A question of Spelling....

[Liondancer]

Just drropping in before I head of with Lestat and get my nightly dose of bad boy charms. I actually got to sit down and write today...it will not last long for I am back at college by September 6th. I have a question about spelling...and wasn't sure where I should place it, so I thought I would address the folks here.

I am writing a fantasy, that is mostly for young teens that will probably take me years to write...after all I write most of my sentences backwards and cannot spell to save my neck. With writing fantasy...and the creation of worlds...we run into spelling issues. Often we end up making up our own words....and often I have to run the computer parrot over it a few times just to hear how it sounds so I can say it! Huge grins. With this book I have created a world with old magical beings that people know about in the real world, but decided to use my own thoughts on how they should be. Like trolls for example...very smart, know a lot about herbal medication...with hair that covers 90% of their faces. Now that I have reached chapter two...I am in the undersea world of the merpeople. I have made up all kinds of crazy ideas...but one thing still gets me...how do you spell Merpeople? My word program goes ape with it's red lines for it refuses to see it as a word. How would you write it?

Merpeople or Mer-people? Is there such a word?

I thought I would ask.....

well I am off to bed, where Lestat waits and hopefully my headache dims.

Take care

Liondancer

[Gary Wassner]

The question to ask yourself Lion is what do you intend to convey by the name? What derivation do you attribute to it? Are they sea people? Are you interested in using a Latin root? Once you figure that out, then you can determine how you want to spell it. Etymological information is helpful to me when I write so that I don't confuse my intended meaning with historical usage. Below are english, french, old german, latin etc derivations of the word mere. I hope they are helpful.

mere (adj.)
c.1400, "unmixed," from O.Fr. mier "pure, entire," from L. merus "unmixed, pure, bare," used of wine, probably originally "clear, bright," from PIE *mer- "to gleam, glimmer, sparkle" (cf. O.E. amerian "to purify," O.Ir. emer "not clear," Skt. maricih "ray, beam," Gk. marmarein "to gleam, glimmer"). Original sense of "nothing less than, absolute" (1536, now only in vestiges such as mere folly) existed for centuries alongside opposite sense of "nothing more than" (1581, e.g. a mere dream).
mere (n.)
O.E. mere "sea, lake, pool, pond," from P.Gmc. *mari (cf. O.N. marr, O.S. meri "sea," Du. meer "lake," O.H.G. mari, Ger. Meer "sea," Goth. marei "sea," mari-saiws "lake"), from PIE *mori-/*mari "sea" (cf. L. mare, O.C.S. morje, Rus. more, Lith. mares, O.Ir. muir, Welsh mor "sea," Gaulish Are-morici "people living near the sea").

[Liondancer]

I am getting visions from the movie The Wizard of Oz, the scarecrow skipping down the yellow brick road singing, “If I only had a brain.” This tends to happen a lot for I am always a few steps behind everyone else. In school, I was taken out of French class, placed in a special program to help me with math, and my English skills got pushed to the back burner. I barely scraped by with a B- last term with College English. Frankly, I think my teacher grew tired of me and passed me to dispel the chances of seeing me again. I stumble over pronunciations of the simplest of words, and have a difficult time reading aloud. In polite society, I have learnt to remain a mystery to save myself the embarrassment of being unable speak appropriately.

To answer your question, is that I am not brilliant as J.R.R. Tolkien. I cannot create a different language. I am not smart enough to understand all the Latin roots in the English language, for I can barely speak it. I discovered it was easier for me to learn sign language then it is to say the world millennium. I feel sorry for the foreigners that come to our country and try to learn our language. The English language has bits and pieces from all different languages. No, wonder that it is so difficult to learn. What I want from Merpeople is to convey a simple word for a society of Mermen and Mermaids. After all, this book will be for older children, young adults and adults who are youthful at heart. I want a simple word that is as morally correct as I can get it. A word that is understood, and not stumbled over. In this story, wars are fought with poison darts or spitballs, where evil is brought down by sharing, kindness and love. Where nature is a blessing, and power and greed is not. Simple morals in a very simple empire, after all the book reflects the author.

As for your dialects and derivations, I sit here in awe. Wishing my IQ were higher then a ninety-five. Although, you have brought up an idea that will not red line me, and I kick myself for not seeing it before now.

Thanks so much for helping dispel that dreaded red line.

