There are 11 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: On Creating Altlangs
From: Roman Rausch
1.2. Re: On Creating Altlangs
From: BPJ
2.1. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
From: Leonardo Castro
2.2. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
From: George Corley
2.3. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
From: DM
2.4. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
From: Jim Henry
3a. Re: What psychological effect does word order have in languages?
From: Leonardo Castro
3b. Re: What psychological effect does word order have in languages?
From: Matthew George
4a. Re: Lexical existence (was The evolution of Angosey: 5 Translations
From: Jim Henry
4b. Re: Lexical existence (was The evolution of Angosey: 5 Translations
From: Patrick Dunn
4c. Re: Lexical existence (was The evolution of Angosey: 5 Translations
From: Adam Walker
Messages
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1.1. Re: On Creating Altlangs
Posted by: "Roman Rausch" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 4:16 am ((PST))
>All engelangs I've seen have some sort of 'aesthetic coherence', as does the
>Black Speech which Tolkien meant to reflect his idea of ugliness
Does it really, though? He himself calls it "very different from Elvish, yet
organized and expressive, as would be expected of a device of Sauron before his
complete corruption" (PE17:11) which sounds quite positive.
I would say that the negative connotations with the Black Speech in
Middle-earth are cultural: It is, after all, the language of the great enemy
who wants to destroy and enslave the known world. I also do not find it ugly:
Phonetically it's well-balanced, you could do much better if you really wanted
to make a language ugly - weird consonant clusters, an excess of a certain
sound type, glottal stops in the unlikeliest of places to make you choke - you
name it.
Messages in this topic (28)
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1.2. Re: On Creating Altlangs
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 5:05 am ((PST))
On 2013-02-22 13:16, Roman Rausch wrote:
>> All engelangs I've seen have some sort of 'aesthetic coherence', as does the
>> Black Speech which Tolkien meant to reflect his idea of ugliness
>
> Does it really, though? He himself calls it "very different from Elvish, yet
> organized and expressive, as would be expected of a device of Sauron before
> his complete corruption" (PE17:11) which sounds quite positive.
> I would say that the negative connotations with the Black Speech in
> Middle-earth are cultural: It is, after all, the language of the great enemy
> who wants to destroy and enslave the known world. I also do not find it ugly:
> Phonetically it's well-balanced, you could do much better if you really
> wanted to make a language ugly - weird consonant clusters, an excess of a
> certain sound type, glottal stops in the unlikeliest of places to make you
> choke - you name it.
>
I couldn't agree more, but look up his description of his
intentions with BS -- in "Letters" I think, which I don't
have at hand. My own Sohlob is definitely much more similar
to BS than to the Eldarin languages, yet it has no 'evil'
connotations within its setting at all -- as if a language
could be inherently good or evil, which I don't think
JRRT thought. He made a point of pointing out that Morgoth
was a skilled omniglot too BTW!
/bpj
Messages in this topic (28)
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2.1. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 5:03 am ((PST))
2013/2/21 DM <[email protected]>:
> Well, one could argue that a gender-typical male would show far less
> interest in conlanging than those of the list, although I may be influenced
> here by those males I know IRL.
>
> I wouldn't say that women "usually" want to marry and have kids. I'd
> venture to say that a good portion of women my age (college) are rather
> disinterested in the whole reproductive arrangement, as I am, and there are
> probably a lot more of us who conlang than even we ourselves know. As a
> group we just tend to be much less vocal.
>
> As for the comparative geekdom of males and females... I have a theory,
> which involves gender analysis and so should probably not be lightly placed
> on the public list. Would people like me to place it on the list, or ought
> I to move it to private correspondence?
I would like you to place it here on the list. Anyway, I'm interested
on having access to your thoughts by whatever means.
BTW, I think there's another interesting sex-related fact to be
explained: there are activities that are more stereotypically
associated with girls than with boys, such as cooking, poetry and
songwriting, but more men than women seems to work on them
professionally. There are some people who says that testosterone
provides a more ambitious approach to those activities so that men are
more likely to take them seriously.
Messages in this topic (34)
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2.2. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 6:32 am ((PST))
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 7:03 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
>
> BTW, I think there's another interesting sex-related fact to be
> explained: there are activities that are more stereotypically
> associated with girls than with boys, such as cooking, poetry and
> songwriting, but more men than women seems to work on them
> professionally. There are some people who says that testosterone
> provides a more ambitious approach to those activities so that men are
> more likely to take them seriously.
>
Are poetry and songwriting considered feminine? I think I might think of
poetry as somewhat feminine, but this has to be extremely culturally
specific, as I know there were many historical cultures where women were
not allowed to learn to read.
Messages in this topic (34)
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2.3. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
Posted by: "DM" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 1:11 pm ((PST))
Whether or not poetry or songwriting are considered "feminine" depends on
the culture. There is nothing "naturally" feminine about them. The
principle extends to other areas as well.
