POWER PLAYERS: The Annotated Aztlan
WORDPLAY
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Full text of Aztlan annotations
UMSONDO
Most observers assume that what we know of the Passions holds true for the world outside Barsaive. It would be odd indeed if the universe interacted with our world in different ways from place to place. Yet ours is an odd world, and perhaps the universe's connection to it does change. The Passions we know in Barsaive may not exist on the other side of the globe; other Passions as yet unknown may take their place. More likely, men and women in distant lands know the same Passions but call them by different names. (ED 314, emphasis mine)
Some wordplay on (um)sondo/sonde:
UMSONDO:
- Umsondo is an African word referring to the color of the cattle of the tribespeople of South Africa. This, and his rather odd comment on the Rain Queen, lend more credence toward an Azanian than a Passion.
- credit given to Ancient History
SONDE:
- That which is sent; a message or messenger; hence, also, a visitation of providence; an affliction or trial. [Obs.] Ye have enough, parde, of Goddes sond. - Chaucer. Source: Webster's on-line, also Online Plain Text English Dictionary
And my personal favourite:
- Any of various devices, esp. a radiosonde, sent aloft by rocket or balloon to measure atmospheric conditions. Source: Wordsmyth
(After all, one of the things we keep being told in Aztlan about Tenochtitlan is the relevance of its high altitude. And ... "Wordsmyth"? :D)
SONDO: [Spanish]
- I sound, from the verb sondar. Other meanings: explore, fathom, sound, plumb, search, probe.
Note that most of these would have the same connotations as in English: ie. the idea of testing an idea to discover its truth. This becomes even more evident within the Portuguese translation of I investigate. (The primary language of Brazil - now part of Amazonia - is Portuguese.)
UM: [as verb prefix, article, or connectable noun]
- Separable or non-separable prefix (with the verb) indicating some degree of stress, absoluteness, redoing, or that it is about what is described ie. to re-explore, or to Explore in an absolute sense [German - sorry, difficult to describe]
- Indefinite prefix or suffix indicating some relation with the root [Esperanto]
- The quality of being, ie. insightful-ness [Tolkein's Black Speech ... all right, so he stole it from European patterns]
And again, my personal favourite:
- Indefinite article sometimes used in the context of names or something unknown, ie. a, some, also sometimes as one or unity, or that which is perceived or known or inferred to have its own physical existence (living or nonliving), or even as person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, human, soul [Portuguese]
