[Dragaera] sword joke

[Mark Mandel]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 3:44 PM, J C <greyw01f at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> How many Jhegaala does it take to sharpen a sword?
>
> X*, but he's really hard to pin down, because his schedule keeps changing.
>
> *: where x= the number of metamorphoses a Jhegaala goes through in its
> lifetime
> (I just can't remember the specific number--AFT, and hell, until _Jhegaala_
> was written, even Steve didn't know for sure how many transformations they
> underwent, so it might be funny with the variable in the final format of the
> joke)
>

5 stages, so X = 5 (but there are only 4 transformations).


> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> How many Jhereg does it take to sharpen a sword?
>
> One, but only if he's got some 'work'.
>
> (what do you guys think? Are the quotation marks too obvious?  Should I
> leave "work" unadorned with such punctuation?)
>

I'm pretty sure it's always quoted in the books.


>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> How many Yendi does it take to sharpen a sword?
>
> Don't be stupid.  Any Yendi worth their salt already knows the answer.
>
> or:
>
> How many Yendi does it take to sharpen a sword?
>
> Don't be stupid. It only takes a single Dragonlord.
>

I don't get the first one.



>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> How many Athyra does it take to sharpen a sword?
>
> Three.  One to think up the idea of a Platonic Form of the "ideal" of
> sharpness, one to research the sorcery required to sharpen a sword to that
> degree, and another to successfully cast the spell during the first
> experimental casting, even though he accidentally blows himself up in the
> process.
>

Not "Platonic Form", which is very specifically from the history of
*our*philosophy.


>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> How many Hawk does it take to sharpen a sword?
>
> Isn't it odd how we use "s" to pluralize Terran fauna, but not Dragaeran?
>

Heh. But it's not fauna here; if they were talking about birds of prey it'd
be "hawks", plural and with small letter "h". They'd say "Hawklords", and
there'd be no joke.

Mark A. Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards
http://www.cracksandshards.com
a Steven Brust fan website

and

Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological
Busybody