And while we’re on the subject of writing in other cultures….

Dear Interwebs (and dear writers/editors/journalists),

If you’re going to be using or quoting French words, would you please try to get the accents right? It may not seem like much to you, but witness:

-”côte”=slope; “coté“=side
-”mat”=matte, Fool trump in tarot; “mât”=mast
-”pâte”=dough, “pâté“=spreadable paste made with meat, “pate”= a word that doesn’t exist in the dictionary (though “patte” does)

I can deal with no accents whatsoever, since I’ll assume they’ve all been stripped. But please pretty please with cherries on top, don’t just randomly add them and hope it looks good. It doesn’t. It just looks weird, unpronouncable, and written by someone who had no blasted idea of what accents were for.

And if you’re going to be making up French first names, could you please check the time period when your story is supposed to be taking place?

You might not know it, but before 1993, the civil servants at the town hall (where you go to register a birth), could reject anything that wasn’t on a pre-approved list (it’s here in French, if you’re interested. A shorter version in English is up on Wikipedia). The list was calendar saints, mythology (Greek/Roman), some foreign names (very limited, since the ones listed are James, Ivan or Nadine), some substantives, and acceptable variations on spelling of an authorised name (Marianne for Marie-Anne, Mathieu for Matthieu, Michèle/Michelle). And you actually had to justify why you weren’t giving a proper French name (as in, a calendar saint).

And before 1966, anything that wasn’t a calendar saint had very, very low chances of going through.

So, if you’re going to be creative with first names, please don’t set your story in 1945.

Arg. Getting to work today: 2h30 minutes in a packed bus (vs. 45 minutes usually).
Yes, it snowed. Loads and loads of snow, to be precise, and it’s not a good idea to have hills between you and your destination in that sort of case, especially when the cities are taken by surprise and don’t put salt on their roads to remove said snow.
Also, the suburban trains were on strike, just for the heck of it.

(getting back from work: 1h00, thanks to a colleague’s car and half an hour crammed into a train that was literally packed to the rafters. The mood has been better.)

/snark on

So, for his birthday, I gave the BF a shiny present: the gold edition of Age of Empires III by Ensemble Studios. It included this nifty-looking set of extension called “The War Chiefs”, and “The Asian Dynasties”, which add Native American and Asian civilisations to the game, respectively. Now, the basic principle of AoE III is that each civilisation has a home town, and a great leader: the French have Napoleon, the Ottomans have Suleiman the Magnificent…

And the Aztecs? Well, you can almost imagine the conversation that went on between the developers at Ensemble:

“Ok, we need a war leader for the Aztecs. Someone great, who changed the face of their Empire” *looking over the list of Aztec Emperors* “Darn it, everyone has names of four syllables or more. No gamer is going to have the patience to memorise those.” *looks over the list again* “How about Tizoc?”
“Er, didn’t he only reign five years?”
*dismissive hand* “I’m sure he was cut down in the prime of his glory. Like Alexander the Great. Nah, he should do fine.”

At least, that’s the only reasonable explanation of how we end up with the worst Aztec Emperor in history, the only one who lost his coronation war, barely conquered anything worth mentioning, and died in murky circumstances barely five years after ascending the throne. (poisoning by his own generals or priests was suspected)

*goes bang head against wall*

(not that the Chinese fare any better, since they’re attributed the Kangxi Emperor, who was a Manchu, not a Chinese–but at least you can make a case for his greatness. Tizoc is just… ugh)

/snark over

EDIT: ok, I stand corrected. The game effects a random choice of leader, and does so among a predefined database that includes Tizoc, Cuauhtemoc and Tenoch. It was sheer bad luck that we got Tizoc twice in a row..