Talwar
Well-Known Sword
- Pronouns
- he/him
I didn't know it was as simple as calling a number.
TRUEFact: Goering tragically lost the napkin Hitler wrote the number on during Oktoberfest in ‘40. Oopsies!I didn't know it was as simple as calling a number.
The magnitude and horror of the Final Solution will be scarcely known in a world where the Nazis won, which is I think an underappreciated reality of most 'Nazis win' scenarios.
I wanted to avoid the thoroughly American 'supermarket' and 'suburb' so opted for the more Gallicized 'hypermarket' and 'faubourg'). Does anyone else do this?
I think "this must be an AH because the terms are different" is a pretty common trope. I can't remember a specific example of me doing it but I know I have.
I guess more than simply sprinkling different terms in- does anyone else embark on seemingly endless etymological rivet-counting while trying to write their alternate history works?
I guess more than simply sprinkling different terms in- does anyone else embark on seemingly endless etymological rivet-counting while trying to write their alternate history works?
Counterpoint: I think that changing language too much does really take away from AH works and make them hard to enter into.
'Duffle bag' is perhaps my worst instance of this (I use 'carryall bag' in most places where it or a similar term would appear, because 'duffle bag' dates back to only the early 20th century, its earliest known appearance in, of all things, an e. e. cummings poem), but the inverse is also troubling- I agonized over using the term 'x-ray' because it's such a weirdly specific OTL circumstance term that really shouldn't exist in most ATLs but there's simply no good, easily understood generic term or obvious alternate that wouldn't then require an extra half paragraph of explanation.The details are evading me right now, but I know @Gryphon has done this, but it was a negative example. That is, he'd changed things in such a way that a particular common term never came into widespread use, but there was no way to actually demonstrate the AH-ness of this, because people aren't going to notice that you just never say 'duffle bag' or something.
My go-to example of how words are tied to history is the name of the metal copper. In Roman times copper mainly came from Cyprus, so they called it aes cyprium (metal of Cyprus), which was corrupted in the Latin word cuprum, which later became the Old English coper and then eventually copper. So in an ATL where Rome never came into being, or Europe is a backwater and Chinese is the world's lingua franca, or even the Normans never invaded and the Anglo-Saxons stay around there's no reason why your characters would use the word copper. But how likely is a writer to find some alternate term for copper? As you say, that becomes losing yourself in the weeds forever over it. This is also a problem you also encounter in fantasy writing, except it's worse there because there is no real history to tie to, every word becomes questionable.'Duffle bag' is perhaps my worst instance of this (I use 'carryall bag' in most places where it or a similar term would appear, because 'duffle bag' dates back to only the early 20th century, its earliest known appearance in, of all things, an e. e. cummings poem), but the inverse is also troubling- I agonized over using the term 'x-ray' because it's such a weirdly specific OTL circumstance term that really shouldn't exist in most ATLs but there's simply no good, easily understood generic term or obvious alternate that wouldn't then require an extra half paragraph of explanation.
(I think, IIRC, the specific example we talked about was 'car'- I've preferenced 'auto' in a lot of stories, but no one will really notice if you don't say 'car' unless you draw attention to it.)
It's a really tough line to walk, because you can easily lose yourself in weeds forever in it- consider, for example, how many of the things you might say in a given day are a reference to an in-joke or a piece of media or any other thing that would be completely inexplicable to someone from an ATL, and then consider how rarely you see characters in any fiction, much less AH, reference popular media even obliquely (which would be difficult to explain in and of itself to a lot of premodern writers, where you need whole extra books to explain all the references present in the book you're reading).
Overall the best approach, I think, is to preference OTL terms where there's a good reason to, but if there's a simple and easy alternate term that would be instantly understandable, don't be afraid to use it, because you're the absolute god of the things that you're writing and no one can actually stop you from doing whatever you want except you.
I sometimes do, but have a rule of thumb that in order to actually include it, it should be intuitive. For instance, having some totally made up military rank, even if it's not any more bizarre in etymology than an OTL one, would confuse a reader, but replacing the word "general" with titles like "grand colonel" and "corpsmaster" wouldn't because you can easily grasp that they're military ranks for people in a position of power.
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I'd be much more critical and harsher if I didn't soon learn that said author was just entering his teenage years. He was 14 or so, and I'm not sure how right it is to scold a teenager for stating his still forming beliefs.
One thing I probably focus on far too much is finding alternate terms to avoid inconvenient etymologies (examples: I want to describe something as a 'skunkworks' but obviously 'skunkworks' is an OTL Americanism with very specific origins in the 1930s, I wanted to avoid the thoroughly American 'supermarket' and 'suburb' so opted for the more Gallicized 'hypermarket' and 'faubourg'). Does anyone else do this?