There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
From: Adam Walker
1b. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
From: Michael Everson
1c. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
From: Adam Walker
1d. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
From: Adam Walker
1e. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
From: Michael Everson
2a. Re: Attributives, Relative Clauses, and Coordinating Conjunctions
From: Jim Henry
3a. Re: another conlang promoted to natlanghood: Denden
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3b. proto-Europic
From: And Rosta
3c. Re: proto-Europic
From: George Corley
3d. Re: proto-Europic
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3e. Re: proto-Europic
From: And Rosta
3f. Re: proto-Europic
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3g. Re: another conlang promoted to natlanghood: Denden
From: Padraic Brown
3h. Re: proto-Europic
From: Peter Cyrus
3i. Re: proto-Europic
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
4a. Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL
From: Arthaey Angosii
4b. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
From: David Peterson
4c. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
From: MorphemeAddict
4d. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
From: George Corley
4e. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
From: Padraic Brown
4f. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
From: Adam Walker
4g. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
From: David Peterson
4h. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
From: Arthaey Angosii
5. Romániço
From: Gary Shannon
6. Word lists based on order of language acquisition
From: Matthew Martin
Messages
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1a. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 7:46 am ((PDT))
Sutton's Sign Writing is being used in practical daily-life applications
for several signed languages already. ASL users continue to reject SW
partly on political grounds. (It was invented by a hearing person.) But
Catalan Sign Language is producing magazines in SW as well as educational
materials, etc. IIRC Nicaraguan Sign Language was the first to adopt SW as
its written medium, and I believe there are quite a number of others that
are now using it. The trend toward using SW will likely continue since it
is the writing system of choice for signed languages among Wycliffe and
Wycliffe associated Bible translation teams and literacy projects, though a
number of those projects are opting for non-written translations using
video or computer generated graphics. Still it seems likely that a great
many Third-world signed languages will come to be written using SW while
ASL remains, essentially, an unwritten language, though I do know ASL users
who are actively using SW.
One of the drawbacks of using SW is no unicode support, at least not that I
am aware of.
Adam
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 8:06 PM, Arthaey Angosii <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hey, everyone! Long time no email. :) (I've just been busy with work
> and with life in general, nothing terribly exciting or bad going on.)
>
> Anyway, I've started taking an ASL (American Sign Language) class and
> am really disappointed in all the various transcription systems that
> are out there. The most common failing is a lack of transcribing
> non-manual aspects of ASL, which are grammatically necessary. The
> second common failing is they they are more geared toward academic
> documentation, not toward a useful day-to-day writing system.
>
> I had been hopeful about the new kid on the block, si5s, but it seems
> lacking too (doesn't encode z axis of movement, doesn't encode palm
> orientation, etc).
>
> I asked on a Deaf forum about writing systems and was pretty
> thoroughly shot down as writing wasn't something Deaf people were
> interested in, encoding a spatial-visual language into a linear
> written space was impossible, and I was barking up the wrong tree.
>
> But for *myself*, I sure would like to be able to write myself notes
> about what I learn in my ASL class, make flashcards, etc. Plus my
> natural inclination toward conlangs and conscripts likes the challenge
> of trying to encode everything that's phonemic and necessary about ASL
> into a written form. Based on my conversations on that Deaf forum, I
> have no illusions that actual Deaf people and native signers of ASL
> will be interested in a written form of ASL, but then again, that's
> never stopped me from creating my conlangs even though no one is
> interested in speaking them.
>
> So. Are there any ASL signers here (Deaf or otherwise) that have done
> something like this already? Or who would be interested in giving me
> feedback if I end up working on my own conscript?
>
>
> --
> AA
>
> http://conlang.arthaey.com
>
Messages in this topic (14)
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1b. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
Posted by: "Michael Everson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:25 am ((PDT))
On 28 Mar 2012, at 15:46, Adam Walker wrote:
> ASL users continue to reject SW partly on political grounds.
"Some ASL users", please. Many ASL users do not reject it, and there have been
PhD theses at Gallaudet dealing with it, and I know one native ASL speaker who
is Deaf who is a user and is working with me and others to encode SW in the
Universal Character Set.
> (It was invented by a hearing person.)
A hearing person who speaks ASL, and who has good relations with Deaf users of
many languages all over the world.
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (14)
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1c. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:52 am ((PDT))
If you read my whole message, I mentioned at then end that I also know Deaf
ASL users who use and/or promote SW, but there IS significant resistance to
the idea, much of it politically motivated. Witness the original poster's
reception when he asked about writting systems for ASL on ASL fora. Yes,
she does. And she's avery nice persom. I haven't met her in person, but I
have corresponded with Valery a bit, have contributed to her Sign Puddle
website and have her as a friend on Facebook. Valery's system is MY system
of choice. I find it fully adequate for writing signed languages. It
encodes at least as much of what is happening in ASL and other SLs as the
various systems in use do for spoken languages. But that doesn't mean
there aren't voiciferous opponents.
