laugh here--

From Nebula nominee "Helen Remembers the Stork Club" by Esther M. Friesner.

Each winter here seems to last just long enough for her to start a serious flirtation with making the move to Florida at long, long last. But then what? There's not enough money left in any of her accounts to pay for a little Pompano Beach pied-à-terre and still keep up the payments on her mint cond. pre-war high ceil. 2 BR, LR w/FPL, frml DR gem.

Not to impressed with the real estate classifieds encryption, either. 

Every time he sees her, he looks at her with hot, hungry eyes. She knows it's no longer her flesh he craves to possess, but her real estate. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même damn chose. That's how it was with her first husband, too.

It's within character for this person to think French expressions, but I still don't know what it means.  So I just tell myself しょうがない　and　continue with the story.

[Simon Painter]

I've got a major pet peeve about foreign languages in fiction as well, but for a different reason.

The time it bothers me is when a character (let's say he's french) is able to deliver a long, empassioned speech about the nature of reality without any problem, but throughout the entire book, he'll answer any yes/no questions with 'oui' or 'non'.

This is probably done by the author to remind us of the character's nationality, and probably to make him more distinct, but it has the knock-on effect of making him seem like he's either extremely pretentious or a moron, due to the fact that he can learn the English word for, say, 'Quantum Velocity Cyntrascope' but not for 'yes'.

To be fair, I've found this is most common amongst thriller writers (yes, you there, Mr Brown.  I can see you trying to sneak out) though I still see it from time to time in SF.

My other major Pet Peeve, and this is pretty petantic I expect, is the constant mis-use of the term 'Solar System'.  This usually occurs when you'll have a group of explorers rocketing off into unknown space and comment about arriving in this or that 'solar system'  which they aren't, unless they're back home (Solar System, as I'm sure you all know being the name for the particular *Star System* that we live in).
It's not a serious problem, but I see it appearing an awfull lot all over the place.

I may one day calm down enough to talk at any length about Present-Tense Narration without trying to throw things at the monitor 

Simon Painter
Shropshire, UK

[Anarkey]

I haven't read Hammered.  Does she write paragraphs of non-English dialogue?  That sounds insane. 

Noooo, I wouldn't say paragraphs.  Her characters are Canadians, so there's lots of French mixed in, especially endearments and such (which I suppose would irritate Simon like "oui" and "non").  There are entire sentences of dialog in French from time to time, but I just grokked them for flavor and moved on, without worrying about the word for word.  Nothing plot critical was conveyed in French.  From what I understand, the French usage is a fairly big complaint people have had with her book (well, the series, really, those Canadians are major characters in every book), but it only bugged me very little, and not enough to diminish my enjoyment.

I'm curious, now, since twice you've mentioned that you can't hear the French words in your head and that bothers you, whether you enjoyed the reading of "Clockwork Atom Bomb" here on Escape Pod.  I both heard it and read it, and found the French (and the endless UN acronyms) much easier to decipher when I could see them on the page, as opposed to hearing them.  In fact, I thought it was particularly poorly suited to audio, but I know it got picked because it was a Hugo nominee, so I'm not going to hold Steve responsible for that.  Still, it's possible that worked exactly opposite for you, that hearing them was just fine, but seeing them would have driven you crazy.

[Anarkey]

pied-à-terre

See, now, without looking that up, I would just use my Spanish and knowledge of Latin root words to translate that as "piece of dirt/earth".  I've not looked it up, but that's plenty for me to move on. 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même damn chose.

Maybe I'm revealing too much indoctrination from those Canadian Ambassadors of Music, as opposed to standard American culture knowledge, but that's "The more things change, the more they stay the same", and I don't even have to think twice about it (though now I'm singing "Circumstances").

Curse this board, that's two albums in a week I'm reminded of that I don't have access to hearing for lack of a record player.  I'm going to sulk.

[Anarkey]

Is it an American thing?  Are British more familiar with the language? 

I don't know the answer to this, but I call amusing anecdote time:  A British friend of mine who has been living here for a couple of years often meets me for lunch.  One day we were talking, and I asked her why she wasn't getting her dessert a la mode.  I knew she really liked American ice cream, see, because we'd often joked about how pathetic British ice cream is.  And she looked at me and said "But I don't know how it will come!  And I don't trust it. "   

"What do you mean you don't know how it will come?  A la mode is with ice cream."

"But a la mode means 'of the day'," she protested,"It could come with whatever whim they have in the kitchen."

"In America 'of the day' is 'ice cream'.  Trust me.  It's always ice cream."

So there you go, we've not only adopted the French into our language, we've actually perverted it to mean ice cream.  Mmmmmm, ice cream.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

Not to pick on our UK cousins, but I have always found it hilarious the way the British bastardize French words.  I don't know if it is a National Conspiracy to corrupt the neighbors' tongue, but invariably I would run across French spellings with bizarrely Anglicized pronunciations.  If I pointed it out, I was usually either told "we have adopted that word and made it our own" or "we pronounce foreign words the way their native speakers do".  Neither answer was strictly true, of course.  There were numerous pubs named "Marquis of Something", but spoken as "Marcus of Something".  There was the Belvoir Castle, not pronounced "Bell-vwar" as we do with Fort Belvoir, VA, but instead as "Beaver".

