There are 6 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Help with German
From: Raik Lorenz
2a. Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
From: Gary Shannon
2b. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
From: Larry Sulky
2c. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
From: taliesin the storyteller
3a. Re: Relay
From: taliesin the storyteller
3b. Re: Relay
From: Henrik Theiling
Messages
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1. Re: Help with German
Posted by: "Raik Lorenz" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Aug 27, 2006 5:52 am (PDT)
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 20:41:21 -0000
Von: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
An: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Betreff: Help with German
> In working with Pokorny's "Indogermanisches Wörterbuch" I have come
> across some German words the meanings of which I don't know. I can't
> find them in my German dictionary. I can break them into parts, but
> the compounds don't make any sense to me. Would any of our German
> members tell me what these words mean currently?
>
I'll take a try.
> Leuchtpflanze
Never heard of it. This item is neither in my active nor in my passive
vocabulary - before your mail reached me.
I dare imagine, that it signiefies a plant the emits light under certain
conditions (cf. bioluminescence).
Currently i daresay either it means nothing or it is an item of specialist
jargon. But I can't tell for sure.
> Fruchertrag [maybe it's <Fruchtertrag>?]
That (assuming that you omitted <t>) seems to be an old-fashioned word for
harvest, i.e. the sum of crops of one incidence of harvest in a certain area,
that you can actually harvest. Today, it's probably sufficient to say "Ertrag",
if the context is understood. And this one should be found in a current
dictionary.
> Wassersiedler
The only thing I can imagine a "Wassersiedler" to be is someone, who settles /
lives near a body of water (lake, river, sea, etc.). One further possibility
is, that it is a proper noun denoting a sort of animal or plant - German is
full of weird exocentric compounds that work this way.
> Eiröden
Sorry, I can't help you with this one - not the faintest glimpse od a shimmer
of an idea, what that might be.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Charlie
> http://wiki.frath.net/senjecas
Hopefully, this still was helpful in some way,
regards,
Raik Lorenz
--
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Messages in this topic (4)
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2a. Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:46 pm (PDT)
The Kalusa experiment ( http://kalusa.fiziwig.com/index.php ) was an attempt to
build a conlang collaboratively by allowing anyone to contribute any random
words and sentences, and to have other participants vote on the suitability of
those contributions.
Being entirely open-ended meant that people could contribute whatever words and
sentences they wanted to. Unlike a real pidgin or contact language, or language
developed within a community of people sharing work and social activities,
there was no pressing need to develop the means to say certain "necessary"
things like "I need two pounds of rice and a cabbage." or "Help me unload this
crate of nails." or "Come quickly! The goat has fallen into the well."
As a consequence, a great number of "frivolous" sentences and frankly
ridiculous words have been contributed. How often will we need the word for
"hyperinfracaniphilia", or "epistemic"?
Not being a spoken language, apparently little attention is being paid to the
sound of the language, and words and sentences that are either unpleasant
tongue twisters, or frankly childish sing-song constructions have found their
way into the language. How many reduplicated words does any one language need?
Sentences that begin to sound like "Hong Kong King Kong sing song ping pong
ding dong." are not the kind of things one would hear in a real spoken
language, and yet such grotesque words are proliferating: "Zotasota feniseni
rofkosofko onasona irusiru ishisishi zokusoku fezosezo." making the language
begin to sound like something created by Dr. Seuss while on mind-altering
drugs.
A side effect of flooding the vocabulary with such words is that the web page
that shows the most recent contributions is so saturated with these "goofy" and
useless words that many of the participants and contributors become discouraged
and leave the project because the "real" sentences have been buried under a
deep pile of ickysicky kakasaka dudupudu, which if not actualy destructive to
the language, is certainly not productive of a usable language.
Comments from users include ones like this: "Ack! I go away for three weeks,
and return to find Kalusa defeated! Oh well. It had a good run. ...[addressing
certain contributors]... Looks like you've successfully driven everyone off,
including me."
While there is a lot good stuff in Kalusa, and I fully intend to continue to
keep the website going, I can't help but think that what I've learned from
Kalusa could be applied to a much better collaborative conlang project, so I
have to ask what was learned from the project, and how can these problems be
prevented in any future collaborative language project? Here are some of my
ideas to help keep the project more focused.
1) Language and culture probably evolved together, and the cultural context
would be important to the development of the language. Therefore it would be
helpful to provide at least a basic cultural context for the language.
