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No. 44437
>>44436 >Also, random bystander chat confirms that there are boufbowl matches going on right now, or else about to start real soon. The conversation is quite ambiguous, too: one person suggests that this might be a good time to “buter” certain people. The word “buter” has several meanings: score a goal in soccer, antagonize, or “bump off” (i.e., kill). Hard to know which meaning is intended here, though the fansub translates it as “bump off” so perhaps the more sinister meaning is intended. Guess I’ll find out later if the fansub was correct, though their translation has been quite good so far so it’s quite likely that they’re right about the intended meaning here as well.
>What I found interesting, though, was the way they said “Rejoignez les disciples de Xelor,” not “Joignez les disciples de Xelor.” Rejoigner and joigner can be synonyms in French—you can say rejoigner about joining a group even when you’ve never been part of that group before—but it’s also possible that the correct translation of their speech is “rejoin” rather than “join”. Could be nothing, could be some subtle foreshadowing. Certainly their presence is meant to remind you about Nox, whom we haven’t seen in quite some time at this point but who’s still around and looking for the party.
>Cut to a mob outside listening to Amalia playing the “You can’t do this to me! Don’t you know who I am?” card, which works about as well for her as it ever does for anyone. (E.g., U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney acting outraged that a policeman would stop her as she walked into the Capitol building sans visible ID, or more recently, what Dominique Strauss-Kahn allegedly said to the housekeeper in that New York City hotel). Um, Amalia, honey, you do know that playing the “Don’t you know who I am” card only confirms your status as a jerk to any sane onlooker, right? Meanwhile, further down the street, another voice rises in outrage: it’s Ruel, protesting the ridiculous price the ship owner is asking for his ship. Eighty thousand kamas? Ludicrous! (Incidentally, the fansub gets it wrong here, translating it as eight thousand kamas instead of eighty thousand. But the French dialogue is clearly “quatre-vingt mille”, not “huit mille”.)
>Time for another linguistic aside. The French numbers for multiples of ten (thirty, forty, fifty, etc.) generally follow the rule that you take the name for the “base” number (three, four, five), and add the suffix “-ante” (or “-ente”, but usually “-ante”) to it, though sometimes the result drops a few letters (e.g. quatre becomes quarante, with the “t” vanishing from quatre). Twenty (vingt) is an exception and follows its own rule. The general “-ante” rule, however, becomes odd when you get to the numbers past sixty. If you were going to follow the rule consistently, then seventy, eighty and ninety would be septante (and unlike sept where the “p” is silent, the “p” in septante is pronounced), huitante (though octante is used instead of huitante in some places) and nonante. And in most French-speaking countries that aren’t France (e.g. Switzerland and Belgium), that’s how you say the numbers sixty through ninety: soixante, septante, huitante/octante, nonante. But in France, you say soixante, soixante-dix (sixty-ten), quatre-vingts (four twenties), quatre-vingt-dix (four-twenty-ten). (Note that quatre-vingts takes an “s” at the end when it is not followed by any other number words, but drops the “s” when it is followed by any other number word whatsoever.) So when a French person goes to Switzerland and buys something costing €1.70, he’ll be told the price is “un euro septante” when he’s expecting to hear “un euro soixante-dix”.
>And for any English speakers bemused by this oddity of the French language and feeling thankful that English doesn’t have such strange number constructions, I have just one thing to say to you: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation...”
>Anyway, the old Eniripsa draws a healing circle around Ruel with her broomstick. I notice that her healing ability mends not just Ruel’s wounds, but his clothing damage as well. Which is good—I don’t think I want to see what would happen if too much clothing damage accumulated on Ruel. Oh, and the fansub suggests that the Eniripsa’s name is Hope, but I’m pretty sure that that’s wrong. Listening closely to the French audio, what the announcer said is basically “[Let’s] hope the Eniripsa can heal his wounds,” not “Hope, the Eniripsa, can heal his wounds.” In other words, it was a verb, not a noun. Also, given her age, I’m guessing that she’s the team nurse for the Real Boitards, not the stadium nurse who handles injuries to both teams.
>The Real hold a quick huddle before going back to the game... Whoa. Hold it—I’ve just been struck by an idea for my next linguistic digression. But this time it’ll be on the English language rather than the French language. There are two “main” dialects of English, American English and British English, with most other dialects being traceable to one or both of these. (Australian English doesn’t have nearly enough slang to merit the status of “dialect”—and if you believe that, you daft mug, you’ve got a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock. No worries, mate!) There are lots of spelling distinctions between American and British English, like whether certain words should be spelled “-or” or “-our”, but there are some interesting grammatical distinctions too. The one I want to talk about is whether nouns referring to groups should be singular or plural. In American English, group nouns are usually treated as singular: “A committee was appointed to study the problem.” “After much debate, the committee was unable to agree on a recommendation.” In British English, though, the singular/plural usage is situational: “A committee was appointed to study the problem.” Here the verb refers to the committee as a unit, so it takes the singular form. But: “After much debate, the committee were unable to agree on a recommendation.” Here the verb refers to the committee as a group of individuals, so the plural form should be used. Now let’s look at the sentence I wrote at the beginning of this paragraph: “The Real hold a quick huddle ...” This is British English usage. I’m American but learned my English from a mix of Americans and Brits (with the odd Ozzie or Kiwi thrown in as well), so I mostly lean towards American grammar and spelling but occasionally find myself using British English instead. In particular, in the first sentence of this paragraph I just could not bring myself to write “The Real holds a quick huddle ...” — it just looked wrong to me. The team is acting as a collection of individuals in this instance, so clearly (according to British English rules, at least) the plural form is called for.
>Hopefully that discussion was as interesting to you as my French-language discussions have been. I don’t expect to get too many linguistic discussions out of this episode (it’s part 2 of 3, so I expect it to be the boufbowl game and nothing but the boufbowl game), so I’m grabbing them where I find them. Anyway, as I was saying, the Real holds (nope, that still looks wrong to me) hold a quick huddle before going back to the game. Ruel suggests a new strategy: let the Wookie win! Sorry, that just slipped out. I mean to say that Ruel suggests fighting smarter, not harder. They’ll lose a straight-up strength contest, so avoid the other team and let them tire themselves out, then take the advantage in the second half once the Bouftons are exhausted.
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