#the welsh word Cwm is pronounced Koom

[psychuan]

y'know having read them multiple times i don't understand why people say that Night Watch is the darkest City Watch book when Thud! is right there.

like, Night Watch is pretty grim when you focus on the inevitability of it, but throughout the book the whole like... THING of it is "being told something is inevitable, and fighting it anyway." it's a story about hope and inspiring it in others even when you're not sure you're going to make it through either way. right up until the final melee with Carcer, Vimes does what he can to forestall the inevitable, and for most of the book, he *wins.*

Thud! on the other hand is about fighting against the weight of deep ancient grudges, and the outcome of it SEEMS inevitable. Koom Valley Will Happen Again, and throughout the book there seems no way to stop it. the resolution comes right at the very end, although the book 100% earns the reveal. but it's one man and a small team fighting against bigotry and hatred and figureheads stoking war.

that's not even TOUCHING on the actual Events in the book, which include a hit squad armed with flamethrowers very nearly torching Sam Vimes' infant son to fucking death. then there's the whole thing with the Summoning Dark which keeps trying to push Vimes' rage to the point of murder, there's the part where it *succeeds* and drives him into an unstoppable berserker rage, there's people dying slowly in dark tunnels, and the Vurms which feasting on putrefied corpses.

it's also the first time we've seen Vimes in an actual Murderous rage. every time beforehand he's been angry but it's been "oh i'm gonna arrest the SHIT out of you. i might put the boot in for good measure but you're coming with ME, sunshine." but no, this time he's literally chasing down a hitman screaming "i'll kill you" over and over again.

Thud! is a properly dark book. and yet despite it's unrelenting horribleness... Love Still Wins. Love for your fellow "man." Love wins in all Pterry's books, you can tell, it shines off the page when you read them just how much that man loved humanity, warts 'n' all, but in this one it feels like it's the most optimistic ending. it's the one that goes "in spite of it all, the bigots and warmongers and the narrow minded Will Lose, because there are always people willing to go to the ends of the earth for Love, Love of one another."

i think that's why it's my favourite book in the series.

[tommy-doubterson]

hey. What the hell.

Just for that, here's a few more.

Small is bigger than big. Tall is shorter than short. You get "on" a horse but "in" a car. "No yeah" is yes, "yeah yeah" is no, "yeah no" is no, and "no no" is yes. There is no plural for the word "you". "Queue" is 80% silent letters. You say "unbelievable" but "intolerable".

Don't fucking test me.

The English language is a mess. Here's a list of some more oddities I just looked up.

“Rhythms” is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.

Excluding derivatives, there are only two words in English that end -shion and (though many words end in this sound). These are cushion and fashion.

“THEREIN” is a seven-letter word that contains thirteen words spelled using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein.

There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: queueing.

Soupspoons is the longest word that consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet.

“Almost” is the longest commonly used word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

The longest uncommon word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops (a grass genus).

The longest common single-word palindromes are deified, racecar, repaper, reviver, and rotator.

“One thousand” contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.

“The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.

Cwm (pronounced “koom”, defined as a steep-walled hollow on a hillside) is a rare case of a word used in English in which w is the nucleus vowel, as is crwth (pronounced “krooth”, a type of stringed instrument). Despite their origins in Welsh, they are accepted English words.

“Asthma” and “isthmi” are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.

The nine-word sequence I, in, sin, sing, sting, string, staring, starting (or starling), startling can be formed by successively adding one letter to the previous word.

“Underground” and “underfund” are the only words in the English language that begin and end with the letters “und.”

“Stewardesses” is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.

Antidisestablishmentarianism listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question ‘What is the longest English word?’.

“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.

There are many words that feature all five regular vowels in alphabetical order, the commonest being abstemious, adventitious, facetious.

The superlatively long word honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels.

“Fickleheaded” and “fiddledeedee” are the longest words consisting only of letters in the first half of the alphabet.

The two longest words with only one of the six vowels including y are the 15-letter defenselessness and respectlessness.

“Forty” is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. “One” is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.

Bookkeeper is the only word that has three consecutive doubled letters.

Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English does not have three common words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are the only ones.

“Ough” can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.

Source

I hope you like being outsmarted, English Oddities Anon.

[theartguy]

Pratchett, you genius...

I just learned that the Welsh word for valley, cwm, is pronounced “coom.”

Which means that in Sir Terry Pratchett’s book Thud, where Koom Valley is an important plot point, they’re actually calling it “Valley Valley.”

This amuses me.