The Dervish House
Jul. 22nd, 2011 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI'm currently reading my downloaded copy of Ian McDonald's The Dervish House, one of the Best Novel Hugo nominees. I'm enjoying it so far, but a while ago I hit something that bugs me. What's under the cut is spoiler-free.
The story takes place in Istanbul, Turkey; the vast majority of characters are ethnic Turks, and the rest are long-time residents who, by context, regularly speak and are fluent in Turkish. McDonald is careful about language issues, even providing a pronunciation guide at the beginning, which is what jars about the following exchange, between a precocious 9-year-old Turk (first speaker) and an elderly Greek (second).
McDonald's research is meticulous (as far as I can tell) in other respects; how did he slip up on such an elementary fact as this?
The story takes place in Istanbul, Turkey; the vast majority of characters are ethnic Turks, and the rest are long-time residents who, by context, regularly speak and are fluent in Turkish. McDonald is careful about language issues, even providing a pronunciation guide at the beginning, which is what jars about the following exchange, between a precocious 9-year-old Turk (first speaker) and an elderly Greek (second).
“They have him until last October, when he’s retired because he’s picking up too many faults[."]The problem with this passage is that, if they're speaking Turkish, it's flatly impossible. Turkish does not have grammatical gender; where an English-speaker would use "he", "she", or "it", Turkish simply uses the word "o", without further distinction.
“He, him. You said him.”
“I did?”
“You did. I find it interesting that we assume robots are male. Carry on.”
McDonald's research is meticulous (as far as I can tell) in other respects; how did he slip up on such an elementary fact as this?
