FM notice

[akk]

As of today chapter 11, which turned out to be a monster of more than 9200 words, is with my editor. I wish her (and myself) luck; we're going to need it.

Totally unrelated thought of the day, triggered by radio news and fouilletons filled with the upcoming book release:

Would Harry Potter be as hilariously popular as he is, if his name were Harald Töpfer?
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Comments

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm not sure he would. Germanic names (at least to my ear) tend to sound a bit more formal, a little more impressive. Harry Potter is a very plain, common and down-to-earth name, the kind of name the guy down the street who's so ordinary that he's practically invisible would have. And yet, he's a ridiculously powerful wizard that has the fate of the world on his shoulders and is having these incredible adventures while being the biggest celebrity in the wizarding world.

Makes you think about the importance of naming your characters, doesn't it?

[akk]

Considering that "Harald" is a common slightly old-fashioned given name (often abbreviated to Harri btw. - I abstained from that to show the difference) and "Töpfer" one of the plainer, often-found family names over here (literally: Potter; one who makes (earth) pots) I don't really see the difference. The name certainly isn't impressive or formal; it's just from a different language.

I did a similar exercise with the names of the Galaxy Rangers once (okay, mostly because people actually argued about whether or not Fox should be written with double-x). It was quite interesting, how the perception of the characters changed.

Makes me think about the perception of languages, actually. :)

I wonder if somebody can add name translations to other languages. It would be interesting.

Zachary Fox (English) - Zacharias Fuchs (German) - (?) Rénard (French)...

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

That's exactly my point, though, is the perception of languages and the names associated with them. Harri/Harald Töpfer is very obviously German, as much as Harry Potter is very English (and American, I suppose) and there's that stereotype of Germans having very strong and dominant personalities. You, of course, don't fit that stereotype at all...*g* But there's also a connotation of aggressiveness, even on the linguistic level, due in part I think to the fact that German has a harsher sound than English.

English, on the other hand, has been softened linguistically by the French and Latin influences. It doesn't sound quite so consonantal, if that makes sense, so the perception is that it's less aggressive.

Of course, this could be just an American perspective, or even just a me-perspective (I know I always had a lot more trouble speaking German than Spanish because it's got so many consonants and run-on words) but I hope I'm not getting too stereotypical.

... besides, I don't even want to think how my fellow Americans would mangle any word that has an umlaut in it. LOL

[akk]

Yes, it's strange. Even if we consider that Harald, Harold, etc. are all variants of the same ancient name that's been around since the Vikings or so. I can't really comment on how aggressive / peaceful a language sounds. I don't really want to know how my spoken English sounds. ;)

However, I'm don't think that the aggressiveness of a language is related to the amount of consonants in its words. ( Otherwise, people speaking Czech or Polish, for example, would be downright scary...) For me it depends a lot on what is being said and how; however, I guess we substitute our subjective impression of the sounds, if we don't understand what's actually being said - and then it becomes difficult, because the subjective impression is then based on a different language and therefore a different code of communication.

...is it only me or are we writing an essay here? :)

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

I think we are. :)

I don't think that I've ever heard enough Czech or Polish to have formed an impression of them one way or another. You make a good point about the different languages that a listener might speak affecting the subjective impressions, though. I know the Cantonese I've heard (I'm pretty sure it was Cantonese, at least - I know it was Chinese because the people talking were Chinese, and it sounded like the descriptions of Cantonese I've heard from others) always seemed to be at some level of "stressed" even when they were just sitting talking to each other, and I'm pretty sure that it was because the tones they used went up and down so much, which is usually a sign of stress for non-tonal languages like English (and German, for that matter.)

[akk]

Interesting. I never heard enough Chinese - be it Mandarin or Cantonese for that matter - to form an opinion about it, though I wonder whether these implied, subjective impressions play a role in how people judge the other party at direct talks - even if there are professional translators around, because despite getting the information in their own language, the talkers are still subjected to the impressions the conjure up about the others talking in their own language.
Something like:
*Aha. The guy from ABC is stressed. Our argument might have hit the spot*
When he probably really just meant that he'd think it through with his affiliates later on.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Could be.