Writing fan fiction again
I thought I was done with fan fiction – at least for a while – but I got inspired again and that was that. Though in the past couple of days I’ve been too tired to finish my last fan fic in the new fandom. Hopefully, I’ll feel up to it again soon.
I haven’t even blogged that much lately, so it’s great to be writing again. Hopefully it won’t be long before I’ve recharged my creative batteries so I can finish my novel.
People on trains
I went on a little trip again the other day. As far as these quick trips go, it was fine. I was able to leave a little later than usual and still got home before midnight so it was cool.
What wasn’t quite as cool is that a group of other travelers – a big and very tiresome family – ran around and in general made a nuisance of themselves. On the first part of the trip there was no reservation of seats, but this family seemed to think there was and acted accordingly, by running around and basically demanded access to several seats, in fact, practically the entire carriage.
That forced me to tell a seemingly very nice guy to get up and find another seat. The compartment wasn’t full so there was no reason why we shouldn’t just sit where we were, but obviously that obnoxious family did. It made me look bad in front of that guy and I didn’t like it.
Oh, well. Other than that, the trip went fine and though I ended up completely exhausted after traveling all day when it was so hot, I feel good about it. I only wish I’d managed to get some good photos. Maybe next time.
Italian, Latin, Interlingua
Italian has to be the most beautiful language in the world – at least some dialacts. Lots of people are in agreement about that, so it’s not just my personal opinion. It’s about as easy (or difficult, if you see it that way) as Spanish. The languages are closely related. Just like Spanish, Italian comes from Latin, which was spoken in Ancient Rom. Italy was the homeland of the Romans.
Since I’m interested in history and subjects related to it, it’s especially nice to know Italian. In Italy many books are written about history, archaeology, art history and so on.
Italian is spoken mainly in Italy and in parts of Switzerland. I also happen to know that the people of Malta speak Italian, along with their native language Maltese and their ‘adopted’ language English. Also, there are people who have emigrated from Italy and who still speak their old language. They might be found anywhere in the world, but I think mostly in the US, Canada and Australia. In all, about 60 million people speak Italian, most of them in Europe.
And even if it’s got nothing to do with the language, I love Italian food. The various pastas and pizzas have such incredibly appetizing names. Don’t words like fettucine, lasagna, cannelloni och tagliatelle seem to taste just as well as the pasta by those names?
I’ve also studied Latin, but it’s really difficult. It’s a language that is at the same time unsophisticated and hard to learn. The grammar is tough. Though I have heard that ancient Greek, Russian and Serbo-Croatian are more difficult. A bit of Latin is good to know, if you want to study other modern languages. (Well, maybe not Chinese or Japanese, but many different European languages).
There’s a modern version of Latin – Interlingua. It’s a language that has been created. Basically, it’s simplified but more expressive than Latin. Mainly, it’s based on Spanish and Italian (with a bit of French, English and a number of other languages). The best thing about this language, is that you don’t need to learn it to understand it. If you’ve studied Spanish or Italian you’ll have no trouble understanding Interlingua. Of course, it’s more difficult to learn to write and speak, but then the same goes for every other language.
Since Interlingua has been created without any complicated grammar, it should be easier to learn than other languages. I haven’t studied it myself, but I can assure you that it’s very easy to understand text written in Interlingua.
You sometimes hear proposals about turning Latin into the EU’s official language. Whoever is suggesting that, can’t possibly have tried to study Latin himself – or it’s some professor of Latin who’s forgotten how difficult the language really is. However, now that there’s Interlingua (and a few similar languages), we could use that instead. Since it’s so easy to understand, most people would be able to read all the documents and articles written in it, without any further studies. Only the people who write those documents (or translate them) would have to learn Interlingua. Even if you did have to learn it, it doesn’t seem to be difficult.
