Holdovers from the past in weapons or fighting

[captaintwinings]

I'm working on a Batman story involving Cassandra Cain. For anyone not aware of her, she was trained to be a fighter (or more accurately, an assassin) by reading body language as if it were an actual language, but in order to do this, her father kept her from learning to speak or read. She later (magically) learned to speak English, but had

Comments

[mimerki]

The most obvious answer to me is that English spelling is like kata: The forms have been codified so that they may not precisely mimic what you would really do in a situation (or to sound out a word) but they provide a useful guideline. Depending on who is offering the explanation, they could even suggest that there is meaning to be found in the spelling like there is meaning to be found in kata. (Which there is: You can learn a lot about the history of a word by its spelling.)

[captaintwinings]

That's very true. I love tracing a word back as far as I can take it.

[littlebus]

The "silent E" doesn't sit there just taking up space, it has a job. Consider the words "cap" and "cape" - the E on the ends adds information on how the A should be said.

Instead of a fighting comparison, you could use a body language comparison - the raising of eyebrows helps indicate a statement is really a question, or somesuch.

[landrews]

Hee. Not really helpful, I guess, but there is the fighting reference in the old kid's rule of 'the silent e at the end of the word hits/bonks the vowel on the head and makes it say its name, as in cape, above, with a 'long a' sound, or receive, with the 'long e' or cope, with the 'long o'. I agree that tai chi might help as an explanation :-)

[littlebus]

When I worked as a reading tutor we taught "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" meaning if you see two vowels (either a dipthong or a silent E) then the first vowel says its "name".

So in "cape" the A says "ay" instead of "cap" where the A says "ah".

Using this same example: "cape" could also be spelled "caep" with the A and E together as a proper dithong. The vowel sound is the same, it just looks a bit funny to our modern eyes. Blame Noah Webster.

[landrews]

Yes! They still use that one today, too, but literally in the program we used, always with two vowels side by side :-) I never knew the rules as a child, but my kids and husband have reading disabilities so we did a lot of Lindamood-Bell and that's when I learned the rules. My youngest couldn't *see* vowels, so she couldn't sound words out and she couldn't read a lick, but when she flipped through a non-illustrated story in testing, she answered over half the comprehension questions correctly. Somewhere in there, her brain was registering it. She didn't read until 9, and not well until 10. She's 12 now and reading Nancy Drew and the like but I don't think she'll ever enjoy reading. Way to go off-topic, huh? LOLOL

[singthemuse]

I agree with mimerki!
To take it a step further, not all fighting styles are used 100% of the time for just fighting. I don't know that much about it honestly, but Taichi might be a good place to start. Taichi is still taught as a martial art but you can also find it in places like nursing homes and hospitals being used as stretching exercises to heal everything from high blood pressure to Alzheimers. Its also a very beautiful style so sometimes people want to learn it just for the aesthetic value--kind of like a dance. So a person might learn it as a martial art, or for health reasons or just because they think its pretty. However its all still (basically) the same movements, they just are used for different purposes. I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful. I hope I was at least able to maybe get some ideas flowing. ^^

[captaintwinings]

That is a really interesting thing to think about. I don't know if this character would give much thought to the non-combat aspects, but I'll definitely keep it in mind. Thanks!

[typewriterking]

The one vestigial organ on a modern weapon I know of would be the bayonet. The ubiquity of magazine or belt-fed self-reloading or automatic weapons means few occasions for ever seeing a bayonet charge, and the submachine gun cleans up practically all close-quarter engagements.

While still issuing bayonets, the U.S. Army has moved away from training for charges, due to their rarity, and the Israelis don't issue bayonets on their rifles at all, instead adding bottle-openers, though they do have the requisite lug for fitting one.

[captaintwinings]

I had considered bayonets, but Batman and his proteges are strongly anti-gun, so even though Cassandra might be aware of such a thing, it's not likely any of the others would bring it up.

[madder_rose]

Seconding littlebus's suggestion.

Cassandra, for lack of a better analogy, uses/used signs communicate. While forms or katas work in a way, the facial expressions and other body movements used in sign language and sign communication are better examples of a silent E. (Or K or any other silent letter)

An emphasis on the mouth movement, eyebrows, tilting of a head, shrug of a shoulder all add something to indicate meaning, tense and question/answer to sign language.