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Swearing in Roshar


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On my last read-through WoR I tried to catch the Heralds' names.  Not all are in swears.  I've tried to leave off the ones already mentioned in the thread. 

Battah (Navani discussing Jasnah's disappearance pg 221)

Vedel (Taln's monologue, pg 401)

Chana (Kaladin thinking about Navani, pg 886)

Chanaranach (stormseat temple pg 941)

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On 'drynets' - the only thing I came up with was potentially, as singular 'drynet,' a slang word for a

condom

, as a way of, ahem, keeping things dry. ahem.

 

[hope that isn't too much for the moderators...]

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This is not an in-world swear, but Adolin did say that he has "shat" in Shardblade, showing that Rosharans may use other variants of our s**t.

(I starred it to get around the filter, if the mods want me to remove that I will. :) )

 

Of course even if the word exists on Roshar it isn't necessarily a swearword, that's an interesting point. Different cultures assign different values to their words after all - for example the Japanese word for [the word we're talking about] is equivalent to the English use of "damnation" - a very minor swearword. Perhaps on Roshar it's simply a word used to describe a substance/action and so no one would use it as a curse.

 

I definitely noticed a weird fixation on Kelek's oropharynx. Kelek's breath is used 4 times, and one strange instance of Kelek's tongue. What in the world did Kelek eat that made his breath and tongue into a curse? 

 

Clearly Kalak is a former God King from Nalthis.

Edited by Wrath
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Of course even if the word exists on Roshar it isn't necessarily a swearword, that's an interesting point. Different cultures assign different values to their words after all - for example the Japanese word for [the word we're talking about] is equivalent to the English use of "damnation" - a very minor swearword. Perhaps on Roshar it's simply a word used to describe a substance/action and so no one would use it as a curse.

 

 

Clearly Kalak is a former God King from Nalthis.

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/7183-theory-heralds-are-expatriate-nalthis-returned-warbreaker-wor-spoilers/

Maybe that's what happened to all the past God Kings! They discovered time travel and went to Roshar!

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On my last read-through WoR I tried to catch the Heralds' names.  Not all are in swears.  I've tried to leave off the ones already mentioned in the thread. 

Battah (Navani discussing Jasnah's disappearance pg 221)

Vedel (Taln's monologue, pg 401)

Chana (Kaladin thinking about Navani, pg 886)

Chanaranach (stormseat temple pg 941)

I'm fairly certain Chana and Chanaranach are the same person, in the same manner as Vedel/ Vedeledev.

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New addition: "What in Damnation's eleventh name?" (Sebarial)  Ten is holy, of course, but I hadn't remembered this hint about eleven being unholy.

(I suspect this is purely a cultural extrapolation from the base-10 starting point. However, it is possible that Odium/Braize do in fact have an association with 11. We have WoB that the number of Unmade is fixed but not ten. I had kind of guessed that there were fewer than ten, but it could just as easily be more.)

 

Re: "bastard", I am not including it for now. This is primarily because it is used more as an insult than a curse, similar to "crem-covered" or "stormleavings". Those would probably be worth gathering, but I'm worried about organizing them meaningfully without blowing up the list. If you think I should include them, though, make your case and I'll consider it. 

 

I'm fairly certain Chana and Chanaranach are the same person, in the same manner as Vedel/ Vedeledev.

Yes, Aoibheann was just listing multiple instances and specifying which name form was used.

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  • 3 months later...

On 'drynets' - the only thing I came up with was potentially, as singular 'drynet,' a slang word for a

condom

, as a way of, ahem, keeping things dry. ahem.

 

[hope that isn't too much for the moderators...]

Except roshar is a pre- to early- industrial society with no means of producing rubber (unless some greatshell secretes it or something).

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Except roshar is a pre- to early- industrial society with no means of producing rubber (unless some greatshell secretes it or something).

 

Well, you know, "drynets" existed way before the rubber industry... Parts of animals (such as intestine or bladder :huh: ) or oiled linen :o were then used... Contraception as a whole is nothing new under the sky, it has been around since at least the 15th century...

 

There is a whole section on the history of such devices on Wikipedia. Really interesting :ph34r:

 

Considering the low birth rate among the upper (and lower, after all Kal had only one sibbling) classes of Roshar, I suspect the use of such devices was indeed spread around. I wonder, as a whole, what is the take of Vorinisn on birth control...

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...
1 hour ago, Nymeros said:

Boy is storms a silly curse word and used so much! 

Like how some people use our curses so much? Also, how is it silly? It makes perfect sense in-world; you have these giant storms that come along constantly, the whole world is shaped around them, it makes so much sense that people would start using them as a curse. Even looking at the word itself, it has that sharp, hard T sound so you’ve got something to spit out in anger. It’s a good piece of worldbuilding. 

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It's very odd reading the books and seeing the word "storm," with its standardized meaning, used as an expletive. Like, your tone of voice determines whether use of the word is vulgar and with no alternatives other than "damnation" and evoking your religion? We have more variety and a larger selection of words to use.

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1 hour ago, Nymeros said:

Like, your tone of voice determines whether use of the word is vulgar ...

Forgive me if I'm missing the mark here, but is that not how most cursing works, with the context explaining the use?

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35 minutes ago, EBR said:

Forgive me if I'm missing the mark here, but is that not how most cursing works, with the context explaining the use?

Not in my neck of the woods.

This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rulesk

 

Theyre all vulgar no matter the context. I'm sure if I typed out the words for example that my post would be edited or deleted.:)

 

Edit: I see my post was instantly reported. Removing even the asterisks!

Edited by Nymeros
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12 hours ago, Nymeros said:

and with no alternatives other than "damnation" and evoking your religion? We have more variety and a larger selection of words to use.

There are a ton of curses, including many variants of ‘storms’ and ones with religious basis. Just like here on Earth. Besides, we’ve only seen three books so far. For not having traveled much of the world in depth, we’ve learned many curses already. 

11 hours ago, Nymeros said:

Not in my neck of the woods.

Theyre all vulgar no matter the context. I'm sure if I typed out the words for example that my post would be edited or deleted.:)

You’ve never met anyone who insists some aren’t vulgar before? The level of vulgarity can differ in different cultures and contexts, insults especially. Context almost always matters in language. 

There’s a filter, most would be turned into cosmere curses. 

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