[4] OTL term ‘gutta-percha’ – from Malaysia, but in TTL most of Malaysia is currently part of the Siamese Empire. The fact that this natural latex has been defined as a form of lacquer in TTL (largely a linguistic accident) will have consequences later on…

Can we possibly infer from this that there may be a delay in the rise of latex and other non-vulcanized rubber products in TTL, due to this classification? Or are you making some chemistry in joke here of which i'm ignorant? In any case, capital update, and I concur that the would be third Earl Grey has found himself quite the woman.
 

Thande

Donor
Can we possibly infer from this that there may be a delay in the rise of latex and other non-vulcanized rubber products in TTL, due to this classification? Or are you making some chemistry in joke here of which i'm ignorant?
It's to do with why a certain product name later comes about, just foreshadowing.

Thanks for the comments everyone.
 

Deleted member 94708


Quick suggestion:

The transliteration you've chosen for bicycle (自行车) is not quite right. The modern Pinyin is zi XING che

I assume you've chosen to provide a different Latinization of 车 (che) than in Pinyin, which is perfectly justifiable, but the middle character in bicycle is one with two pronunciations, and hang means place, row, or firm rather than walk or movement (xing). A quick search on baidu says that's been true for several centuries now, so if you're going to choose the same word as OTL for bicycle it's almost necessary to use xing, not hang.
 

Thande

Donor
Quick suggestion:

The transliteration you've chosen for bicycle (自行车) is not quite right. The modern Pinyin is zi XING che

I assume you've chosen to provide a different Latinization of 车 (che) than in Pinyin, which is perfectly justifiable, but the middle character in bicycle is one with two pronunciations, and hang means place, row, or firm rather than walk or movement (xing). A quick search on baidu says that's been true for several centuries now, so if you're going to choose the same word as OTL for bicycle it's almost necessary to use xing, not hang.
Thanks for the comment!

To be clear, this was meant to be a transliteration of the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters. Does this affect your point?
 

Deleted member 94708

Thanks for the comment!

To be clear, this was meant to be a transliteration of the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters. Does this affect your point?

Cantonese uses a different word: 单车

In Pinyin that's dan che, in Jyutping it's apparently dan ce.
 

Thande

Donor
Cantonese uses a different word: 单车

In Pinyin that's dan che, in Jyutping it's apparently dan ce.
Fair enough. I mean it's probably a bit butterfly-net regardless to use either of the OTL terms, but I didn't think I could come up with a satisfactory AH alternative. I'll change it to dan-ce then.
 

Deleted member 94708

Fair enough. I mean it's probably a bit butterfly-net regardless to use either of the OTL terms, but I didn't think I could come up with a satisfactory AH alternative. I'll change it to dan-ce then.

If you want an alternative the only one I can think of which works moderately well is 脚踏车.

Pinyin: jiao ta che
Jyutping: goek daap ce

It apparently is an old term for bicycle though I can't find how old.

Are you planning on having Cantonese be the "Standard Mandarin" equivalent for Feng China? If so I would advise against it; even with the territory they own now Cantonese speakers are no more than 20% of the population, at best. Probably a smaller share than are the speakers of the various Mandarin dialects within Feng China's borders, as Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing, Chengdu, Henan, Jiangsu, and Yunnan all speak dialects far more closely related to Mandarin than Cantonese.

If, on the other hand, this is just local flavor as the setting is in Guangzhou, then that makes more sense.
 

Thande

Donor
Are you planning on having Cantonese be the "Standard Mandarin" equivalent for Feng China? If so I would advise against it; even with the territory they own now Cantonese speakers are no more than 20% of the population, at best. Probably a smaller share than are the speakers of the various Mandarin dialects within Feng China's borders, as Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing, Chengdu, Henan, Jiangsu, and Yunnan all speak dialects far more closely related to Mandarin than Cantonese.

If, on the other hand, this is just local flavor as the setting is in Guangzhou, then that makes more sense.
I'm aware of that - as you say, it doesn't make sense for it to be the standard language because even when the Feng were starting out, Cantonese speakers still probably wouldn't have been the majority, and I'm guessing the rebel Qing state officials who provided parts of the initial provisional government would have spoken a form of court Mandarin? The use of Cantonese terms here, as you say, is just to give local flavour because we're dealing with Guangzhou/Hanjing locals; I didn't specify what dialect the Governor was using because I wasn't sure which it would be in this context.
 

Deleted member 94708

I'm aware of that - as you say, it doesn't make sense for it to be the standard language because even when the Feng were starting out, Cantonese speakers still probably wouldn't have been the majority, and I'm guessing the rebel Qing state officials who provided parts of the initial provisional government would have spoken a form of court Mandarin? The use of Cantonese terms here, as you say, is just to give local flavour because we're dealing with Guangzhou/Hanjing locals; I didn't specify what dialect the Governor was using because I wasn't sure which it would be in this context.

The Feng arose ITTL right around the time that new literary movements IOTL were promoting Vernacular Written Mandarin (白话/baihua), the precursor to modern Standard Mandarin, which was specifically designed to be a language for literature and culture which would be more accessible to the masses as it much more closely mimicked the grammar and usage of spoken Mandarin, as opposed to classical written Mandarin.

