the-book-of-incipient-words-google-docs
The Book of Incipient Words
This artifact superficially manifests as a standard child’s black-and-white composition book. It appears to be about twenty years old, bound with aged rubber bands, and about to fall apart — but it never quite does. In fact, the Book is functionally invulnerable. To give one example: it has stopped a fifty caliber machine gun round on at least one occasion (the force of the bullet still killed the person trying to use it as a shield, though). Needless to say, The Book of Incipient Words will register as magical in standard identification spells. With that particular tint of esoteric color that denotes “Here Be Dragons.”
Using the Book is very straightforward: it exists to rectify the meta-question If only there was a word for [X] that most people have thought of, at least once of in their lives. To operate, simply open the Book, and think of whatever complex situation or condition or emotion it is that you’d wish had a simple, straightforward word for. If there actually already is a word for it, that word will pop into your head. If there isn’t, the Book will come up with one on the spot, and gently force your hand to write it into the Book. More importantly: in the latter case, over the next few weeks or so the new word will seamlessly and subtly integrate itself into your native language. From there, it’s just a matter of translation.
That’s pretty much all that The Book of Incipient Words does. Research occultists are still trying to work out where it came from, whether there are any complications the will arise from using the book, and — most importantly — why nobody powerful has come to permanently retrieve the Book from whomever is currently holding it. Which last is a question of no little interest, really.
I imagine the esoteric division at the Académie Française is still looking for a way to destroy the thing, not to mention keeping it out of the hands of any native French speakers.
What they should *really* fear is it making its’ way into the hands of anyone fluent in the Cajun closed metaphorical dialect of French.
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What’s a closed metaphorical dialect, you ask?
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‘s a double-whammy of incomprehensibility ..
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First, there’s the usual dialectic changes, different words pronounced differently (think southern accent, or scottish accent) but ..
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Atop the pronunciations, a closed metaphorical dialect, as Darmok and Jalad famously demonstrated, drops most of the familiar idioms and replaces them with new ones .. and doesn’t bother to explain.
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Something “out of left field” becomes “from a different opera”, for instance.
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The results of the “proper French” having to adapt to the more pithy Cajun sayings .. might be just what they need, come to think of it.
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Mew
Given the random cobbling the English languages have become, one wonders if it hasn’t been squirreled away in the Public Library or something. Few collectors would be stupid enough to make a Librarian angry.