Here's the Twisted Pencil to start off a new day.
Posted on 03/23/2007 11:44:31 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
Squarebarb:
There were some of us including GOPpoet who were thinking of starting a writer's thread here on FR. There's a horse thread, a football thread, a Hobbit Hole thread, so why not a thread for us writers?
And mainly sticking to fiction otherwise the discussion tends toward politicsa iinstead of the craft of writing.
Okay Eleutheria5, YOU start the thread."
Eleutheria5:
On it. Could use some help from someone who knows how to do HTTP and other techy stuff, though. Tried to learn, but drat that right hemisphere dominance we creative folks have. I've actually been running a board on the aol writers' club since 1996 called Conservative Writers' Club. Mostly it simply fights flame wars with liberal writers, though, and all the conservative contributors, including me, burn out. It'd be great to get away from that and just swap ideas with people who DON'T wish every one of us a flaming death.
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
“I can imagine that modern and ancient Hebrew are very different — what we have in the KJ is, I think, from about 700 B.C. and of course there must be vast changes. But I wonder how it changed, since it was not a generally-used language from -— maybe 200 A.D.?”
There you’re mistaken. It was the language of Jewish scholars from that day to this. Some Aramaic and Greek got mixed in, of course, along with a bit of Latin and maybe even a bit of Persian. It wasn’t a colloquial language for a long time, though.
As for my Arabic, translating articles from the newspapers, I see an overabundance of Group V and VII verbs which are passive force.
You are correct in what you wrote about the "say" in Arabic, but you have placed it in First Group which is not passive. Not all verbs lend itself to passive tense. (Qoola in V group just gets new meanings, it no longer means says but to lie, fabricate and pretend) Using the verb fawl - to do (pretend the aw is the ayn) Group V then becomes tafawl with a shadda on the ayn and means I have done. Group VII then becomes enfawl -I was forced to do.
The most important thing for this student is if I see a neefal verb in Hebrew and a Group V or Group VII verb in Arabic, I better place that puppy in passive voice if I want to pass my exam.
As for my profs... when you come...you and they can argue the finer points of the language over coffee on Ibn Giboral Street. I know they would love to!
bannie... are you in Israel?
You are a superstar. :)
I am very slow and stupid at languages. It is like math for me. One plus One equals two on a good day with everything going right in my life.
I wish I had a talent for it, but I don't. So, I have to rely on what the profs tell me. (like I said earlier, especially if I want to pass those exams)
Here's the Twisted Pencil to start off a new day.
I looked through all my editions of Dickens but none of the illustrations seemed appropriate.
Amazing that we have two people on the writer’s thread with Hebrew and Arabic, wonderful.
As for myself my degree was in Romance languages, major Spanish, minor French. We spent most of our time on early Spanish. Reading El Cid was a delight.
My only knowledge of a language other than Romance languages is a slight acquaintance with a Native American language. Very different and quite complicated.
Romance languages don’t decline verbs so I got off Scot-free from that particular entanglement.
As for the passive voice in fiction, as I mentioned earlier, it has its uses. For me the passive voice is a sentence without an agent, ‘The tea was brought’, but also I suppose that it is a reversal of subject and object.
Shall we try something different today?
How about ways of indicating passage of time?
Remember the old movie trick of calendar pages flipping past. It has become a cliche but I always liked it.
No...In Bakersfield, Calif.
:-)
Do you speak Hebrew fluently?
For me, I sometimes purposely describe a seasonal change if I am allowing for that much time.
Sometimes, I just state that time has passed. Example: Eighteen days after Lee said good-bye to him on the Warrenton Pike, Jeb Stuart galloped into Jackson’s headquarters.
I also use children. Example: Here is a comment that Jimmie Stuart makes to father. “That is because I was almost three when you left for the north. Now, I am four and a half and I done growed.”
Another thing I did was if it was winter in the preceeding scenes, I gave Lee a case of spring fever in the next scene.
I don't know if these are good. I would be interested to hear what others do.
I took four years of French in school. I wasn’t very good at it either. Languages are just hard for me. I barely understand English. LOL!
No...No...You misunderstood!!!!
I don’t speak it at all!!!!!!
I’m so sorry if I misled you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wish I did; but I sometimes struggle with ENGLISH!!!
LOL!
We are discussing how to do a time change in your writing. I have listed some devices I use. What do you do?
:-)
I only know of a calendar having it's pages torn off, per old movies! LOL!
Sorry, did I reply to the wrong person? I meant Eleutheria — he/she seems fluent in Hebrew.
Carton the idea of having the child reply as to her age is excellnt, I like it.
Seasonal changes are great.
How about -— for long periods of time -— change in
the value of money? Inflation.
I guess what we are looking at are the things changed by time. ‘Time Changes Everything’ -— Bob Wills.
Let us say we are reading a book about Sequoyah -— his last journey toward Mexico.
Let us say they pause at a river crossing and one of his friends looks up at trash high in the trees, and says,
“I passed by here when the flood was that high, during the spring floods.”
Tells us the friend has been on this trail before, probably the year before, and hopefully knows the way into Texas and toward the Mexican border.
Wow, I am thinking of a whole lot of them.
Have a character look in the mirror and see time on her face would be good. A few more wrinkles and gray hair.
No, you didn’t respond to the wrong person. Bannie was making a joke which I took seriously.
This day is about gone!
Tomorrow let’s open a discussioon on ‘What makes a hero?’
Since I think we are all weary of the alienated anti-hero.
I’ll put up the Twisted Pencil and we can all have at it.
Seasonal changes are good (also your idea of the uniforms becoming more and more tattered is excellent)-—
but for urban characters the changes in season are not so important.
Although the major holidays mark time — Halloween, Christmas especially.
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