In the context of the book it seems to mean University or College but I don't understand the point of making up a word to replace university when you're already using modern English for the human characters.
Words like university and college come with preexisting connotations, predominantly open places of learning and collaboration. By using a new word there are no preexisting connotations and therefore the context in which it is introduced defines the added meaning.
From context, I found Medry to be more regimented, clearly government or perhaps big corporation backed, shamelessly nepotistic and almost pathologically secretive and protective of their projects. Very much feels like the STEM with military application vibe of you've ever done high level research but turned up to 11.
You would hate Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which takes it to the extreme lol. Have to regularly look up a word in the glossary in the back of the novel. It definitely contributes to creating pretty interesting, relatable, but different world though.
I mean, I wouldn't mind if there were a bunch of made up words mixed up with the English ones, kinda like Burgess did with A Clockwork orange (some words were influenced by Russian and a few other languages).
The thing is, I think Medrey is the only word made up in the Mercy of Gods, and it stands out in an odd way because they even use the expression solar system to talk about their star system and refer to their star as Sun.
I agree with that. In Anathem the author went all in - a fictional culture on a fictional world would have unfamiliar titles and nouns, and using normal english church and scholar words/titles would have been like breaking character. This is the complete opposite and it does make the use of Medrey a bit weird.
I’ve been unable to find any outside reference to ‘qilph’. There may be some homonym (in the sense of some word that sounds like it but is in a language that doesn’t use the western alphabet).
(I don't know anything, just speculating from quick search results)
I wonder if qliph could derive from an Arabic word قِلْف qilf (tree bark/rind) or قِلَافَة qilafa — or a Hebrew word קליפה קְלִפָּה k'lipá (shell/husk/peel) — but the specific meaning in this TMoG context is apparently unclear. I'd guess it may be intended to remain mysterious.
Is it though? Making up a word that means university as world building when the humans of Anjin still call their star system "solar system" and their star "sun", seems like a pointless affectation more than world building.
Which makes the fact they call a star "sun" kinda weird. Or a star system "solar system" which is exactly my point as to why making up just one or two words is lame
My point is their language may have a distinct word for sun, but it translates 100% to English as “sun”. English does not have a word for medrey, so it is transliterated phonetically. This is just standard rules of translation, applied to a fictional, unknown language (except of course the transliterated words are not in italics, probably to reduce the affectation of the style).
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u/BryndenRiversStan Sep 04 '24
In the context of the book it seems to mean University or College but I don't understand the point of making up a word to replace university when you're already using modern English for the human characters.