I suspect that the reason proposals are made about making Latin the offical language of the EU, is because it would be awkward using a modern language that is still being used by one or several countries. That might give that country (or countries) an unfair advantage over the other member countries. Latin, on the other hand, isn’t officially spoken anywhere except for in the Vatican. Even better, Interlingua is spoken nowhere and everywhere, depending on wherever the students of the language live. It seems to me that it couldn’t get any fairer than that.
Language: Spanish and Portuguese
My next language was Spanish. Just like French, it was quite easy to learn. It’s quite similar to latin, which was, in a way, the English of ancient times. In Europe, it’s mostly spoken in Spain. Some people say that it’s also spoken in Andorra (but I think that’s because many Spaniards live there). Spanish is also spoken in North Africa and in the Philippines, and naturally in South America (also known as Latin America – in Mexico, Central America, some islands in the Caribbean).
According to some estimates, Spanish – or as people speaking the language outside Spain like to call it – Castilian – Castellano, is spoken by about 250 million people. That’s in no way an exact figure, but what you can be sure of is that spanish is a language that is good to know. It’s probably right behind English as ‘the most useful language in the world’. Though some people say that about French.
Here are some books that you might want to read: Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written several good books. So far I haven’t managed to read any of them in the original language, but I will, as soon as I can. Especially One Hundred Years of Solitude. I have read Love in the Time of Cholera, and with a few exceptions, it was really interesting. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in Spanish.
In Latin American literature the so called magical realism is typical. If I’ve understood it correctly, it means that the stories are a bit like fantasy or fairy tales. Many people recommend Isabel Allende’s book, The House of Spirits. I haven’t read it myself, not even in other languages, but it’s supposed to be good.
Since I’ve studied Spanish and Italian, I’d like to learn some Portuguese as well. Portugal is a fairly small country, but Portuguese is also spoken in Brazil. Also in a couple of countries in Africa, and in Asia – Macao. Portugal was, like Spain, the Netherlands, England and France good at colonizing and winning wars. Portuguese is spoken by about 10 million people in Portugal, and nearly 180 million people in Brazil. That adds up to about 200 million people worldwide.
Language: French
My third language was French. It’s not very difficult either, at least I don’t think so. Sure there are some irregular verbs, but I never worried much about that. That might be because I was quite young at the time. I’ve read that if you learn your first foreign language before the age of six, any other language you learn after that will be easier too. And speaking of learning languages, though this may be irrelevant, I recently read that if you play a musical instrument, it makes it easier to learn (any subject, apparently).
French is quite a beautiful language. Though I don’t find Swedish, Finnish and English particularly ugly. I won’t tell you which languages I find ugly. One of the difficulties with French is that it’s quite difficult to get enough practice. The best you can do is travel to France and stay there for at least a year. But how many people can do that? I’ve realized that I’ll never be completely fluent in French, and I’ve accepted that.
I’m doing my best with what I’ve got. I watch tv, read fiction, and listen to French music. As it happens, there are several sci fi books by French author Jules Verne. My favorite book is Voyage au centre du terre (Journey to the Centre of the Earth). I’ve also read Paris au XXìeme siècle (Paris in the Twentieth Century), but that wasn’t such a good book. It’s easy to understand why Verne’s publisher wouldn’t accept that book. When I was a child I used to read some French books (translated into Swedish).One of those is Tistou les pouces verts (Sorry, don’t know what that’s called in English) by Maurice Druon. I’ve read it recently and I have to say that it’s probably the sort of story a child will appreciate more.
I’ve also found a series of historic mysteries by a guy called Jean-Francois Parot. The series is about Nicolas Le Floch, who works as a police officer in Paris in the 18 century, during l’Ancien Régime (before the Revolution).
Of course, you can cheat. Read books translated into French. I’ve done that, but it isn’t all that great, if you want to learn the language properly. The book was first written in one language, then the translator has to create a version of the book in his or her language. How much of the original language flavor is lost that way?
The French and the Belgians make lots of great comics. That’s one good way of practicing a language. TinTin and Laureline et Valerian (not sure what they’re called in English, sorry) are a few good examples, and there are many others. Read them if you’re into comics.
