The Shard of Canticle

[Meganagem]

Guys, why do the Canticlites always say things such as "If it please you" 

My impression was that they may be.... influencee somewhat by Whimsy. "If you please" feels like it matters what pleased the person. Even the most reasonable requests they make come with, "If it suits you" prefaces. 

 

The only connection I could make was "if it suits your whim" 

 

 

 

Did that cross anyone else's mind? 

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

1 hour ago, Meganagem said:

Guys, why do the Canticlites always say things such as "If it please you" 

My impression was that they may be.... influencee somewhat by Whimsy. "If you please" feels like it matters what pleased the person. Even the most reasonable requests they make come with, "If it suits you" prefaces. 

 

The only connection I could make was "if it suits your whim" 

 

 

 

Did that cross anyone else's mind? 

I'm 99% certain that Canticle was made by Invention. A WOB described how Canticle is a Megasturcture with a 'Powerful Being' going around making multiple. He mentioned what I can only assume is a future story title, The Grand Apparatus.

WOB in question

Spoiler

msyverw

So, what's up with Canticle? You've got the sunlight, it appears to be Invested and then the planet's core is trying to suck it up. And you know, where does it go after it does that, and...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, Canticle was built for a very specific purpose by a very powerful being in the Cosmere, that I will someday get to. You're going to see some more stuff like this. Basically, megastructures that imitate planets or other sort of heavenly bodies.

msyverw

So it's not like some avatar of Autonomy or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not an avatar of anything, it was built for a specific purpose, yes.

Just wait til I get to the Grand Apparatus, you're gonna love that. What was that voice that talked about a future Cosmere planet? Hmm!

If it somehow isn't Invention doing this, I'll cook and eat my book collection.

[Treamayne]

6 hours ago, Meganagem said:

Guys, why do the Canticlites always say things such as "If it please you" 

Keep in mind that the names (and likely society) was at least partly inspired by Puritan societies. WoB:

Spoiler

Angemon175

When Adonalsium Will Remember Our Plight Eventually came on page did anyone else immediately think of Good Omens and Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery Pulsifer?? That was my first thought and couldn't stop laughing, I hope it's an homage

Brandon Sanderson

It kind of is, kind of isn't. I first became aware of this quirk of puritan societies because of Pratchett, but it was Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets that did it, actually.

Truth is, these kind of names were very rare (and kind of odd) in actual puritan societies, but they're just too deliciously interesting to not riff off of. Single word puritan names, like Faith or Justice, were far more common. (Including Silence, which I used after I actually encountered it doing genealogy of puritan Americans.)

General Reddit 2023 (Oct. 1, 2023)

So, it is likely just a cultural quirk to aid in Worldbuilding. Note that Sanderson did something similar in Elantris (spoilers):

Spoiler

Annotations to Elantris Ch 4:

Quote

When I was coming up with Galladon’s character, I realized I would need a set of linguistic features that would reinforce his culture’s relaxed nature. So, I went with smooth-sounds, and gave their dialect a very ‘chatty’ feel. The Dula habit of calling everyone ‘friend’ came from this–as did their habit of softening everything they say with a question tag. Linguistically, questions are less antagonistic than statements, and I figured a culture like the Dula one would be all about not antagonizing people.

A number of languages in our own world make frequent use of similar tags. Korean, the foreign language I’m most familiar with, has a language construction like this. Closer to home, people often make fun of the Canadian propensity for adding a similar tag to their own statements. I hear that Spanish often uses these tags. In many of these languages, a large percentage of statements made will actually end in a softening interrogative tag.

Anyway, enough linguistics. I’m probably using the standard ‘literary’ posture of falling back on facts and explanations to make myself sound more authoritative. Either way, I liked having Galladon say ‘Kolo’ a lot. In the original draft, the tags were added onto the ends of sentences, much like we might ask ‘eh?’ or ‘understand?’ in English. “It’s hot today, kolo?”

Moshe, however, found the excessive use of Kolo confusing–especially in connection with Sule. He thought that people might get the two words confused, since they’re used similarly in the sentences. Simply put, he found the kolos distracting, and started to cut them right and left. I, in turn, fought to keep in as many as I could. It actually grew rather amusing–in each successive draft, he’d try to cut more and more, and I’d try to keep ahold of as many as possible.

(I was half tempted to throw a ‘kolo’ into the draft of MISTBORN, just to amuse him.)

 

"If it please you" type constuctions are also a relatively common cultural language quirks in many real life societies, and similar to the above reference is generally used for honorary or submissive reasons - such as Korean where the "ra" command form is only used for children and animals (and deliberate insults) - but talking to a superior or somebody older that you, the conjugation {shimnida) is closer to "I hope you want to [do this thing]."

[teknopathetic he/him]

I think Canticle was made by Ambition.

An acolyte of Ambition brought the people from Threnody there. The planet has unexplained large mounds the move within the planet similar to how large mounds of the evil are described. The planet is specifically designed to prevent shades from overrunning the place. The planet seems like it is storing power for something big. 

To me, this is some sort of resurrection machine for Ambition. But I guess we will see. 

Edited July 26, 2024 by teknopathetic