>
> BTW, I think there's another interesting sex-related fact to be
> explained: there are activities that are more stereotypically
> associated with girls than with boys, such as cooking, poetry and
> songwriting, but more men than women seems to work on them
> professionally. There are some people who says that testosterone
> provides a more ambitious approach to those activities so that men are
> more likely to take them seriously.
Here is where my theory comes in.
I'm not an expert on the study of sex hormones, so I can't say whether or
not testosterone has any effect on anything. I'd explain that observation
with the following assertion.
Females in Western society are more likely to be "put down" when they
express ambitions. It's happened to me. Fortunately for me, I'm slightly
socially stupid, so I ignored them. Many others are not so lucky, and these
incidents happen most often when we are young, elementary-school age. If
you want to play tag with the boys, you get shut out. If you complain to a
teacher, they direct you to the girls playing jump-rope on the other side
of the playground. If it weren't for this tendency, to redirect instead of
confront, I might have been an athlete. Instead I started reading books at
recess and turned into a geek.
It should be emphasized that this isn't a conscious process. It's
subconscious, and it happens really early in life. There is a book called
Delusions of Gender by one Cordelia Fine about the process of gender
acquisition in young children, which I can't hope to summarize in full but
which everyone ought to read to further understand what I'm talking about.
Long story short, general culture perpetuates a set of gender stereotypes,
which make females tend to be more passive and males tend to be more
active. Unfortunately, because of these ingrained stereotypes, boys are
more likely to receive leeway to be interested in "odd" things (such as
conlanging). This might then lead to more male conlangers, simply because
there were more pathways open for them to explore their interests than
there were for females such as myself.
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 9:32 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 7:03 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > BTW, I think there's another interesting sex-related fact to be
> > explained: there are activities that are more stereotypically
> > associated with girls than with boys, such as cooking, poetry and
> > songwriting, but more men than women seems to work on them
> > professionally. There are some people who says that testosterone
> > provides a more ambitious approach to those activities so that men are
> > more likely to take them seriously.
> >
>
> Are poetry and songwriting considered feminine? I think I might think of
> poetry as somewhat feminine, but this has to be extremely culturally
> specific, as I know there were many historical cultures where women were
> not allowed to learn to read.
>
Messages in this topic (34)
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2.4. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 3:50 pm ((PST))
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 4:11 PM, DM <[email protected]> wrote:
> subconscious, and it happens really early in life. There is a book called
> Delusions of Gender by one Cordelia Fine about the process of gender
> acquisition in young children, which I can't hope to summarize in full but
> which everyone ought to read to further understand what I'm talking about.
I'll second the recommendation. Ms. Fine reviews a number of
pop-science books which have misrepresented and exaggerated the
studies on neurological and behavioral differences between males and
females, and also critiques some poorly-designed studies that don't
really prove as much as their authors claim. In short, there are very
few sex differences that are probably caused more by genetics and
neurology than by culture.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (34)
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3a. Re: What psychological effect does word order have in languages?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 5:53 am ((PST))
2013/2/21 Matthew George <[email protected]>:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:40 AM, Leonardo Castro
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> BTW, the word "puta" ("whore") can have an exclamatory function when
>> placed before a noun (informally):
>>
>> "Este é um puta carro!" = "This is a great car!"
>> "Esta é uma puta conlang!" = "This is an impressive conlang!"
>>
>
> General question: would be English equivalent be "bitchin' "?
I didn't know this expression, but, judging by Urban Dictionary
definitions, yes.
[...]
2013/2/21 Matthew George <[email protected]>:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:13 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Ah, but you could say "It was the sky that the Almighty hurled Him headlong
>> from". It's not even such a poetic use, it's just suggest a very
>> low-frequency structure that would require a particular discourse context.
>>
>
> But then the subject becomes "the sky" instead of "Him". The meaning is
> fundamentally changed - the alteration to word order disrupts the semantics.
>
> I'm fascinated by the possibility that people with differently-structured
> native languages perceive preceding adjectives as having variant
> implications. Mr. Corley thinks they're more restrictive, while Mr. Castro
> thinks they're freer - and if their respective native tongues are English
> and Portuguese (correct?
Yes with regard to me.
> ), that's very suggestive.
>
> Perhaps I should seek out some poetry in languages where either position is
> possible and see what choices people make.
I guess the less common order is always considered more "poetic". In
the first strophe of one of the most famous Brazilian poetic text
"Navio Negreiro", we see two cases of adjective preceding nouns:
"pleno mar" ("open sea") and "dourada borboleta" ("golden butterfly").
In the second one, we find "líquido tesouro" ("liquid treasure").
