#just read white teeth and zadie smith is also a master of this though. and it's SO SO satisfying | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

quatregats · 4 months ago

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Also sorry I'm thinking about all the linguistic details that POB managed to cram into this book. Specifically the way the coffee house is called Joselito's (Spanish diminuitive for José 'Joseph') but Stephen, when speaking in Catalan, refers to the waiter as "Jep" (Catalan diminuitive for Josep 'Joseph'), and also that he uses "the Catalan of the island" which I'm not sure if POB uses that phrase intentionally but I'm guessing he does - Stephen is not from the Balearic Islands, and would certainly not speak Balearic Catalan as his native dialect, so while in English the line seems to convey that he's at home (he's speaking his native language - and this is true), the fact that even in his native language he's still chameleoning into another dialect feels very interesting, IDK

#guy who simply cannot be at home anywhere!!!!!#i think that catalan is the closest he has to a native language but even that's tenuous #AND while i have opinions on the dialects i think he prefers i don't think he has one which feels 'native' bc he was passed around so much #idk. stephen maturin homeless wanderer at the start of these books many thoughts #perce rambles #aubreyad #The Creative Endeavor and other aubreyad nonsense #also i COMPLETELY lost the original train of this post which is that i appreciate what a master of switching between registers #pob is. he's one of the few native-english-speaker writers who i've read really do it well #just read white teeth and zadie smith is also a master of this though. and it's SO SO satisfying

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