Saturday, August 21, 2010

I Talk Funny

I talk funny, but that's OK.

My syntax is flawed natural. I don't oft say the "t" in don't. I use the past tense of the verb with the past perfect when I use the contraction. I've ate dog in China. I make up words on the fly and define them in the same context. We've got the unabridged OED for a reason, and that's Shakespeare.

I pronounce words the way they sound and feel instead of the way everybody talks on the news. I create voices, I collect accents, I speak from simple English and simple grammar to complex English and gnomic.

Because I've worked places where people dain't English speakers (including the United States), I up and down and around my English level to match the audience, instead of expecting the audience to match me. Unless they're supposed to be trying, in which case we'll make it hard correct.

Nobody wins when nobody communicates, and nobody has fun when we all communicate the same way. Play with a language and it'll play with you.

We haven't got no prescriptivists 'round here.

#

Book covers, people. Horrible book covers. Where are the artists come publishing time? I'm not just talking about Fantasy chain-mail bikinis, I'm talking Science Fiction books without matching covers. Any publishable genre book will have a Hook Image tailor-made for the cover.

Here's a good cover. I can't find the book (if it even exists), but I can imagine it's my type of book.

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2000 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long To Die" - in progress (~1/18)

2 comments:

  1. My English is all over the place as well, plus I keep dropping words from different languages. Sometimes, I say a sentence which I think is all English only to discover I put in like three languages in it. *shakes head*

    Also, covers: I think publishing companies are drifting toward minimalistic covers these days. Not sure if it's to increase sales or to decrease the cost of the cover...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alas, publishing is a crass, commercial business that poisons Art while feeding it.

    I want a few illustrations inside my books too. Is it so much to ask books to live up to the publishing standards of the Victorian era?

    ReplyDelete

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