Thursday, November 8, 2012

Secret Origins: M



I may be the only one, but I love finding out where letters come from. It’s so weird which sounds we pick to have symbols for and which ones we don’t (no “ch” letter, although it’s a common sound, nor “th” anymore), and the fact that sometimes we have more than one letter for a sound (look at the overlap between C and S, C and Q, or J and G). And when you try to figure out the whys of letters, the best explanation you can come up with is “because”. Ah, linguistics!

The history of the letter M is pretty neat as the symbol has remained fairly constant throughout history. Okay, I think it’s neat. The modern Latin version is virtually identical to the Etruscan M, although some versions have an elongated line at the end similar to the Greek lowercase mu (μ), while the capital Μ is, as I’m sure you noticed, no different from what we have. Hundreds of years, thousands of miles, but M is M.

Brief side note: I’ve mentioned this a few time (like, in every letter post) but the Romans who popularized our alphabet took the letters from Etruscan, a now extinct language. The Etruscans in turn copied their alphabet from the visiting Greeks, who were the first in Europe to have an actual alphabet—which is defined as a letter system with both consonants and vowels. And if you go all the way back to ancient Greek, M still doesn’t look all that different. Some dialects have the swoop of the mu more pronounced, but the two peaks remain constant until it evolved to the more modern form.

Now, the Greeks were the first to come up with a traditional alphabet, but they weren’t the first to have one. The Phoenicians had what’s known as an abjad, an alphabet with only consonants, no vowels, and their mem is basically the ancient mu flipped around. The Phoenician alphabet evolved almost four thousand years ago from a Proto-Sinaitic base where the symbols were taken from Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The shape of M starts to make more sense when you realize that the proto-Sinaitic mem came from the Egyptian word for waterand the jagged line symbolizing it was supposed to look like wave crests.

TL;DR: M is wave peaks.
 
Sources

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Even More Characters That Need To Go Away




Yeah, another one of these because there’s supposed to be a hurricane and even if the chances of the power going out are remote, I like to be prepared and as such I’m posting something I’ve had lying around for a while. I’d hate for you to be left without my opinions for more than a day.
You know you love them.

So here are more characters I can live without:

The Detective that’s not even a cop
Now, this isn’t to impugn cozy mysteries, where the character probing a crime/strange goings on isn’t a detective. This is more the characters that go investigate crimes like they’re cops all the time. They ask questions, take evidence (even if they’re not qualified to and from what I gather, that creates a big stink during trial), and are always treated like they’re cops even though they’ve never gone through any of the training and years of experience that’s standard for becoming a detective. Either this has to stop or I’m going down to the police station and demanding they let me investigate crimes. I’m sure you’ll read about how that goes in the newspaper.

The Super Soldier
Usually it’s a man who is the amazing, ass-kicking, martial arts master with the reflexes of a cat on Adderall, but occasionally it’s a woman. Either way the character has drifted into cliché territory. Not every character has to be the best fighter to be interesting. You can—gasp—give them other traits that color their personality and make them actual people.

The Jerkass with a Heart of Gold
If a character is surly, rude, and pushes everyone away, you just know they’re going to turn out to be the good guy. I’ve seen this a little too much in YA romances, where the brooding, aloof male doesn’t get along with the female at first but once she catches him in an act of kindness they overcome their differences and fall in love. It’s basically PRIDE AND PREJUDICE except, I don’t know, maybe Darcy is a vampire this time.

The Amnesiac
From what I understand, amnesia where you totally forget everything about your life, name, family, whatever, is really rare. When it does happened, it’s usually not from a simple bump to the head but from a mix of psychological and physiological traumas. As with most things, I blame Hollywood for this.

That’s all for now. If you’re NaNoing right now...what are you doing reading this? Get back to work!

Saturday, November 3, 2012

What to Do When the Power Fails




As I sit here on the eve of the hurricane, which is almost a week before this post even goes up because I plan in advance but let’s just pretend, I have to worry. Not about all the dangerous winds, flooding, and possible death but about a far worse fate: what to do should the power go out. During last year’s big hurricane I spent a solid minute trying to turn on the television before I believed the power was really out. Then there was a lot of sobbing. And I mean a lot because it didn’t come back for almost four days and by the end I was ready to start murdering people.

So here’s a list of things to keep you from going all Jack Torrance should you lose your internet connection.

1. Read.
            Obviously. In the time the power was out, I read four books and ten comic book volumes. The thing is, with the lights gone you have to rely on flashlights, so be careful of eye strain. Keep some aspirin and a shot of rum on the end table in case of a headache. What? How do you swallow pills?

2. Watch movies/shows on a laptop.
            To aid with your media withdrawal, set up the laptop and have a movie night. You have to be careful not to run out of juice, though. If you have a charger that can be plugged into a car, then you don’t have much to worry about.

3. Go for a walk.
            I know. Exercise. But desperate times call for desperate measures. After the last hurricane, when I went out to survey the damage I saw a lot of people out on constitutionals. Just watch out for fallen wires. As a bonus, bring along a phone and take pictures of yourself next to fallen trees and telephone poles and act like you knocked them down with your bare hands.

4. At night, find a traffic light.
            You want to stay far back enough so you won’t get hurt, but near enough to have a good view. I live near a somewhat busy stoplight and the last time the power went out, there was more than a little SCREEEEECH-BANG! Especially on a street where everyone thinks the speed limit is a rather low suggestion.

