Member: orangebooks

No worries--I figured out you were Carolcat. Didn't know why, though.

If you do end up telling someone about the Distant Cousin books, in Israel, you might remember that they are all available as ebooks through SmashWords.com--instant gratification at a budget price. Sorry to say that to a librarian, but there it is.

Shalom, verily!
///////Al

posted by AnaDarcy at 4:50 pm (EST) on May 10, 2009

OK, good deal. They DO sound perfect for you. I hope you find them so. I haven't done any linguistics in decades either, unless you count teaching English to barely literate freshmen linguistics. That's how I approached it, actually, and it worked, though my traditionally trained colleagues always gave me the skunk eye.

Anyway, you'll find, in book one, a philologist sort of fellow who discovers that the main character's language has one word that's a Germanic cognate and another that's from the Italic side. I don't really explain his conclusion from that (because the average reader isn't looking for a linguistic explication), but he realizes that her language must date from before the time the Germanic and Italic bunches broke off from the Indo-European parent language, and is thus very, very old.

It's just a passing thing in the book, but I like to be accurate whenever I can. For what it's worth, a physics prof wrote the other day that he enjoyed the science in the story--that it wasn't tiresomely wild, with faster-than-light travel and wormholes and slimy aliens and such. You'll find a few things we don't have or can't do, yet, but they're more or less plausible, or so he thought.

Hey, and if you enjoy it, tell someone! It's deuced hard to get the word out when your ad budget is zero. Israel! Who knew!

Best wishes,
//A

posted by AnaDarcy at 12:20 pm (EST) on May 10, 2009