There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: R2D2 language
From: MorphemeAddict
1.2. Re: R2D2 language
From: George Corley
1.3. Re: R2D2 language
From: And Rosta
1.4. Re: R2D2 language
From: Logan Kearsley
1.5. Re: R2D2 language
From: Jim Henry
1.6. Re: R2D2 language
From: Padraic Brown
1.7. Re: R2D2 language
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
1.8. Re: R2D2 language
From: Adam Walker
1.9. Re: R2D2 language
From: David Peterson
1.10. Re: R2D2 language
From: Padraic Brown
2. Target audiences of conlangs in media (was: R2D2 language)
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3. (no subject)
From: Karil Padur
4a. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
From: BPJ
4b. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
From: yuri
4c. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
From: Catherine Davie
4d. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
From: Anthony Miles
4e. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
From: George Corley
5a. language vs. economics
From: MorphemeAddict
5b. Re: language vs. economics
From: Tony Harris
5c. Re: language vs. economics
From: MorphemeAddict
5d. Re: language vs. economics
From: David Peterson
6a. Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
From: Anthony Miles
6b. Re: Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
From: Matthew A. Gurevitch
6c. Re: Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
From: Mechthild Czapp
6d. Re: Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1.1. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 6:56 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 8:22 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 4/3/12, Eric Christopherson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I don't mean to be harsh to the list, but I wouldn't expect
> > Karen and her friends to go on and on about how
> > unprofessional and shallow Conlang members' fiction writing
> > is (especially of the amateurs among us). Nor would I expect
> > Conlang members to be quite as critical of other members'
> > beginning conlangs as they are of Mando'a. Constructively
> > critical, yes, but not so dismissive.
>
> In general, I agree that Conlang members are typically not dismissive
> without good reason. But I think there are good reasons in cases like this.
> First, this isn't just some hobbyist tinkering with different grammatical
> forms. It's not some beginner's first try at making a language. This
> language is a **product** that has been specifically designed for a market
> and has been sold and bought on that market. It is therefore subject to
> the same variety of visceral and rational criticisms that, for example, a
> brand of cereal or a new line of trucks is subject to. Second, I don't
> think anyone here has been particularly unprofessional or shallow.
> The criticisms I've read so far I think have been fairly leveled. I haven't
> read anything like "oh, that's just stupid" or "the author doesn't know
> what she's doing" -- nothing of the sort! The comments I've seen all point
> to valid problems of presentation (several people have noted that the
> grammar description was left unedited, for example) or grammatical aspects
> that just don't make sense (like the bit about verb tense being optional
> and based solely on contact with species that require it).
>
> And for that matter, I've read several comments praising various aspects
> of the grammar that are indeed interesting (such as the optional tenses! --
> just not the nonsensical rationale). I don't think there is anything at all
> wrong or unprofessional or shallow about panning an inferior **product**.
> I'm not ashamed of saying, quite emphatically, that I know of many conlangs
> here on the list that are far better than the given one, much better
> built. For all the effort that may or may not have gone into the language,
> it seems to me that it could have been rather better.
>
> Padraic
>
I suspect that the language would have been too weird or too 'hard' if it
had been any better. It was nearly optimal for its purpose.
stevo
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.2. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 8:07 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 9:56 AM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I suspect that the language would have been too weird or too 'hard' if it
> had been any better. It was nearly optimal for its purpose.
>
> stevo
>
Really? Klingon is not "too hard". Na'vi is not "too hard", Dothraki is
not "too hard". When you are creating a constructed language for a work of
fiction, specifically in the modern literature market, then I think you
should take linguistics geeks as the target audience for said language.
Even if your overall work is intended for a general audience, the kind of
people who will be interested in the language itself are often the kind of
people who will dig as deep as we will. And once again, there are plenty
of ways to avoid the issue entirely without making more than a few token
words.
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.3. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 10:26 am ((PDT))
The traditional British drama schools teach IPA, I believe, sometimes
coupled with inexplicably bogus phonetic theory.
On Apr 3, 2012 12:29 AM, "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On 2 April 2012 22:43, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > >
> > That's actually really common for conlangs written for movies, from what
> I
> > understand (although lots of people here would know a lot better than I).
> > Actors apparently have little interest in learning IPA (I cannot conceive
> > why, but you know . . . actors). I imagine the same would hold for
> those
> > writing for fans.
> >
> >
> I hope David will chime up on this himself, but I seem to remember him
> writing that for Dothraki, he sends to the actors both mp3s of the Dothraki
> texts, but also the written texts in the Dothraki transliteration and in
> IPA, and that most actors have at least a passable knowledge of it. They
> seem to learn IPA during some acting classes, especially the ones focussed
> on pronunciation, speaking with specific accents, etc.
