2000 AD Online Forum

Ok I been doing a bit of a Slaine re-read.

One thing that I have never been quite sure of is...how do you pronounce "Slough" as in "Slough Feg" or "Slough Trott"?

Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Or something else. Any views? Has Pat Mills said anything about it?

Quote from: Magnetica on 11 April, 2014, 07:05:08 PM
Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

Well, you pronounce it with the same accent as "Slaine".

"Slow-ugg-yeh."

Feg is pronounced "Fa-tcha".

Tricky, the Celtic languages are...

Cheers

Jim

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 11 April, 2014, 07:32:05 PM

Quote from: Magnetica on 11 April, 2014, 07:05:08 PM
Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

Well, I never knew that. 
Also, sorry Jim, but me and my brother as kids used to pronounce the 'Feg' as 'Fayg', giving it an Irish language twist it really, really doesn't have. And I still can't help pronouncing it like that in my mind.  I wouldn't mind, but the man's French, for feck's sake.

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 11 April, 2014, 07:32:05 PM
Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

Cheers, Joe!
Is there any basis in history or myth for being a Slough?

It's pronounced 'slow', as in slow feg...I'm Irish.

Quote from: Call-Me-Kenneth on 12 April, 2014, 03:49:30 AM
It's pronounced 'slow', as in slow feg...I'm Irish.

BUT Y'SEE IT'S NOT, KENNY! (to paraphrase Brian Potter.)

I'd always gone gone for a rhyme with Plough. because it sounds right, but Jim and Sauchie's observations of its origins are entirely correct: it should be Sluff.  But as that sounds utterly crap, I ain't changing.

Other options are Slock or Slaw.  I suppose I could live with the latter.

Appeals to Irish pronuncitaion are pointless anyway, as Feg is 30,000 years old and as Jayzus notes lives in Ariege valley in the foothills of the Pyranees, and his powerbase is now somewhere beneath the Bay of Biscay.

A fun fact from my English teaching days: the ending '-ough' has no less than 8 different pronunciations.

1.  Through (rhyming with shoe)
2. Tough (stuff)
3. Though (go)
4. plough (now)
5. Cough (off)
6. Thorough (pronounced like the 'a' in 'above')
7. Lough (the anglicized Irish word for 'lake', pronounced like the Scottish 'loch')
8.  Hiccough (another spelling for the word 'hiccup' and pronounced as such, apparently)

If you place it in the middle of a word, it can have a ninth one - 'Thought' or 'ought' for example.

But 'Slough' is most definitely the fourth one.

In west Sligo, 'Lough' can be pronounced 'Law', particularly in front of a vowel, so that 'Lough Easkey' becomes 'Laweasky'.  A bit like your 9th pronunciation there Jayzus, since it functions as the middle of a compound word.

And apologies to Joe Soap, I wrongly credited worthless layabout Sauchie with posting that heart-lifting snippet of McMahon.

Quote from: TordelBack on 12 April, 2014, 09:47:02 AM
apologies to Joe Soap, I wrongly credited worthless layabout Sauchie with posting that heart-lifting snippet of McMahon

It keeps happening since we started doing our hair the same way. I was fascinated by the information concerning the correct pronunciation of Sáine's name when Mills featured that phonetic guide (as part of Spoils of Anwyn?), but went right on using the Anglicised versions everyone else always uses, and the incredibly right-on and Irish-identifying Mills defaults to the English versions when speaking about the characters on his ECBT2000ad interviews.

We hold countless dual notions concerning pronunciation of proper nouns in our heads, and switch effortlessly between them depending on context. None of us intend any more slight to the Francophone world when telling our pals we're off to Paris for a dirty weekend (rather than Par-ee) than the French offer when speaking of Londres. When you're speaking French to a French speaker, you would default to the native pronunciation, and the same works in reverse. If I had the Gaelic, and was talking to a fellow speaker, I suppose I'd default to the Celtic phonemes.

Anglophones sound silly dropping Par-ee into everyday conversation, and the pause necessary to interrupt a free flowing French sentence with Lon-don is just as awkward. The Irish sound version of Sláine character names cause the same awkward stumble in English, and the reason Mills chose the title Sláine was because it sounds cool and hard in English. The purpose of a character's name is to convey, through their sound and feel, something of their nature, and Slough Feg does that perfectly and effortlessly in English.