French is of course, spoken in France, but also in Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Monaco, parts of Africa, parts of Asia and in parts of Canada, primarily Quebec. Also in the Caribbean (several islands, where people also speak creole, which is supposed to be based on French), and South America (French Guyana) and in some smaller islands in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
There are different opinions about how many people really speak French in the world today. To some extent that depends how you define ‘francophone’. Does that include everyone who speaks French as their first language, or everyone who is able to communicate relatively fluently in French, or everyone who has ever studied French for a few years? In any case, the number of French speaking people is somewhere between 100 miljoner and more than 200 miljoner. It’s said that French is the most useful language to learn, unless you count English, though that is being said about Spanish and a few other languages as well.
With Christianity and the increasing influence of the church, latin became mixed into Swedish (and most likely the same thing happened Norway and Denmark as well).
During the 17 and 18 century, France was a major political power in Europe (though up until the early 1700’s, Sweden too, was a political power to be reckoned with, at least in the Baltic area). From France terms connected to science and culture made its way into the Swedish language (and many other European languages).
Finally (well, up until now), during the second half of the 20 century, English began its victorious conquest of the other languages of the world. Of course, as I’ve already explained, I prefer to call this version of the English language Anglo.
The reason for this is that I don’t speak English, and neither do my friends in Lithuania and India. We’re not English and we don’t live in England. Some people do their best to imitate the English as it’s spoken in England or in the US. I prefer not to. I’ve never spent much time in the UK – never for longer than about two weeks at a time.
Language – Anglo (English)
English might not need a closer introduction, but I’ll say a few words about it anyway. Nowadays, you simply can’t get along without english.
Personally, I don’t find english difficult at all. Unlike many other languages, you can practice English almost daily. English is all around. That can be practical since you need to learn it. I started learning it when I was about two years old. Actually, it was mom who was going to study, but I was the one who found it a lot of fun, so I was the one who learned the most.
English is spoken practically everywhere, by several billion people (at least as a second or a third language). As a first language it’s spoken by about 300 million people. Wherever you go, you can probably get by with English.
I prefer to refer to the international version of English as Anglo. That’s because I live in Northern Europe, and my friends in for instance Lithuania and India, hardly speak English. I mean, we don’t live in England, and we’re not from there. We don’t speak American either, like the people of the USA, or Canadian, as they do in Canada, or aussie or oz (or whatever they call it in Australia) etc. Anglo. If you have a better suggestion, please let me know.
Eccentric Circles by Rebecca Lickiss
The fantasy book Eccentric Circles is one I can really recommend. The author – Rebecca Lickiss – is relatively new. I only know of one other book by her. It’s called Never After. They’re both fun, interesting and well written, but I think Eccentric Circles is a little better.
That might be because it’s about a girl who has a bit in common with me. Not the funny, but totally weird hippie family, but her situation in general. She’s a single girl, who is also an unpublished writer. Unfortunately, that’s where the likeness ends. Or maybe I shouldn’t saying unfortunately. All kinds of things happen to her that I wouldn’t want happening in my life.
At the beginning of the book, her great-grandmother (I think it’s the greatgreandmother, but when I reread the book, I got the impression it was her grandmother, but I think she’s three generations older, she was over a hundred years old). Piper (that’s the name of the main character) inherits her relative’s house, because she’s so good at books…
Her job will be to clean out the house and categorize all the books her older relative has collected. While doing that, her wacky family, who is driving her crazy – personally I don’t get why, they seem like a lot of fun – get her a job in a bookstore. Lucky girl!
While she’s getting the house in order, she finds out a few odd things about it. For one, there’s far more space behind the house than there should be, more specifically the world of Faerie. She also meets an incredibly gorgeous elf – who’s a bard or something – he calls himself a wordsmith. There’s also a genuine dwarf, who has his own cave where he mines jems and a grumpy old wizard, who lives in a tower, and several really irritating pixies who fly around playing tricks on people, sometimes quite nasty ones.