>
> That seems not unlike classical singers, who also have a good knowledge of
> IPA, which they use to learn to sing in languages they don't speak and
> cannot read in their normal orthography.
>
> So it seems that actors *do* have some interest in learning IPA, although
> maybe not to the point that they can all produce the more "exotic" sounds
> like pharyngeals or non-pulmonic consonants.
> --
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
>
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.4. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 10:40 am ((PDT))
On 2 April 2012 22:38, Eric Christopherson <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> I don't mean to be harsh to the list, but I wouldn't expect Karen and her
> friends to go on and on about how unprofessional and shallow Conlang members'
> fiction writing is (especially of the amateurs among us). Nor would I expect
> Conlang members to be quite as critical of other members' beginning conlangs
> as they are of Mando'a. Constructively critical, yes, but not so dismissive.
I would expect them to do so if unprofessional and shallow fiction
were actually published, though. Once something is printed in an
actual book (and not via vanity press), there's an expectation that it
conform to a higher level of quality.
At the possible risk of offending someone who likes _Eragon_, it's
like when people say "It's pretty good for something written by a
19-year-old". Well, yeah, but that's not the relevant metric. One can
say "it's good for providing some flavor to a Star Wars novel with a
linguistically naive audience", and that may be perfectly true and a
perfectly valid goal and we may be pleased that it successfully
fulfills its design goals. But that's irrelevant to the analysis of
whether or not it's good *as a conlang*, or how annoyed one might get
over the fact that *bad conlang* was published.
-l.
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.5. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 11:39 am ((PDT))
On 4/2/12, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes, there are a great many things about this conlang that are naive,
> and just plain wrong, but for the average reader it's probably
> perfectly adequate for the job. As much as we would like to see every
> conlang be a work of art, some are just minimally utilitarian. And
> that's probably O.K.
I agree with your last couple of statements, without necessarily
agreeing that they apply to this particular conlang (which I haven't
looked into in depth).
"Minimally utilitarian", to me, means that the language is a sketch,
just as fully developed as it needs to be to support the proper names
and the few phrases or sentences used in the novel (or movie or comic
or whatever), but with no additional details unnecessary to its use in
the story. It doesn't mean "relex of English" (bating the question of
whether Karen Traviss' Mandalorian is a relex of English, which I
won't go into).
A story-supporting sketchlang can have a simple phonology that uses a
subset of English's phoneme inventory, to avoid using sounds that
typical readers can't pronounce. It can be little more than the
phonology, just enough to allow the author to create proper names that
sound consistent, while most of the elements in those proper names are
unexplained cranberrry morphs and few (or none) have a clear meaning.
It can have only a handful of grammar rules, just enough to allow the
author to write a few phrases and sentences, with all aspects of the
grammar that aren't involved in those sentences left undecided and
unexplained, and the lexicon not existing beyond the words used in
those sentences.
But the language's writing system shouldn't be a cipher of the English
alphabet, and it's phonology shouldn't be identical to that of
English, and to the extent that the grammar and lexicon *are*
developed and explained, we should expect it to make sense on its own
terms. It shouldn't be a relex of English or any other natlang, or
have elements that don't make sense (like, as some other posters
mentioned, using tense only with species who care about it; would
humans count as a species who care about tense? Depends on what their
native language is, doesn't it?).
I'd analogize it to two paintings. In one, the foreground is detailed
and realistically painted, while the background is hazy and vague, but
otherwise in roughly the same realistic style as the foreground. In
another, the foreground is realistically detailed and well painted,
while the background is similarly detailed, but badly painted.
On the other hand, given how unrealistic the Star Wars universe is as
a whole, maybe that's a bad analogy. It's not as though the
"foreground", the plot and characters and the foregrounded aspects of
the worldbuilding, are such realistic art that the conlang in the
background being unrealistic or bad art (if it is) is a shocking
discontinunity. It's not like, for instance, a hard sf novel where
the physics of the foreground plot is realistic while the physics of
background worldbuilding is horribly wrong.
On the gripping hand, it looks like Karen Traviss' Mandalorian was
based on a sketchy Mandalorian created by someone else -- kind of like
Marc Okrand basing Klingon on the few lines of dialogue someone wrote
for the first Star Trek movie, but with a larger, more constraining
corpus. She was probably pretty tightly constrained in what she
could do with it and still be consistent with the earlier work, so we
can't blame her for all the defects in the resulting product.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.6. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 11:43 am ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 4/4/12, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> I suspect that the language would have been too weird or too
> 'hard' if it had been any better.
Possibly. But I think there are many other similar conlangs, i.e., conlangs
that are part of movies (Na'vi, Dothraki, Klingon) that are bóth better and
obviously not too weird or too hard to be learned by fans.
> It was nearly optimal for its purpose.
