Angels of the Odd (1844)

There is a phonetically written-out accent, which is given as a tip of something you should never do. So I removed it entirely, I changed it so the narrator speaks like the Angel, and the Angel speaks like the narrator.

Here’s a selection (some, not all) of the phonetic unusualness in the Angel’s speech: disbelieve->disbelief, dare->there, submission->zubmizzion, teuffel->devil, full->vull, fool->vool, gry->cry, dis->this, drink->trink, zory->sorry, very->ferry, either->eder, about->apout, puppy->buppy, at->ab, and->und, visit->vist, prepare->pehabe, chicken->shicken, with->mit, for->vor, bell->pell, yourzelf->yourself, why->vy, think->tink, apout->about, business->pizzness, came->com’d, how->ow, Vor->for, of->ob, vord->word, is-> iz, truth->oof, what->vat, must->mos, here->ere, f->v, th->d, s->z, u->o, st->s, p->b, ab->as

It’s internally consistent with itself. The Angel speaks with few words that have the letter s in them (which would all be transformed to zs), which is possibly like that to keep the text readable. The Angel also really doesn’t talk at length unlike the narrator, which may be because Poe got fucking tired of writing it that way. Or to make the final triply-replaced word stand out more, which of course here is now only an act of submission.

Grammatically, the Angel does not use irregular verbs (come becomes come’d instead of came, do becomes do instead of doing or did), which might be an implication that the fake accent is a puzzle language used to entertain the gamer’s mind instead of a real accent, or might be something actual people do at this point of linguistic development idk. ‘Be’ is used as a verb after ‘you’, instead of ‘are’ or ‘am’.

I used this Spanish translation and Google translate to see someone else’s guess about what the Angel meant by teuffel (devil). It’s used as “headteuffel” (headdevil, one of the winged things like: the chicken, the owl, the imp, and the devil) and what der teuffel you pe do dare” (what the devil you be doing there/what the devil are you doing here).

This probably would’ve been a lot harder to do on a piece of paper annotated before there were computers.

Author: Float

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *