Steedholder InStead

saber964 wrote:
You still can in several states. IIRC several states have tracts of unowned land that is not owned by either or state the federal government. The state's are AK WY MT ND SD ID CO AZ NM UT and NV.

There is pretty good reasons why much of that land is still available as it is desert or dry grasslands too far from water to farm. The amount of time and resources that would be required to improve the enough to qualify for homesteading is more then most are will to invest.

I humbly apologize. I should have stated what I meant more clearly...

The inflective pronunciation of Steadholder - * with the pitch of the voice of Stead on a decline - is less of a resoundingly "powerful" personage than Steedholder - with the pitch of the voice of Steed resonating on an incline. "Steedholder" Harrington sounds much more powerful and becoming of a Grayson addressing a Steadholder. Or an armsmen announcing "Steedholder Harrington's" arrival. The pronunciation of Steedholder can hold its own against many of the powerfully sounding words of that awful German language. Although Fox2!'s occasional elision to Stadtholter is much better - considering the German influence. As in "Führer," with the aggressive biting of the lip to pronounce.

It is a close kin to what I've stated in another post long ago but not forgotten. My most favorite one-liner of all Honorverse fame...

"We meet again, Admiral Tourville," she said, and her soprano voice was cold.

Auditorily, only "Admiral" would have the same impact in this most powerfully penned Honorverse one-liner that gives me **goosies. "Captain" Tourville would pale by comparison as much as Tourville pales by comparison to the Salamander.

I was never questioning which is correct.

Though the discussion is very interesting.

*Notwithstanding a more formal explanation.
**goosies: goose bumps.

.

Rincewind wrote:So basically you are describing Honor Alexander-Harrington as a horse holder?

Only if she and I were to have breakfast the morning after.

cthia wrote:I humbly apologize. I should have stated what I meant more clearly...

The inflective pronunciation of Steadholder - * with the pitch of the voice of Stead on a decline - is less of a resoundingly "powerful" personage than Steedholder - with the pitch of the voice of Steed resonating on an incline. "Steedholder" Harrington sounds much more powerful and becoming of a Grayson addressing a Steadholder. Or an armsmen announcing "Steedholder Harrington's" arrival. The pronunciation of Steedholder can hold its own against many of the powerfully sounding words of that awful German language. Although Fox2!'s occasional elision to Stadtholter is much better - considering the German influence. As in "Führer," with the aggressive biting of the lip to pronounce.

I have no idea what you mean by this, can you explain using standard linguistic notation or at least attempt to type it out phonetically?

It sounds like you are confusing vowel values with the impact of rising or falling inflexion of the voice. These two things are not the same but just accent based conventions of normal english it is quite possible to change the stress and pitch of delivery without changing the vowel values. If I understand what you are saying "exterminate" would normally be falling but when said by an excited Dalek it shows it can be a rising pitch.

pnakasone wrote:

saber964 wrote:
You still can in several states. IIRC several states have tracts of unowned land that is not owned by either or state the federal government. The state's are AK WY MT ND SD ID CO AZ NM UT and NV.

There is pretty good reasons why much of that land is still available as it is desert or dry grasslands too far from water to farm. The amount of time and resources that would be required to improve the enough to qualify for homesteading is more then most are will to invest.

Actually it is mostly mountainous areas in most states. A noteworthy percentage are actually lapsed mining claims. IIRC there is one town in Colorado that because of more accurate mapping is not actually part of the United States. In all the overlapping territorial claim and land grants like the Louisiana Purchase Texas Territory Claim and Mexican Territory . This town and about twenty-five square mile area doesn't technically belong to the U.S.

cthia wrote:
Looking up the etymology of steadholder I find...

A stadtholder, literally place holder (in modern Dutch "stad" means "city", but the older meaning of "stad" - also "stede" - was "place", and it is a cognate of English "stead", as "in stead of"), was a term for a "steward" or "lieutenant".

The meaning of 'Stadtholder' as 'placeholder' evolvedq from an early medieval meaning of 'place-owner' or 'land owner'.

In this context, 'stadt-' or 'stede' shares a root meaning with Dutch 'staan' (English 'stand'), as in 'the place where he stands'.

But that is besides the point. Leaving aside the issue of linguistic evolution and whether the lingua franca of the Honorverse can still be called English or not, we simply cannot predict how any given word will be pronounced two thousand years from now. Even today, I can offer at least half a dozen pronunciations for any common-usage word in the English language - and I've only lived in a paltry three English-speaking societies on a single small planet.

Nico wrote:

cthia wrote:
Looking up the etymology of steadholder I find...

A stadtholder, literally place holder (in modern Dutch "stad" means "city", but the older meaning of "stad" - also "stede" - was "place", and it is a cognate of English "stead", as "in stead of"), was a term for a "steward" or "lieutenant".

The meaning of 'Stadtholder' as 'placeholder' evolvedq from an early medieval meaning of 'place-owner' or 'land owner'.

In this context, 'stadt-' or 'stede' shares a root meaning with Dutch 'staan' (English 'stand'), as in 'the place where he stands'.

But that is besides the point. Leaving aside the issue of linguistic evolution and whether the lingua franca of the Honorverse can still be called English or not, we simply cannot predict how any given word will be pronounced two thousand years from now. Even today, I can offer at least half a dozen pronunciations for any common-usage word in the English language - and I've only lived in a paltry three English-speaking societies on a single small planet.

like the slang among the English speaking countries. I remember when I was in the USN we had a RAN exchange officer aboard and sometimes his orders were answered by a questioning look and Sir could you repeat that.

Oh, absolutely! Now throw into the mix of first language English speakers L2 and L3 speakers as well, especially in countries where multiple indigenous languages are spoken by the majority of the people.

Here in South Africa English has become the de facto working language of business and government, as the only practical way to handle such things in a country where up to five or six languages may be commonly spoken alongside each other in any given region. The challenge is that each ethnic group seems to have their own spoken version of L2 or L3 English, which is quite frequently very different from not only the standard South African English but also from each other - sometimes to the point of mutual incomprehensibility. It's an absolute nightmare in some cases, such as the military or police or emergency services. The standard SA English is pretty much universally understood, but non-English speakers often have trouble making themselves understood when, for instance, the police responding to a crime scene in a township happen to belong to a different ethnic group.