Talk:Broderbund

message: The cited article in CGW #88 says:
> There was a group of merchants in the game known as the "Broederbond," Afrikaans for "association of brothers." When Doug's brother Gary started successfully hawking the game from computer store to computer store, they immediately thought of emphasizing the family aspect of the business.
> That's when Broderbund got its start. However, since Doug had spent some time in South Africa (in fact, was once ousted because he dared to teach at an integrated school in Botswana); there was actually a group known in South Africa as the "broederbond" (who were not especially good guys) and Doug and Gary felt that using the Afrikaans spelling would have implied support for the repressive South African regime, they adopted the variant spelling "Broderbund," which is still in use."
However, a fairly detailed article on http://www.filfre.net/tag/broderbund/ has a different take:
> The name “Brøderbund” itself is of course an odd one that would never pass muster with a corporate public-relations department today. It actually first appears in Doug’s very first game, Galactic Empire, where it’s the name of one of the warring factions. “Brøderbund” is a compound noun that is vaguely recognizable to speakers of a number of languages, but isn’t quite correct in any of them. In Danish and Norwegian, the word “brødre” is the plural of “bror,” which means “brother.” (The “ø” is a special vowel found only in Danish and Norwegian; it’s pronounced like the German “ö,” and, also like “ö,” is often used in plural forms of nouns.) It’s probably acceptable to change it to “brøder” in a compound word, to make pronunciation easier. However, the second part of the name, “bund,” is in no sense correct. The intended meaning is obviously the German “Bund,” meaning a bond or union. Yet in Danish or Norwegian the correct word would be “forbund”; “bund” alone means a ground or base, obviously not the intended meaning. So, what we have here is a mash-up of Danish and German — or an example of a sort of pidgin Danish, if you prefer.
> Which is not to say that the Carlston brothers didn’t know exactly what they were doing in creating the name. Both were fascinated by languages, and enjoyed this sort of linguistic play. They chose to use the Danish and Norwegian word for “brother” in place of Gary’s more familiar Swedish because Swedish uses German-style umlauts; thus the word would have become “bröder.” The problem with “bröder” was that the “ö” would be impossible to represent on computer screens of the time. The “ø,” however, could be represented by simply typing a zero; then as (sometimes) now, computer displays used the slash to easily distinguish “0” from “o.” This also made the name a clever play on computer technology itself. Even in their professional copy, where the proper character would presumably have been available, the company would often write “Brøderbund” as “Br0derbund” to reinforce the computer connection. As for pronunciation… let’s not even get into that. Suffice to say that everyone just said the name as “Broderbund,” although that’s not correct if we insist on reading it as a Scandinavian word.
Google translate recognizes "Broederbond" as the Afrikaans word for "Fraternity".
Curiously, I was unable to find a mention of "Broederbond" in the manuals for Galactic Empire, Galactic Trader, or Tawala's Last Redoubt (see e.g. https://archive.org/details/Galactic_Empire_1979_Broderbund).  The only mention is in the background text for Galactic Revolution (#3 in the series), where it is spelled "Broederbund" -- not recognized by Google Translate.  The relevant text reads, "It was the aristocracy which fomented the revolution, led by Jan Swart, head of the Broederbund, a secret guild of the traders, who saw their profits threatened by the increasingly insatiable demands of Tawala's burgeoning bureaucracy.  But it was du Buque who finally led it and destroyed not only Tawala but the Broederbund as well."
The non-Afrikaans origin story comes from a Computer History Museum interview with Douglas Carlston -- http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Carlston_Doug/Carlston_Doug_1.oral_history.2004.102658043.pdf .  On page 10:
> Bergin: Where did you get the word from?
> Carlston: Well, as I said, Gary was a Scandinavian studies major. The word is vaguely
Scandinavian and means ‘brotherhood.’ In Swedish, it would be difficult, Broederverbundet, but
nobody can say that. People had enough trouble saying Brøderbund. The slash through the ‘o’
was both a play on the Danish way of umlauting an ‘o’ and the computer science way of
indicating a zero as opposed to an ‘o.’ So we were playing with both ideas. 
Fadden0 (talk) 20:28, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the name "Brøderbund" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The redirect Acquisition of Broderbund by The Learning Company has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  Utopes (talk / cont) 07:00, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Acquisition of Broderbund by The Learning Company]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: The IGN source does give the "loose translation of 'band of brothers'", but it's also contradicted by the also-used New York Times piece where it says it's simply "Danish for brotherhood". Other sources give it as Afrikaans, e.g.  I would suggest that at the least this definitive explanation be shaded and deemphasized. Thoughts? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:39, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology