What's With All the W's?

[Raveler1]

I've assumed Spidew sounds like a little kid - spy-dow (w/r) - but I can't express it in standard english writing. Anyone have their IPA dictionary handy, care to express the exact sound that replaces a terminal "er" sound?

Ok, maybe that's just me.

[Renegade Paladin]

The misspellings are neither cute nor childish; they're just irritatingly stupid. I've already given up on Erfworld because of it.

[Maurog]

As long as you keep posting in the Erfworld forums, we love you anyway!

[jami]

As long as you keep posting in the Erfworld forums, we love you anyway!

LOL!

Had we known we were going to be put to such grammatical scrutiny, we would never have replaced every single "r" that every character uses with a "w."

Oh...

[Renegade Paladin]

[Aust_Arrowsplitter]

I kinda like the W's. It does add a tad bit of verisimilitude: It makes the world seem more like its own world, and less like just another Forgotten Realms knockoff we see in so many other fantasy comics.

And the whole 'end the turn' thing is kinda cool as well... though... how long is a turn? Will we find out? Is it a standard six-second round, or is it like a turn in some Turn Based Strategy games, like Advance Wars, where a turn lasts until all your units have used all their actions, or you pass.

[Mauril Everleaf]

yay more logic to defeat the nay-sayers!
anyway, just counted the panels again, and there are 116 times where the letter r would be normally used, only 8 times was it substituted for a w, which results in only 6.8% of r's being w's. since people also complain about gobwin, i checked the l's to w's. there were 118 times where l was normal and only 2 substitutions (both in reference to the city of Gobwin Knob). thats a massive 1.7% of the total. if you stack them, you get a 4.3% exchange. so if 4.3% of affected letters really bothers you, you really need to live somewhere where dialect and accent are normal (ie, deep south, chicago, philadelphia, etc) and realize that this is not a big deal. also, as mention before (on this thread and maybe others), look at the things that are being reference with transposed letters. the thing that Lord Manpower the Temporary is riding resembles a spider in basic physiology only (eight legs and eyes) but its huge size dictates that it is very different in many other respects. Look at the creature in Erfworld #3 and in the end of Erfworld #6, again physiology is similar to a dragon, but manner and style insist that it is something very different. The gwiffon looks nothing like the griffon of folklore. its not a lion/eagle that rains death on its foes from the heaven, but rather an gigantic animate marshmellow peep. and since we havent seen a gobwin that resembles a goblin or any reference to it outside of the name of the city, whats to say that its nothing more than the name of someone famous? maybe the founder of the city was named Peter Gobwin or something. so, discounting that, it makes the transpositions drop somewhat (to 0%, or 0 out of 116 for l=>w, and 3.4% for total or 8 out of 232).

[Gundato]

I do like the concept of minor alterations to words to help with the atmosphere, but I feel that it detracts from the atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, it isn't overly used. The problem is that our first introduction to the W system was with the 6-page launch. If it had been slowly shown to us (1 page per update) I feel that people would treat it much like we treat Thog or Durkon. As it stands, it feels more like the Congaree dialect in Harry Turtledove's novels. A dialect added for the sake of being a dialect, not so much for the immersion.

[Roderick_BR]

Could be worse... they could swap the "L" too...

[Brickwall]

Sir, I just recently moved from an area with a New England accent (read: close to nonregional) to an area with a southern accent. I'm bothered by it as much as the W's. I can still talk to the people, but it makes me not want to. Even with redeeming features, it's still that big pimple on the face of the Mona Lisa.

[Mauril Everleaf]

oh, i agree, that somethings can be annoying (my pet peeve is when people pronounce wash as "warsh" or wolf as "woof"). so i know where you are coming from. however, having realized that there is nothing that i can do to change it, i accept and move on. sometimes it sends a shiver down my spine, but i dont piss and moan about it. i live in rural oklahoma, and spent a year and a half at school in arkansas, have family from south eastern texas and in new orleans, so believe me when i say that im used to annoying accents. and if you dont want to read Erfworld, that totally fine. No one is forcing you to. no more than they are requiring you to watch a certain tv program or listen to a certain radio station. If you cant stand it, leave it be, but if you can get past the inconsequential dialect alteration and enjoy the comic for its wit and plot, then congratulations, come and join us.

[Brickwall]

I love the wit and plot. But it's the pimple on the Mona Lisa, like I said.

[Nazzo, the 102nd]

Heh. Guess the anti-"w-where-should-be-an-r" people would really get annoyed with Homestar Runner.

Well, my two shmuckers. The characters do not talk like that everytime. It's just the name of the creatures. Secondly, I don't think it gives a childish touch on the comic, since my imagination says that Wanda and Jillian are hot women that I would tottaly hit if I were Prince Ansom. And lastly, I am starting to think that this comic is really based in some sort of game and all. Even the cast page has races, classes, occupations (kinda like the job system from FF5) and they have turns in battle. Each creature has its properties, and we have some sort of magic items, like the helmet Jillian was using and the hat Amson gave her.

I dream of the day when we'll have the full PC game to play with! Or, as funny as it, a book explaining the RPG system.

Oh. I see my schmuckers going away again.

[Brickwall]

Well, I do dislike Homestar Runner most of the time, but that's not the point.

[Eva of Banjo]

It's just the way folks talk in Erfworld I guess, kinda like how folks talk in Bahston. I think it's cool.

[Mauril Everleaf]

and now for more counting fun!
0 out of 24 w's=>r's this time and 0 out of 13 w's=>l's, which makes for 0% on each, and a combined 0% for the comic. when included in the whole, it drops the precents to 5.7%, 1.5% and 3.7% for the r's, l's and totals respectively.
i have decided to retract gobwin being a name (mostly due to its sarcasm, but also due to the fact that gobwin was shown to be a creature on the erfatar request thread). enjoy!

[silentknight]

Thank you for mentioning the L to W in Gobwin. I was about to say, "goblin doesn't have an R!"

Anyway, I love it!

My theory is that the world was created by a child (or childlike god) but is populated by adults (or by the "characters" of adults). Since the child made the world, it got to populate that world and name all of the cweatures. That would explain why only the names of those critters are strangely spelled, but the rest of normal speech seems unaffected. It also explains why the critters are cute/toy-like/candy-related.

On a different note, I really, really want to know all of the -Mancers. I agree that the croakamancer seems like a necromancer, and the idea that the dirtomancer is an earth-element spellcaster seems likely. I think there will be other elemental casters too.

Or is a dirtomancer just a fancy name for a farmer?

[Mauril Everleaf]

time for some more counting fun!
due to lack of dialogue, this one was easy
w's for r's 0/2 0%
w's for l's 0/6 0%
total 0/8 0%

so far in the strip
w's for r's 8/142 5.6%
w's for l's 2/137 1.5%
total 10/279 3.6%

at this point, its not really to prove anything. i just like counting them.