And as far as "some" vs. "most/many" what have you. I would wager that
"most" ASL users have never even tried SW and whatever opinions they do or
do not have about the system are based on hearsay and/or absence of
information. Practically every Deaf person I have known who has actual
experience with SW is in someway involved in the linguistics community, ie
not typical people of ANY language community.
Adam
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Michael Everson <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 28 Mar 2012, at 15:46, Adam Walker wrote:
>
> > ASL users continue to reject SW partly on political grounds.
>
> "Some ASL users", please. Many ASL users do not reject it, and there have
> been PhD theses at Gallaudet dealing with it, and I know one native ASL
> speaker who is Deaf who is a user and is working with me and others to
> encode SW in the Universal Character Set.
>
> > (It was invented by a hearing person.)
>
> A hearing person who speaks ASL, and who has good relations with Deaf
> users of many languages all over the world.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
Messages in this topic (14)
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1d. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:20 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Michael Everson <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 28 Mar 2012, at 15:46, Adam Walker wrote:
>
> and I know one native ASL speaker who is Deaf who is a user and is
> working with me and others to encode SW in the Universal Character Set.
>
That wouldn't happen to be Stuart Thiessen, the linguist and all-around
techie, would it? He's a very nice man and it seems like just the sort of
project he would be involved with.
Adam
Messages in this topic (14)
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1e. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
Posted by: "Michael Everson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:18 pm ((PDT))
On 28 Mar 2012, at 20:20, Adam Walker wrote:
>> and I know one native ASL speaker who is Deaf who is a user and is working
>> with me and others to encode SW in the Universal Character Set.
>
> That wouldn't happen to be Stuart Thiessen, the linguist and all-around
> techie, would it? He's a very nice man and it seems like just the sort of
> project he would be involved with.
Yes, it's Stuart.
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (14)
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2a. Re: Attributives, Relative Clauses, and Coordinating Conjunctions
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:38 am ((PDT))
On 3/26/12, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]> wrote:
> So, I now have a generic coordinating conjunction that means "the
> things being coordinated are co-referential". Useful for appositives
> and many other things. E.g.
gjâ-zym-byn has a conjunction {Å¡ej} which I usually gloss as "also
known as", used for connecting two noun phrases describing the same
thing in different ways, and for connecting clauses describing the
same event in different ways; fairly similar to your COREF
conjunction, if not always used the same way.
> "The president COREF Obama" == "President Obama"
{Å¡ej} isn't necessarily used in connection a title to a proper name;
plain juxtaposition is more likely in that context, and it's not
ambiguous because gzb's syntax separates noun phrases with
postpositions or conjunctions.
> "Great-thing COREF Alexander" == "Alexander the Great" (cf.
> "Great-thing MOD Alexander" == "Alexander, who happens to be a great
> guy")
Hmm, I'm not sure how I would translate them -- "great" in English is
polysemous enough I'm not sure how I would render it into gzb in these
sentences. I figure, though, that whatever modifier I end up using
for "great" (maybe "competent-AUG" or "admiration-worthy" or
"approval-worthy-AUG"...?) would get a title-suffix when used as an
epithet to a name (and would probably precede the name, but might
follow it), and be used in plain modifier form (and always follow the
name) in translating sentences like your "Great-thing MOD Alexander".
> "I broke COREF dropped the vase" == "I broke the vase by dropping it"
> (dropping and breaking are different descriptions of the same actual
> action)
> "I fixed a bug COREF made my boss happy" == "I made my boss happy by
> fixing a bug"
> "I win COREF you lose" == "I win and you lose, and these are the same
> thing" (cf. "I win this game and you lose that totally unrelated one")
gzb would use {Å¡ej} in sentences like that.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (3)
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3a. Re: another conlang promoted to natlanghood: Denden
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:14 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:24:48 +0200 BPJ wrote:
> [...]
> Either way it's not the conlangers' problem. Painters are not
> required to glue a note that the object/person depicted does
> not exist in the external world, and novelists are not required
> to print a note that their text is fictional on every page.
> The burden of finding out whether they quote a fictional
> or a factual work rests on the person doing the quoting.
Absolutely. The only difference is that many people, including
many linguists, are not aware that there are people around who
make up languages as *art*. Yet, a thorough research should
*always* reveal that the language in question is fictional.
With most fictional languages, there are references to places
and other things that are obviously fictional; everybody knows
that there are no dragons in the real world, and that we know
nothing about the inhabitants of other planetary systems and
their languages, etc.
The only case where a researcher worth his stripes could actually
be misled for a while are conlangs "set in the real world", such
as Miapimoquitch or those of the League of Lost Languages. But
even there, a scrupulous research should reveal the fictionality
of the language - it just doesn't show up in any peer-reviewed
publication, no library carries a grammar, Ethnologue doesn't
list it, etc.
Consider this page:
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/attidian.html
At first glance, this looks like a discussion of a real ancient
inscription. But there are some things which shed a light of
doubt on it. Clicking on the words "Jörg Rhiemeier's Conlang
Page" or "League of Lost Languages" leads to pages which make
quite clear that the language is fictional; moreover, *all* the
sources cited in the article will soon turn out to be spurious.
