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- Visiting BWBs.
Have you ever noticed how, in fiction, you can always understand what soldiers are saying when they converse?
Comment on this article by @Death's Companion here.
Comment on this article by @Death's Companion here.
I believe the informal motto of the Saumur Cavalry Academy is "To our wives, to our horses, and to those who mount them."I'd also add that phrases can arise out of nowhere. I'm aware of one young officer (not me) who got married, and for honeymoon, went on a riding tour of the Borders. His new wife was familiar with riding horses. He wasn't. When he returned from honeymoon, he found that quite a few muscles he hadn't been aware of before were in a state where he was all too aware of them; he was barely able to walk. You can imagine the sympathy he got from his Troop as he returned from honeymoon in such a state, and his explanation that it was the horse riding fell on amused ears. "Horse riding" became a synonym for an activity that rarely involves horses (unless your name is Catherine the Great, I guess).
I believe the informal motto of the Saumur Cavalry Academy is "To our wives, to our horses, and to those who mount them."
I can see a great boon for alternate history here, far back enough a POD and you can just make stuff up as army lingo and as long as it's suitably rude readers will go "that sounds about right".
There's a sequence in the upcoming LTTW volume 7 where I feature the Empire of North America's Imperial Marines and I did think about this, but mostly ended up using some historical slang with a few mutations (not necessarily plausible) as it didn't sound right to me otherwise. For example I referenced the OTL American Marines using 'Oo-rah' and British soldiers of the ARW era using 'Huzzah' by having these ones use 'Oo-zah', although the circumstances in which the OTL term probably came about (the post-Bolshevik intervention into Russia) didn't happen. Don't look too closely at the threads of logicI can see a great boon for alternate history here, far back enough a POD and you can just make stuff up as army lingo and as long as it's suitably rude readers will go "that sounds about right".
Now, the toast is: Our Families.
IIRC sprogs earlier referred to green troops. So kind of a vicious circle of slang there.However, back in the Bootnecks (which are referred to as Leathernecks) some 40 years ago, Sprog meant very specifically children (as in wife and sprogs).
What I love about that particular example is that I understand that both the US Army’s “Hooah!” and the USMC’s “Oo-rah!” come from the same source from literally opposite directions; Hooah is a warped and evolved form of Huzzah (having halfway merged with probably a Seminole battle cry), which had migrated from the East over centuries until it reached Great Britain from the Mongols, while “Oo-rah” comes from the Russians in Siberia who got it rather more directly from the Mongols.There's a sequence in the upcoming LTTW volume 7 where I feature the Empire of North America's Imperial Marines and I did think about this, but mostly ended up using some historical slang with a few mutations (not necessarily plausible) as it didn't sound right to me otherwise. For example I referenced the OTL American Marines using 'Oo-rah' and British soldiers of the ARW era using 'Huzzah' by having these ones use 'Oo-zah', although the circumstances in which the OTL term probably came about (the post-Bolshevik intervention into Russia) didn't happen. Don't look too closely at the threads of logic
Not an anachronism in this household, sir! Good day!What I find interesting is how military slang gets codified nowadays- a part of US Navy Boot Camp is spent teaching you old US Navy slang terms as part of 'Navy culture'. Obviously it is a sanitized version but it means maintaining archaicisms like 'scuttlebutt' for gossip.
Thanks @Death's Companion and @David Flin this gives excellent food for thought.
There would probably be a whole article just on the topic of life's fairness and appreciation for the people who make things happen and have things happen too them.As always, all credit for any article goes to the author. They're the one that wrote it. All the editor does is present it.
(The reverse also holds: blame for a poor article goes to the editor, for having the poor judgement of publishing an article not up to scratch).
Somehow, it doesn't seem fair: The author gets all the credit and the editor gets all the blame. But that's the editorial game.