Salvete and Xairete (from a long time ghost)

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

Hullo everyone,

I've been ghosting on this community for a ridiculously long time and figured I should finally introduce myself. I am currently in college studying linguistics and (to a lesser degree) Latin and Ancient Greek. Finding the word Basileus ('king' in Ancient Greek) in my Greek book this semester totally blew me away! That is one of the things I love about Megan Whalen Turner's writing: being able to tease out the historical parallels and also how she weaves them so seamlessly into a fictitious, but believable, setting.

My conversion to this fandom was rather slow. I read the Thief sometime around the first half of highschool, I think. I very much enjoyed it, but wasn't yet hooked. A couple years later I read QoA and liked it even better, so much so, in fact,  that when I saw KoA in the bookstore I snapped it up right away. And that is when I truly fell in love with the series (that was last spring). I must admit that Costis is now my favorite character, though all her characters are wonderful (even the villains). And I nearly fell off my bed when I read the line from Sutcliff's Mark of the Horse Lord in KoA!  I couldn't believe my eyes, but I was very glad that Costis' path diverged from that of Phaedrus/Midir. I just reread the series this semester (they provided a welcome reprieve from my despotic phonetics class) and one of my goals was to find the Rosemary Sutcliff references...I found the once about the emerald signet ring in the Thief, but could not find a reference in QoA. All the more reason to reread them!

I look forward to actually being active in this group just as soon as I get my life back (week and a half to go!). You really have an awesome community here.

Comments

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

Welcome from a fellow linguistics graduate who was really poor at phonetics! XP

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You survived phonetics? Then it *is* possible. That is encouraging, because even after 20 hours of lab work to do with formants, I still don't know what they are =P.

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

me neither. X_X

The best part was, my phonology teacher was german... for an English phonetics class... Now granted, she was a good teacher but it was a bit weird...

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

haha! Luckily my prof. is a native English speaker...but he talks in linguist-speak which might as well be another language sometimes.

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

true... *gonk*

What really killed me was Syntax... Syntax 405 to be precise. That course was interesting but I had no aptitude for it and it kicked my butt. T_T

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

Aaah, Syntax. Yeah, that is some crazy stuff. I loved it in 401, but 503 broke my heart because all that I had thought I had learned in 401 had been a lie (sort of) and I had to completely change the way I thought about trees. And then of course there was Chomsky's 'covert movement' theory which I am still in denial about. I am still really interested in Syntax, but the higher levels are just mind boggling!

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

The coolest course I took was Psycholinguistics. That stuff was SO interesting. And we didn't really study other people's theories of syntax. It was more of a theoretical field syntax thing where we were given language data and had to figure out the rules on our own. It was fun but haaaard.

My linguistics department hated Chomsky so the only time we studied him was when they were proving him wrong. =p

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Hey guys, we ought to start a club. I'm 25 years out of school, but I have a degree in linguistics, because I switched my major at the last minute from Classics! (My pick for coolest course ever was Aphasia. Now that is wacky stuff.)

One professor said: "Noam Chomsky thinks reality has nothing to do with anything." But geez, who do you believe the claim that John saw?

[inconceivablelf.livejournal.com]

this is exactly what I want to major in so it's amazing to hear you guys talking about it. maybe the Thief attracts linguists more then anything else?

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

I think that I always had an affinity for language which led to reading a lot, finding the Thief, and becoming a linguist. =3

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I want in, too. I'm ... too many years out of school to count, but I'm degree in Ling also... which at CCNY was in the Dept. of Classical Langs. and Arabic.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Hey, my dad went to City College!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

As did mine. I may have been the only member of the class of... '72, I think... to know not only the alma mater ("Lavender") but also the (or an) Evening Session drinking song from the thirties.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, "Lavender my lavender" -- we used to hear that one at the dinner table.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

And when CCNY played NYU it was the Lavenders vs. the Violets!

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

dang, I should have gone to your school. My professor had Chomsky on his dissertation committee (yikes!). I think on the whole though, my department is just kinda waiting for him to die or step aside and give someone else a chance.

And as for 'covert movement'...you covered D-structure and S-structure (wh-movement and all that jazz) right? According to Chomsky, there is another structure...after you speak.