There is no _Albica_ journal, no Glastonbury University, and
the only Accademia Farnese Google knows of is a music ensemble
which of course does not publish linguistic scholarly work.
That conlangs are occasionally mistaken for natlangs in scholarly
work is merely an indication that some scholars research sloppily.
This has happened to me twice: I was once asked for more info on
"Paleo-Alpine languages", and once on "Middle Albic" and the
"Gospel of Joseph of Arimathea". At least, those two researchers
did *ask* the source before they made the blunder.
At any rate, it is not the conlangers to blame for such accidents.
A scholar who can tell science from crackpotry should also be able
to tell natlangs from conlangs. At least, none of us claims that
the thing was real - as opposed to crackpots who present often even
less plausible constructions and claim that they were real!
> [...]
> Perhaps there rests on us a burden of raising awareness that
> there is such a thing as artlangs, but not in the sonse that
> it's incumbent on us to prevent that anybody mistakes an artlang
> for a natlang, but in the sense that it's in our own interest
> to raise awareness and acceptance that there is an art form
> like ours.
Yes. The problem is simply that most people aren't used to the
idea that some people make up plausibly-looking languages just
for fun. At least, many people have by now heard of such famous
fictional languages as Quenya, Sindarin, Kligon, Na'vi or Dothraki;
but many, many people are not at all into fantasy or science
fiction and thus not exposed to such examples.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (23)
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3b. proto-Europic
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:16 pm ((PDT))
Europic is a conjectural language family that contains Indo-European and Old
European (the language of Old European hydronymy). Within Old European is the
Hesperic family, which contains Albic. The similarities between Old Albic and
internally reconstructed (pre-)Proto-Indo-European are very striking -- far
more than could be attributed to areal influence from Celtic, so one must
assume that only a rather shallow time distance separates Proto-Europic from
PIE and Old Albic. Given the relatively shallow time distance and the testimony
of PIE and Old Albic, a reconstruction of Proto-Europic should be practicable?
Does one yet exist?
I haven't been able to find an Old Albic lexicon, so my observations are based
on a description of Old Albic grammar and the vocables used in its examples.
--And.
Messages in this topic (23)
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3c. Re: proto-Europic
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:22 pm ((PDT))
Wait, what? I suppose you could ask the creator. Or are you creating this
"Old European" yourself?
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 3:15 PM, And Rosta <[email protected]> wrote:
> Europic is a conjectural language family that contains Indo-European and
> Old European (the language of Old European hydronymy). Within Old European
> is the Hesperic family, which contains Albic. The similarities between Old
> Albic and internally reconstructed (pre-)Proto-Indo-European are very
> striking -- far more than could be attributed to areal influence from
> Celtic, so one must assume that only a rather shallow time distance
> separates Proto-Europic from PIE and Old Albic. Given the relatively
> shallow time distance and the testimony of PIE and Old Albic, a
> reconstruction of Proto-Europic should be practicable? Does one yet exist?
>
> I haven't been able to find an Old Albic lexicon, so my observations are
> based on a description of Old Albic grammar and the vocables used in its
> examples.
>
> --And.
>
Messages in this topic (23)
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3d. Re: proto-Europic
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:44 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:15:51 +0100 And Rosta wrote:
> Europic is a conjectural language family that contains Indo-European and Old
> European (the language of Old European hydronymy). Within Old European is
> the Hesperic family, which contains Albic. The similarities between Old
> Albic and internally reconstructed (pre-)Proto-Indo-European are very
> striking -- far more than could be attributed to areal influence from
> Celtic, so one must assume that only a rather shallow time distance
> separates Proto-Europic from PIE and Old Albic.
The time distance is indeed not great - Proto-Europic was spoken
where now is the Bay of Odessa, immediately before the Black Sea
Flood event, which was around 5500 BC. From there, one group
moved north (probably by boats on the Dniepr river) and founded PIE;
Early PIE, the latest common ancestor of Late PIE and Anatolian,
I date at 4000 BC, Late PIE, the latest common ancestor of the non-
Anatolian IE languages, I date at about 3200-3000 BC; both were
spoken north of the Black Sea. Another group moved west (probably by
boats on the Danube river) and founded the Linear Pottery culture
(which seems to appear out of nowhere all across Central Europe
around 5500 BC); their language became Proto-Hesperic. One daughter
group eventually ended up in the British Isles, and Old Albic, a
notoriously conservative (though not in all points) descendant of
Proto-Hesperic, was spoken around 600 BC.
At any rate, Old Albic is closer to IE than Uralic is!
> Given the relatively shallow
> time distance and the testimony of PIE and Old Albic, a reconstruction of
> Proto-Europic should be practicable? Does one yet exist?
So far it exists only in form of a handful of brief notes and
ideas on sound correspondences. Basically, when I decide that
a particular Old Albic word has an Indo-European cognate, I take
the PIE word and apply the sound changes to it, going first
backwards to Proto-Europic and then forwards to Old Albic.