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 11 April, 2014, 07:32:05 PM

Quote from: Magnetica on 11 April, 2014, 07:05:08 PM
Is as per the town Slough between London and Reading or is it "sloff" as in rhymes with cough?

Presumably the former, given that they earn this name by 'sloughing' off their skins.

This just shows the difficulty in having written conversations about pronunication. :D When you say it is like the town Slough - how do you pronounce that? I meant like Plough but I think you meant "sluff" - certainly if you shed your skin it is "sluff".

Quote from: The Enigmatic Dr X on 11 April, 2014, 08:06:17 PM
Well, you pronounce it with the same accent as "Slaine".

Well this opens up another can of worms...so how do you pronounce Slaine? Do you mean "Slaunyeh". Personally I suspect that is right but prefer to stick to good old "slain".....I see Sauchie has addressed this just as I was typing this.

Quote from: Magnetica on 12 April, 2014, 11:05:56 AM
Well this opens up another can of worms...

This can has been open for so long I'm starting to doubt that there ever was a can.  Just worms.  Lots and lots of worms.

Or, if you prefer, wyrms.

Quote from: sauchie on 12 April, 2014, 11:01:42 AMThe Irish sound version of Sláine character names cause the same awkward stumble in English, and the reason Mills chose the title Sláine was because it sounds cool and hard in English.

Oh dear, here we go again...  ;)

My dad had a look at the very first Slaine story as was reading it and told me how to pronounce it the Irish way.  I don't care if others pronounce it the English way though - Pat Mills does, for starters.

As for the Lord Weird - well, I never knew the verb 'Slough' was pronounced 'sluff'.  But there's no way I'm changing my pronunciation of Mr Feg's first name.

EDIT: Monsieur Feg, to be more precise.

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 12 April, 2014, 12:36:19 PM
I never knew the verb 'Slough' was pronounced 'sluff'. 

Me neither until today...I had to look it up.

I always said "sloff /sloth" rather than "sluff" for Slough Feg.

Then again I have been going round thinking it was Johnny "Alp-ha" rather than "alfa" for 37 years.

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 12 April, 2014, 12:36:19 PM
EDIT: Monsieur Feg, to be more precise

Aye, that's the most interesting bit of buried treasure our wee discussion has turned over. If I ever knew that, I'd forgotten, so cheers to the chap with the trowel and dirty knees. Yourselves are special cases, I suppose, since many of the Irish contingent seem to have at least a working knowledge of Gaelic language and myth, so I suppose my point about pronunciation being derived instinctively through context is weighted differently for youz code-switchers than for the monoculture of The Big Island. That metaphor of having a foot in both camps probably sums up my own approach to the topic.

Exclusively favouring any one pronunciation of either Sláine or Slough Feg involves losing the obvious authorial intent to communicate something of their respectively violent and decaying natures and to increase the sum of knowledge regarding Celtic culture. Holding both pronunciations in my head simultaneously, and understanding that both contained their own different kinds of truth, helped the teenage-me understand that there are other perspectives, other orthodoxies, and other histories than the ones which were handed to me at birth - which sounds like a reasonable summary of Mills's purpose in writing Sláine (or anything else).

As a child I was fascinated with trying to categorise how big a place had to be before it got a foreign name: Edimbourg but Glasgow?

Quote from: sauchie on 12 April, 2014, 02:01:54 PM

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 12 April, 2014, 12:36:19 PM
EDIT: Monsieur Feg, to be more precise

Aye, that's the most interesting bit of buried treasure our wee discussion has turned over. If I ever knew that, I'd forgotten, so cheers to the chap with the trowel and dirty knees.

T'was Jayzus introduced that to the discussion - he may well have dirty knees too, who knows how these artists make ends meet.

Agreed though, Slaine (and Mills) is all about confounding expectations and broadening horizons - which is why I found myself chuckling at leyser-gun consternation over on the 'Gonna read 'em all' thread.  Hurling the mythic landscape of Atlantean super-science, macrosmic balance and pandimensional elder star-gods slumbering at the dawn of time into a strip which had most recently had its protagonists mucking out a dragon farm in the Gower peninsula was a magnificent gob-slapper.

This conversation reminds me of an online article I read recently, about how the pronunciation of words has changed over time.

There was a bit in it that said something like "presumably the 'd' in Wednesday hasn't always been silent", which confused me for a second, 'cos I've always pronounced both 'd's.