5. Play video games.
            Alas, the consoles and computer games will not work (or won’t once the charge runs out), but there’s always games to play on phones and portable devices. Just keep a car charger or a lot of batteries handy.

And that’s all. It might be too late for this storm, but there’s always another one on the way. Maybe next year! Keep this bookmarked ; ).

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Language of Confusion: Stranger Danger




See, I decided to do two words since neither one had enough to warrant a full post and, well, the word play was already out there. So let’s get dangerous.

I’ve always wanted to say that and have it make sense in context. Was it the entire reason for this post? Perhaps!

Ahem. Danger. Showed up in the mid-thirteenth century with a meaning none of us would recognize. Instead of trouble or peril, it meant the power or jurisdiction of a master. Yes, really. It came from the Anglo-Frenchdaunger and Old Frenchdangier, which can be traced to the Vulgar Latin dominarium—dominion, basically. That word is related to the classical Latindominus, the word for lord or master and the origin word for domain, as you’ve probably guessed. Dangerous has a similarly unexpected history, showing up in the early thirteenth century as difficult or arrogant. It’s Anglo-French word is dangerous (big leap) and in Old French, it’s dangeros. Although I haven’t found information on any Latin forebears, its relation to the danger line makes it easy to assume.

The question becomes when they so radically changed their meanings. In the late fourteenth century, danger switched because there was a sense of risk in being under the power of another. Another having dominion over you could do anything they wanted, making things unsure, risky, or as we call it these days…dangerous. Interestingly enough, by the way, dangerous didn’t take on its modern meaning for another hundred years. Until it caught up with its brother in the late fifteenth century, it meant “hard to please”.

Strange showed up in the late thirteenth century with basically the same meaning of unknown or unfamiliar. It was estrange in Old French, a word that meant foreign, and further back was extraneusin classical Latin, where it meant both foreign and external. The x softened to an s and then the e was dropped, but strange comes from a word that also gave us extra, extraordinary, and pretty much anything else with “ex” or “extra” at the beginning. And as I’ve discussed before, the ex- prefix  means “out”. Strange is extraneous, foreign…an outsider.

TL;DR: Danger changed meanings. Stranger changed pronunciation.

Sources
French as a Mother-Tongue in Medieval England,” by Jacquie Heys.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

National No Writing Month




Did I use that one last year or did I just think about using it? I suppose I could look it up. It wouldn’t even take that much effort. But whatever. This is a writer’s blog so I suppose there should be the occasional post about, what’s it called, writing, and I figured with November looming two days away, this was the perfect time to do it.

So are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? I’m not, although I planned to. I got bitten by the writing bug back in September and it was strong enough that I didn’t want to wait almost two months. I suppose you could say I completed my own personal NaNo. Although I won’t be able to flash the badge, I’ll be flashing one in spirit.

Wait. That somehow sounds wrong.

Anyway, keep remembering that it’s about quantity, not quality, and no one has to hear about it again after November 30th (which is what happened to my last NaNo piece, by the way). It is an exercise of discipline. If you fail? Don’t freak out about it. Sometimes the writing stars align and sometimes they don’t. Either way, I think we can all agree that no NaNo books are readable come December.

What are your tips for National Novel Writing Month? Are you participating or marveling at it from the sidelines?

PS. Happy day before Halloween! Don’t let the Slenderman get you!

Seriously. He’s coming.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Fearless




I am not actually without fear. I believe spiders will try to crawl into my mouth if I’m not careful because they are unholy creatures even Satan shuns. I’m also not a fan of public speaking unless, like here, I can craft my words via typing. But when it comes to movies, books and video games, I’m rarely frightened. This isn’t a shock since I literally grew up reading Stephen King (I was the only fifth grader who brought CHRISTINE to class to read) and was similarly indoctrinated to horror movies (I remember watching Alienwhen I couldn’t have been more than seven). So, in summation, it takes a lot for a book/movie/game to scare me.

There’s a reason I threw “game” in there. While roving through the internet one day when I should have been editing, I came across a story about “the Slender Man”. It’s an urban legend actually invented on the internet, about a tall, thin man in a black suit with no face, just white where eyes and a mouth should be. In all a good story. Nothing to write home about, but hey. It’s different from the usual ghosts and ghouls.

Except. There is a game called Slender, released free for download over the internet. I heard about it and decided to check it out on YouTube and…it was scary. Actually scary. Silent Hill was interesting, but didn’t make me blink and this, released as an indie game, actually frightened me enough that I didn’t want to download it, the crummy YouTube videos were enough for me. Not long after I stumbled across another game, Deep Sleep. It’s a Flixel game and so the graphics aren’t on par with Slender, but it’s still creepy as sh!t. It’s also a short point-and-click game, where you collect items to use to escape a typical scary setting. For such a quick game, it sure gave me chills.

What these games have in common is the lurking figure, the one that remains just out of sight and hunting you. Neither has a strong story or any characters except the first-person player, but those aren’t necessary. You are the character, something is after you, and you have to keep moving. A simple concept, but don’t go mistaking that for a criticism. If you want a good story, look elsewhere. If you want to be scared, go for either one of these games.

And leave the lights on.