More randomness

[lirion]

You know you've been reading too much fantasy when you can't sleep for dreaming of demons. They weren't nightmares exactly, more like actiona dventure storeis involving people I know some of who'm were demons or half demons and we were tracking them down or something. I kept waking up. And then, oddly for me, falling back into the same dream. Or

Comments

[paradigmshifty]

You don't need to work at being too hot dear :-)

[thorfinn]

Empathy and Sympathy are Abstract Nouns tagging the concept.

Empathetic and Sympathetic are the respectively derived Adjectives.

A person can "have" empathy/sympathy, but "is" empathetic/sympathetic.

:-) And I'd say sympath is a valid noun - it's someone that has sympathy.

[lirion]

So where does empathic come from then? vs empathetic?

That's what I'm really wanting to know, why empathic and not sympathic?
Probably wasn't clear. Is it empathetic or empathic? Are both equally valid?

Empathetic sounds wrong to me, but that may well be due to always having heard empathic. Because sympathic also sounds wrong. And yet theya re both I the same 'style' as it were.

It's not so much figuring what sort of word as which is correct. So maybe linguisitic nerd rather than grammar?

I have a feeling that as a word sympath does not yet exist though, whereas empath does (even if again, it largely features in fantasy novels :))

[paradigmshifty]

According to dictionary.com they're synonyms.

[thorfinn]

Sympath and Empath are Concrete Nouns in their own right, and sympathic and empathic are the... *ponder* Hrm. I think they're adverbs, maybe? Whatever they are, they are derived from the concrete nouns, as opposed to coming from Sympathy/Empathy, I think.

And yes, sympath isn't particularly used - I think mainly because "empath" has been loaded with an extra jargon meaning, as you say, for fantasy novels. :-)

[penguin2]

I'm a purist, like wot the Shadowy One do be :D

I'm not going to start on those fuckwitted Wal-Martianed ovine spelling-retarded microcephaloid disembowellers of my beloved language...300 million of the slack-jawed cud-chewing motherfeckers, most of them (unjustifiably) internet-enabled, and they're likely to bury traditional English through sheer weight of numbers - all because a major fruitcake called Noah Webster decided to spread his fruitcakery far and wide. I mean, sheesh, GBS tried the same thing in his day, and we told him to go bite his own tonker.

Um, yes, I'm rather passionate about this :P

As for the titles, in this case they're obviously both wordplay - for Where Eagles Dare and The Outlaw Josey Wales (the latter being one of my favest fillums of like foreverty).

[lirion]

*grin* It's fine I understand the passion. I keep coming across instances of words ending in our vs or and staring at the screen having to tell myself that no, it's not me that can't spell correctly.

Re the titles, while I don't recognise the titles themselves, being wordplay doesn't surpise me, the previous two were "A fistful of Charms" and "A Few Demons More".

However, those two titles I've mentioned are the same damn book! Why does it need two titles?

[penguin2]

Take pity upon poor brain-burnt me, then - I have to proofread for a certain author's USA editions. It burns, preciousss!

Why does it need two titles?

According to my sources in the upper reaches of the international publishing industry an' a' tha', it's because the decision-makers at the Merkin end of the chain are convinced that their readers want 1) uncomplicated titles, with a humour level (where relevant) approximating the funniness (yeah right) of slipping-on-a-banana-peel slapstick, and 2) a title that references Merkin cultural thingummies. This flies in the face of popular opinion, but popular opinion doesn't make those decisions :-S

[lirion]

Ah, thankyou, I was wondering where I'd initially had this conversation. I knew someone had drawm my attention to the existance of the word emapthetic. I like your pathetic comment :)
It's cropped up more and more since then and i've snapped at at least one person for vebally using it in conversation with me.

I recall having a chat with someone about how America started using 'or' instead of 'our' for words such as honour, colour etc but the details currently escape me. Ther was some emthod to that madness I believe.

[mireille21]

Different editions of things happens for lots of reasons, so there is no one answer. Often different editions are produced just for cultural reasons - eg. IIRC Neverwhere has the "underground" in the original UK edition whereas "subway" in the US. Lots of other subtleties too, but at least the title was kept the same.

Title changes can be cultural too; eg. Philosopher's Stone vs Sorcerer's Stone for Harry Potter. It can be for marketing reasons, such as if the original didn't do so well and they don't *want* it to be able to be recognised as the same book. Or sometimes it is to distinguish it, a book by that name may already exist in one country and therefore they don't want another going into the same market and confusion ensuing. Sometimes it's because of a film tie-in, and the film title becomes much more recognisable than the original (and don't get me started on the novelisation of Minority Report now marketed under the same name as the original set of short stories, *sigh*. And the list goes on... creating confusion and

Titles

[shizzukana]

You are lucky, english native speakers from whatever country you may be, to have book´s titles that do make any sense or sound as if they did at all. The translations of some english titles into german are awful, especially when it comes to fantasy.
And speaking of brain candy and sympath: Do you know J.R.Ward? To her a sympath is kind of a vampire which doesn´t only feed on blood but also on the moods and memorys of his victims. Pretty much like a demon, isn´t it?