I don't necessarily think it is "optimal" or even "nearly optimal", but
neither do I think twas horrible trash. I will say it was clearly good
enough for Lucasfilm to buy it, and that means it is quite good enough for
the purpose it was designed for. That bit about getting one's knickers in
a twist is probably the best part of the whole page, and I think that's
where I'll leave it, before any formal censure can take place! ;)
Padraic
> stevo
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.7. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 12:40 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 11:40:20 -0600 Logan Kearsley wrote:
> On 2 April 2012 22:38, Eric Christopherson <[email protected]> wrote:
> [...]
> > I don't mean to be harsh to the list, but I wouldn't expect Karen and her
> > friends to go on and on about how unprofessional and shallow Conlang
> > members' fiction writing is (especially of the amateurs among us). Nor
> > would I expect Conlang members to be quite as critical of other members'
> > beginning conlangs as they are of Mando'a. Constructively critical, yes,
> > but not so dismissive.
>
> I would expect them to do so if unprofessional and shallow fiction
> were actually published, though. Once something is printed in an
> actual book (and not via vanity press), there's an expectation that it
> conform to a higher level of quality.
Yes. After the precedents of Klingon, Na'vi and Dothraki (I'll
set aside Quenya and Sindarin here, which are the products of
much more dedication than could be expected from a conlanger
hired to do a language for a media franchise), there is a certain
*state of the art* in professional conlang contracting which goes
well beyond going through a dictionary and assigning nice-sounding
strings of sounds to the entries.
> At the possible risk of offending someone who likes _Eragon_, it's
> like when people say "It's pretty good for something written by a
> 19-year-old". Well, yeah, but that's not the relevant metric. One can
> say "it's good for providing some flavor to a Star Wars novel with a
> linguistically naive audience", and that may be perfectly true and a
> perfectly valid goal and we may be pleased that it successfully
> fulfills its design goals. But that's irrelevant to the analysis of
> whether or not it's good *as a conlang*, or how annoyed one might get
> over the fact that *bad conlang* was published.
Ah, that much-maligned novel again. I haven't read it yet, and
what I have been told about it doesn't give me an incentive to
read it - I guess I haven't missed much. But as I haven't read
it, I am not entitled to judge it. I think one should be somewhat
kind towards youth works, but if it just sucks rocks, it sucks
rocks, no matter how old the author is. As I wrote above, there
is a certain state of the art, and newcomers are expected to
comply.
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 14:38:57 -0400 Jim Henry wrote:
> On 4/2/12, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Yes, there are a great many things about this conlang that are naive,
> > and just plain wrong, but for the average reader it's probably
> > perfectly adequate for the job. As much as we would like to see every
> > conlang be a work of art, some are just minimally utilitarian. And
> > that's probably O.K.
>
> I agree with your last couple of statements, without necessarily
> agreeing that they apply to this particular conlang (which I haven't
> looked into in depth).
>
> "Minimally utilitarian", to me, means that the language is a sketch,
> just as fully developed as it needs to be to support the proper names
> and the few phrases or sentences used in the novel (or movie or comic
> or whatever), but with no additional details unnecessary to its use in
> the story. It doesn't mean "relex of English" (bating the question of
> whether Karen Traviss' Mandalorian is a relex of English, which I
> won't go into).
Indeed. I have long maintained the notion that even a brief
sketch that only gives a glimpse of a language can be masterfully
crafted, and I still maintain this notion now. Even if you just
have a few dozen names and three or four lines of dialogue with
translations, you can show that you are not just doing a cipher of
English (or whatever language). A good conlanger can create the
impression of a language with a lot of depth beneath it with a few
well-set strokes.
> A story-supporting sketchlang can have a simple phonology that uses a
> subset of English's phoneme inventory, to avoid using sounds that
> typical readers can't pronounce.
Fair.
> It can be little more than the
> phonology, just enough to allow the author to create proper names that
> sound consistent, while most of the elements in those proper names are
> unexplained cranberrry morphs and few (or none) have a clear meaning.
> It can have only a handful of grammar rules, just enough to allow the
> author to write a few phrases and sentences, with all aspects of the
> grammar that aren't involved in those sentences left undecided and
> unexplained, and the lexicon not existing beyond the words used in
> those sentences.
Sure. And these few rules that are given can meaningfully differ
from those of English (or whatever language). With a few lines
of dialogue, you can already display the basic word order of the
language and some further aspects of its grammar; with just a few
words, you can already display the phonology (and that is of
course much more than a phoneme inventory).
> But the language's writing system shouldn't be a cipher of the English
> alphabet, and it's phonology shouldn't be identical to that of
> English,
Especially, the language should not copycat the baroque spelling
conventions of English!
> and to the extent that the grammar and lexicon *are*
> developed and explained, we should expect it to make sense on its own
> terms.
