LINKDING

excerpt: Taifa of Tuluz Spring 1194 “A wondrous thing is happening at the university!” said Avram to Isaac the Blind. “Like nothing you’ve ever seen!” “I daresay you’re right,” Isaac answered, “since the last time I saw anything, I was younger than you.” ➤ historical fantasynovelette set in a muslim kingdom on the iberian peninsula in the 12th century, with a jewish scholar as the viewpoint character ➤ I love the setting, richly full of a wide variety of types of people and languages and religions, with universities and scientific progress and people doing magic, all interacting with each other ➤ the mystery at the heart of the story is that someone is stealing people's languages of study, on purpose, leaving behind only whatever their first language was. why, and how? and is it reversible? ➤ it's about people's relationships with language and with knowledge and with the world. it's great! ➤ 14k words in length

<blockquote>“Do you know people die of tooth infections?” “Stupid way to die,” Wei Wuxian mumbles. “I agree,” Wen Qing says. “So: you’re going to the dentist.” / While on the run, Wen Qing drags Wei Wuxian to a free clinic where they are confronted with someone from their past lives, a root canal, and the devastating suggestion of how things could be different.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I hate when I have a call in Inglewood. It’s still the 1990s in Inglewood, and for all I know, people still care about Madonna. Los Angeles County has a forty-bed psych facility there. Arrowhead looks like a nursing home: a long one-story building with a wide wheelchair ramp and glass doors and overly bright, easy-to-clean floors. I stop at the reception desk and check in. “Rosni Gupta,” I say. “I’m here to do an evaluation.”</blockquote> ➤ the one with the time traveller who speaks Old English

<blockquote>Zhou: You can understand this language? The sign? Subject: Yes, I can understand this sign. It is one of my father’s languages, I have learned it from he, my father, who learned it from [sign unrecognizable], but past that the wake of history is lost. Zhou: Who was your father? Subject: My father was. [here she makes the phonetic sign marker, then pauses] Zhou: Go on. Subject: It is not his real name. Zhou: Tell us his real name, then. Subject: [ejects something wet onto the table]</blockquote>

<blockquote>“You know,” Diana says as she strides back to you, “China’s really hot right now—with their new open-door policy, lots of people are (clamoring?) to invest there; I have people calling me all the time, asking if I have A-grade Mandarin.” She sets a brochure down on the desk and sits back in the executive chair across from you. “Have you considered selling your Mandarin?” You trace your hands over the brochure, feeling the embossed logo. China’s flag cascades down to a silhouette of Beijing’s skyline; you read the Simplified characters printed on the brochure, your eyes skimming over them so much more quickly than you skim over English. “How much?” you ask. Diana leans in. “A-grade Mandarin is going for as much as $800,000 these days.” Your heart skips a beat. That would be enough to cover Lillian’s college, with maybe a little bit left over—it’s a tantalizing number. But the thought of going without Mandarin gives you pause: it’s the language you think in, the language that’s close to your heart in the way English is not; it’s more integral to who you are than any foreign tongue. English you could go without—Lillian’s Mandarin is good enough to help you translate your way around what you need—but Mandarin?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The thing people always forget is that it was a Vulcan ship that reached Tarsus IV first.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jaylah and Nyota and language.</blockquote>

<blockquote>A fic about learning dead languages, when you're Dawn and it's the summer after season 6.</blockquote>

<blockquote>After Khan, Jim has a few residual issues. Spock helps him. Naturally, there's a strange Vulcan practice for everything.</blockquote> ➤ writing on the body and also hugs!

<blockquote>Uhura learns to be a xenolinguist.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Stargates' universal translation effect can sometimes make secret communication in enemy territory difficult. Luckily, Rodney has a plan.</blockquote> ➤and that plan is to talk entirely in cultural references where the meaning doesn't translate with the words. SO GREAT even if I don't understand three quarters of what they're saying.

<blockquote>1814. Fourteen-year-old schoolboy Jérôme Bahorel stands up against tyranny in his Greek classroom, despite any consequences. Based on another Aeschylus quote, this one about tyranny. (Warning for implied/mentioned school corporal punishment.)</blockquote>

Once having turned away, forever there shall be no news from my children.

➤ Racebending challenge, with Mary Poppins reimagined as an Indian ayah. ➤ as a commenter says: <blockquote>'It is a familiar arrogance she encounters; this certainty that they must be the heroes and पुरुषोत्तमs of their story.' The reason the sentence hit me so hard is that by the time I got here I was reeling with how powerful it was that This Story Is Not for Me. Which is one of those stupid points of privilege, you know? Why char-shouldchar- it be for me? And then I got to this line and it was so powerful.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Cottia worries about losing herself to Roman civilization.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In Uhura's first year at the Academy, she wrote a paper on Adhine, a minority language of Vulcan.</blockquote>

➤ In which Winona and Amanda are young and awesome.

➤ The Doctor and how he relates to language

<blockquote>Figuring out someone else's culture isn't always easy</blockquote>

<blockquote>"I'm working on it," she said, already thinking of how to explain transporter technology to someone who might not know what it was in a language she had thought dead not two hours ago.</blockquote>

<blockquote>She knew what was happening, but it was impossible. Like suddenly knowing, The sun won't rise in the morning. Gravity doesn't work. The Wraith don't mean any harm... Something had happened to the translators. She couldn't wrap her head around it, but she knew it must be true. The translators were such a fact of life: like the Ancestors' rings, like the Wraith. So omnipresent that even as a sensible adult you forgot sometimes that these things were not permanent, that they too could be damaged. </blockquote> ➤ I really love everything about this, except for the decision to render english-that-non-english-speakers-can't-understand in German. I understand why the decision was made, but it threw off the feel of things for me and was jut a constantly-cropping-up false note in an otherwise really thoughtful story. https://web.archive.org/web/20110827110146/http://trinityofone.unrealwords.com:80/athosian.html 11k