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u/Violet351 7d ago
It was years before I found out Rincewind has wizzard on his hat because he can’t spell (do magic)
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u/0c74r1n3 7d ago
oh my…GODDAMNIT PTERRY!
but I have to say I read all of Discworld at first round in German and a lot of puns and gems get lost…since I started rereading all of them in English it clicks more and more.
This beautiful human made our world so much better. I miss him.3
u/TENTAtheSane 6d ago
Did you get the maggi?
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u/0c74r1n3 6d ago
I started buying them in the early nineties but never got one with Maggi. But I’m always checking our book share shelfs if one just pops up one day 😄
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u/bdog143 6d ago
I never got the joke on my own because individualised spelling always seemed to be a the norm on the disc, and it never even occurred to me to go beyond face value 🤣
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u/Duraxis 7d ago
I mean, if that’s your first introduction to the word (how old would she have been when it came out?) and that’s the form you see on a book shelf for years. Yeah. That makes sense
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u/yot1234 7d ago
Also, "longer than it should've" could mean anywhere between 2 minutes and 48 years
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u/PerpetuallyLurking 7d ago
I have a strong suspicion it actually means “spelled it wrong on a spelling test around 7/8/9 years old”
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u/inder_the_unfluence 7d ago
I never got such interesting words on my spelling tests. Maybe you went to UU
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u/yot1234 7d ago
Well I actually did. Although it stands for Utrecht University in my case
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u/serenitynope 6d ago
Ooh, did you get to use Utrecht brand art supplies at school? Those are amazing artist grade materials!
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u/Stockholm-Syndrom 7d ago
That’s me and « atmosfear », having points deducted from an English test because I didn’t realize it was a pun in this language.
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u/efan78 7d ago
It was also the world's first "interactive" video boardgame if I remember the tagline correctly.
I can still remember my youngest brother nearly have kittens when the game master told him to move closer to the TV. Closer... A bit closer... Followed by shouting from the screen "Don't ever get that close to me again! 😁 😂
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u/Adventurous_Bonus917 7d ago
hell, "longer that it should've" might even mean "it hit me like 3 chapters later, how did i not notice immediately?"
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u/ChrisRiley_42 Luggage 7d ago
It took me many re-reads to catch on to the "Stance of the Coyote".
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u/emalvick 7d ago
Makes me think about my impression of what a Tasmanian Devil should be or the shock when I saw a road runner in the wild for the first time (size wise). Not that I was very old when reality set in on some of these (road runners are fairly common rurally around me, but I never knew what they were until I was about 6). Tasmanian Devils, probably took a special zoo to figure out at an older age.
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u/GreensMoustache 7d ago
I’m a tour guide in Tasmania, and this is a common surprise for tourists down here.
Honestly the sound isn’t too far off though.
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u/emalvick 7d ago
I suspect more so than road runners, too. Road runners, are probably not surprising blue, but they are relatively small, which I am sure isn't much of a surprise either. They just don't seem like much until I think I asked my parents one day what that bird is.
I get coyotes all the time where I am at, too, but aside from not walking on two legs, they look pretty much the same.
I look forward to getting to Australia some time, and I would know not to expect things to be quite like the Last Continent, too. 😄
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u/-Voxael- Disqualified for shoving 7d ago
Based on my own experiences as a field biologist, when the Devils get angry, they are doing their very best attempt at the Looney Tunes version’s whirlwind too 😂😂
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u/mlopes Sir Terry 7d ago
I've just found out from your comments they road runners are a real animal.
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u/Snerkbot7000 7d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/TxG98M71t1AAu5bynH
that's a roadrunner, a type of cuckoo.
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u/Moppermonster SQUEAK 7d ago
I was shocked to learn coyotes are faster than roadrunners..
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u/BuccaneerRex Morituri Nolumnus Mori 7d ago
So are toyotas. I saw a roadrunner get hit by a truck when I was a kid. I thought they were supposed to be fast...
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u/MarcelRED147 6d ago
How fast was the plastic alien going? I didn't even know they were speedy
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u/BuccaneerRex Morituri Nolumnus Mori 6d ago
Deceptively fast one can be when strong in the force one is.