Absolutely.
> It shouldn't be a relex of English or any other natlang, or
> have elements that don't make sense (like, as some other posters
> mentioned, using tense only with species who care about it; would
> humans count as a species who care about tense? Depends on what their
> native language is, doesn't it?).
You say it.
> I'd analogize it to two paintings. In one, the foreground is detailed
> and realistically painted, while the background is hazy and vague, but
> otherwise in roughly the same realistic style as the foreground. In
> another, the foreground is realistically detailed and well painted,
> while the background is similarly detailed, but badly painted.
Certainly, the first painting is better; or at least, most
people will think so.
> On the other hand, given how unrealistic the Star Wars universe is as
> a whole, maybe that's a bad analogy. It's not as though the
> "foreground", the plot and characters and the foregrounded aspects of
> the worldbuilding, are such realistic art that the conlang in the
> background being unrealistic or bad art (if it is) is a shocking
> discontinunity. It's not like, for instance, a hard sf novel where
> the physics of the foreground plot is realistic while the physics of
> background worldbuilding is horribly wrong.
Fine. It has been said that Star Wars is just high fantasy with
science fiction props - it is about unlikely heroes, beautiful
princesses, brave knights, evil wizards and all that stuff. It
works much like _The Lord of the Rings_; it is not at all
difficult to transpose the plot into a Middle-earth-like setting.
(Not that this means that a conlang made for a high fantasy
setting has more excuse for being unimaginative than one made
for a hard SF setting, though.)
> On the gripping hand, it looks like Karen Traviss' Mandalorian was
> based on a sketchy Mandalorian created by someone else -- kind of like
> Marc Okrand basing Klingon on the few lines of dialogue someone wrote
> for the first Star Trek movie, but with a larger, more constraining
> corpus. She was probably pretty tightly constrained in what she
> could do with it and still be consistent with the earlier work, so we
> can't blame her for all the defects in the resulting product.
Yes. Also, Hollywood is not known for granting artists working
for them as much time as they (claim to) need; deadlines are
often tight, and thus the work has to proceed quickly.
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 11:43:00 -0700 Padraic Brown wrote:
> --- On Wed, 4/4/12, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I suspect that the language would have been too weird or too
> > 'hard' if it had been any better.
>
> Possibly. But I think there are many other similar conlangs, i.e., conlangs
> that are part of movies (Na'vi, Dothraki, Klingon) that are bóth better and
> obviously not too weird or too hard to be learned by fans.
Yes. People don't complain on how difficult those languages are.
As I have already observed, there are fans who care about the
languages who want to see good conlangs, and fans who don't care
about the languages who don't mind if there is much depth and
complexity therein.
> > It was nearly optimal for its purpose.
>
> I don't necessarily think it is "optimal" or even "nearly optimal", but
> neither do I think twas horrible trash. I will say it was clearly good
> enough for Lucasfilm to buy it, and that means it is quite good enough for
> the purpose it was designed for. That bit about getting one's knickers in
> a twist is probably the best part of the whole page, and I think that's
> where I'll leave it, before any formal censure can take place! ;)
Fair. Karen Traviss's language is ugly hackwork, by the
standards of our community, that is. But apparently it was
good enough for Lucasfilm to buy it, as you say. Whether it
is good enough for the *fans*, it's another matter. The major
part of the fan community will swallow it, I am sure, but the
language geeks among the fans surely find exception with it.
Whether Mrs. Traviss *could* have made a better conlang, given
factors such as pre-existing material that had to be used and
tight deadlines, I cannot say.
--
... 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 (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.8. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 1:59 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 11:40:20 -0600 Logan Kearsley wrote:
>
> > On 2 April 2012 22:38, Eric Christopherson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > At the possible risk of offending someone who likes _Eragon_, it's
> > like when people say "It's pretty good for something written by a
> > 19-year-old". Well, yeah, but that's not the relevant metric. One can
> > say "it's good for providing some flavor to a Star Wars novel with a
> > linguistically naive audience", and that may be perfectly true and a
> > perfectly valid goal and we may be pleased that it successfully
> > fulfills its design goals. But that's irrelevant to the analysis of
> > whether or not it's good *as a conlang*, or how annoyed one might get
> > over the fact that *bad conlang* was published.
>
> Ah, that much-maligned novel again. I haven't read it yet, and
> what I have been told about it doesn't give me an incentive to
> read it - I guess I haven't missed much. But as I haven't read
> it, I am not entitled to judge it. I think one should be somewhat
> kind towards youth works, but if it just sucks rocks, it sucks
> rocks, no matter how old the author is. As I wrote above, there
> is a certain state of the art, and newcomers are expected to
> comply.
