Dragaera

Athyra (no Chapter 9+ spoilers) and Dragon

Tue Jun 3 03:40:42 PDT 2003

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Philip Hart wrote:
>
>This was discussed recently.  The lawerly answer: Vlad doesn't consider
>himself to have been in the army in a formal sense (he didn't have a rank
>I think, he didn't formally enlist, he didn't really follow a command
>structure) or in any sense that would correspond to what Savn means by
>being in the army.  Or he doesn't want to encourage Savn by making it
>seem a romantic or badass thing to do.  - I suspect Vlad smiles
>[bottom of page 90 in the original edition] because of an internal
>conversation along the lines of:
>	"Check it out, Loioish, this poor Teckla kid thinks it would be
>fun to sign up to be fed to Blackwand."
>	"Gee boss, waste of a teckla."
>
>The authoritative (literally) answer: Vlad doesn't feel like getting into
>a long discussion about his history with a Dragraeran/Teckla/child.
>Perhaps SKZB would say Vlad smiles because he finds himself lying,
>which is against his code, or perhaps because he was about to not lie,
>which is against his better judgement.

Sincerelly, I prefer the first one. I think he explains many things to Savn 
but does not care to stop explanations when he wants.

> > Finally, in page 95 Savn asks himself "Why aren't I afraid?"  Excuse me
> > for my poor english but I do not remember reading this grammatic
> > construction before: what's its purpose? there is any kind of enphasis
> > or stress which I do not catch? Thanks.
>
>I was going to say "because someone evil slipped you an altered version of
>the text" but there on page 106 of my edition is the clunker you quote.
>You are technically correct, but plenty of educated English speakers say
>this.  "Am I not?" is a common construction, but English wants to contract
>it to "amn't", which isn't English (in America or Britain anyway), or
>"aint", which is a notorious word considered an indicator of low
>socio-economic status.  "Aren't" doesn't make sense but is "colloquially
>acceptable and indeed almost universal" (Fowler's Modern English Usage,
>2nd Ed., under "Be 7").  I would speculate that Savn's usage of this form
>shows that he is educated enough to avoid "aint" but not sophisticated
>enough to shudder at "aren't", as Vlad would.  I personally would write
>(and for that matter say) "I wonder why I'm not afraid".

There is anything to say but THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your answer.

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