> I haven't been able to find an Old Albic lexicon, so my observations are
> based on a description of Old Albic grammar and the vocables used in its
> examples.
The lexicon is not online yet, but it is under construction, and
I hope to get it up later this year together with a revised
grammar, a description of the alphabet, and other stuff on the
Elves of the British Isles. But your observations that the
language is related to Indo-European is perfectly right.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (23)
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3e. Re: proto-Europic
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:59 pm ((PDT))
George Corley, On 28/03/2012 20:22:
> Wait, what? I suppose you could ask the creator. Or are you creating this
> "Old European" yourself?
Old Albic (and the hypothesized Hesperic and Europic families) is Joerg's
creation. As a conlang it is IMO quite conspicuously interesting because it
fuses orthodox linguistic scholarship with conlanging: Joerg tries to make Old
Albic consistent with what we know about Old European and Insular Celtic and
with what we might expect Early Europic lgs to be like. (It also has a
secondary aim of fashioning a 'real world' -- conhistorical -- counterpart of
the Eldar, which to my thinking conflicts with the other aim somewhat
unsatisfactorily (tho certainly no less unsatisfactorily than the conflicting
aims of my own conlang).) It's similar to Brithenig and its ilk -- conlanging
that is consistent with a body of facts about particular natlangs.
I've thought over the years about doing something akin to Proto-Europic, but I
don't have the dedication to do the project justice, and in my hands the
project would involve larger imaginative leaps away from the terra firma of
established scholarship that Joerg's Old Albic rests more securely on; it's the
comparative conservatism of Joerg's approach that makes it more interesting to
the audience. (I.e. I'd have more fun doing Proto-Europic my way than Joerg's,
but the results are more interesting when things are done Joerg's way.)
--And.
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 3:15 PM, And Rosta<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Europic is a conjectural language family that contains Indo-European and
>> Old European (the language of Old European hydronymy). Within Old European
>> is the Hesperic family, which contains Albic. The similarities between Old
>> Albic and internally reconstructed (pre-)Proto-Indo-European are very
>> striking -- far more than could be attributed to areal influence from
>> Celtic, so one must assume that only a rather shallow time distance
>> separates Proto-Europic from PIE and Old Albic. Given the relatively
>> shallow time distance and the testimony of PIE and Old Albic, a
>> reconstruction of Proto-Europic should be practicable? Does one yet exist?
>>
>> I haven't been able to find an Old Albic lexicon, so my observations are
>> based on a description of Old Albic grammar and the vocables used in its
>> examples.
>>
>> --And.
>>
Messages in this topic (23)
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3f. Re: proto-Europic
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:21 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:59:30 +0100 And Rosta wrote:
> George Corley, On 28/03/2012 20:22:
> > Wait, what? I suppose you could ask the creator. Or are you creating
> > this
> > "Old European" yourself?
>
> Old Albic (and the hypothesized Hesperic and Europic families) is Joerg's
> creation. As a conlang it is IMO quite conspicuously interesting because it
> fuses orthodox linguistic scholarship with conlanging: Joerg tries to make
> Old Albic consistent with what we know about Old European and Insular Celtic
> and with what we might expect Early Europic lgs to be like. (It also has a
> secondary aim of fashioning a 'real world' -- conhistorical -- counterpart
> of the Eldar, which to my thinking conflicts with the other aim somewhat
> unsatisfactorily (tho certainly no less unsatisfactorily than the
> conflicting aims of my own conlang).) It's similar to Brithenig and its ilk
> -- conlanging that is consistent with a body of facts about particular
> natlangs.
The "real world Eldar" of my conlang aren't really a separate race
with properties unlike those found in real humans (such as relative
immortality or "magical" or superhuman powers etc.); they are just a
human ethnic group, even if they are considerably more "enlightened"
than most other peoples of their age. Think of a civilization on
a par with ancient Greece. The connection to Tolkien's Elves is
that my Elves are the people on which the Germanic and Celtic tales
of Elves on which Tolkien based his Elves are based. Also, the Greek
tradition of the Hyperboreans, an enlightened people living on an
island "opposite the land of the Celts", and maybe even contributing
to the Atlantis myth. I sometimes stop and think "How realistic is
all this?" but I think I can "get away" with it, and I have invested
so much dedication in it that it is simply too late to stop and scrap
it ;)
> I've thought over the years about doing something akin to Proto-Europic, but
> I don't have the dedication to do the project justice, and in my hands the
> project would involve larger imaginative leaps away from the terra firma of
> established scholarship that Joerg's Old Albic rests more securely on; it's
> the comparative conservatism of Joerg's approach that makes it more
> interesting to the audience. (I.e. I'd have more fun doing Proto-Europic my
> way than Joerg's, but the results are more interesting when things are done
> Joerg's way.)
Thank you for your appreciation of my project! I can assure you
that working on Old Albic and all the stuff connected with it is
very much fun to me - otherwise I wouldn't have found the dedication
to follow through this sophisticated project ;) I don't know, of
course, what would result if one was doing it your way, and whether
that would be "more interesting" (to whom? Some people find interest
in projects others would consider a waste of time).