>
Well, since it has come up in two messages, I am going to respond. I like
Eragon. I have read the frist three books and have the fourth high in my
TBR queue. The story is NOT LOTR though there is obvious influence. It is
also not Star Wars or any number of other works, It is its own world with
its own rules and characters. Yes, it has elves and dwarves but they
aren't Tolkien's elves and dwarves even though they share elements. The
languages in Alagaesia could be more developed for my taste, but they are
enough to give the proper flavor to the world. And the story is fun.
Adam
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.9. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 2:50 pm ((PDT))
On Apr 2, 2012, at 4:29 PM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
> I hope David will chime up on this himself, but I seem to remember him
> writing that for Dothraki, he sends to the actors both mp3s of the Dothraki
> texts, but also the written texts in the Dothraki transliteration and in
> IPA, and that most actors have at least a passable knowledge of it. They
> seem to learn IPA during some acting classes, especially the ones focussed
> on pronunciation, speaking with specific accents, etc.
For GoT, I think the .mp3's were more useful, but there were at least dialect
coaches on set that were versed in IPA. Many actors *do* learn *some* IPA if
they take an accent class. A friend of mine took one such class where the goal
was to strip out one's own accent in order to learn how to slip into other
accents. They're all *English* accents, but they get into some detailwith real
IPAabout English phonetics. I don't know how widespread classes like this are
amongst actors, though.
On Apr 4, 2012, at 1:52 PM, yuri wrote:
> For a fraction of the money paid to big name actors, the movie makers
> could outsource the creation of a movie language to one of us
> conlangers on this list.
>
> There are some very talented individuals on this list who would
> probably charge only a modest fee because they're doing what they
> enjoy.
This is true, but there's nothing that can be done now about what happened in
the past. Things are a lot different now than they were in the pasteven the
past ten years. In the 90s and early 00s, it wasn't unimaginable to hear about
producers of something that had absolutely "no idea" where to go if they wanted
a language created. It's kind of hard to imagine that happening now.
That said, it doesn't mean everything's roses now. For example, what we've seen
from video game companies specifically recently is, yeah, they know about
people who create languages, but they don't care. From their vantage point,
it's more cost effective to have a writer already on their staff to make up
gibberish and ship it. These guys don't even get paid *extra* to create a
"language": it's just a part of their job. They don't see the value at *all* in
having someone do a good job, to the point where paying a conlanger even a tiny
amount to create a language would be seen as a waste of resources and a waste
of time.
This doesn't seem to be the case with the wider entertainment industry (we'll
see what happens in the future), but I think we may have gotten over the "yes,
we exist" hump. The next one is "why should we care?". That's a hard one to get
over.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
1.10. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 5:38 pm ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 4/4/12, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > It was nearly optimal for its purpose.
> >
> > I don't necessarily think it is "optimal" or even
> "nearly optimal", but
> > neither do I think twas horrible trash. I will say it
> was clearly good
> > enough for Lucasfilm to buy it, and that means it is
> quite good enough for
> > the purpose it was designed for. That bit about getting
> one's knickers in
> > a twist is probably the best part of the whole page,
> and I think that's
> > where I'll leave it, before any formal censure can take
> place! ;)
>
> Fair. Karen Traviss's language is ugly hackwork, by
> the
> standards of our community, that is. But apparently it
> was
> good enough for Lucasfilm to buy it, as you say.
> Whether it
> is good enough for the *fans*, it's another matter.
Indeed. And this is something we can't really gauge simply based on the
conlang itself. Fans may like it, and we might think it wanting. It's a
matter of taste.
> The major part of the fan community will swallow it, I am sure, but
> the language geeks among the fans surely find exception with
> it.
>
> Whether Mrs. Traviss *could* have made a better conlang,
> given factors such as pre-existing material that had to be used
> and tight deadlines, I cannot say.
This is certainly true! The only thing we can say with certainty is that
a better conlang could have been made by sòmeone!
Padraic
Messages in this topic (41)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. Target audiences of conlangs in media (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 10:17 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 11:07:41 -0400 George Corley wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 9:56 AM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >
> > I suspect that the language would have been too weird or too 'hard' if it
> > had been any better. It was nearly optimal for its purpose.
> >
> > stevo
> >
>
> Really? Klingon is not "too hard". Na'vi is not "too hard", Dothraki is
> not "too hard". When you are creating a constructed language for a work of
> fiction, specifically in the modern literature market, then I think you
> should take linguistics geeks as the target audience for said language.
Or rather, linguistics geeks are a noteworthy *part* of the
audience. There are millions of Star Trek fans who are not
interested in the Klingon language beyond a few set phrases.
The same goes, mutatis mutandis, with fans of other media
franchises featuring conlangs. Such people won't care about
the conlangs being shallow relexes of English or whatever;
on the other hand, I haven't heard of anyone who said that
Sindarin, Klingon or Na'vi was "too difficult".
