"Bend to the reed's tune - sing a new song": Update

     It's time for an update on the book I'm currently working on: Children of the Music.  The title of this post is the epigraph for the book -- a traditional statement from the Siritoch culture.  The book itself is divided into two halves, the first being "The Reed's Tune" and the second "The New Song."  You can discover how those phrases apply to the story when you read it.

     I have also decided to reveal the cover art.  This doesn't mean the book will be published soon, because I'm not quite satisfied with it yet, but this gives me an illustration to post in various places.  The cover incorporates every symbolic element of the book: the differing eyes of the two peoples, the Music of the Siritoch (of particular importance is the serpentine trumpet that I featured in another post), the sacred tree of the Epanishai, and the circle of standing stones where a shrine exists that is holy to both peoples, although they don't realize it.

     The back cover will have a map of the Land between the Mountains and the Sea, and the text of the paperback will have two internal black-and-white maps, one for each half.  The second part of the story takes place 285 years after the first, so the land has changed considerably in that time -- a larger population, more cities, roads, etc.

Names and Conlangs in Children of the Music

     The reader will not find the names in this book as difficult as my termite names, although of course they are not English.  There are quite a few characters and the relationships among them may be a little difficult to keep straight at first, so I've compiled tables clarifying who is related to whom.

     When I wrote the book some thirty years ago, I wasn't into the conlanging mode yet.  I've always been interested in language, but I mostly just made up names on impulse. (In fact all of my conlangs started out that way.)  Consequently, I wasn't as careful about some aspects of the names as I would have been if I had written the book in the last ten years.  

       A word on the phonetic system:
     These days when I construct names or a language, I never use the English letter "C" because its pronunciation is too ambiguous.  Is it to be pronounced like an "s" or like a "k"?  In English it's usually like a "k" when it's followed by "a," "o," or "u," and like an "s" if the following letter is "e" or "i"  (examples: cake, cere, cinnamon, conlang, culinary).  

     In the two languages in Children of the Music, I consistently used "c" instead of "k."  I think my intention was to have it be always "hard" as in Latin, but who is going to know that?  So we have names like Cumiso and Cormaldur and Corith.  In fact, I discovered that actually I had only one name where there was an ambiguity in the pronunciation and that was a minor mention of a river named Cindala.  I'm changing that to Tindala.

     So I decided to keep the letter "c" instead of changing it to "k."  I've grown accustomed to the "c," and "Kumiso" and "Kormaldur," etc., just don't feel right to me.
      "G" presents a similar difficulty.  However, I find I used only initial "ga" in Galana and Galno and Gauramur, so those don't present a pronunciation problem.  And I never used the letter "j" so its pronunciation is a non-issue.

     I have thought about writing some rudimentary conlangs for the two languages, but I don't really want to spend a lot of time doing that at this point, even though it would be fun.  And I've decided it wouldn't add anything to the stories except maybe for some of my conlanger friends.  I do have a few words in Siritoch and Epanishai.  In Siritoch "Wal" means "Grandfather"  (of any degree, actually).  I wanted something for Nebet to call his great-grandfather.  Just "Grandfather" seemed too formal for a seven-year-old and "Grandpa" or "Granddad" seemed too colloquial and too native to our planet Earth.  I really think it would have been appropriate to make Siritoch words for "Mother" and "Father," too, and I've considered adding those to make it less formal.  However, I haven't decided yet whether to do that.

     The odd thing is, among the Epanishai, I felt that having  Saremna call her father "Papa" seemed perfectly appropriate.  "Father" would be way too formal from a five-year-old, and I never even thought of making an Epanishai word for "Father."  So I haven't been exactly consistent, but it seems to work.

     For the Siritoch, I did come up with diminutive suffixes, such as "Walanatha," which would in effect equal "Grandpa."  This can be used with personal names as well, such as Nebetanatha or just Nebetanath and even the long but sonorous Batharamolanatha (her name is Batharamol).  This is sometimes shortened to simply 'Ramolanatha.  Otherwise, I have very little Siritoch vocabulary, only "Thirnam," a name which means "Cherry." Frankly, I've always liked the word "Epanishai" (pronounced Eh-PAHN-ish-AI), but I never cared for sound of Siritoch (the "ch" should be that soft gutteral sound as in German "Koch.").  However, after all these years I'm stuck with the word -- my mind would not accept using any other term for those people!
     If you look at the names of the Siritoch, there are repetitions that surely mean something in their language.  A lot of names end in -ith or -ath or -eth, and others end in -ol.  I've sometimes thought of -ith as a feminine ending, but I haven't been consistent in this.  I think the names all have a meaning which could be worked out if a conlang was composed (e.g., -ol could be a plural form), but again I don't think that would add anything to the enjoyment of the story.

