• TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    if you read don quixote in two days you’re a definitely a retard.

    like going to France and ordering McDonalds.

    fucking Americans.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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      21 minutes ago

      Technically, if you do that you’ll be doing the same as a lot of locals. People love their “Mac Do” (for some reason).

      Immerse yourself in the local culture (and have a beer at the local Mc D, assuming that’s still a thing, I’m not really sure).

  • Boozilla@sh.itjust.works
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    19 hours ago

    Feel this in my bones. I enjoy reading books, but they go down the memory hole fast for me, especially names.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      if you are like Anon it’s because you read too fast. slow the fuck down and maybe you’d remember relevant details.

    • Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I have a strong case of the "My eyes were moving correctly but i was thinking about lunch for the last 3 paragraphs"es

    • TipRing@lemmy.world
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      10 minutes ago

      I never made this connection but now I imagine this as Holden being self-aware / self-critical.

    • sanzky@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I love that the guys say something like “it means war horse”. Rocinante is a word play with “Rocin antes”. Rocin being an old weak horse unfit for serious work and. ‘antes’ is the spanish word for ‘before’.

        • rabidhamster@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 minutes ago

          From the book:

          Holden punched the comm system on the wall. “Well, crew, welcome aboard the gas freighter Rocinante.”

          “What does that name even mean?” Naomi said after he let go of the comm button.

          “It means we need to go find some windmills,” Holden said over his shoulder as he headed to the lift.

          James Holden is a very Don Quixote-like character. Try harder.

    • tetris11@feddit.uk
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      6 hours ago

      I only know it because it’s the name of my best friends horse. He played the violin at our wedding

    • TheDarkestShark@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      One of my favorite fan theories is that the authors did not name the ship after the horse from don quixote directly. There is a Rush song called Cygnus X-1 that’s basically a space opera and the ship in that song is called the Rocinate, and one of the authors of The Expanse is a huge rush fan. So in my mind that is where the ships name comes from.

      • Dultas@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Wasn’t the expanse loosely based on a play by post RPG game the author was running? Maybe the name came from that? Isn’t that also why Shed was killed off, the player couldn’t play anymore.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    For me, the problem with “Rocinante” is I don’t know how to pronounce it. So, while reading, I’d skip past it, recognizing that it’s the horse, but not parsing it as a word.

    If asked that question, I’d need to explain that, but I’d stumble over the word.

    If a book has too many oddly (to me) spelled names, I’ll skip it for this reason. Apostrophes in the middle and no vowels, and I’m not going to read your book.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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      16 minutes ago

      For me, the problem with “Rocinante” is I don’t know how to pronounce it.

      If you’re using a European language, you’re pronouncing it correctly, or close enough.

      If your only contact with English is the written word, I guess it depends on what languages you’re familiar with. If you’re using AI / translation software, just ask it to read it to you. Maybe it’ll get it right. Or not. Who can tell with those things.

    • whatstatersprecious@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Spanish is incredibly easy to pronounce though? There are only a couple things different than English and none of those differences are relevant for Rocinante. It’s also consistent in pronunciation, unlike English.

        • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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          19 hours ago

          So you are saying it’s raa - thin - an - teh??

          That’s wild… I’m convinced you are not pronouncing ‘ant’ or ‘tent’ “correctly” for those to be your suggestions…

          • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 hours ago

            Hm… Ro as in Ross…? The rest is the correct pronunciation, yes.

            Maybe, I don’t know… an as in anvil and te as in tenant…? English, being several unrelated languages in a trenchcoat, can be a bit weird, and pronunciation varies excessively with dialects…

            The vowels in Castilian (aka Spanish outside of Spain and other Castilian speaking countries) are very simple, five vowels, five sounds, pronounced more or less as they would have been in Latin.

            C is pronounced like a k or a hard z, never as an s (except in some dialects).

            Rocinante. From rocín and antes, for he was a rocín (old horse) before being Quijote’s steed (also during, but the old man wasn’t all there).

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    That’s a shitty question though. Totally irrelevant to the meat of the story, and definitely not a proof someone read the whole thing and thought about it.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        21 hours ago

        No, it isn’t.