But quite a few people *do* care about the quality of the
conlangs used in books, movies, TV series or games. They are
certainly a minority of the audience, but the days when the
quality of the fictional languages in a media franchise "just
didn't matter" are over. Fantasy and science fiction fans are
now aware of the fact that a language is much more than a list
of exotic-sounding words, and expect something original and self-
contained, just as they expect excellent special effects when
they go to the movies (even though the most important matter in
a film is of course still the *story*). Good conlanging simply
has become part of good worldbuilding craftsmanship.
> Even if your overall work is intended for a general audience, the kind of
> people who will be interested in the language itself are often the kind of
> people who will dig as deep as we will. And once again, there are plenty
> of ways to avoid the issue entirely without making more than a few token
> words.
Yes. Those who care for the languages look deeper and are
disappointed when they find that the languages work just like
English and the glyphs are just a letter substitution cipher.
Those who don't care for the languages won't complain about
such naive conlangs, but they won't complain about languages
that are "too difficult". This is not like a Prisoner's
Dilemma, it is like Pascal's Wager, where you can only win or
draw but never lose when you "believe in God" and make a good
conlang. (Pascal's Wager goes like this: If God exists, he will
reward me if I believe, and censure me if I don't. If God
doesn't exist, it makes no difference whether I believe or not.
Hence, it is rational to believe in God.)
Conclusion: Well-developed and original conlangs are state of the
art in imaginative fiction, and doing them satisfies those who
care and won't hurt those who don't care.
--
... 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 (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. (no subject)
Posted by: "Karil Padur" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 10:27 am ((PDT))
<a
href="http://onlineedu.co.in/wp-content/plugins/extended-comment-options/erfja.html";>
http://onlineedu.co.in/wp-content/plugins/extended-comment-options/erfja.html</a>
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 12:16 pm ((PDT))
On 2012-04-03 09:44, George Corley wrote:
> @Fredrik: Interesting. I imagined that Klingon speakers would be a very
> small subset of Star Trek fans, but the fact those people are more
> interested in the language than the series is something I hadn't thought
> about. Of course, anecdotally, I know that while William Annis wrote the
> fan reference grammar for Na'vi, he's not really a big fan of*Avatar*.
I wonder how much overlap there is between those who
learn sophisticated conlangs with media exposure and
those who create languages themselves?
(_Avatar_ surely left me with a sour feeling, messagewise.
"You need to get a new body with working legs to get a life."
I'm not even sure I'd want a "working" body if I were offered
one -- I'd probably have a very hard time adapting....
Not to speak of the Noble Savage Syndrome. This has pretty
much put me off the language too.)
/bpj
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "yuri" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 1:53 pm ((PDT))
On 3 April 2012 14:05, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> Also we have to keep in mind that the idea of inventing a language,
> particularly a completely *different* language from your L1, may not occur
> to some people. Or, it might occur to them but seem like too big of a
> challenge for what they are trying to accomplish. While it seems simple
> for us here on CONLANG to invent a language (in fact, most of us could
> probably make up a sketch of a decent conlang in a few hours), I think that
> most people not initiated in the craft would find it daunting.
For a fraction of the money paid to big name actors, the movie makers
could outsource the creation of a movie language to one of us
conlangers on this list.
There are some very talented individuals on this list who would
probably charge only a modest fee because they're doing what they
enjoy.
Yuri
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
4c. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Catherine Davie" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 1:58 pm ((PDT))
Thats exactly how David Peterson it contracted to create Dothraki for HBO,
IIRC. :)
--
AA
On Wednesday, April 4, 2012, yuri wrote:
> On 3 April 2012 14:05, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> > Also we have to keep in mind that the idea of inventing a language,
> > particularly a completely *different* language from your L1, may not
> occur
> > to some people. Or, it might occur to them but seem like too big of a
> > challenge for what they are trying to accomplish. While it seems simple
> > for us here on CONLANG to invent a language (in fact, most of us could
> > probably make up a sketch of a decent conlang in a few hours), I think
> that
> > most people not initiated in the craft would find it daunting.
>
> For a fraction of the money paid to big name actors, the movie makers
> could outsource the creation of a movie language to one of us
> conlangers on this list.
>
> There are some very talented individuals on this list who would
> probably charge only a modest fee because they're doing what they
> enjoy.
>
> Yuri
>
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
4d. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 3:56 pm ((PDT))
My feeling is that it's better for a non-conlanger to focus on a few token
words and perhaps some pervasive feature of the language underlying the
translation convention than do a patchwork job. It looks sloppy, and
reflects badly on actual conlangers.
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
4e. Re: Mandalorian (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 4:08 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 6:56 PM, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
> My feeling is that it's better for a non-conlanger to focus on a few token
> words and perhaps some pervasive feature of the language underlying the
> translation convention than do a patchwork job. It looks sloppy, and
> reflects badly on actual conlangers.