Quote from: TordelBack on 12 April, 2014, 02:44:08 PM
T'was Jayzus introduced that to the discussion - he may well have dirty knees too, who knows how these artists make ends meet.

You're quite right - my knees are filthy.  Mainly from kneeling in the mud and crying when I've no rent money.
Everyone has to pronounce Feg's speech with a French accent from now on.
'Eyes weezout life -rhhotteeng corhhpsezz-  sundaired 'eads - zeez are pleez-eeng words to me.'

Which leads me onto a fresh bit of Sláine controversy - handy how everyone, from the Irish to the Egyptians, spoke the same language in Sláine's time, eh? 

Where in the Prog does it identify Slough Feg ans French?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer_(cave_art) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer_(cave_art))

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 12 April, 2014, 05:55:04 PM
Everyone has to pronounce Feg's speech with a French accent from now on. 'Eyes weezout life -rhhotteeng corhhpsezz-  sundaired 'eads - zeez are pleez-eeng words to me.'

Tir Nan Og flooded when the Lord Weird melted all the ice with just a dash of Cointreau.

Quote from: M.I.K. on 12 April, 2014, 05:34:33 PM
..."presumably the 'd' in Wednesday hasn't always been silent", which confused me for a second, 'cos I've always pronounced both 'd's.

S'right - it's a corruption of Woden's Day.

OK so they drew him in France. Doesn't mean he is French.Pretty sure someone in UK has drawn Beyonce, she's still American.

I count that Wikipedia evidence as hearsay.

Next because he is a Drune someone will tell me he is from Drune Hill in Antarctica.

Another thing I've discovered because of this thread is that Henri Breuil's 1920s drawing of the Sorcerer at Trois-Freres seems to be better known than the painting itself.  What's more, he seems to have used a fair bit of imagination in filling in the gaps.  It's quite a stretch to see antlers there, unless they were rubbed off in the meantime.

In any case, Feg himself broke it to bits when he first met Medb. 

QuoteOK so they drew him in France. Doesn't mean he is French.Pretty sure someone in UK has drawn Beyonce, she's still American.

Er, I wasn't being entirely serious, there, Bat King.  I don't think there was much of a Republique de France in those days.

Quote from: Bat King on 12 April, 2014, 07:12:29 PM
OK so they drew him in France. Doesn't mean he is French. Pretty sure someone in UK has drawn Beyonce, she's still American.

You've misunderstood I think - it's not that there's a painting of Slough Feg in France, it's that Slough Feg spends most of his stories sitting about in that very cave, talking about the images on the walls that were painted of him when he was younger. He actually lives in that cave. In France.

The 'Horned God' map is explicit in determining the extent of the Drune's territory as modern-day France, too.

'Sright.

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 12 April, 2014, 07:20:11 PM

QuoteOK so they drew him in France. Doesn't mean he is French.Pretty sure someone in UK has drawn Beyonce, she's still American.

Er, I wasn't being entirely serious, there, Bat King.  I don't think there was much of a Republique de France in those days.

Yeah so was I. Actually he coulda been from Antarctica...

But, 'boom!' in pops Dark Jimbo with proof that the Drune Lords might be french or the Welsh before the flood moved them. The Bretton & Welsh have some similarities - including bringing the names Britain and Brittany of course...

On the cave paintings, some scientists have suggested there were travelling cave painters... much of the evidence that painting took place over a number of years would suggest not though. But if there were travelling cave painters everyone could be in the wrong place!

As far as I know the Drunes and Slough Feg are completely fictional, no?  The Drunes were just Pat Mills' way of recognising the negative depictions of ancient druids (Sláine's tribe's druids being the positive ones.)  I don't think Feg has any basis in reality at all; rather than Mills making a character of the painting at Trois Freres.  And in Sláine's world, it's meant to be his own self-portrait, if I recall correctly.

Yes, you are right the Drunes are fictional, Pat has said he didn't base them on any real or mythical tribe. They are the worst of Druidic kind and shown to be 'different'. Other writers do a similar thing. In his Macro & Cato novels (I still call it the Eagle Series despite the Publisher...) Simon Scarrow has only one Sect of Druids being what the Romans described, the rest are much friendlier even though still opposing Rome.

I would be interested to learn what French myths there are about their tribes from that age. Not much has been translated to my knowledge and my French isn't up to much.