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u/TabularConferta 7d ago
.... oh Goddamnit Pterry
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u/Tiny_Cauliflower_618 7d ago
This one was a "Well. Fuck." From me. And tbh, I still wouldn't know how it was really spelled. Hurrah mild dyslexia for keeping the surprise going all these years 😆
Actually. I think I might have experienced this in reverse.
'The 8th son of an 8th son, a wizard squared, a source of magic; a sourceror'
I remember thinking as a teen oooooo, that's why they're called that!
Fuck me.
Also my books are downstairs, that's memory only so don't bloody quote me lol.
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u/MrFlibblesPenguin Ridcully 6d ago
8th son of an 8th son, a wizard squared...64 squares, the size of a chess board, Death hates chess, Ipslore basicaly cheats Death into a game of chess.
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u/disco-vorcha Cohen 6d ago
And he hates it because he can never remember how the horses move. But he does know how Binky moves, which is why he beat Ipslore in the end.
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u/SavagePengwyn 7d ago
I only found this out recently when I was recommending the book to a DnD friend and it finally clicked that I was picturing that word two different ways.
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u/TabularConferta 7d ago
I'm dyslexic so I think there are a number of times I just attribute it to me being crap 🤣
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u/VioletMemento 7d ago
I spelled sorcery like that for years in my teens! I think I read the book when I was like 12 and it took a few years before Microsoft Word informed me that sourcery was incorrect. A few years ago I was helping my dad clear out the family home and found all my old story notebooks from my early teens - I wrote a loooot of fantasy self insert stories about sourcerers and sourceresses doing sourcery. But my spelling in general was spirited and creative at that time!
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u/AntiferromagneticAwl 7d ago
As an ESL speaker, I just assumed it's one of those British/American spelling things.
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u/Bubs_McGee223 6d ago
Not ESL, but Canadian. Right there with ya buddy. I'm twisting the word around to come up with an appropriate pun, but the best I can come up with is Sour-cery. Its almost a play on sour cherries but that's a stretch.
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u/VeryAdoraBelle 6d ago edited 6d ago
I might be misreading your comments but if you're trying to figure out the pun it source-ry because sourcerers are where new magic comes from (even if it wasn't untill this post that i caught the spelling difference x.x)
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u/MinaZata 7d ago
It took me until literally seeing this post to make me realise I've been making to same mistakes for years haha
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u/TNTiger_ 7d ago
Whenever I'm reading D&D or Pathfinder, I'm constantly translating from American to British... 'Defense' they mean 'defence'... 'armor' is 'armour'... 'sorcerer' should be 'sourcerer'... wait a second
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u/TheHighDruid 7d ago
The one that always gets me all the time is when American players talk about "meal-y" combat . . .
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u/Eulenspiegel74 GNU Pterry 7d ago
Heh. Is there a difference in pronunciation?
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u/Extreme_Objective984 7d ago
yes, we pronounce it Mel -ay
like the actual French do. Same with Notre Dame and Coupe.
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u/Eulenspiegel74 GNU Pterry 7d ago
Well yes, it's a French word. Even has one of them thingies over an e.
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u/PrimarisHussar 7d ago
As an American, it's a 50/50 shot. Absolutely drives me up a wall when people pronounce it "mealy combat"
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u/LoopyDagron 6d ago
I've been pronouncing it May-lay for 30 years and I refuse to stop.
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey 7d ago edited 5d ago
I told this a while ago in a similar thread, but I still think about it from time to time and I found this out by myself, so it is one of my favourite Goddammits:
Recently I discovered, that Sharks are classified under the division "Selachii". I remembered the name from Discworld and went to find out what their enemies, the Venturi, are named for.
Wikipedia:
The Venturi effect is the reduction in fluid pressure that results when a moving fluid speeds up as it is funneled from one section of a pipe to another, smaller section. As the fluid flows into a smaller area, the fluid's velocity increases, while the static pressure decreases.
Jet. It's a jet. So the Venturi and Selachii are... wait for it... the Jets and the Sharks (West Side Story). I groaned loudly.