>
My thoughts, exactly.
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. language vs. economics
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 12:55 pm ((PDT))
I found the following video very interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=m9x8l9vXU9w
It may be that speakers of languages with a strong future time reference
(e.g., English, Italian, Russian) have better lives economically than
speakers of languages with weak future time reference (e.g., Chinese,
German).
A language designed without a mandatory tense marker (in particular, for
the future tense), e.g., Lojban, might be better for its speakers than
having an obligatory future tense marker, e.g., Esperanto.
stevo
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: language vs. economics
Posted by: "Tony Harris" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 1:00 pm ((PDT))
That doesn't make sense to me, since I rather thought the economic
living conditions in Germany were better than those in Italy or Russia.
Yet the statement is that it should be the reverse.
The two statements also seem contradictory, aren't they? In the first,
having a strong time reference is a good thing, in the second, a
language without a mandatory tense marker is better. Am I missing
something?
On 04/04/2012 03:55 PM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
> I found the following video very interesting.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=m9x8l9vXU9w
>
> It may be that speakers of languages with a strong future time reference
> (e.g., English, Italian, Russian) have better lives economically than
> speakers of languages with weak future time reference (e.g., Chinese,
> German).
>
> A language designed without a mandatory tense marker (in particular, for
> the future tense), e.g., Lojban, might be better for its speakers than
> having an obligatory future tense marker, e.g., Esperanto.
>
> stevo
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
5c. Re: language vs. economics
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 1:05 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Tony Harris <[email protected]> wrote:
> That doesn't make sense to me, since I rather thought the economic living
> conditions in Germany were better than those in Italy or Russia. Yet the
> statement is that it should be the reverse.
>
> The two statements also seem contradictory, aren't they? In the first,
> having a strong time reference is a good thing, in the second, a language
> without a mandatory tense marker is better. Am I missing something?
>
> Apparently you're missing the context of the video. Watch it.
stevo
>
>
> On 04/04/2012 03:55 PM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
>
>> I found the following video very interesting.
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?**feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=**m9x8l9vXU9w<http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=m9x8l9vXU9w>
>>
>> It may be that speakers of languages with a strong future time reference
>> (e.g., English, Italian, Russian) have better lives economically than
>> speakers of languages with weak future time reference (e.g., Chinese,
>> German).
>>
>> A language designed without a mandatory tense marker (in particular, for
>> the future tense), e.g., Lojban, might be better for its speakers than
>> having an obligatory future tense marker, e.g., Esperanto.
>>
>> stevo
>>
>
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
5d. Re: language vs. economics
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 2:39 pm ((PDT))
For those who don't follow Language Log, there's actually been quite a bit of
discussion about this there. I can't find all the posts, but this is a guest
post by the author of that paper:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3792
If you look at the first paragraph, it refers to two posts made by LLers prior
to that guest post. In addition, I believe there was an LL response to Chen's
guest post. I'd recommend reading through those if you're interested in the
original paper; lots of fruitful discussion.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
On Apr 4, 2012, at 1:03 PM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Tony Harris <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> That doesn't make sense to me, since I rather thought the economic living
>> conditions in Germany were better than those in Italy or Russia. Yet the
>> statement is that it should be the reverse.
>>
>> The two statements also seem contradictory, aren't they? In the first,
>> having a strong time reference is a good thing, in the second, a language
>> without a mandatory tense marker is better. Am I missing something?
>>
>> Apparently you're missing the context of the video. Watch it.
>
> stevo
>
>>
>>
>> On 04/04/2012 03:55 PM, MorphemeAddict wrote:
>>
>>> I found the following video very interesting.
>>>
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?**feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=**m9x8l9vXU9w<http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=m9x8l9vXU9w>
>>>
>>> It may be that speakers of languages with a strong future time reference
>>> (e.g., English, Italian, Russian) have better lives economically than
>>> speakers of languages with weak future time reference (e.g., Chinese,
>>> German).
>>>
>>> A language designed without a mandatory tense marker (in particular, for
>>> the future tense), e.g., Lojban, might be better for its speakers than
>>> having an obligatory future tense marker, e.g., Esperanto.
>>>
>>> stevo
>>>
>>
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 4:27 pm ((PDT))
I'm confident enough in this revision of Siye grammar to revise the Babel
Text. The perennial problem, however, is the distinction between 'speech'
and 'language'. In Siye 1.2, Genesis 9:1 would read
"Samni menekem ika siye tumni am simaki yokononiki isikama."