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (23)
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3g. Re: another conlang promoted to natlanghood: Denden
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:27 pm ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 3/28/12, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Either way it's not the conlangers' problem.
> Painters are not
> > required to glue a note that the object/person depicted
> does
> > not exist in the external world, and novelists are not
> required
> > to print a note that their text is fictional on every
> page.
> > The burden of finding out whether they quote a
> fictional
> > or a factual work rests on the person doing the
> quoting.
>
> Absolutely. The only difference is that many people,
> including
> many linguists, are not aware that there are people around
> who make up languages as *art*.
I think by now this number must be vanishingly small, espècially among the
younger generations. Twenty-five years ago, there was Quenya, and that
was about it. Then came Klingon which I think laid the foundation for
the mainstreaming of constructed languages. People began to expect
something other than random "ooga-booga" noises for alien languages. And
now we've had Parseltongue, Navi and Dothraki all in quick succession
along with the old tried and true Quenya all very much in front of the
public awareness. It's hard to imagine that anyone who's seen these movies
or who has heard about them online (or even on the radio!) can still be
totally unaware of language creation as an art.
> [...] The problem is simply that most people aren't
> used to the idea that some people make up plausibly-looking languages
> just for fun. At least, many people have by now heard of
> such famous fictional languages as Quenya, Sindarin, Kligon, Na'vi or
> Dothraki; but many, many people are not at all into fantasy or
> science fiction and thus not exposed to such examples.
This might have been the case ten to fifteen years ago. But now there is
simply só much awareness in the media and online about artlangs (especially
as used in film and in books) that I just can't see how even someone who
is not not into fantasy movies but is otherwise online (i.e. for research)
is not aware of the existence of languages as artwork.
The situation is such that I think even the term "secret vice" has become
quite the anachronism.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (23)
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3h. Re: proto-Europic
Posted by: "Peter Cyrus" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:08 pm ((PDT))
I thought the Elves were the pre-Germanic inhabitants of Scandinavia, the
ones who sacrificed to Freyr and Freya in Elfblots.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:59:30 +0100 And Rosta wrote:
>
> > George Corley, On 28/03/2012 20:22:
> > > Wait, what? I suppose you could ask the creator. Or are you creating
> > > this
> > > "Old European" yourself?
> >
> > Old Albic (and the hypothesized Hesperic and Europic families) is Joerg's
> > creation. As a conlang it is IMO quite conspicuously interesting because
> it
> > fuses orthodox linguistic scholarship with conlanging: Joerg tries to
> make
> > Old Albic consistent with what we know about Old European and Insular
> Celtic
> > and with what we might expect Early Europic lgs to be like. (It also has
> a
> > secondary aim of fashioning a 'real world' -- conhistorical --
> counterpart
> > of the Eldar, which to my thinking conflicts with the other aim somewhat
> > unsatisfactorily (tho certainly no less unsatisfactorily than the
> > conflicting aims of my own conlang).) It's similar to Brithenig and its
> ilk
> > -- conlanging that is consistent with a body of facts about particular
> > natlangs.
>
> The "real world Eldar" of my conlang aren't really a separate race
> with properties unlike those found in real humans (such as relative
> immortality or "magical" or superhuman powers etc.); they are just a
> human ethnic group, even if they are considerably more "enlightened"
> than most other peoples of their age. Think of a civilization on
> a par with ancient Greece. The connection to Tolkien's Elves is
> that my Elves are the people on which the Germanic and Celtic tales
> of Elves on which Tolkien based his Elves are based. Also, the Greek
> tradition of the Hyperboreans, an enlightened people living on an
> island "opposite the land of the Celts", and maybe even contributing
> to the Atlantis myth. I sometimes stop and think "How realistic is
> all this?" but I think I can "get away" with it, and I have invested
> so much dedication in it that it is simply too late to stop and scrap
> it ;)
>
> > I've thought over the years about doing something akin to Proto-Europic,
> but
> > I don't have the dedication to do the project justice, and in my hands
> the
> > project would involve larger imaginative leaps away from the terra firma
> of
> > established scholarship that Joerg's Old Albic rests more securely on;
> it's
> > the comparative conservatism of Joerg's approach that makes it more
> > interesting to the audience. (I.e. I'd have more fun doing Proto-Europic
> my
> > way than Joerg's, but the results are more interesting when things are
> done
> > Joerg's way.)
>
> Thank you for your appreciation of my project! I can assure you
> that working on Old Albic and all the stuff connected with it is
> very much fun to me - otherwise I wouldn't have found the dedication
> to follow through this sophisticated project ;) I don't know, of
> course, what would result if one was doing it your way, and whether
> that would be "more interesting" (to whom? Some people find interest
> in projects others would consider a waste of time).
>
> --
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
> http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
> "BÄsel asa Äm, a Äm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Ämel." - SiM 1:1
>
Messages in this topic (23)
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3i. Re: proto-Europic
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:26 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:08:11 +0200 Peter Cyrus wrote:
> I thought the Elves were the pre-Germanic inhabitants of Scandinavia, the
> ones who sacrificed to Freyr and Freya in Elfblots.
