What He Said

[bloodyrosemccoy]

From xkcd:



This goes well with issendai’s Random Apostrophe Proclamation. I did propose an amendment for us conlang nerds, but I try to be minimal in my approach to random words tossed in when an English word would do just fine. Fellow conlang enthusiasts, unless we are writing specifically for each other, we must make use of appendices. Nice to think they’re good for something.

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I think that's common with readers--I know I'm the same way. I try to avoid that with my alien names, and make them at least somewhat easy for a person to say or at least read without tripping over the oddities.

This is tough, since I have a lot of characters with very offbeat languages with clicks and whatnot. You know Lwefir--her full name is ridiculously long and contains diacritics and punctuation. I said it ONCE. After that, I stuck with "Lwefir," which is unusual, but I hope not something a reader would trip on as much as, say, a frequent recurrence of the name !QrzALgh or whatever. (Speaking of naturalizing, I have decided I use "rumuqilu" enough to do away with the diacritics on the u's in the stories.) It's only when highlighting something that I'll go all fancy language on your ass.

This is why nerds like me are usually fine with some notes in the back of the book. We know most people aren't interested in the intricacies of the characters' languages. Toss us a minor plot point once in a while and we'll be happy.