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

Nope. Never studied that, though I only took Intro to Syntax and Syntax 405. Perhaps those were in more of the graduate courses. I might have learned what those things are without ever hearing a specific name for them. We did study sentence trees and sentence mapping and how to write rules for forming sentence clauses. But we didn't give a 'name' to what we learned. It was very grass-roots syntax, where we were supposed to discover the rules ourselves and decide what they governed on our own.

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

wow, that sounds like a really good program. They were teaching you to actually be linguists rather than mimic linguists. Very cool.

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

Well, my school's linguistics dept. was primarily a researching department. My whole university is considered a research University so the focus was on experiments, field tests, and being able to write/critique/and understand scholarly articles. It meant we had a lot to do with hands on stuff and not so much reading/studying older theories. I definitely enjoyed it!

[filkferengi]

I took phonetics in French, & we touched on syntax. Lots of fun, with funky accents thrown in for free. I took the linguistics class for foreign language education majors; does that count?

Linguistics gives you a formal structure to analyze some facets of the wonderfulness of mwt's books. [how's that for bringing things back on-topic? ;)]

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

Welcome! *offers cookies and tea*

WOOT COSTIS. Hah, I love spotting the Sutcliff references too. MWT=genius

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

many thanks for the cookies and the tea (mhmmm)! And I'm so glad that other people here have read Sutcliff!

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

!!!! I just realised the dolpin on the ring. I was trying to make out what it was and I only just realised...IT IS WIN

hey, only books i used to read were by Sutcliff and MWT. I noticed the ring thing and found out from sdn that MWT was a Rosemary Sutcliff fan. I only got a confirmation it was a true tribute about a year ago when i joined the community and emailed Megan. (And that's why I'm called emerald

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

Yay! Welcome!

I don't remember if we found any tribute quotes in QoA or not ... hmmmmm.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

oh wow! I just noticed your icon.
...

very very cool! Is it an actual picture you came across somewhere, or did you create it?

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

*blushes* thanks! I was initially hoping to find a picture like it, but apparently there aren't many pics out there of emerald dolphin signet rings, so I made one myself (with copious use of copy/paste and layering).

I must echo icon appreciation, because yours is really lovely! Is that Irene from the Japanese QoA?

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

Yes she is! So beautiful, and so remote.

You did a fabulous job on the ring. It seems as though it could have been an actual artifact from the days of the Ninth.

[appellations.livejournal.com]

Welcome!

"I must admit that Costis is now my favorite character"

Especially Jade's favourite :P

I second Peggy's comment about the emerald ring. Tres pretty!

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

I am currently in college studying linguistics and (to a lesser degree) Latin and Ancient Greek. Finding the word Basileus ('king' in Ancient Greek) in my Greek book this semester totally blew me away!

Y helo thar me!

Welcome!

[puppeteergirl.livejournal.com]

Welcome to sounis!

I like Costis. He's a really good character (though I have heard otherwise). I like that he has strong morals, but isn't a goody-two-shoes guy. He's sorta like your average Joe who has been pushed into unusual circumstances, and the whole plot doesn't really revolve around him which is an agreeable change from the average-joe-becomes-the-center-of-the-story setup.

But then, I find all of MWT's characters extremely interesting.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Welcome! Love the icon, too. I noticed your name on the member list long ago and am glad you've delurked!

[(Anonymous)]

Re the icon...Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's.
:(
~Feir Dearig

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I just saw that, so sad. I'm sitting here looking at my stack of Discworld books.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

Welcome! Glad you've de-lurked. :) 'Fraid I don't have much else to say. I guess I'm just not really a very interesting person. *scurries away*

[cailet-06.livejournal.com]

Hello, and I agree Costis is turning out to be one of my fav characters, and it was especially enjoyable to read the discussions on linguistics, although I have to admit as a history major I was completely lost.

quote in QoA

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

When Eugeides says "I am not kind" it is a quote from Warrior Scarlet.

Re: quote in QoA

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

Good catch! Is that in QoA or KoA (or both)?

Warrior Scarlet is on my To Be Read bookshelf; it has just moved up in priority now.

Re: quote in QoA

[lipton-tea.livejournal.com]

Oh seriously? That's awesome! Thank you. I need to reread Warrior Scarlet now...

Re: quote in QoA

[sclerotia.livejournal.com]

Oh, Oh! Brain spasm! That is from KoA and not QoA. Sorry. I had this all figured out. I will have to go back and see if I can remember what the quote is from QoA.