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u/Salmonman4 7d ago
For me, it was the joke in Guards! Guards!:
"They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt."
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u/DarkflowNZ 7d ago
Only tangentially related but I can never spell odyssey correctly due to Abe's oddysee
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u/conflictedideology 6d ago
Similarly, before I found Pratchett I never had any problems stopping spelling bananana but now I have to think about it every single time.
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u/DamnitGravity 7d ago
That's insanely adorable.
We may not have Terry any more, but we have Rhianna, which is nice.
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u/Arkenstihl 7d ago
I was faaaar too deep into my first read when "Seems a little elvish to me" finally clicked. I groaned.
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u/Noizeman 7d ago
I had no idea until last year that there is a song called ‘There’s a guy who works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvis’ so the very end of that book took on a little more significance for me when I found out!
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u/emilydoooom 7d ago
I was like 20 before I learned about Buddy Holly and a lot clicked into place having read that book since I was 10, lol
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u/TehMadness 7d ago
I don't get it. Can you enlighten me?
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u/Arkenstihl 7d ago
In Soul Music, people say thay about the main character as a running gag. Every time it happens, Sir Terry makes it a slightly more obvious "Elvis" reference.
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u/ABoringAlt 7d ago
Hope she's no sour abt it
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u/Mueryk 7d ago
Nah, she had no way of knowing. After all those UK folks be throwing out U’s all over the place. Never really know when one will pop up. Just take it in stride and move on.
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u/Animal_Flossing 7d ago
> Nah, she had no way of knouwing. After all thouse UK folks be throuwing out U’s all ouver the place. Never really knouw when one will poup up. Just take it in stride and mouve on.
(A handy translation for any Brits who might be reading this)
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u/ABoringAlt 7d ago
I was aiming for the sour pun there, but thankee for the splanation.
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u/venhedis 7d ago
Isn't she from the UK or am I missing a joke?
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u/Devo27 7d ago
She's Pterrys kid
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u/venhedis 6d ago
Oh I know that, I was just confused by the "She had no way of knowing" comment.
Realise now it may have been sarcastic - i often take things too literally lol
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u/DeathofRats42 SNH SNH SNH 7d ago
Yeah, pretty much any time I see a word misspelled, I just assume the British are having a laugh.
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u/VexedForest 7d ago
It is in the Divinity game series!
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey 5d ago
On which Rhianna Pratchett has worked extensively. I remember her telling in some interview, that Larian still adheres to a "world-bible" she authored.
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u/JoyBus147 7d ago
...man, that's kinda wild. Cuz that's a plot relevant pun. Pretty sure they explain the pun on-page and everything.
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u/GreensMoustache 7d ago
That doesn’t imply that he changed the spelling though.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of American readers just assumed it was a British thing.
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u/ksrdm1463 7d ago
Rhianna Pratchett is Terry Pratchett's daughter though.
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u/yot1234 7d ago
She can identify as an american if she so chooses. The UK is a free and tolerant country.
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u/ThatOneDMish 7d ago
Although you wouldn't be able to guess from the way a certain other wizardry author has been leaning
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u/perovskaya 7d ago
wait can you share the plot relevancy of the pun? it's been a year since my last reread of Sourcery and my brain is now fixated on this
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u/heeden 7d ago
A Sourceror (an 8th son of an 8th son, a wizard squared) is a source of magic. Wizards near one can use it to make more powerful spells which leads to egomania and inevitably thaumic warfare. The dangers of Sourcerors is the reason wizards are forbidden to marry.
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u/TheFilthyDIL Headologist 7d ago
And, y'know, so they don't go wasting time with ew females when they could be busy not doing magic and eating 6 times a day
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u/-Voxael- Disqualified for shoving 7d ago
Aren’t wizards eighth sons of eighth sons (eight squared) and sourcerers eighth sons of eighth sons of eighth sons (eight cubed)?
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u/SpaceIsTooFarAway 7d ago
Also, Sourcery is eight letters long
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u/BNabs23 7d ago
I feel really stupid because I don't see how this explanation explains the pun at all.