        Most people will not retain the name of an animal that doesn’t speak. The horse has zero impact on the story, and only serves as a piece of Quixote’ personality signifiers

        • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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          19 hours ago

          I would say Rocinante helps early in the story, with understanding the depth of Quixote’s delusion.

          Whilst in reality Rocinante is an old workhorse; in the delusion of Don Quixote, Rocinante is a grand charger fit for a knight of the highest order.

          Helping to illustrate the core of the story; Don Quixote is applying a veneer of importance and significance over the top of reality. Rocinante is a reflection of the Don himself.

          • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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            18 hours ago

            I agree with the role Rocinante plays for sure.

            I just don’t think that makes the name of the horse a good question. It’s like asking the name of John Wick’s dog. The whole movie hinges on the dog, but what name it has is irrelevant.

            The point of reading something like Don Quixote isn’t the names. Even Pancho’s name is barely important. Hell, I’d even argue that the fact we’re talking about Don Quixote rather than Alonso Quixano even illustrates that names aren’t exactly the prime bit of information that matters.

            Now, it is hard to discuss the story without factoring in name changes. Aldonza/Dulcinea in specific is maybe the biggest symbol of what the Don is experiencing, and the underlying theme of the story. But the specific names? It’s just a bad question for a high school English teacher to ask a student.

            My reasoning is that, no matter what else is retained, names only serve as a point of reference in damn near all literature. When an early exposure to old school, classical literature is happening, the student is going to already be learning three or four things at once, and memorizing the name of a non dialogue character doesn’t serve do achieve that learning, or even test how much that student retained.

            You’ve got them trying to learn how to read critically, how to read archaic styles, how to retain important factors, and how to express what they’ve picked up. The name of an animal that’s essentially stage dressing akin to the sword or armor? That’s entirely the wrong question.

            What would be a good one is, “what does Quixote’s horse symbolize?” Or even, “what do you think about his horse?”. Both would get the student thinking rather than trying to just pull up a word that’s arbitrary.

            • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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              18 hours ago

              What would be a good one is, “what does Quixote’s horse symbolize?” Or even, “what do you think about his horse?”. Both would get the student thinking rather than trying to just pull up a word that’s arbitrary.

              That is a great point.

              Significantly better questions; than a name.

  • brown567@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Wasn’t it a donkey? I think it was named Rocinante? Idk, I read it like 16 years ago.

    Edit post-Wikipedia: it was a workhorse, not a donkey, but I nailed the name. I’ve wondered in the past if Geralt’s horse Roach in The Witcher was a nod to Rocinante

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      I for some reason thought Don Quixote rode a donkey too… Where’d that come from?

        • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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          19 hours ago

          Sancho Panza rode the donkey, Dapple. Though Don Quixote does “ride” the donkey a few times. Rocinante is his usual mount.

    • Alaknár@sopuli.xyz
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      1 day ago

      Kind of, maybe? But probably not.

      In the original, Geralt’s horse’s name is “Płotka” - has technically the same meaning as Roach (a small, cheap kind of fish), but the term is also sometimes used for easy, inconsequential and irrelevant things.

      • brown567@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Good to know! It’d be a cool reference, but I guess it wouldn’t really fit with Geralt’s character. He’s pretty far off from Don Quixote XD

  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    The names of the 3 musketeers regularly come up in crosswords and no matter how many times I see it I can’t remember one of the 4. There’s Porthos, Athos, and I believe D’Artagnan was the one who joined later. Doesn’t help that their names sound vaguely like the 3 fates: Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis.

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Aramis is the one you’re missing, and he’s also the one I always forget. I can remember porthos and athos because they sound similar, and d’artagnan was the name of the company my old job used for some supplies, but Aramis is too easy a name to forget.

      • kamee@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Maybe both of you guys issue is that you think of Porthos first, Athos, Porthos, Aramis is burned in to my mind, never read any book about musketeers either and I am terrible with names

  • Randelung@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Same experience with a really old German book. He wanted to know the color of the hat one of the side characters was wearing. I had no clue, after investing so much time into trying to understand it. That kinda made me give up - why try to participate when the outcome is the same as if I didn’t?

