kicking_k

kicking_k wrote on December 11, 2007 at 9:00 PM:

I liked many things about this, but I agree about the feeling of artifice. (I know I'm commenting vastly after the fact here. Sorry. I've been wanting to get this off my chest ever since I read the book.)

One thing that particularly bothered me was the feeling that for most of the book, Polly and the other Regimentals aren't speaking the common tongue of Ankh-Morkpork, but Borogravian. They're mostly poor country people without much education. Yet when gurl zrrg Ivzrf - jub trgf uvf bar nggrzcg ng Obebtenivna jebat naq pnyyf uvzfrys n pureel cnapnxr - they have no trouble communicating.

In Jingo there was some commenta about Morporkian being a lingua franca among Klatchians speaking mutually unintelligible dialects, but there wasn't any of that here, and somehow all the Pollys and Pauls and Johnnys seemed out of place in a country which seems to have the same relation to Uberwald as, say, Bosnia has to Russia. I got the feeling they only had English names so Pratchett could make references to soldiers' songs, none of which really resonated as part of Disc culture rather than British...

And it lifted me out of the book somewhat.

Kate

Kate wrote on December 15, 2007 at 10:32 AM:

That's a really good comment and one that completely escaped me at the time. Thanks for pointing it out.

Outside of a Dog: Pratchett, Terry: (31) Monstrous Regiment

kicking_k

Kate