Maybe; some scholars say so. But AFAIK the tradition of "Elves"
was much more vigorous among the Anglo-Saxons who perceived the
Elves as sharing their country (I recommend reading _Elves in
Anglo-Saxon England_ by Alaric Hall), while in Norse myth the Elves
just live in a faraway country "between Heaven and Earth" (perhaps
Britain as it appeared when the Germanic people were not yet the
formidable mariners of later ages, and the North Sea seemed large
to them?), and they don't figure prominently in the Eddas. And the
Insular Celts definitely believed that Elves lived in their country,
too.
It is thus my hypothesis that the "real" Elves were a civilization
in the British Isles. But I know that it is just a hypothesis; it
could have been otherwise.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"BÄsel asa Äm, a Äm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Ämel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL
Posted by: "Arthaey Angosii" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:14 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sutton's Sign Writing is being used in practical daily-life applications
> for several signed languages already.
That validation helps ease my concerns about whether it would work, in
a practical sense, for at least my own note-taking in class.
> ASL users continue to reject SW
> partly on political grounds. (It was invented by a hearing person.) But
> Catalan Sign Language is producing magazines in SW as well as educational
> materials, etc.
I hadn't realized that non-ASL sign languages were embracing SignWriting. Cool!
> One of the drawbacks of using SW is no unicode support, at least not that I
> am aware of.
There is a Unicode proposal â see
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4090.pdf â which Michael
Everson is involved in.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Michael Everson <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Some ASL users", please. Many ASL users do not reject it, and there have been
> PhD theses at Gallaudet dealing with it, and I know one native ASL speaker who
> is Deaf who is a user and is working with me and others to encode SW in the
> Universal Character Set.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> If you read my whole message, I mentioned at then end that I also know Deaf
> ASL users who use and/or promote SW, but there IS significant resistance to
> the idea, much of it politically motivated. Witness the original poster's
> reception when he asked about writting systems for ASL on ASL fora.
I'm glad to hear that there are some ASL speakers who support & use
SignWriting, but it seems disingenuous to imply that there is not a
strong community rejection of it.
As of now, there is an 18-post forum thread about this. Not a single
Deaf person has spoken in favor of even the *idea* of having a written
form of ASL. Unless the Deaf people on the forum are wildly
unrepresentative of the Deaf community at large, I think it's fair to
say written ASL is quite unpopular.
The most popular and vocal arguments Deaf people had against written ASL were:
- ASL is already visual; it doesn't need another visual form
- when Deaf people want to write, they write in English; they don't
want or need to learn yet another writing system
And there were many other arguments too:
- ASL has never been a written language and never will be
- ASL should only be "broken down in writing for linguistics purposes"
but not for communication
- video is the appropriate recording medium, not writing
- writing is what hearing people do; signing is what deaf people do
- ASL is too complex to be able to be written down; you would lose too
much nuance
- no one uses written ASL, so no one has any motivation to learn it
(chicken & egg)
No Deaf person on the forum objected to any of the above arguments;
they merely piled on their own addition reasons why they didn't need
or want a written form of ASL. I wonder if, because you have been
working with the SignWriting community directly, you see a skewed
minority of Deaf signers supporting it?
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> Practically every Deaf person I have known who has actual
> experience with SW is in someway involved in the linguistics community, ie
> not typical people of ANY language community.
This is an interesting observation, but it does make sense. Folks into
linguistics definitely have a different perspective on language use
than the general speaking community, whether that be English speakers
or ASL signers or any other group.
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:54 pm ((PDT))
On Mar 28, 2012, at 10:14 AM, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> I'm glad to hear that there are some ASL speakers who support & use
> SignWriting, but it seems disingenuous to imply that there is not a
> strong community rejection of it.
Another perspective is my uncle (who's nearing 50). I asked him about
SignWriting once, and he seemed positive enough (seemed to be of the opinion,
"Oh yeah, people use that"), but I asked if he used it and knew it, and he said
no, and kind of implied that it was sillymainly for kids, or storybooks. (And
he seemed to think that these two opinions weren't in conflict.) He uses
English for writing.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
4c. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:00 pm ((PDT))
I had an email conversation with a deaf man once about writing ASL. He
answered that the language would be polluted or weakened if reduced to a
written form. He used English for reading and writing.
I expected the deaf community to embrace a written form of their language,
but such seems to be not the case.
stevo
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Arthaey Angosii <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Sutton's Sign Writing is being used in practical daily-life applications
> > for several signed languages already.
>
> That validation helps ease my concerns about whether it would work, in
> a practical sense, for at least my own note-taking in class.
>
> > ASL users continue to reject SW
> > partly on political grounds. (It was invented by a hearing person.) But
> > Catalan Sign Language is producing magazines in SW as well as educational
> > materials, etc.
>
> I hadn't realized that non-ASL sign languages were embracing SignWriting.
> Cool!
>
> > One of the drawbacks of using SW is no unicode support, at least not
> that I
> > am aware of.