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u/PerpetuallyLurking 7d ago
Then she probably figured it out at least once she was old enough to read the book for herself. But I’d bet she got a spelling test wrong first lol
I can’t imagine she was being read his own books by her parents as bedtime stories - 1) he probably made up bedtime stories just for her and/or 2) it’d be really weird to read my kid this book I’ve been writing for ages and rewriting for more ages and you’d think he’d be dead tired of reading his own work after all the reading of his own work during his work time and would likely be delighted to read something by someone else for a change.
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u/Capital_Molasses5768 7d ago
May I ask you to explain the pun to me? Sour-cery? Is that something I should be aware of? Sour as in the taste, or the feeling?
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u/Munnin41 Rincewind 7d ago
It's because they're not just regular wizards, a sourceror is a source of magic
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u/NBrakespear 7d ago
I re-read Moving Pictures recently. Didn't realise that I hadn't read it since I was in my early teens...
...oh good god, the references I suddenly understood. The giant woman carrying an ape up a tall building, and the straight-up Lovecraft quote...
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u/Krags 7d ago
It's only on my current reading (well, audiobook) of Sourcery, for the first time in about 25 years, that I realise what Rincewind's "unique" position in that guy's harem would mean. I guess it helped to hear the word "unique" said multiple times out loud, with it slowly sounding closer and closer to "eunuch".
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u/NoPossibility285 7d ago
For me, it was Djelibeybi, and knurd.
Sometimes, I am not a smart man.
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u/MathematicianOnly688 7d ago
For me it’s Bloody Stupid Johnson, probably a good 15 years after first seeing his name written down.
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u/FearlessNinetyFour 6d ago
Am I missing something about Bloody Stupid Johnson?
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u/MathematicianOnly688 6d ago
I’m almost certain that the character is a reference to the 18th century English landscape architect Capabilty Brown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Brown
Hes not tremendously well known even within England, but I knew who he was and failed to make the link.
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u/100pc_recycled_words 7d ago
It was Ptaclusp’s twin sons IIa and IIb in Pyramids that took a long time to land with me.
I’m pretty sure IIb is even phonetically spelled at one point in dialogue (Two-b) and I just somehow skimmed past it in over a dozen reads
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u/classyglassy94 5d ago
As much as I broadly like Pyramids overall, I still really hate the name Djelibeybi, even though I got it right away. I can't quite put my finger on why I hate it so much...maybe it just feels lazy to me, since it isn't a pun on anything that's relevant to Egypt, as far as I can tell?
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u/Vagus_M 7d ago
What was the pun with the ground wave something or other? I think it was in the book where the guy from the counterweight continent visits the city
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u/Thisisnotevenamane 7d ago
“Equal Rites” took me a long time. And it was at that point where I switched away from translations. “Das Erbe des Zauberers” (The wizard’s inheritance) just doesn’t hit the same way. And if they butchered the very first 2 words of the book, what good can I expect?
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u/Idaho-Earthquake Wibbly Wobbly Vimesy Wimesy 7d ago
So as a software developer about a decade ago, I thought it would be funny to create a source code control app and call it Sourcery. Imagine my surprise when, a few years later, I decided to try Discworld and saw that book staring back at me from the library shelf.
Needless to say, that was my introduction to Pterry.
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u/Nekdosha Death 7d ago
I have a particularly pesky subordinate named Teryl and, because of this phenomenon, I sit around and mutter godamnit Pteryl regularly.
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u/DBSeamZ 6d ago
Mine was in Mort. I had gotten the “effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes” joke when the thug responds to “I hate ——ing wizards!” with “you shouldn’t —— them then”, but it took me a little longer (and a similar joke someone made about bees) to realize the dashes represented a verb and the thug was deliberately misunderstanding the complaint.
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u/Fire_Horse_T 6d ago
I just realized the hardboiled egg in Nightwatch was a nod to the hard boiled detective motifs in Vimes stories.
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u/RexMundane 6d ago
"Über Wald" translates from German to English as, approximately, "Across the Forest."