Soon Piper learns that her grandmother (or greatgrandmother) was murdered and she has to find out who did it. But the plot is a bit more complex than that. Besides the murder, it’s about how our literature affects and changes Faerie.
One example is that an elf used to be considered a little goblin, who could be found squatting on a toadstool. After Tolkien monumental work, the elves are now considered to be tall, beautiful and poetic.
This is quite a unique concept in fantasy literature.
In any case, Piper falls in love with Aelveron (the sexy elf) but isn’t sure if she can trust him. After a while, she uncovers clues that seem to indicate he seduced and murdered her greatgrandmother. To make things even more confusing, Piper also finds clues that point to other Faerie creatures. On top of that, the pixies keept terrorizing her and as always, her family irritates her enormously.
For instance, it seems that while I (and most readers, I assume) find it amusing, it drives her crazy that her family accepts Aelveron without any surprise. When Piper protests a family member points out that at least he has more reason than most to believe himself to be an elf – he looks like one. Piper’s younger brother hisses that she has to keep that hot guy far away from his girlfriend.
In the end, Piper solves the murder, saves Faerie and her own world and manages to exorcise her grandmother’s ghost. Not bad for an unemployed writer! And after all that, she still has access to Faerie through her own backyard, and her job in the bookstore.
Read the book, you’ll like it. It’s funny, exciting, interesting and romantic.
The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop
Here’s the next book in my series about my favorite books. The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop. It’s set in a world the author has written about before, in a series of books. I haven’t read them yet, for various reasons. This book that isn’t part of the series is well worth reading.’
The world it’s set in, comes across as pretty dark. There are two ‘species’ of people. Blood – that lives for a very long time, at least several centuries – and ‘ordinary’ people. If I understood the book correctly, both types can have magical powers.
There’s a whole interesting ‘mythology’ – or something – about this world. A young woman needs to have something called a virgin night – when she loses her virginity to a more experienced man, who preferably should be of a higher magical level than she is. It helps him ‘hold her back’ somehow. That might sound a bit anti-feminist, but actually it isn’t. After her virgin night, the young woman has achieved her true adult magical level, usually higher than the man who helped her.
If this man, who’s supposed to help a young woman, makes a mistake and fails to hold her back properly, she might end up being ‘broken’. Her entire life is ruined and her magical powers are weakened. This might be done purposely by ruthless men.
Those with magical powers have a sort of ‘inventory’ – a way to carry around things invisibly – something that computer game players will recognize.
The book starts out with a young man being sold as a slave at an auction. It’s supposed to be a sort of punishment for him. Ten years ago, he was trapped by an evil, but sexy woman and turned into a pleasure slave – a sort of sex slave. She put a ring on him (guess where…), which forced him to obey her.
Finally, he had enough of the humiliation his owner and her lover put him through and he killed them. That means he’s about to be sold to a new owner.
He’s bought by a notorious witch, who buys up slaves and takes them through the wilderness back to her own land. All those slaves then vanish without a trace and it’s assumed they are killed in some gruesome way. As soon as she pickes out the main character, she removes his slave ring, which is capaple of inflicting horrible pain, and replaces it with another one, this time invisible. That’s the ring from the title.
But the witch is neither the person he thinks she is, or evil. There is however another witch, who definitely is evil. She’s got a pleasure slave of her own, who is Blood, which means he lives for a very long time. He’s called the Sadist, because he hates women (aristocratic women, like his owner, not servants and other slaves). Actually, he’s a healer – some sort of doctor. He too wears a slave ring, in the same place the main character does. His owner is the enemy of the other characters and she chases after them throughout the whole book.
This other pleasure slave comes into the plot a little later, but from the start you know that he and the main character know each other. The one who’s Blood has trained the other guy, so that he’d be able to put up with the life of a pleasure slave.
The witch who has bought the pleasure slave, has bought other slaves too and they all set out together to get to her country, through the dangerous wilderness. Throughout this journey, the main characters find out many things. Among other things, he falls in love with the witch, who isn’t as old as he thought she was. Apparently, witches can disguise themselves to look younger and more beautiful.
