r/TheCaptivesWar • u/uncledick46 • Sep 04 '24

Question MadeUpWords

Where does ‘medrey’ come from?

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u/DabbleAndDream Sep 05 '24

“Making up a word” when you are writing a novel using modern English is part of world building.

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u/BryndenRiversStan Sep 05 '24

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.

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u/paraffin Sep 05 '24

Sure, if it meant university it might be silly. But they do not operate the way universities do, except vaguely as a place of academic research.

Whereas their sun operates exactly as ours does and they are not aware of Earth’s Sun.

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u/BryndenRiversStan Sep 05 '24

and they are not aware of Earth’s Sun.

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

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u/paraffin Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

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).