My favorite example wasn't even French; the Spanish resort town of "Ibiza", which usually came out sounding like "Eye-BEE-ther".  (My Welsh friend was the most severe culprit with foreign placenames; ironic considering Welsh spelling...)

Being from Arizona, I found it especially painful to hear the way they said words like "taco", "Jalapeno", and "tortilla".  "Tore-tillah", anyone?  And they would tell me I was wrong when I said it my way!  We eventually found common ground though; I brought in a case of frozen burritos one night, and one of my female colleagues swooned, and vowed to pronounce it however I chose, as long as I gave her another one!

I point all of this out, not to counter the accusation that Americans are often clueless about other languages... but to demonstrate that we are not wandering alone in our linguistic fog! 

[wakela]

I'm curious, now, since twice you've mentioned that you can't hear the French words in your head and that bothers you, whether you enjoyed the reading of "Clockwork Atom Bomb" here on Escape Pod.  I both heard it and read it, and found the French (and the endless UN acronyms) much easier to decipher when I could see them on the page, as opposed to hearing them.

I haven't heard or read it.  I'll give it a listen and see how it goes.  My guess is that I will have the opposite feeling as you do.  I think I would have an easier time listening and being able to ignore it, than getting stumped on words I don't know how to pronounce.  It sounds like your knowledge of European languages is better than mine, so maybe that's why you don't mind so much.

Now that I think of it, I recently listened to a CATO institute podcast.  It was an American interviewing a French person.  The only French used was when the caster introduced the interviewee and said that they worked and L'institute de blahblah de Frahnce in a French accent.  Great, I thought, now there is no way I can look this person up on the web if I'm interested in hearing more. 

The time it bothers me is when a character (let's say he's french) is able to deliver a long, empassioned speech about the nature of reality without any problem, but throughout the entire book, he'll answer any yes/no questions with 'oui' or 'non'.

Yes, I think this is really stupid.  I have never met anyone in real life who does this.  I don't say "Yes" and "No" when speaking Japanese, and Japanese people don't say "hai" and "iie" when speaking English with me.  I've been to a few international conferences and everyone speaks English without reverting to their native language.

This reminds me of those TV reporters in the US who insist on pronoucing Spanish as a Spanish speaker would, presumably a Mexican.   Again, not something that happens between Japanese and Americans as far as my experience goes. 

[wakela]

So there you go, we've not only adopted the French into our language, we've actually perverted it to mean ice cream.

That's a good story.  I had no idea.  I remember arguing with an English person about whether the entree comes before the meal or is the main meal, itself.

And don't get me started on Japanese English...ok, ok, here you go:
makudonarudo->McDonald's.  In Tokyo they say maku and in Osaka they say makudo.
Skinship is any personal relationship that envolved affectionate physical contact.  It can be sexual or familial.
My pace -> One's own pace. "He works at my pace"  means "He works at his pace." Same thing with "my house".
herusu mehtah -> health meter -> Bathroom scale.
burapee -> burado peetu -> Brad Pitt
They generally believe that these are standard English words and will use them when speaking English.
If you are every stuck on a word while speaking to a Japanese person, try saying it with a goofy Japanese accent.  This has a 50/50 chance of success.
http://www.engrish.com/ is one of the funniest sites on the web.

Not to pick on our UK cousins, but I have always found it hilarious the way the British bastardize French words.

Yes. Yes.  I always thought that Americans were the linguistic dopes compared to the Europeans who all seem able to speak five languages.  Until I heard a British person talk about Mexian food.  At least we try.

[Planish]

Proper nouns with an imbalance of consonants and vowel, and far too many apostrophes.
Examples: Goa'uld, Phssthpok, Muad'Dib, Kaled'a'in.
Also pseudo-Gaelic-Tolkienesque names. (Unless it is by Tolkien).

[SFEley]

Proper nouns with an imbalance of consonants and vowel, and far too many apostrophes.
Examples: Goa'uld, Phssthpok, Muad'Dib, Kaled'a'in.

Fantasy words with apostrophes in them in general.  Real languages generally don't work that way, and even when they do, it's a pain in the butt to have to read for fun.  I knew the trend was getting ridiculous when I saw there was a major fantasy series with titles like Wit'ch Fire.

[Mfitz]

Proper nouns with an imbalance of consonants and vowel, and far too many apostrophes.
Examples: Goa'uld, Phssthpok, Muad'Dib, Kaled'a'in.
Also pseudo-Gaelic-Tolkienesque names. (Unless it is by Tolkien).

I'm with you on that, esp the pseudo-Gaelic names.

I also go crazy over long names for everyday things, and thing like that, especially if I can't pronounce the words at a glance. 

Kyrhigha, got out of her bumpalorft and put on her farhaphenictlilgers before leaving her humble phla'psrhuum to start her job.

I'd go so far as to say if you aren't a professional linguist, most of the time even if you are, just skip the made up language and write in English.  Also there is no need to make up wacky alternative names for everyday things unless the different name somehow ties into a worldview necessary for the plot of the piece.

Kyrhigha got out of her dreaming platform and put on her foot cases before leaving her plasterboard and stone un-yurt to start her daily public duty.