Thanks for sharing the writeup! It might help you to think of 'll' as 'lh' (some older texts used to spell it like that) and I like that appraoch better than 'you'll be spitting a lot' because if you do, UR doin it wrong.
The real fun happens when the Welsh-speaking brain encounters Spanish texts. It was... rather embarassing.
I do understand why people are so fond of writing magic with strict rule systems. I'm trying to draw heavily upon, as it happens, the kind of magic you find in the Mabinogion for my archaeology-in-Faerie novel, and half the time I'm flying blind. I have no idea what magicians can do - what can a not-very-proficient magician achieve? A very good one? What's the balance of your natural power, your natural ability to do things with it, and how much can one learn? How reliable is magic?
I'm operating in a system where there are few rules and nobody knows them for certain; something can be true one day and false the next; and different people can encounter different realities. Even without magical ability, you can make things happen; magical ability can be gifted (and probably taken away, too?), and...
Well, it's messy. It's mysterious. Writers and readers have to follow the characters and throw ourselves into the maelstrom of the unknown, and as a writer I am often battling with the lament that what I have makes no sense.
Writing with rules intact would be much, much easier; and I have no idea whether this will work for readers and whether I'll be able to preserve the sense of mystery that stories like the Mabinogion have... and which enthrall so many readers.
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Date: 2010-03-03 10:53 am (UTC)The real fun happens when the Welsh-speaking brain encounters Spanish texts. It was... rather embarassing.
I do understand why people are so fond of writing magic with strict rule systems. I'm trying to draw heavily upon, as it happens, the kind of magic you find in the Mabinogion for my archaeology-in-Faerie novel, and half the time I'm flying blind. I have no idea what magicians can do - what can a not-very-proficient magician achieve? A very good one? What's the balance of your natural power, your natural ability to do things with it, and how much can one learn? How reliable is magic?
I'm operating in a system where there are few rules and nobody knows them for certain; something can be true one day and false the next; and different people can encounter different realities. Even without magical ability, you can make things happen; magical ability can be gifted (and probably taken away, too?), and...
Well, it's messy. It's mysterious. Writers and readers have to follow the characters and throw ourselves into the maelstrom of the unknown, and as a writer I am often battling with the lament that what I have makes no sense.
Writing with rules intact would be much, much easier; and I have no idea whether this will work for readers and whether I'll be able to preserve the sense of mystery that stories like the Mabinogion have... and which enthrall so many readers.