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        when i moved to austin and everyone was pronouncing guadalupe “guadaloop” and looking at me funny for pronouncing it guadalupe, i got murder eyes for like a month.

        • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          I’m going to need reports on how you say Koenig and Mueller too. As you are quite aware, moving to Austin requires multi-factor identification. /s

              • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                i did move, i’ve been back in california for over a decade

                i lived in a since-gentrified apartment complex on may-ner down from the amy’s

                like fuck texas, that one was English

                and i refuse to pronounce it Kaynig. Kenig is the furthest i’ll go

                you have a favorite out in Lockhart?

                • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 day ago

                  Thank you for visiting Austin, the live music capital of the world. We apologize if the rest of Texas disturbed you during your stay, and we thank you for your patience with this matter as we are still researching dimensional translocation possibilities. As you are a valued Californian, we would like to ask you to please take 5 minutes out of your day to go online and recall all the robotaxi’s y’all sent us. Keep it weird, and come back soon.

                  ~Come back soon is an invitation for a vacation not to exceed two weeks. Buying real estate to move your podcast offices to is strictly prohibited. Fans of Joe Rogan’s comedy are discouraged to apply.~

      • Err(()).unwrap()@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        If that principle applied throughout history, anglophones would have evolved either an armored ass or no ass at all. I believe they are pathologically incapable of grasping the phonology of foreign languages. Just ask any native English speaker the name of the Soviet Union’s general secretary that succeeded Stalin and preceded Brezhnev… realistically, nine out of ten will have no idea, and the remaining one will say he was some “cruise chef”.

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day ago

          As a linguaphile, I’ve always tried to pronounce words from other languages as correctly as possible. People tend to think that makes me weird.

          Xenophobes think I’m being a snob, and “inclusive” people think I’m mocking the language or making some offensive joke or something. Literally the only people who don’t get upset about it are the ones who speak whatever language it is.

          • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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            1 day ago

            Literally the only people who don’t get upset about it are the ones who speak whatever language it is.

            It depends on the exact word and context, like if you go to Japan and say Hay mmmburrrgurrrr をいただきたいです, it sounds so bad.

            • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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              17 hours ago

              I’m trying to figure out what that’s even supposed to say. “Mmmburrrgurrrr” doesn’t sound like any japanese words I know.

              “Hay” I’m guessing is supposed to be “Hai,” although if you pronounce it like “hay” then you’re going to stand out as an ignorant foreigner.

              As for 「おいただきたいです」、well that’s just phrased awkwardly. It sounds too formal and almost mocking. The issue isn’t pronouncing it correctly. It’s like saying 「申しわけありません」 when 「ごめんなさい」 would do.

              My point wasn’t about phrasing things weird or being too formal, it was about pronunciation. Like saying 「ありがとうございます」 instead of “uhragado guhzaimasoo”

              • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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                17 hours ago

                It’s over-emphasizing the non-japanese sounds in “hamburger”; the point is that there are rules for loan words in any language and it sounds awkward if you break them.

                • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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                  15 hours ago

                  Oh, I thought we were talking about anglophones pronouncing non-english words, not the other way around.

                  Japanese gets a pass on its loanwords because the language doesn’t have the letters to pronounce a lot of words from other languages. It does the best it can. I don’t know many English speakers who pronounce Llewellyn the Welsh way…

                  But if you’re ordering a hamburger in Japan, there’s probably already something wrong with you anyway. Unless it’s at Gasto. In that case, enjoy your ハンバーグ.

        • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          Step 1: Seek to prove that anglophones can’t pronounce foreign words.

          Step 2: Ask a history question that has less to do with pronunciation than it does with an awareness of political events that happened on the other side of the globe, likely before the respondent was born.

          Step 3: Ignore that even the people who were alive in that time were likely only getting their pronunciation from whoever was anchoring the news and may be blameless for only hearing an incorrect pronunciation.

          Step 4: Feel smug, I guess.