Lion

[Leiali]

I am getting visions from the movie The Wizard of Oz, the scarecrow skipping down the yellow brick road singing, “If I only had a brain.” This tends to happen a lot for I am always a few steps behind everyone else. In school, I was taken out of French class, placed in a special program to help me with math, and my English skills got pushed to the back burner. I barely scraped by with a B- last term with College English. Frankly, I think my teacher grew tired of me and passed me to dispel the chances of seeing me again. I stumble over pronunciations of the simplest of words, and have a difficult time reading aloud. In polite society, I have learnt to remain a mystery to save myself the embarrassment of being unable speak appropriately.

To answer your question, is that I am not brilliant as J.R.R. Tolkien. I cannot create a different language. I am not smart enough to understand all the Latin roots in the English language, for I can barely speak it. I discovered it was easier for me to learn sign language then it is to say the world millennium. I feel sorry for the foreigners that come to our country and try to learn our language. The English language has bits and pieces from all different languages. No, wonder that it is so difficult to learn. What I want from Merpeople is to convey a simple word for a society of Mermen and Mermaids. After all, this book will be for older children, young adults and adults who are youthful at heart. I want a simple word that is as morally correct as I can get it. A word that is understood, and not stumbled over. In this story, wars are fought with poison darts or spitballs, where evil is brought down by sharing, kindness and love. Where nature is a blessing, and power and greed is not. Simple morals in a very simple empire, after all the book reflects the author.

As for your dialects and derivations, I sit here in awe. Wishing my IQ were higher then a ninety-five. Although, you have brought up an idea that will not red line me, and I kick myself for not seeing it before now.

Thanks so much for helping dispel that dreaded red line.

Lion

I wonder if you have considered exploring the possibility that you might have some form of dyslexia? If you have trouble reading out loud and pronouncing words, that would be my first thought. Living with dyslexia can be very frustrating as I understand from friends with various forms of it, but it certainly does not mean you aren't intelligent, just that your brain is wired a little differently!

[Liondancer]

Known issues that I have are ADHD, PTSD, DD (Dissociation Disorder) and yes, I think I have dyslexia, it just has not been acknowledged by the experts yet. In the early seventy’s I was diagnosed as being retarded, which is clearly not so. Psycho-educational Consultant made a new assment in 2002 so I could attend the ABE (adult basic education) Program at college. Her discoveries were an extremely high percentage in verbal abstraction, and visual/social awareness. I proved to be average in vocabulary, general knowledge, comprehension, visual/motor co-ordination, visual abstract reasoning, spatial visualization, verbal comprehension, perceptual organization and over all IQ. The borderline is, working memory and attention, and visual processing speed. Now for low average and extremely low, there are numerical concepts/complex concentration, non-verbal abstract reasoning, working memory and processing speed. My working memory is put down as one percent and my processing speed at fourteen percent. There is a lot going on in my brain besides dyslexia. The tests I underwent clearly show that I did not fry my brains on drugs, but I was seriously impacted by severe child abuse. The consultant told me that I might have brain damage, and may never be able to improve my memory. I am also told that the test for dyslexia costs about two thousand dollars; I still have yet to look into this. In the mean time, I struggle through college’s Visual Arts Program. In some cases, my disabilities allow me to take exams in a quite room away from everyone else. I am allowed extra time for essays, and class projects, but I have never asked for this. I am also allowed to bring a recorder to class to record lectures, although I found this to be embarrassing in pressing the wrong button. Disabilities services also provided me with software to help my writing. The program is called Texthelp. This program is for people with dyslexia, and it has improved my writing greatly. It is also responsible for rather nasty headaches! My dream is to be a writer, and that is proving to be the most difficult path of all. Between my scrambled thoughts, the difficulty in sitting still, haunting past and being pushed into a realm of forgetting, it is not easy for me to get coherent thoughts down on paper. It is very frustrating.

Well I have to run, doctors appointment today.

Take care

Liondancer

[Kleronomas]

You're an inspiration Liondancer, keep on keeping on.

