Poul Anderson sets up Ralph Corwin to be a total jerk.
As soon as she meets him, Wanda is instantly alert to possible dominance games:
"She wondered if it was the British accent that put her off." (p. 161)
British accents can be very off-putting. And where did he get it since he was born in Detroit in 1895? He keeps up the compliments to Wanda. He turns out to have had two divorces although I never make judgments about those. She feels that he is lecturing her and that he loves to hear himself talk. When, in a Japanese restaurant, the cook comes to prepare the sukiyaki at the table, Corwin tells him to stand aside and does it himself, "'Hokkaido style.'" (p 171)
This narrative is going somewhere. There will be one big conflict between Wanda and Corwin.
Does anyone know whether Wanda's name among the Tulat, "Khara-tse-tuntyn-bayuk, She Who Knows Strangeness," (p.161) is related to any known language?
4 comments:
It wouldn't be -- 15K years ago is well beyond the reach of reconstructive philology, even the most speculative parts like "Nostratic". Half that is about as far back as you can get.
It's probably -based- on some extant language.
As for Mr. Jerk, he's not likely to be as monodimensional as he looks at first glance.
In part it's intergenerational. He's from just far enough back to really jar on Wanda's modern sensibilities without being weird/alien enough to get by on that.
It's not just a British accent, it's a class accent from the upper reaches; and Americans who bothered to acquire one were usually making a statement.
With some exceptions. Back about a century ago or a little more, many East Coast patricians in the US got a mid-Atlantic or pseudo-British tinge by osmosis -- like the Roosevelts, at places like Groton School and Harvard.
When I returned from Kenya in the late 1960's, I had a British accent of a fairly tony sort, picked up at school there. I can still put it on, if I try.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!]
As regards accents, something like that happened to me, in a reverse kind of way. In either 1995 or 1996, during one of my visits to the UK, I was making small purchases of things like postcards in a London shop. As I was talking the shop owner asked if I was from Massachusetts. Not just if I was an American, but from MASSACHUSETTS, my home state!
I thought it was interesting that this British gentleman could pinpoint which part of the US I came from just MY accent.
Ad astra! Sean
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