Shards of Honor - readthrough!

[flourish]

To kick off our Vorkosiverse reread: Shards of Honor! I've just got some quick thoughts, and look forward to hearing all of yours too:

• Cordelia discusses herself as being somewhat socially awkward or incapable when she talks about the bad relationship she was in pre-Aral, but she doesn't actually end up being that way in the series later. Is this just self-doubt? Or could it be that Cordelia is "out of step" with Beta colony and for some reason has assumptions about the way people interact that's more suited to life on Barrayar (or, even, not on Barrayar either, but at least on Barrayar she knows her assumptions are likely to be wrong)?
• I've recently seen some people complaining about the question of "blood guilt" that gets brought up with the fetuses in replicators, suggesting that Bujold has some kind of anti-abortion axe to grind. Rereading it this time, I wonder if it isn't perfectly reasonable: on Beta colony there are not typically any unwanted pregnancies, nor would I imagine are they very common on Escobar. The idea that Betan culture - how does Cordelia put it? "has a respect for life"? - has a very different tenor than it does in the United States today, then, or on Barrayar for that matter. I don't have any opinion on the topic that I care to share, but it was interesting to me to meditate on how it affects our understanding of Cordelia...
• It's also interesting that Cordelia explicitly positions herself as a theist. I like that Bujold does not just allow the assumption that everyone is a theist, or everyone is an atheist, or whatever.
• It just occurred to me: Konstantine Bothari - he's Greek! And so is Elena, then. Somehow it did not occur to me that 'Konstantine' established him as part of the Greek minority on Barrayar.
• Rereading Shards of Honor reminded me of Xav Vorbarra's Betan wife. To refresh: Xav is the younger son of Dorca the Just, half-brother to Mad Emperor Yuri. He ended up living through the end of the Time of Isolation (or at least Dorca's reign overlapped the Time of Isolation's end, so I assume Xav lived through it) and ended up bringing home a Betan wife from his ambassadorship to Beta colony. I don't know if we know her name, but his daughter Olivia married Piotr and therefore was Aral's mother; another daughter was Padma Vorpatril's mother. Can we say wonderful fanfiction topic? I would love to dig my teeth into writing about the experience of a Betan going to just-post-Time of Isolation Barrayar! Holy jeez, talk about culture shock.

What are you all thinking about?

Remember: the next book in our readthrough is Barrayar, and we'll be discussing it on June 1!

Comments

[twistedchick]

The language differences might remain, despite cultural similarities, because of landscape. People in the mountains or in other geographically-separated areas, or those who don't get down to cities often, may be more likely to retain the language they grew up speaking. It's also possible that the common culture includes terminology in both languages, so that some people end up speaking a combined version that becomes Barrayaran, as opposed to the earlier separate languages.

(disclaimer: not a linguist.)

[bibliofilen]

Sweden ruled over Finland for 500+ years and the Finnish language still survived. I guess the same could be said for the Norman ruling class in Britain where the court spoke French and the people English. I think it is mostly about what language is used in what setting and how common it is that people switch back and forth between these settings.

[teluekh.livejournal.com]

Barrayar reminds me a bit of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as portrayed in /A Sailor of Austria/, except -less- linguistically messed up. Before World War II displaced a lot of people into ethnic nation-states, language enclaves were much more common. Many still exist.

Switzerland might be a good general comparison for Barrayar. Multilingual, high local autonomy. Districts are more comparable to cantons or even separate countries than U.S. states.

The Nexus isn't all that far future...somewhere in the vague vicinity of 1000 years?

[bibliofilen]

Yes, well. If Chaucer (some 700 years ago) is more or less easily read by a modern speaker of English what do you make of The Battle of Maldon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maldon#Other_sources

[bibliofilen]

Or the Charter of Cnut would be even more fitting - just a bit less than 1000 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_language#Charter_of_Cnut

[teluekh.livejournal.com]

But the difference there is more due to invasion by the Normans than natural drift...

[bibliofilen]

I'm not that certain. You see the same with Old Norse as compared with modern Scandinavian languages. As you can see most of the words still exist in some way in modern English so it isn't just a shift of vocabulary and nor is modern English more Latin in its grammar.

I am so sorry but I have to go to sleep now (it's 2.16 in the morning here). I'd love to continue this discussion in the morning however.

[aedifica]

But for an example on the other side, I'm told modern speakers of Icelandic can still read the Eddas in the original, because the language has changed so little!

[bibliofilen]

They still translate them to modern Icelandic. Besides there is a lot of difference between the different Eddas as well as the different parts of them. Since they were written from the thirteenth century forward they are also arguably more like Chaucer than Beowulf.

I also think that the Eddas play a very big part in Icelandic national identity. Considering this and the tiny population it might well be a big reason for the slower language shift. Compare this to Barrayar where most of the national identity seems to come from stories and historical happenings during the time of isolation (and later the Cetagandan war) and we don't hear anything of the times before they arrived on Barrayar.