>
> There is a Unicode proposal â see
> http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4090.pdf â which Michael
> Everson is involved in.
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Michael Everson <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > "Some ASL users", please. Many ASL users do not reject it, and there
> have been
> > PhD theses at Gallaudet dealing with it, and I know one native ASL
> speaker who
> > is Deaf who is a user and is working with me and others to encode SW in
> the
> > Universal Character Set.
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > If you read my whole message, I mentioned at then end that I also know
> Deaf
> > ASL users who use and/or promote SW, but there IS significant resistance
> to
> > the idea, much of it politically motivated. Witness the original
> poster's
> > reception when he asked about writting systems for ASL on ASL fora.
>
> I'm glad to hear that there are some ASL speakers who support & use
> SignWriting, but it seems disingenuous to imply that there is not a
> strong community rejection of it.
>
> As of now, there is an 18-post forum thread about this. Not a single
> Deaf person has spoken in favor of even the *idea* of having a written
> form of ASL. Unless the Deaf people on the forum are wildly
> unrepresentative of the Deaf community at large, I think it's fair to
> say written ASL is quite unpopular.
>
> The most popular and vocal arguments Deaf people had against written ASL
> were:
>
> - ASL is already visual; it doesn't need another visual form
>
> - when Deaf people want to write, they write in English; they don't
> want or need to learn yet another writing system
>
> And there were many other arguments too:
>
> - ASL has never been a written language and never will be
>
> - ASL should only be "broken down in writing for linguistics purposes"
> but not for communication
>
> - video is the appropriate recording medium, not writing
>
> - writing is what hearing people do; signing is what deaf people do
>
> - ASL is too complex to be able to be written down; you would lose too
> much nuance
>
> - no one uses written ASL, so no one has any motivation to learn it
> (chicken & egg)
>
> No Deaf person on the forum objected to any of the above arguments;
> they merely piled on their own addition reasons why they didn't need
> or want a written form of ASL. I wonder if, because you have been
> working with the SignWriting community directly, you see a skewed
> minority of Deaf signers supporting it?
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Practically every Deaf person I have known who has actual
> > experience with SW is in someway involved in the linguistics community,
> ie
> > not typical people of ANY language community.
>
> This is an interesting observation, but it does make sense. Folks into
> linguistics definitely have a different perspective on language use
> than the general speaking community, whether that be English speakers
> or ASL signers or any other group.
>
>
> --
> AA
>
> http://conlang.arthaey.com
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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4d. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:20 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 3:59 PM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> I had an email conversation with a deaf man once about writing ASL. He
> answered that the language would be polluted or weakened if reduced to a
> written form. He used English for reading and writing.
> I expected the deaf community to embrace a written form of their language,
> but such seems to be not the case.
>
>
Hmm, interesting. ISTR that certain Greek philosophers claimed that
writing had ruined our memories, but I haven't heard of such cultural
resistance to writing in modern times.
Messages in this topic (8)
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4e. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:58 pm ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 3/28/12, Arthaey Angosii <[email protected]> wrote:
> The most popular and vocal arguments Deaf people had against
> written ASL were:
>
> - ASL is already visual; it doesn't need another visual
> form
This makes sense, though it could be argued that the two are different
kinds of visuality. One is ephemeral and fleeting -- it happens in the
moment and is gone. The other stands as a record that can be referred to
in future in the same way spoken language is fleeting but becomes immortal
via writing.
> - when Deaf people want to write, they write in English;
> they don't want or need to learn yet another writing system
Makes sense also, and I think this is the strongest argument against SW or
any similar scheme -- it seems like this SW is to ASL what the IPA is to
English. That is, trying to record ever more detailed nuances of a
language.
Assuming the ASL signer àlso knows how to read and write English, this
makes good sense. Why learn a special written form of ASL when you've
already got command of a widely known written language?
> And there were many other arguments too:
>
> - ASL has never been a written language and never will be
>
> - ASL should only be "broken down in writing for linguistics
> purposes" but not for communication
A lot of these "arguments" sound like extreme parochialism -- as if they
fear the hearing world will learn to read their language and invade their
space or as if they wish to distance themselves from everyone else as far
as they may.
> - video is the appropriate recording medium, not writing
This one actually makes a lot of sense. ASL ìs a spatial language. I would
think the optimum way of fully 'encoding' the signed language is simply
to record the signer while she's signing and leave it at that.
Of course, the same exact thing can be said of spoken language -- how many
times have we here (or anywhere else online) gotten into a tiff over the
lack of visual and tonal clues as to irony, humor, etc.? Clearly, the
optimal way to 'encode' any spoken language is also to simply record the
speaker while she's talking.
Writing, whether the language is aural or visual, is a compromise at best.
> - writing is what hearing people do; signing is what deaf
> people do
No -- speáking is what hearing people do. Anyone, hearing, deaf or blind,
can write.
> - ASL is too complex to be able to be written down; you
> would lose too much nuance
Such haughtiness! But the very same can be said of spoken language, yet we
do well enough in writing it down. It is by no means the perfect of
capturing every nuance (succinctly, anyway), but it's certainly better
than nothing at all.
