Miko and the Bears, by Sophonisba [folklore challenge]
-title- Miko to Kuma to Sennin (Miko and the Bears)
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Reasonably gen. Not perhaps suitable for very young readers.
-spoilers- "Before I Sleep"; "The Tao of Rodney"
-disclaimer- Not mine in any way, shape, or form.
-word count- 4792
-summary- The memorable vacation Miko had at Lake Louise.
( sennin, n. Quasi-immortal magical being, usually living on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, to avoid stupid people. )
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Reasonably gen. Not perhaps suitable for very young readers.
-spoilers- "Before I Sleep"; "The Tao of Rodney"
-disclaimer- Not mine in any way, shape, or form.
-word count- 4792
-summary- The memorable vacation Miko had at Lake Louise.
( sennin, n. Quasi-immortal magical being, usually living on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, to avoid stupid people. )
Oh dear, that's "Stay on the path" isn't it? Clear to those who have the cultural background, but oblique to those who don't. I wish people would remember more often that language is for communication, not obfuscation. Or as my retired military father says: "If it can be misunderstood, it will be."
I read once that there was a sign in Switzerland that said in English "Please don't pick the flowers", in German "It is forbidden to pick the flowers", and in French "Those who love the mountains will leave them their flowers".
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What's really annoying is when you have a group of people who have two different opinions of when "next Thursday" is.
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This is a lovely story. Miko is a sadly neglected character, both in fanfic and on the show. I especially like the bits about confusion in translations, as well, and the very realistic examples of family dynamic. I've always been grateful to be the eldest child in mine!
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Thank you for your commentary!
//I especially like the bits about confusion in translations, as well, and the very realistic examples of family dynamic.//
Translations and difficulties thereof are some of my favorite things -- one of the aspects of this idea that I couldn't figure out a way to show in English is that Rodney's speaking polite and feminine Japanese, which is inherently funny -- and I realized later that I glarked a fair amount of the way Miko's family worked from The Middle Moffat. (I'm an eldest child myself.)
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I had a Japanese roommate my second year of college - she often said that one of the things that made English so hard was that there was no feminine or masculine to the language.
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(They were always right next to each other on the library shelves when I was growing up.)
No feminine or masculine, no verb variations based on politeness, and no declension of nouns (which Japanese sort of has in a half-assed way). And no conjugation of verbs by person except when it does, which has to be more confusing than set different forms for each. Also non-homophonic homographs with dissimilar meanings, weird spellings, and consonants two and three deep. (What's that poem that goes on and on about the difficulties of English and finishes something like "Man alive/I spoke it well when I was five!"?)
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Not only on the library shelf together when I was growing up, but I shelved them on a pretty regular basis when I worked in the same library in high school!
Recently I had to visit three different local library branches to find any Walter Farley books (The Black Stallion series) for the little girls who are my new neighbors. I was stunned - those books are classics! How could they not have even just oneMy first 'foreign' language was Latin. I still remember coming home to show the textbook to my parents and exclaiming about how beautifully organized the language was. Years later I received an impassioned lecture from a friend about the differences between textbook French, France French, and Canadian French. And after three years of high school German I went on a trip to Germany and could hardly understand a word anyone said ( ... )
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It's a Symptom, that's what it is. I couldn't find copies of Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario or The Worms of Kukumlima in the Indianapolis libraries, either. Heck, I was looking for The Tin Woodman of Oz at Borders the other day and found that they had: The Wizard and; The Wizard; and, eventually when I broke down and asked a clerk, a two-volume omnibus edition of Baum's Oz books in Adult Literature.
Bzzt? Doesn't anyone read the good old stuff any more?
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I think there are very few people who even know that Baum wrote more than just one Oz book. The books are certainly difficult to find. I ended up buying my own copy of The Perilous Gard after seeing several copies removed from circulation in the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library system. Noel Streatfield's Shoes books can be remarkably hard to find, too. How can a library not have a copy of Ballet Shoes, at the very least?
Actually, what bothered me most at these libraries was not so much the lack of certain classic kids books, as the amount of empty space on the shelves.
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Ooh, I love that book. Especially the ending...
//Noel Streatfield's Shoes books can be remarkably hard to find, too.//
I found out recently (via Wikipedia) that most of them were retitled "____ Shoes" for America to try to build product identification with Ballet Shoes, despite the fact that only a few of them have anything to do even with Madame Fidolia.
(The one of hers that I really wish I could find [and keep not] is The Magic Summer.)
//Actually, what bothered me most at these libraries was not so much the lack of certain classic kids books, as the amount of empty space on the shelves.//
Yes, I know. I understand weeding-for-space, but weeding for the sake of weeding always seems a little impolite to me, as you never know when someone might come in looking for something.
(Although there might be empty-space-because-so-much-is-checked-out, which would be a Good Thing.)
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