2) The earliest utterances of the language should deal with the most basic
daily needs of the people who speak the language, and not with "existentialism"
and "hyperinfracaniphilia". Therefore, rather than allowing contributors to add
random (and often "goofy") sentences and words, a large collection of simple
sentences dealing with the daily concerns of the people would be provided in
English; sentences such as "It is time to plant the corn." and "Father has gone
to the marketplace.". Contributors would suggest translations for the sentences
in this corpus of daily life, and all of the different suggested translations
would be presented together on the web page where they could be voted on. Once
a clear winner emerged the sentences with lower vote rankings would be deleted
and only one "correct" way to translate that sentence would be retained. Minor
variations in emphasis or shades of meaning might be retained, but translations
that departed radically from the highest ranking translation would be
discarded.
3) Languages do change and evolve, but they also exhibit a great deal of
stability in their most basic vocabulary. Basic vocabulary would be stabilized
as soon as a word emerged as clearly the most popular translation, and these
"standard" words would be added to a cannonical dictionary. Translations that
radically violated this cannonical basic vocabulary would be dropped, since,
for example, once the word "kaya" had been well established for "water" it is
unlikely that the word "gumisumi" would suddenly take its place. Anyone who
suddenly began translating "water" as "gumisumi" would clearly be considered as
being in a state of sin, and those translations would be expunged from the
corpus.
What other suggestions does anyone have for creating an improved collaborative
conlang project?
--gary
Messages in this topic (3)
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2b. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:55 pm (PDT)
Gary, as always your posting is incisive and thoughtful. I think your
ideas for an improved go-round are spot on. One additional
consideration might be this: more clarity as to which morpheme in
Kalusa2 corresponds to which morpheme in English. I'm not saying you
should require folks to submit an interlinear (I'm kind of thinking
it, but I'm not saying it), but there should be enough information
that folks can see what is meant by each morpheme and each word.
Besides, that would be a necessary condition in order to establish
that, for example, "kaya" is the word for 'water' and thereby be able
to canonise it.
--larry
Messages in this topic (3)
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2c. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:03 am (PDT)
* Gary Shannon said on 2006-08-27 22:27:45 +0200
> Not being a spoken language, apparently little attention is being paid to the
> sound of the language, and words and sentences that are either unpleasant
> tongue twisters, or frankly childish sing-song constructions have found their
> way into the language. How many reduplicated words does any one language need?
> Sentences that begin to sound like "Hong Kong King Kong sing song ping pong
> ding dong." are not the kind of things one would hear in a real spoken
> language, and yet such grotesque words are proliferating: "Zotasota feniseni
> rofkosofko onasona irusiru ishisishi zokusoku fezosezo." making the language
> begin to sound like something created by Dr. Seuss while on mind-altering
> drugs.
Reading the comments on the kalusa-page (which you forgot to link to,
it's at <http://kalusa.fiziwig.com/>) it seems that the problem is
basically sabotage by some of the participants. What I don't understand
is how you can tell who added which sentence, but from the comments, it
seems that the participants can. So it seems to me that each
(translated) sentence should be "signed" somehow by the translator.
For extreme anarchy, make it possible to have scores valid only for one
user, that is: if participant a scores participant b, that only
affects what participant a sees... basically, a per-user score-file.
That might mean we wind up with not one but <number of participants>
languages, thus mimicking real language even better.
t.
Messages in this topic (3)
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3a. Re: Relay
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 1:35 am (PDT)
* Peter Bleackley said on 2006-08-24 18:00:00 +0200
> Go to http://www.theiling.de/cgi/relay.cgi and sign up. This gives you
> access to the scheduling webform, where you can enter your
> availability to participate on various dates, and other preferences.
I'm sure I'm asking this on behalf of more than myself: what does the
colors in the overview-calendar mean? Is red a popular, contested day and
green free for the taking?
t., forgetful
Messages in this topic (2)
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3b. Re: Relay
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 3:22 am (PDT)
Hi!
taliesin the storyteller writes:
>...
> I'm sure I'm asking this on behalf of more than myself: what does
> the colors in the overview-calendar mean? Is red a popular,
> contested day and green free for the taking?
>...
Green means the priority for that day is high, i.e., many people have
entered that it fits their schedule well, while red means the
opposite.
Now, currently, not many people have edited their schedule for the
upcoming relay, so the colours are currently basically meaningless.
And anyway, since the collapse of people's availability to only a
one-dimensional scale is a wild simplification, the colours can be
viewed as an entertaining element even if the schedule is well
filled. :-)
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (2)
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