> - no one uses written ASL, so no one has any motivation to
> learn it (chicken & egg)
>
> No Deaf person on the forum objected to any of the above
> arguments; they merely piled on their own addition reasons why they
> didn't need or want a written form of ASL.
Very interesting indeed. For a broad community to be só against something
as innocuous as a system of writing leads me to think that Adam is right
about the politicisation of the deaf community and their language. Out of
all these more or less half-baked gripes, I can only see one that actually
makes sense and addresses what is being discussed.
> AA
Padraic
Messages in this topic (8)
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4f. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:00 pm ((PDT))
Well, such is not true in third-world countries where SW is being embraced
by Deaf communities, and at least some European Deaf communities (Catalan
SL, as I mentioned before) are entusiastically embracing SW. I haven't
really heard of opposition to a written form of the local signed language
EXCEPT among ASL users. I'm not syaing such attitudes don't exist, just
that I haven't heard of them. And with the ASL community, the resistance
has its roots (largely) in Deaf politics -- a hearing person invented it,
so it isn't *ours*, so it's bad. If a Deaf person had invented SW, I
believe it would be in common use now. Still, it is making in roads, and
as more and more foreign Deaf communities embrace SW and begin producing
literature and even techincal works in their native languages, I can't
believe that American Deaf will hold out forever -- though Americans period
can be quite stubborn about embracing foreign ideas -- witness the metric
system.
The literacy rate of American Deaf in English is, as you note below,
another factor that works against ASL adopting a written form.
Adam
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 3:19 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 3:59 PM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I had an email conversation with a deaf man once about writing ASL. He
> > answered that the language would be polluted or weakened if reduced to a
> > written form. He used English for reading and writing.
> > I expected the deaf community to embrace a written form of their
> language,
> > but such seems to be not the case.
> >
> >
> Hmm, interesting. ISTR that certain Greek philosophers claimed that
> writing had ruined our memories, but I haven't heard of such cultural
> resistance to writing in modern times.
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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4g. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:04 pm ((PDT))
On Mar 28, 2012, at 1:59 PM, Adam Walker wrote:
> And with the ASL community, the resistance
> has its roots (largely) in Deaf politics -- a hearing person invented it,
> so it isn't *ours*, so it's bad. If a Deaf person had invented SW, I
> believe it would be in common use now.
Which is a shame, because it detracts from the legitimate (and obvious)
criticisms of adopting SW as a system. Opposition isn't purely political,
remember. I think SW is an awful system for a variety of reasonsnone of which
have anything to do with who invented it or why.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
4h. Re: Sutton SignWriting (Was: Written Form of American Sign Language
Posted by: "Arthaey Angosii" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:18 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 2:03 PM, David Peterson <[email protected]> wrote:
> Opposition isn't purely political, remember. I think SW is an awful system for
> a variety of reasonsânone of which have anything to do with who invented
> it or why.
Can you share your objections? I'd love to hear them!
My objections are largely aesthetic, to be honest. It looks so blocky!
So gif-y! It doesn't look like a real writing system to me. (As a side
note, I am asking on the SignWriting list about the "shorthand"
version of it, because I'm hoping that will behave more like a usable
script without being [too] lossy.)
I also dislike the lack of density. Not many sentences fit on a
standard sheet of paper, or above the fold. (Again, I'm hoping the
"shorthand" version will help.)
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com
Messages in this topic (8)
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5. Romániço
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 11:12 am ((PDT))
Everybody probably already knows about this, but it was new to me, so
forgive me if I'm a day late and a dollar short.
http://www.romaniczo.com/en_indiczo.html
---quote---
Romániço is a simplified reunification of the living neo-Latin
langauges Spanish, French, Italian, etc. harking back to the lost
Common Romance of the Middle Ages and making the Romance of today
easier to grasp for non-Romance-speakers.
It does this by filtering out local variations of the vocabulary of
Latin Europe, stripping each word to its immediate Latinate source,
then recasting it with a simplified orthography and grammar.
On this site, youll find everything you need to learn and start using
Romániço today.
---/quote---
Messages in this topic (1)
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________________________________________________________________________
6. Word lists based on order of language acquisition
Posted by: "Matthew Martin" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:37 pm ((PDT))
I've been kicking around the idea of a small family conlang (a fake language
with a small fixed vocab, for use in a home setting among parents and children).
I read somewhere that there exists a list of the order in which words are
typically acquired by infants. (mom and dad first, then 'want', etc). That
list, if I could find it, would be very handy.
I suppose that the same list could also be useful to the people who have
been using the Basic English list, Swadesh or X most common words in a large
corpus lists as the basis of their initial conlang vocabularies.
So far, I've found this one for English:
http://teachmetotalk.com/2008/02/12/first-100-words-advancing-your-toddlers-vocabulary-with-words-and-signs/
Does anyone know of a better list, or cross cultural lists, especially one
with some research behind it?
Thanks,
Matthew Martin
Messages in this topic (1)
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