[Leiali]

Known issues that I have are ADHD, PTSD, DD (Dissociation Disorder) and yes, I think I have dyslexia, it just has not been acknowledged by the experts yet. In the early seventy’s I was diagnosed as being retarded, which is clearly not so. Psycho-educational Consultant made a new assment in 2002 so I could attend the ABE (adult basic education) Program at college. Her discoveries were an extremely high percentage in verbal abstraction, and visual/social awareness. I proved to be average in vocabulary, general knowledge, comprehension, visual/motor co-ordination, visual abstract reasoning, spatial visualization, verbal comprehension, perceptual organization and over all IQ. The borderline is, working memory and attention, and visual processing speed. Now for low average and extremely low, there are numerical concepts/complex concentration, non-verbal abstract reasoning, working memory and processing speed. My working memory is put down as one percent and my processing speed at fourteen percent. There is a lot going on in my brain besides dyslexia. The tests I underwent clearly show that I did not fry my brains on drugs, but I was seriously impacted by severe child abuse. The consultant told me that I might have brain damage, and may never be able to improve my memory. I am also told that the test for dyslexia costs about two thousand dollars; I still have yet to look into this. In the mean time, I struggle through college’s Visual Arts Program. In some cases, my disabilities allow me to take exams in a quite room away from everyone else. I am allowed extra time for essays, and class projects, but I have never asked for this. I am also allowed to bring a recorder to class to record lectures, although I found this to be embarrassing in pressing the wrong button. Disabilities services also provided me with software to help my writing. The program is called Texthelp. This program is for people with dyslexia, and it has improved my writing greatly. It is also responsible for rather nasty headaches! My dream is to be a writer, and that is proving to be the most difficult path of all. Between my scrambled thoughts, the difficulty in sitting still, haunting past and being pushed into a realm of forgetting, it is not easy for me to get coherent thoughts down on paper. It is very frustrating.

Well I have to run, doctors appointment today.

Take care

Liondancer

I'm glad to hear you have had an in depth investigation into any potential learning difficulties, it sounds as though where you live might be a lot better equipped than the UK to diagnose and aid such issues. I work in a field where I come into contact with quite a few people who have had difficult childhoods, were abused or have not had an average start in life and it is people like you who make me proud to work as I do, your tenacity and positive approach are an inspiration. And I imagine writing a book from your own unique perspective will be an intriguing read!

I accidentally missed the bit about £2000 for a dyslexia test - how expensive is that?! There might be some charities that test for it at a reduced rate.I know there is an excellent one locally, and if you are in a city it is worth investigating the possible existence of any similar organisations.

[Liondancer]

I am sorry for taking so long to answer this reply, for I get lost at college and tend to forget to come up for air. The investigation into my learning disabilities in away will always be on going, full of questions and what if’s. Way back in the 70’s the experts crossed me off and signed papers that I was retarded. There has been a lot of research done over the years, and a lot of progress has been made, and now there is help for a lot of children that were like me. It is great to see this progress and take apart in it’s changes. I still go up against the school boards, and take a stand against children not getting the education they deserve.
As for me, I am my own worst enemy, and worst critic there is. I lack a positive mind and yes do suffer from a low sense of self worth. Yet, there is that fighting spirit inside me that never truly goes away. It’s that spirit that tells me to get up and fight for those goals I have set for myself. When those goals are met, the pride of accomplishment is felt and the realization that those so called experts have no idea what they are talking about. My writing grows stronger the older I get, and with the help of computers it helps me play in fields that were otherwise closed to me. Writing has always been the voice I was never been permitted to be heard. I think it is my blind ignorance that keeps me going. As silly as it sounds, for some reason it makes total sense to me. I master each goal by diving in first. I don’t read the instructions to anything, and so I am totally unprepared for just about everything. If I sat back and read how difficult it was going to be a published writer, I would begin building my cement walls and be unable to climb over it. I have noticed over the last few years a big change in myself. For my self esteem are growing stronger and my positive mind. I guess that is because I survived a week in New York. Before then I have never taken a taxi, rode on a bus or been on my own. I learnt very quickly that if you don’t run after things, life really speeds on by without you. What really put me to shame was an elderly lady outside the MOMA attacking a cab driver. So much courage that lady had, and there I was a coward, afraid to open my mouth and yell for a cab.
As for the price for an dyslexia test …it is about the price of a computer. I am still not sure what that is in England, because my British relatives are unable to teach me how to understand it. One of my aunts told me some kind of story about stones, and my wild imagination took me down a road with a lady throwing stones across a lake. Somehow I don’t think that was what she was trying to explain. One day perhaps… I might look further into having this test done. For the time being I am enjoying being ignorantly blind.