"siye tumni am simaki yokoniki" breaks down thusly:
siye tum-ni am simaki yokono-ni-ki
speech one-COM and tongue common-COM-INS
"isikama" is an intransitive verb - "ika" is in the Absolutive case, and
therefore lacks overt case marking, while "siye ... -ki" is in the
instrumental case. Adjectives follow nouns. "simaki" is etymologically "the
thing by which one habitually speaks", but the -ki has become a nominalizing
suffix for Patients and Inanimate Instrumental nouns. -ni- is the Comitative
case marker. "siye tumni" and "simaki yokoni" are noun phrases marked with
the Comitative case, while "siye tumni am simaki yokononiki" is a complex
noun phrase marked with the Instrumental case. So the grammar is clear enough.
"simaki" means "tongue" in the literal sense, and I am not sure that I want
to have a second word for "speech" in Siye, given my limited source material
(no, I'm not saying what it is). If I do not, however, have a second word
for "speech/language", how do I translate Genesis 9:1?
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
Posted by: "Matthew A. Gurevitch" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 4:38 pm ((PDT))
One suggestion I would have is to translate "speech" as "words," to
differentiate from "tongue."
--Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Miles <[email protected]>
To: CONLANG <[email protected]>
Sent: Wed, Apr 4, 2012 7:28 pm
Subject: Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
I'm confident enough in this revision of Siye grammar to revise the Babel
Text. The perennial problem, however, is the distinction between 'speech'
and 'language'. In Siye 1.2, Genesis 9:1 would read
"Samni menekem ika siye tumni am simaki yokononiki isikama."
"siye tumni am simaki yokoniki" breaks down thusly:
siye tum-ni am simaki yokono-ni-ki
speech one-COM and tongue common-COM-INS
"isikama" is an intransitive verb - "ika" is in the Absolutive case, and
therefore lacks overt case marking, while "siye ... -ki" is in the
instrumental case. Adjectives follow nouns. "simaki" is etymologically "the
thing by which one habitually speaks", but the -ki has become a nominalizing
suffix for Patients and Inanimate Instrumental nouns. -ni- is the Comitative
case marker. "siye tumni" and "simaki yokoni" are noun phrases marked with
the Comitative case, while "siye tumni am simaki yokononiki" is a complex
noun phrase marked with the Instrumental case. So the grammar is clear enough.
"simaki" means "tongue" in the literal sense, and I am not sure that I want
to have a second word for "speech" in Siye, given my limited source material
(no, I'm not saying what it is). If I do not, however, have a second word
for "speech/language", how do I translate Genesis 9:1?
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
6c. Re: Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
Posted by: "Mechthild Czapp" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 5:08 pm ((PDT))
My Rejistanian translation dealt with this by saying something like only one
language and no regional variations. On account that speech can refer to
individual characteristics of speaking.
On 05.04.2012, at 00:26, Anthony Miles wrote:
> I'm confident enough in this revision of Siye grammar to revise the Babel
> Text. The perennial problem, however, is the distinction between 'speech'
> and 'language'. In Siye 1.2, Genesis 9:1 would read
> "Samni menekem ika siye tumni am simaki yokononiki isikama."
> "siye tumni am simaki yokoniki" breaks down thusly:
> siye tum-ni am simaki yokono-ni-ki
> speech one-COM and tongue common-COM-INS
> "isikama" is an intransitive verb - "ika" is in the Absolutive case, and
> therefore lacks overt case marking, while "siye ... -ki" is in the
> instrumental case. Adjectives follow nouns. "simaki" is etymologically "the
> thing by which one habitually speaks", but the -ki has become a nominalizing
> suffix for Patients and Inanimate Instrumental nouns. -ni- is the Comitative
> case marker. "siye tumni" and "simaki yokoni" are noun phrases marked with
> the Comitative case, while "siye tumni am simaki yokononiki" is a complex
> noun phrase marked with the Instrumental case. So the grammar is clear enough.
>
> "simaki" means "tongue" in the literal sense, and I am not sure that I want
> to have a second word for "speech" in Siye, given my limited source material
> (no, I'm not saying what it is). If I do not, however, have a second word
> for "speech/language", how do I translate Genesis 9:1?
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
6d. Re: Babel Text Blues - 'one speech' and 'common languages'
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Apr 4, 2012 5:30 pm ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 4/4/12, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
> "simaki" means "tongue" in the literal sense, and I am not
> sure that I want
> to have a second word for "speech" in Siye, given my limited
> source material
> (no, I'm not saying what it is). If I do not, however, have
> a second word
> for "speech/language", how do I translate Genesis 9:1?
Well, if you have only one word for that concept, then the translation
will only have the one word! (Simple, eh!) If you have only one word for
both physical tongue and speech, you could wax poetical and translate as
something like "...had the one tongue and the dance thereof." That way you
get both the physical tongue/language side plus a more figurative
description of how language works, by the dancing of peoples' tongues.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (4)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