I would expect such a trend to accelerate under a modernizing power which realizes how important mass literacy is to their economic and military power. But rather than giving this language a Beijing-accented flavor, it's likely that the presence of the seat of government in Guangzhou/Hanjing is going to give it a very pronounced Cantonese list. It would be unsurprising to see Cantonese grammar and vocabulary influencing Court and Vernacular Mandarin both even as they converge with one another.

Unless you're prepared to make wild guesses as to what a Cantonese-influenced TTL Standard Mandarin would look like, you might as well just use Pinyin in any future posts where you need to give a literary flair.

And, of course, how much the various dialects are permitted to blend together probably depends quite a bit on whether Feng China is Diversitarian or Societist down the line... hahaha.
 

Thande

Donor
The Feng arose ITTL right around the time that new literary movements IOTL were promoting Vernacular Written Mandarin (白话/baihua), the precursor to modern Standard Mandarin, which was specifically designed to be a language for literature and culture which would be more accessible to the masses as it much more closely mimicked the grammar and usage of spoken Mandarin, as opposed to classical written Mandarin.

I would expect such a trend to accelerate under a modernizing power which realizes how important mass literacy is to their economic and military power. But rather than giving this language a Beijing-accented flavor, it's likely that the presence of the seat of government in Guangzhou/Hanjing is going to give it a very pronounced Cantonese list. It would be unsurprising to see Cantonese grammar and vocabulary influencing Court and Vernacular Mandarin both even as they converge with one another.

Unless you're prepared to make wild guesses as to what a Cantonese-influenced TTL Standard Mandarin would look like, you might as well just use Pinyin in any future posts where you need to give a literary flair.

And, of course, how much the various dialects are permitted to blend together probably depends quite a bit on whether Feng China is Diversitarian or Societist down the line... hahaha.
Thanks for that, it's very interesting.

I'm probably going to stick with pinyin for most stuff just to avoid confusion (at one point I was considering using Wade-Giles just to sound "more 19th century" but I thought it would be too confusing for tracking OTL people and place names etc.) but it would be nice to give the occasional nod to what you describe there being the case.
 
When her vision cleared, he was there.

She acted before she could think. All cool, sultry demeanour gone, she let out a joyous squeal and lunged into the column of marching men. “Caajisi!”

Charles Grey turned and grinned, managing to spread his arms just in time for Amoy to envelop him in hers. She wrapped her legs about his knees as well as though some force would tear him away. “Amy!” he said, somewhat muffled as she sobbed into his shoulder.

It was only now that Amoy’s usually keen mind caught up with what had been practically a reflex action and the realisation of consequences hit her like a dam breaking. Fortunately, she had been far from the only young woman in the crowd to have the same idea. The army column, which would probably have held up firmly in the face of a Siamese attack, had dissolved into a confused mess when hit by the subtler tactics of wives and girlfriends. The policemen were mostly smirking rather than scowling at this.

Governor Ng was an astute enough politician to know when not to push his luck. He cleared his throat. “Yes, as I said, go and greet our brave conquering heroes!” He irritably waved at an underling, who in turn delegated a message to someone else, and a few seconds later some of the great lanterns suspended from the gaslights rather anticlimactically opened up and scattered lotus blossoms over the soldiers and the crowd.

This is a really lovely bit of writing and it's really stuck with me since I first read it the other day. I wish I could write as well as this.

Also, the acronym for the Cuban Naval Armada flummoxed me for a moment because I've been rereading For Want Of A Nail and I was briefly confused as to what the Confederation of North America was doing ITTL…
 

Rambam23

Banned
Yay! Finally all caught up this weekend. This is so utterly engrossing. I'll be sure to leave feedback after each post from now on. There are two areas I'd like to hear about soon.
1. Music: We haven't heard about classical music since interlude 10 (except talking about how Mozart was a general and Beethoven wrote a symphony in his honor). I would love to hear how the classical/romantic eras turned out (we know that nationalist composing came early). Might be hard to do given the current conceit of narrative prose.
2. Medicine: This would be easier to do in the context of war stories: just have a character visit a war hospital.
 
Just caught up. I too am lost as to why the non Nova Mundine powers are doing what they're doing.

I know it's been a while, partly because the UK has decided to fight a lot of the same battles as those between Diversitarianism and Societism in OTL lately, but I can finally release a new update to Volume V. (And don't worry, Volume II will be coming out soon on SLP, and I may have a little surprise on that score...)


Part #223: Cookeing the Books

I appreciate your brief digression into Engineering. ATL authors really love to digress on things not quite related to their topic but brought up by curious cross TL minds...
 

I know it's very, VERY late, but...

I have a video of O Fortuna (and with it, images) suiting the French invasion of London in early 19th century.
 
Just finished the TL, it took me two months but I finished it. All I can say is, brilliant. I hope this continues. By the way, I really like the recent prose updates.

Sorry to bump the thread.
 
Top