You’d assume there was some grand inspiration behind The Witcher ebook collection – a fictional land rife with politics and undiscovered geographical factors, or dragons and ogres for the hero to slay. In spite of everything, it is a standard collection in its personal proper, plus it is acquired an acclaimed online game tie-in collection and a Netflix adaptation that hasn’t been canned but.
However no, The Witcher creator Andrzej Sapkowski says the preliminary thought for the books got here from the Polish language.
A few of chances are you’ll bear in mind out of your GCSE lessons that the German language has three genders – masculine, female, and neuter. Polish is similar, and that is what sparked Sapkowski’s inspiration.
Sapkowski explains the beginnings of The Witcher throughout a livestream with YouTube channel Unbelievable discuss(s), run by 5 Ukrainian writers and hosts discussions on sci-fi and fantasy writing.
Translated by Witcher587 over on The Witcher subreddit, Sapkowski states in Polish the phrase ‘witch’ (wiedźma) is female. There is no such thing as a masculine counterpart for the phrase, so Sapkowski determined to create it himself, which led to him coining the phrase ‘wiedźmin’, a male witch.
Sapkowski additionally reveals he did not have a map in thoughts for The Witcher’s setting, the Continent, and did not need to make one to distinguish his collection from different fantasy novels on the time. As an alternative, the primary map was made by a Czech translator, Sapkowski says, and this was later used as the idea of all future maps.
It is unbelievable that The Witcher 4: Polaris and season 4 of Netflix’s adaptation solely exist thanks to at least one brief phrase (or its non-existence) in Polish.
In the identical interview, Sapkowski formally confirms he is engaged on a new Witcher ebook.