Like I mentioned earlier, she’s not evil at all. She just wants to save as many slaves and animals as possible.
If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll see that I like this world a lot, even though it can be a bit dark. I won’t go into what happens next, but there are many dangers threatening the main characters on their way through the wilderness.
This is an interesting, but at times, quite gruesome book, with many memorable characters. Read it, but only if you like this type of fantasy. If you like the same old type of story, with girls being raped and enslaved, you might as well forget it.
Language 2
In general, I can say, that with the exception of English (Anglo), it’s difficult to become really fluent, unless you’re prepared to travel to the country where the language is spoken, to work or study, for at least a year. Sure you can do that, if you’re content to study one or two languages, but if you want to know several it could be difficult. The best I can do, is read as many books as possible and watch tv and movies in the language in question.
Another thing you can do, is to take advantage of the internet. There are news sites, in many different languages and sometimes free literature for download. Of course there are all kinds of web pages in many different languages. Apart from that, there are also sites dedicated to the study of languages, with forums and chat rooms, where you can use the language.
Without the internet, I would have been able to use so many of my languages.
I’ve chatted with people in French, German, Spanish and Italian (not always completely successfully, I might add). Unfortunately, not everyone you encounter want to help you out. Instead they choose to get by in their own, not always so great, English. But if you do meet someone who wants to help you, it’s the best. Much better than any dictionary.
You can also use the computer offline. I’ve bought a language software, Languages of the World. Most of the major languages of the world are available on those CD:s, but I think it might be best to just use the program to practice languages you’ve already studied, rather than starting out with a new language.
Storm
For me, who lives in a small town, being able to watch all the movies I want is not something I can take for granted. Now I’ve taken care of that. That’s why I’ve seen more movies in the past couple of years, than I have for ages. Nice. It’s always fun to get a little variety. Otherwise it’s usually mainly tv (besides books, music and so on).
This time, I’d like to comment on a Swedish movie, Storm. The main characters are played by Eric Ericson (The Befallen/De drabbade), Eva Röse (The Befallen/De drabbade) and Jonas Karlsson (Once in a lifetime/Livet är en schlager). Since I live in the west of Sweden, I recognize some of the places the movie were shot in, and of course that’s fun. By chance, I walked by when the scene in the town square was shot (the one with the merry-go-rounds and so on). At the time, I had no idea what it was about.
The plot is centered around Donny (“DD”). He’s a pretty slimy guy, who slides around the trendy, cool places in Stockholm. Life and people around him are merely props and background for his constant chase after easy, quick experiences like free drinks and shared cocaine. He doesn’t date, because he considers that too expensive. Instead he studies hot women, so he can recall them later, when, as he puts it, he wants ‘a cozy moment’.
Suddenly, his comfortable, shallow life is turned upside down when a mysterious woman more or less lands on his cab. By then, Donny’s already seen her lower herself from a passageway crossing his street, down to his level. Since he doesn’t want to get involved with anyone else, Donny’s more concerned with his own safety, but despite that, he gets drawn into the mystery woman – Lova’s (pronounced Lor-vah) – adventures.
At times things get really menacing. An ominous man in dark clothes follows Lova everywhere she goes, and seems intent on silencing her for good. Now that Donny is involved too, he too has to run from the dark man.
After a while, Donny begins to realize that it’s far from a coincidence that he’s been pulled into the dramatic and mysterious incidents. Everything seems to be connected to his past. Eventually he needs to choose between trusting the dark man or Lova. The choice will have major consequences for his future.
I won’t say more about the plot, but the movie is really exciting and interesting. It does look a bit like a computer game, but I think it’s rather well done. Some people who have seen the movie complain about the dialogue, but I think you get a reasonable explanation as to why it sounds like it does. Watch the movie and you’ll find what it’s about.
When I rated the movie at some movie sites, I gave it a four, out of five. You might not agree, but I think you’ll find the movie worth watching.
