NaNoWriMo: Out with a Bang!
So, this Friday marked the last day of NaNoWriMo. And I made it. 50,000 words, as I realize the rest of the year where I don't if I even acheive 10K, is no small feat. But, once again, my friends, I celebrate my success of having made it. It was tought in some parts and I'm not going to pretend that there weren't times when I wanted nothing more than to quit. But once I got to a certain level, I just knew that I'd come so far that I couldn't quit then.
NaNoWriMo went out with a bang this year because the day after NaNoWriMo marked the first day of snow of the year. A nice pile of snow was accumulated by this morning: I'd say perhaps even a half-a-foot. Sadly, the stupid trademark of Seattle (rain) has caused it to melt into yesteryear.
I did not cheat very much for NaNoWriMo. My characters can sing songs, can't they? Of course they can. They can speak in foreign languages so then I have to translate them or make the rest of the dialogue tell you what it says. Word of the wise: never, ever, ever, create Irish Nationalists. My Irish Gaelic is not that good. But I made it.
On that note, Irish Gaelic in general is a very challenging language. But I would encourage others to join me and the Irish government in attempting to preserve the dying language. It's a rough language to learn because it's like everything hard out of English plus all the verb problems of French with the bizarre article stuff of German, plus the strange pronunciation stress rules of Russian plus the completely weird changing consonants and the morphemes represented by the same stinking letter but change by soft and hard vowels. And unwritten vowels--those are messed up. For example, the color blue. Between two broad consonants without a vowel, there is an unwritten a sound. You would probably think that gorm (blue) would be pronounced like written. But it's pronounced goram. Between two slender consanants, it's an i. So ainm (name) is actually pronounced sounding like anim. But it's way fun to speak. It sounds so cool. But there are lots of s sounds and lots of sh sounds. Irish pretty much lives and thrives off of those (in the way it sounds). So, it sounds like parseltongue to a certain extent.
Now my little rant: peoply trying to spell their children's names Celtic-like (especially Irish-like) because they think it's new-agey need to learn some phonetics. For example, the people who name their children things with the beginning of Aidan in it, and when people can't pronounce it they say that it's Irish pronunciation. I don't know about everybody, but this happens in Seattle. AIDAN IS AN ENGLISH TRANSLITERATION. So, if you say, "it's like Aidan," that's fine. But with Irish pronunciation, Aidan would sound a bit more like Odan. With a short o. A super-super hard d, pressing your tongue against the place where your gums meet your top teeth. It's fine if you do that. The real Irish spelling is Aodhan with an accent to the right on the second a. The reason Aidan was changed is because a) There's a Saint Aidan. He's an Irish saint b) The British couldn't pronounce it. So, you cannot throw Ai onto something, call it Irish pronunciation and pronounce it like a long a. In English you can, but not in Irish.
End rant.
So, I hope that you're all doing well. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, but the odds are not.
NaNoWriMo went out with a bang this year because the day after NaNoWriMo marked the first day of snow of the year. A nice pile of snow was accumulated by this morning: I'd say perhaps even a half-a-foot. Sadly, the stupid trademark of Seattle (rain) has caused it to melt into yesteryear.
I did not cheat very much for NaNoWriMo. My characters can sing songs, can't they? Of course they can. They can speak in foreign languages so then I have to translate them or make the rest of the dialogue tell you what it says. Word of the wise: never, ever, ever, create Irish Nationalists. My Irish Gaelic is not that good. But I made it.
On that note, Irish Gaelic in general is a very challenging language. But I would encourage others to join me and the Irish government in attempting to preserve the dying language. It's a rough language to learn because it's like everything hard out of English plus all the verb problems of French with the bizarre article stuff of German, plus the strange pronunciation stress rules of Russian plus the completely weird changing consonants and the morphemes represented by the same stinking letter but change by soft and hard vowels. And unwritten vowels--those are messed up. For example, the color blue. Between two broad consonants without a vowel, there is an unwritten a sound. You would probably think that gorm (blue) would be pronounced like written. But it's pronounced goram. Between two slender consanants, it's an i. So ainm (name) is actually pronounced sounding like anim. But it's way fun to speak. It sounds so cool. But there are lots of s sounds and lots of sh sounds. Irish pretty much lives and thrives off of those (in the way it sounds). So, it sounds like parseltongue to a certain extent.
Now my little rant: peoply trying to spell their children's names Celtic-like (especially Irish-like) because they think it's new-agey need to learn some phonetics. For example, the people who name their children things with the beginning of Aidan in it, and when people can't pronounce it they say that it's Irish pronunciation. I don't know about everybody, but this happens in Seattle. AIDAN IS AN ENGLISH TRANSLITERATION. So, if you say, "it's like Aidan," that's fine. But with Irish pronunciation, Aidan would sound a bit more like Odan. With a short o. A super-super hard d, pressing your tongue against the place where your gums meet your top teeth. It's fine if you do that. The real Irish spelling is Aodhan with an accent to the right on the second a. The reason Aidan was changed is because a) There's a Saint Aidan. He's an Irish saint b) The British couldn't pronounce it. So, you cannot throw Ai onto something, call it Irish pronunciation and pronounce it like a long a. In English you can, but not in Irish.
End rant.
So, I hope that you're all doing well. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, but the odds are not.
Comments