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Earth references?


kaevne

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So in RoW, there was an point where Mraize was talking to Shallan/Veil and he used the phrase "prime the pump."  This is an interesting idiom because it originates from recent English history, 18th century England for use in fluid dynamics and 19th century United States for use in Economics which popularized general use colloquailly.

Between this, and the Dog & Dragon story told by Wit, where a traditional barn with a silo was mentioned, I'm wondering if these are these purposeful Earth references by Worldhoppers?  Could it be that Hoid, Mraize, and other Worldhoppers originated from a version of Earth and the Cosmere stories are set in the future?  Or is this just an unintentional literary fluke by Sanderson?  I'm curious what phrases were used in the translated versions.

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8 minutes ago, kaevne said:

So in RoW, there was an point where Mraize was talking to Shallan/Veil and he used the phrase "prime the pump."  This is an interesting idiom because it originates from recent English history, 18th century England for use in fluid dynamics and 19th century United States for use in Economics which popularized general use colloquailly.

Between this, and the Dog & Dragon story told by Wit, where a traditional barn with a silo was mentioned, I'm wondering if these are these purposeful Earth references by Worldhoppers?  Could it be that Hoid, Mraize, and other Worldhoppers originated from a version of Earth and the Cosmere stories are set in the future?  Or is this just an unintentional literary fluke by Sanderson?  I'm curious what phrases were used in the translated versions.

It's probably from Yolen, which is the Earth stand-in for the Cosmere. Earth is not a planet inside the Cosmere.

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1 hour ago, kaevne said:

So in RoW, there was an point where Mraize was talking to Shallan/Veil and he used the phrase "prime the pump."  This is an interesting idiom because it originates from recent English history, 18th century England for use in fluid dynamics and 19th century United States for use in Economics which popularized general use colloquailly.

Between this, and the Dog & Dragon story told by Wit, where a traditional barn with a silo was mentioned, I'm wondering if these are these purposeful Earth references by Worldhoppers?  Could it be that Hoid, Mraize, and other Worldhoppers originated from a version of Earth and the Cosmere stories are set in the future?  Or is this just an unintentional literary fluke by Sanderson?  I'm curious what phrases were used in the translated versions.

Hoid is from Yolen, which was at least partly Earthlike, as Ati and Leras copied extensively when creating Scadrial.

Mraize’s reference likely comes from Scadrial, the most Earth-analogue type planet. Scadrial is around mid/late 1800s right now. At least the North is.

Edited by Kingsdaughter613
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33 minutes ago, kaevne said:

So in RoW, there was an point where Mraize was talking to Shallan/Veil and he used the phrase "prime the pump."  This is an interesting idiom because it originates from recent English history, 18th century England for use in fluid dynamics and 19th century United States for use in Economics which popularized general use colloquailly.

Between this, and the Dog & Dragon story told by Wit, where a traditional barn with a silo was mentioned, I'm wondering if these are these purposeful Earth references by Worldhoppers?  Could it be that Hoid, Mraize, and other Worldhoppers originated from a version of Earth and the Cosmere stories are set in the future?  Or is this just an unintentional literary fluke by Sanderson?  I'm curious what phrases were used in the translated versions.

So, there's a few parts to this.

First - Earth is not part of the Cosmere; that's in fact one of the ways to differentiate a Cosmere story from one of Brandon's non-Cosmere works. If Earth is mentioned in any way, shape, or form, the story isn't part of the Cosmere. (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/what-is-the-cosmere/) So Mraize mentioning priming a pump, or Hoid mentioning dogs, is not an indication that Earth is in the cosmere.There are no Earth references by worldhoppers, because Earth is not a planet in the Cosmere.

However, there ARE other planets in the Cosmere that are more Earth-like than Roshar. Hoid constantly tells Kaladin stories and then complains that Kal can't understand what they're about, because Roshar is wet and full of crabs instead of "normal" Cosmere animals, which are more Earth-like. There's an example from way earlier, too:

Hoid: "A bunny rabbit and a chick went frolicking in the grass together on a sunny day."

Kal: "A what and a what? A chick... is that a baby chicken?"

Hoid: "Let me make it more appropriate for you then. A piece of wet slime and a disgusting crab-thing with seventeen legs slunk along together on an insufferably rainy day..."

Among other planets in the Cosmere, Scadrial before the Lord Ruler

Spoiler

or after the end of Era 1

should be assumed to be very Earth-like. Nalthis also seems fairly earthy in its ecology. So sometimes, references to non-Rosharan flora, fauna, or expressions does mean that the speaker is foreign. (Also see: Zahel and Azure using color-based idioms all the time, or anyone who refers to "soil" which on Roshar is only in Shinovar.)

But, the last bit is - in terms of expressions, the language of the point of view character is always written in text as "normal English", including expressions and idioms. There's a bit the Mistborn annotations where Brandon talks about this. There's something that is described as a "homicidal hat-trick", and he went back and forth on using that expression - because "a hat-trick" meaning "three successes" comes from a particular modern sport that doesn't exist in Mistborn. He eventually decided that using expressions was fine - treat the text as having been translated from its original language to English, expressions and all. But, at the end of the day, lots of words in English have etymologies, and it would be far too annoying to write or read a text where all words or phrases that don't have a plausible etymology in the local language are eliminated.

An example of that is the word "dozens", used in the Stormlight Archive. On Roshar, twelve isn't actually a special number - they would refer to groups of ten instead. In fact, in Sanderson's original version of Way of Kings from 2002 ("Way of Kings Prime"), he ran with this and never used the word "dozen", referring to "tensets" of soldiers instead of "dozens" of soldiers, stuff like that. He didn't keep that up for the Stormlight Archive that was eventually published, though - it was just too much messing with the language for too little payoff. The current Stormlight Archive uses the words "dozen" and "dozens" like an English speaker would - even though on Roshar, they wouldn't actually have a special word for twelve of something.

So sometimes, using a word or phrase with a modern etymology just means that Sanderson is writing to in English to an English audience, and nothing more.

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Very good observations and commentary. These usually don’t stick out to me while reading, but this one rubbed the wrong way (pun intended):

Quote

She swore she’d touched his cheek right after he’d shaved, and still found it ragged like sandpaper.

It interrupted my reading to think- did they have sandpaper on Roshar in this period? Navani requisitioned a file later in the book, so maybe they had other woodworking tools? That Brandon footnote helped clear this up for me. 

Also, was Kelek eating an apple on the first day of Adolin’s trial? That also seemed rather earth-y to me. 

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3 minutes ago, Gingeriffic! said:

Very good observations and commentary. These usually don’t stick out to me while reading, but this one rubbed the wrong way (pun intended):

It interrupted my reading to think- did they have sandpaper on Roshar in this period? Navani requisitioned a file later in the book, so maybe they had other woodworking tools? That Brandon footnote helped clear this up for me. 

Also, was Kelek eating an apple on the first day of Adolin’s trial? That also seemed rather earth-y to me. 

He probably got it from one of the off-world traders.

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