The use and abuse of vocabulary

[julesjones]

[Poll #1341406]

ETA: You can choose more than one option on this format of poll.

Comments

[gina-stormgrant.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure choices 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive. Can I pick both?

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

I did. While I don't think mana exists in the real world, the concept certainly does.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

I wondered about that too - but decicded sufficient people believed in it, or something like it (me included) to make it real.

[julesjones]

I phrased it as "real world concept" as that was the best way I could think of to talk about it without making assumptions about whether people actively believe in it or not. Giving a related example -- I think the atheists around here would accept the God of the Bible as a real world concept rather than something simply made up for a game or story, even if they personally don't believe he exists.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Just because you're an atheist doesn't make the word mana invalid any more than it makes the word god (any god) invalid, or for that matter the word, unicorn. I don't believe in god, I don't believe in mana and, much as I'd like to, I don't believe in unicorns, however the words for all are completely valid and a necessary part of our vocabulary.

[julesjones]

Unicorns would be another good example of the distinction I was trying to make. Whether or not any individual, or a culture at large, currently *believes* that they exist, it's still a label for a real concept, rather than a word recently invented for a piece of fiction and something always seen as purely fictional.

There isn't a sharp boundary, of course. But there's definitely a difference in tone between "unicorn" and "ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal".

[julesjones]

That's why I've used checkboxes rather than radio buttons. I *think* that allows you to select more than one.

[stormheller.livejournal.com]

Once you've voted you can't get the boxes back so I sent my alter-ego over to vote again. ;-D

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can. Click where it says "Poll #1341406", then on "Fill out poll".

[gina-stormgrant.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Done now. Too early for thinking. ;-D

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I looked it up on wikipedia as I was wondering if you meant the word that I commonly think of as being spelt "manna". And even though "mana" is a variant spelling of "manna", I'm assuming you didn't and meant the first entry that wikipedia displays for "mana".

[julesjones]

"Manna" as in the Biblical term and "mana" are two distinct words, but the fact that someone on the comment thread I saw had assumed they were the same was one of the things that prompted this poll.

The poll's slanted, deliberately, and in a way that will suggest the point I'm going to make when I post later today about what interested me about that comment thread. :-)

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

BTW, I selected my answer in your poll before looking it up.

I shall look forward to the post abut the comment thread!

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I'd assumed it was a variant spelling of 'manna' - (largely on the assumption that you wouldn't ask about a non-existent word)

I'm a Scrabble player - there's variant spellings for so many words...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it wasn't just me. I considered "misspelling of manna or manana", but it seemed unlikely that one would base a poll on a misspelling, and the questions indicated it was something totally different which I happen to know nothing about.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

:-) I was rather glad it wasn't just me either!

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Same here - never heard of.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

My reaction was, "Bother, have I had it wrong all this time, about how you spell 'manna'?"

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

I ended up with 1 & 2, though I would not really use the 'original' meaning of the word. I suppose I'm making the assumption that the SF/RPG people didn't come up with it independently, which could be wrong -- it's a pretty simple word.

[julesjones]

It's an assumption I made as well. Larry Niven is the primary vector that I know of (although I'm sure there are earlier examples), and it's fairly clear from his work that he was riffing off the real world concept.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

I think that's where I first came across the term (in the book "The Flight Of The Horse", the story "What good is a glass dagger?"). Oh so many years ago.

RPG Mana

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

I presume they had to use mana becasue if they said "force" in a RPG sourcebook they would have got sued :-)

[doire]

Commenting before I look because I can't resist words and feel in the mood to not mind looking a fool;
1 Polynesian idea related to taboo.
2 Larry Niven "When the magic goes ???? er..." and into the shared world stories and then more widely used but possibly made up and so really 3.

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

Is it just taboo - I thought it was general magical potential in and around things and people.In the original meaning that is, not the RPG one.

[doire]

Now that's an illustration of the whole problem; it's so much related to intrinsic power in my mind that I don't make that explicit.

I thought that taboo came from having much mana; some thing/person became forbidden because of the danger of the power.

[zeborah]

In New Zealand these days, at least in mainstream (which means European-derived) society - I don't know about how it's used elsewhere or elsewhen - mana is tangential to tapu and it's not really about magic either.

tapu basically means that there are restrictions on the thing (up to, but not necessarily, being outright forbidden); the opposite is noa which means the thing can be used as ordinary. It's a bit like kosher vs <thinks> um, the opposite. But of course different too because, y'know, different cultures. If you open a new building, you can hold a ceremony to lift the tapu.

mana... I think of as status, face, respect, self-respect, honour, kind of thing. So it's very much real; it's just abstract.

Something that is tapu doesn't necessarily have mana, and someone that has mana isn't necessarily tapu, but there can be overlap.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I picked the second one because it's a real-world word, whether or not you believe in the concept it describes, and whether or not s/f writers and game designers are using it in a way that's consistent with its original meaning.

[karinfromnosund.livejournal.com]

"Mana" is a word that is sometimes used on rasfc to denote some kind of magic.

[shana.livejournal.com]

I first heard of it in Fraser's The Golden Bough, which I was reading in elementary school.

Since the people that used it believed it to be a real concept, I checked #1, as my personal belief/scientific evidence/etc. is irrelevent.

But it has definitely been adopted by sf and fantasy writers and gamers.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Couldn't resist looking it up in the Concise Oxford. It appears to derive from a Maori word meaning supernatural or magical power.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Maori? Well I never! I'd always assumed (wrongly) that it came from manna (food of the gods)

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Never heard it and assumed b/c you're very careful about that kind of thing that it WASN'T a misspelling of "manna" as in "from heaven." But that's just me, with NO connection to SF community whatsoever.

It's...

[seawasp]

... actually a derivation of a real-world word used by SF/F writers and fantasy RPGs of both computer and pen-and-paper types.

The earliest RPG use of "mana points" I know of was in The Arduin Grimoire, back in the late 1970s.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I always confuse "mana" with the miraculous food of the Bible, but then I remember that "manna" has two Ns. So that means I'm not sure about "mana", though I've heard people talk about it in connection with RPG games. As to what it is, I haven't really any idea.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

I had to google it, because I didn't know what it was. But then I had to choose the first (and of course also the last) option, because it would appear to be a river in Siberia. It doesn't get much more real than that.

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

Hm. Is it, I wonder, a synonym for the NOrse word "wyrd", which is general magical power, not just fate

[winterbay.livejournal.com]

I've never run into the concept outside of fantasy gaming so that would be why I choose as I did. I had no idea the word was based on a real concept from the beginning :)

[julesjones]

I was interested to see that at least one person on my flist fell into that category. (More than one person has picked the option, but mostly in a way that makes it clear that they'd have picked "rpg designers have repurposed a real word" had I offered that as an option.)

[hairmonger.livejournal.com]

I encountered "mana" while I was still in elementary school in some children's story set in Polynesia. When I came across it later in sf (not in Larry Niven that I remember; haven't read much Niven) I no more noticed the authors' use of it than their using "rocket" and "telepath."

Mary Anne in Kentucky