Lois’s answer to “How is Gotorget pronounced? I am listening to the audio book and they pronounce it "Go-tor-get" wit…” > Likes and Comments
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Having lived in Sweden for a while, my instinct is to pronounce it Go-tor-yet in the Swedish fashion. 'Torget' means 'the square' or 'the market-place' in Swedish, and there's a big square in Stockholm called Hötorget (the Haymarket).
@ JP --
Yeah, it's a problem when making up fantasy names and terms, that one may inadvertently reproduce some real name in another language. Internet searches now make it possible, if you at least suspect an issue, to check, but before the net there was just no way.
It's very interesting, if daunting, listening or watching media with Japanese-made fantasy Europeanoid fantasy worlds, seeing the same process from the other end, and I wonder if some of my coinages have been as wince-worthy. Probably.
L.
Lois, thanks for your comment. I've now read everything I could find of the World of the Five Gods, and I'm partway through rereading it all. Well written; it comes alive. As for Gotorget, it's not really a problem. It hurts no-one if I think of it as a Swedish name in the privacy of my own mind.
What are some examples of Japanese-made Europeanoid fantasy place names that make you cringe, or laugh, or boggle?
Incidentally, I now live in Spain, so I when I see the name Betriz I automatically pronounce it Betreeth; which again is probably not how you imagined it.
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Having lived in Sweden for a while, my instinct is to pronounce it Go-tor-yet in the Swedish fashion. 'Torget' means 'the square' or 'the market-place' in Swedish, and there's a big square in Stockholm called Hötorget (the Haymarket).
@ JP --Yeah, it's a problem when making up fantasy names and terms, that one may inadvertently reproduce some real name in another language. Internet searches now make it possible, if you at least suspect an issue, to check, but before the net there was just no way.
It's very interesting, if daunting, listening or watching media with Japanese-made fantasy Europeanoid fantasy worlds, seeing the same process from the other end, and I wonder if some of my coinages have been as wince-worthy. Probably.
L.
Lois, thanks for your comment. I've now read everything I could find of the World of the Five Gods, and I'm partway through rereading it all. Well written; it comes alive. As for Gotorget, it's not really a problem. It hurts no-one if I think of it as a Swedish name in the privacy of my own mind.
What are some examples of Japanese-made Europeanoid fantasy place names that make you cringe, or laugh, or boggle?
Incidentally, I now live in Spain, so I when I see the name Betriz I automatically pronounce it Betreeth; which again is probably not how you imagined it.
Oh, by the way, I recently had a paper published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and was able to sneak in a mention of your scifi work in the section "Literary Depictions of a Posthuman Earth". https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-e...
Cheers and thanks for answering questions from fans so often and so quickly.