     I did do a little more technical work with the Epanishai language.  The holy trees are called the "sharovai" (singular: sharova), so it's clear that at least one form of plural in Epanishai is changing the -a ending to -ai.  I figure "Epanishai" is plural, too, but I never use a singular -- it never occurred to me back then.  The sacred grove is the "Codia," and a Priestess of the Grove is a "Codian" (plural: Codiant, so that's another way to make a plural in Epanishai).  And I do mention the names of some of the Epanishai months: Torhorda (the month before the new year begins; Danhorda (the midwinter month), and Nalhorda (the month just before midsummer).  I clearly remember setting up the calendar to have eight-day weeks, because I've always found our seven-day week annoying.  If you have to do something every other day, for example, you can't make it come out even.  If I have more information on time keeping, it's buried irretrievably in my voluminous collection of early manuscripts.
     The Epanishai names themselves are distinguishable from Siritoch.  The male names often end in -o.  For variety, several male names end in -ur, -is, or -al, or even -ab.  I didn't seem to vary the female names; they all end in either -ia or -a.  Of course, I could still change some of those, but I don't think I'm going to do that. 

     And that's about the extent of the linguistic work I did for this book.  Probably enough, although not thoroughly satisfying.

A Follow-Up on My Political Correctness Post

     I did decide to change the word "men" whenever I had used it to mean "people."  There was a lot more of that in there than I had realized.  I did keep the term "bearded men" because the Siritoch have no beards and it's the male Epanishai that they fear, not the women, so it makes sense they would make statements like "the bearded men are coming to kill us."  They wouldn't say "the bearded people."
    And I also eliminated "alien" when it's a noun referring to the Epanishai.  I kept it in certain adjectival usages such as "that's alien to our way of life."

     

Political Correctness: How Do You Handle It in Your Writing?

     “Bend to the reed’s tune – sing a new song.”

The Siritoch were made to endure and the Epanishai to strive. 

When two such peoples are driven together, 

which one has the most to lose? 

     I've now been through Children of the Music twice, correcting the scanning errors and making a list of all the names so I can consider whether I should change any of them.  For those of you who might have forgotten, Children of the Music is the 30-year-old story that I'm working over for publication. I'm considering putting the passages quoted above on the back cover.  The first line will be the epigraph of the book.   

     I'm liking this book better and better, but I need an opinion on one aspect of it (well, really on two aspects).  The gentle, pastoral Siritoch, who have no word in their tongue for murder, have dwelled alone in the Land between the Mountains and the Sea for longer than memory, and now they are being invaded by a different people -- a fierce tribe of horsemen and cattle-drovers who are themselves fleeing an even more barbaric foe and who don't take kindly to finding that the land they have been seeking is occupied by sheepherders.  And they have no aversion to murder and pillaging.

     Both sides see their adversary as demonic beings.  And so I have a chapter in which the wise women of each tribe reject this, saying, "For they are men."  Now, when I was growing up, way back in the dark ages of the 1940s and 1950s, before gender equality became such a big deal, I was taught that terms like "men" or "mankind" or "he" could legitimately be used as collective nouns or pronouns subsuming both sexes.  That made perfectly good sense to me.  It's just a convention, after all -- one I still had no trouble with when I wrote this story in the late 1970s.

      Let me give you some examples in the story -- first the Epanishai:

“Rashemia, I didn’t intend for this morning to go as it did.”

“Nor I.”

“Even you – even you failed.”

“Do you think I am not human? After all these years you could think that?”

Her bitter candor vaguely surprised him.  “Did you really believe the holy wood would mean something to them?”

“I hoped.  They are men, Daborno.”

“But they frightened you.  Dare I say that? You were human enough to be frightened – even you.  Perhaps they are not men.”

“They are men!”  Rashemia struck her fist into her palm, hunching her shoulders.  “And, yes – 1 was afraid! Their music is inexplicable! It comes up as if – from deep water – or out of the wind.  It says things in some language older – older than the trees.  By Aftran, I yearn – I yearn to understand it!”

And now from the Siritoch's perspective:

“There is no being prepared – can’t you see that?”  Himrith had gathered herself up, clenching her hands in the wool.  “Oh, Narlach ... Parnom ... fleeing can’t save Thran! The only course is to wait and hold to the things we know – and – and – perhaps when they come back, we – and they – will understand!  For they are men, my son – I could see human trouble in their eyes.  If they are men, they are not evil!  No more evil than those winds and clouds and the grass that flourishes and fades.  For there is a third choice – I have only just seen it!  We have a third choice: to stay and not to die! And if we put enough faith in the Music, we need not fear these men, for all their giant horses and their knives and their loud voices.” 

Now I could substitute "humans" or "people" for "men."  Try reading it with those substitutes.  I just think the impact is lost.  "Humans" and "people" are both weak words with a feminine rhythm. (Are we going to have to get rid of the terms "feminine and masculine rhymes"?  Just wondering.)  "For they are humans."  "For they are people."  Just lacks the punch of "For they are men!"

So what's your opinion?

Are you so offended by this use of the word "men" 

that the story will be ruined for you is I leave it as is?

Would you enjoy it more if I used "people" or "humans"?

Tell me!

 And one other thing along the same line.  The Siritoch refer to the Epanishai as "aliens."  I don't know why I used that term instead of "strangers" or "outlanders" or some such.  I wasn't into science fiction in those days, so I wasn't thinking of the connotation of somebody from another planet.  This one I really may change because I've come not to like the term "aliens" -- it's come to connote humans ("men") from a country not your own, and I prefer to reserve it for extraterrestrials or else to eliminate it entirely.  I wrote about that once before here: You Say Alien and I Say Extraterrestrial.

     (Sorry -- still no artwork for this story!  I'm working on the cover, but it's a long way from being finished.)