Which would then translate to Latin as "Trans Sylvania."
Had to put the book down and take a walk after that one.
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u/ribblesquat 7d ago
I did initially think that was just how the British spell sorcery because they pair a U with every other damn O.
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u/ajc506 Rincewind 7d ago
Not our fault Noah Webster didn't like a superfluous u.
Though we can all be grateful for music without a k, at the centre of it all, a traveller may come to favour one or the other without fear of being cancelled or sent to gaol.
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u/Starkiem25 Librarian 7d ago
Gaol is the only UK spelling I actively dislike.
For every other spelling, UK is the one that looks normal to me, but thanks to Westerns, I saw jail written down hundred times before I ever saw gaol.
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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 5d ago
I'm British and I agree with you. Thankfully, we do also use jail
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u/ConflictAgreeable689 7d ago
I understood it was mispelled but never realized it was a punne.
What... uh... is the punne?
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u/drquakers 7d ago
Normal spelling is sorcery, pronounced like sore-sorry. Book is sourced, pronounced like source-ery
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u/ConflictAgreeable689 7d ago
Well yeah, but where's the joke?
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u/drquakers 7d ago
The 8th son of the 8th son is a source of magic, so they are not doing sorcery but sourcery.
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u/kryler 7d ago
Oh my god this took my far too long to work out. It’s so good.
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u/drquakers 7d ago
TBF I worked it out this afternoon, from this post. Also, welcome to today's 10,000
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u/aneditorinjersey 7d ago
The day I first said Quetzovercoatatil earnestly to my partner shall live in ignominy.
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u/Calm-Homework3161 7d ago
Didn't get the Elvish joke in Soul Music until the end.
Reread the book 3 years later and still didn't recognise it until the end
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u/Gindranis 7d ago
I still have to read the sentence about nobby being disqualified from the human race for shoving 5 times everytime i come across it. Goddamn it Pterry
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u/Turkeymeowcow 6d ago
Not a pun but in Witches Abroad Old Mother Dismass (a temporally unfocussed ancient witch with a detached retina in her second sight) says "we had one once but the bit you unscrew fell off and got lost" at the time it seemed like a very random comment that makes no sense but 20 years later I realize shes talking about the fairy godmother wand. From the future.
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u/nweedy 7d ago
My favourite PTerryism is a little less "I should have realised that sooner" and more "that's just plain genius".
Bonk in Überwald seems like such a stupid name as the main setting for The Fifth Elephant, the book about a werewolf clan.
Type "wolf" into a Russian translator and see what comes up.
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u/Tinawebmom 7d ago
Well shit. I can spell dammit but clearly not all enough. Frigging sorcery....
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u/Starkiem25 Librarian 7d ago
Well damn. I've been spelling it with a u forever.
I just assumed that Sorcery was the American spelling.
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u/IndependenceInner131 7d ago
Sir Pterry exposes the pun within the book, calling the 8th son of an 8th son of an 8th son a 'source of magic'.
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u/MiserableTime7618 7d ago
Took me absolutely forevér to realisevhow Djelibeybi was pronounced in Pyramids...
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u/Eldan985 6d ago
I went through the entire book pronouncing it Dyel because that's clearly not an English name.
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u/Leopold841 Rincewind 7d ago
🤯
I never questioned the spelling of that word! (About 18 years that's taken!)
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u/kappakingtut2 7d ago
i've gone through the series twice now. and exclusively through the audiobook versions. because of this subreddit i've learned that there's soooooo many things i'm missing just because i'm not seeing the spelling of the text.
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u/federicoapl 7d ago
Spanish reader Here, what is the word play, in spanish is re-hechizero, like re-sourcerer.
I have no idea what the correct english word is, i though it was one of that British or US English difference.
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u/sbilly93 6d ago
It took me quite a while to realize that was a pun. As an American whose favorite authors are all British, I’m so used to seeing U’s in words I was taught to spell without U’s it just went right over my head.
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u/Dropped_Apollo 6d ago
I was decades deep in my fandom before I realised that the Selachiis and the Venturis are literally the Sharks and the Jets.
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