myriadleaves

Quick blog post here, thought it would be worth mentioning No-Sword's excellent post on H. G. Wells' haunting and sonorous opening of War of the Worlds. Mimesis is essentially a case of where words or an expression's pronunciation matches the meaning, i.e. "vast"

In Elden Ring, one of the bosses that you can encounter is a ogreish warrior known as Margit the Fell Omen, which in Japanese corresponds to: 忌み鬼マルギット (Imi Oni Marugitto, "Shunned Oni Margit"). Oni here doesn't literally refer to the mythical creature itself, but

In Modern Japanese there are two 3rd person pronouns that correspond to the Western mode of masculine and feminine ones, namely: 彼 (kare, “he”) and 彼女 (kanojo, “she”). For “it” there is もの (者・物, mono), using two distinct kanji, the former for persons

SPOILERS ARE APLENTY We shall be looking into perhaps one of the most enigmatic characters of Elden Ring. Before proceeding know that this article delves into possibly one of the most impressive secrets of the game. Popular Youtuber and expert on Elden Ring information

Whilst preparing for an upcoming article about the Japanese version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of he Ancient Marine, I encountered the Japanese name for the albatross within the text. 信天翁 Literally "believe heaven venerable-oldster", which frankly does sound like a respectable name for

SPOILERS ARE AHEAD! Yura in Elden Ring takes the role of a wizened veteran hunter of “bloody fingers”, i.e. people having gone deranged with bloodlust, thus he effeche ctively is a bounty-hunter of sorts – he is also along with a few other characters,

Heed the Spoiler Warning! Boc is the demi-human (read: goblin) seamer and manservant of the player, should they chose to save him during the game. He speaks like the greater half of the game’s cast in a Cornish English accent, and moreover he

HEED THE SPOILER WARNING! In Japanese fantasy oriented games and literature, we encounter from time to time anthropomorphic dragons. These are in part derived from much older Asian mythology, particularly that of the legendary dragon gods and kings of the ancient East, such as

SPOILERS ARE WITHIN THE POST In Elden Ring, during the last stages of Bernahl, a knight clad in ferocious armour and member of a secret order of assassins of the clandestine Volcano Manor, makes a solemn pledge against the omniscient presence known as the

~kudasai is no doubt a word that you have heard before if you have ever partaken of any Japanese media, where it is typically translated in dubs or subtitles as "please (would you this favour for me)", but Japanese has more expressions and words

SPOILERS MAY OCCUR FOR ELDEN RING. In Elden Ring there is a race of amphibian like humanoids along with slightly more elfin ones much further off, apparently an older variety of them, whose name in the English translation is albanaurics. Later on in the

Knowing the difference between the two phonetic syllabaries of Japanese can be vital, when very much reading any mode or level of Japanese text. On a surface level they are distinct, one is "squiggly" (ひらがな), and the other is more angular (カタカナ), both of

Hello! Things have been going rather slowly if surely if terms of the progress of researching for various articles, mainly the ones concerning the speech patterns of various character arch-types in fiction. On the personal side of things that has been quite a few

From Software has a tradition of putting especial significance in their world building when it comes to structuring their role playing games, moreover, the latest instalment, Elden Ring only proves this. SPOILERS ARE BELOW, DO NOT PROCEED WITH READING IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED

Capcom's fighting game X-Men vs Street Fighter was nothing less, but a cultural phenomenon in the arcade halls of both Japan and in the West, in the year of 1996 (and later home-releases in 1997 - 1998). Taking the cast of one of the

One of my many interests when it comes to linguistics and especially also literature is that of personal names, when writing a story or a piece of media, the author(s) will some times create names that either are puns, homages or otherwise have

In the seminal novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the titular character of Jay Gatsby is a showman and playboy whose ostentatious lifestyle draws the attention of the protagonist and narrator of the story, a young journalist called Nick Carraway, whose enquiries

Greetings! Once more a quick update on how things are going and to keep you knowing what I have been up to. First and foremost, I am working on a rather massive comparison on how some 140 ninja speak from across all manner of

The year is drawing to a close and I thought I would include one last short translation comparison to round off the old year and herald the new year. What more fitting to do that than taking a look at two instrumental phrases from

We begin this year's Christmas themed posts with a look at one of Hans Christian Andersen's few yuletide fairy tales, aside from Den lille pige med svovlstikker ("the little match-stick girl"), wherein a sentient fir-tree experiences the existential crisis and threat over first waxing

A lot has happened since I last published my larger-than-usual translation comparison of the SoulsBorne series, in regards to the archaic language in those games. Namely, one of my older articles got linked by the excellent blog Mad SNK Project, whose work I have