Monday 24 February 2014

Tam-o'-shanters And Strange Countries

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

I have googled three more words in "Delenda Est."

"...tam-o'-shanter..." (p. 181), a word that I recognized but realized that I did not know what it meant but then did recognize the object described, a kind of Scottish cap, which (I now know) is named after the title character of an epic by Robert Burns.

"...cannel..." (p. 184), I had no idea what this meant but its meaning is easy to google.

"Hinduraj" (p. 185): this is the kind of foreign word (in this case, a fictitious foreign word) whose meaning, at least in a general sense, is immediately clear both from the context of its use and from the form of the word itself. The British Raj was the British reign in India. I googled to check whether there is or has been any "Hinduraj" in our timeline and learned that the Hindu Raj is a mountain range in Pakistan.

In the divergent timeline:

Ynys yr Afallon = a North American confederacy, down to Colombia;
Tehannach = Texas;
Huy Braseal = much of South America;
Hinduraj = Australasia, Indonesia, Borneo, Burma, eastern India and much of the Pacific;
Punjab = Afghanistan and the rest of India;
Han = China, Korea, Japan and eastern Siberia;
Littorn = Russia and much of Europe;
Brittys = the British Isles;
Gallis = France and the Low Countries;
Celtan = Iberia;
Helveti = Switzerland and Austria;
Cimberland = Italy;
Hyperborea = Scandinavia;
Svea = north Scandinavia;
Gothland = south Scandinavia;
Carthagalann = a North African confederacy;
Parthia and Arabia = the Near East;
smaller countries occupy the rest of South America, the Balkans and southern Africa.

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