However, the following three adjective-noun follow the conventional
order: "abraço insano" ("insane hug"), "vibrações marinhas" ("marine
vibrations") and "naus errantes" ("wandering ships").
http://www.culturabrasil.pro.br/navionegreiro.htm
"Canção do Exílio", probably the most famous Brazilian poem,
apparently doesn't have any united adjective-noun pair:
http://www.stirlinglaw.com/ea/exilio.htm
The second most famous poem is probably the 5th part of "Navio Negreiro":
V
Senhor Deus dos desgraçados!
Dizei-me vós, Senhor Deus!
Se é loucura... se é verdade
Tanto horror perante os céus?!
Ó mar, por que não apagas
Co'a esponja de tuas vagas
De teu manto este borrão?...
Astros! noites! tempestades!
Rolai das imensidades!
Varrei os mares, tufão!
Quem são estes desgraçados
Que não encontram em vós
Mais que o rir calmo da turba
Que excita a fúria do algoz?
Quem são? Se a estrela se cala,
Se a vaga à pressa resvala
Como um cúmplice fugaz,
Perante a noite confusa...
Dize-o tu, severa Musa,
Musa libérrima, audaz!...
São os filhos do deserto,
Onde a terra esposa a luz.
Onde vive em campo aberto
A tribo dos homens nus...
São os guerreiros ousados
Que com os tigres mosqueados
Combatem na solidão.
Ontem simples, fortes, bravos.
Hoje míseros escravos,
Sem luz, sem ar, sem razão. . .
São mulheres desgraçadas,
Como Agar o foi também.
Que sedentas, alquebradas,
De longe... bem longe vêm...
Trazendo com tíbios passos,
Filhos e algemas nos braços,
N'alma lágrimas e fel...
Como Agar sofrendo tanto,
Que nem o leite de pranto
Têm que dar para Ismael.
Lá nas areias infindas,
Das palmeiras no país,
Nasceram crianças lindas,
Viveram moças gentis...
Passa um dia a caravana,
Quando a virgem na cabana
Cisma da noite nos véus ...
... Adeus, ó choça do monte,
... Adeus, palmeiras da fonte!...
... Adeus, amores... adeus!...
Depois, o areal extenso...
Depois, o oceano de pó.
Depois no horizonte imenso
Desertos... desertos só...
E a fome, o cansaço, a sede...
Ai! quanto infeliz que cede,
E cai p'ra não mais s'erguer!...
Vaga um lugar na cadeia,
Mas o chacal sobre a areia
Acha um corpo que roer.
Ontem a Serra Leoa,
A guerra, a caça ao leão,
O sono dormido à toa
Sob as tendas d'amplidão!
Hoje... o porão negro, fundo,
Infecto, apertado, imundo,
Tendo a peste por jaguar...
E o sono sempre cortado
Pelo arranco de um finado,
E o baque de um corpo ao mar...
Ontem plena liberdade,
A vontade por poder...
Hoje... cúm'lo de maldade,
Nem são livres p'ra morrer. .
Prende-os a mesma corrente
Férrea, lúgubre serpente
Nas roscas da escravidão.
E assim zombando da morte,
Dança a lúgubre coorte
Ao som do açoute... Irrisão!...
Senhor Deus dos desgraçados!
Dizei-me vós, Senhor Deus,
Se eu deliro... ou se é verdade
Tanto horror perante os céus?!...
Ó mar, por que não apagas
Co'a esponja de tuas vagas
Do teu manto este borrão?
Astros! noites! tempestades!
Rolai das imensidades!
Varrei os mares, tufão! ...
Messages in this topic (24)
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3b. Re: What psychological effect does word order have in languages?
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 12:52 pm ((PST))
I look back on the poetry discussion and am reminded of why I should not
try to analyze sentence structure when very tired. Those weren't the
subjects at all, were they? Oh well.
I happened to download Conlangery #44: Negation, and found that they spent
some time talking about pre- and post-noun adjectives and how certain
languages use them to express things differently. One language has all
pre-adjectives being figurative and post- being literal, which dovetailed
nicely with previous statements here.
Clearly I need to do more research - I hadn't realized this was such a
controversial issue.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (24)
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4a. Re: Lexical existence (was The evolution of Angosey: 5 Translations
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 3:40 pm ((PST))
On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:10 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> Embiggen is certainly a word. I'm not sure how much use "cromulent" gets
> -- I've only really heard it in contexts talking about that episode (where
> it is, of course, presented as an on-the-spot coinage for humor value).
I've never seen the episode in question, and the first several times I
heard the word used I didn't recognize the reference, and yet the
meaning was clear from context. And I'm pretty sure I've seen it used
more recently in ways that aren't simply references to the Simpsons
episode.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (8)
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4b. Re: Lexical existence (was The evolution of Angosey: 5 Translations
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 3:59 pm ((PST))
I used it today in linguistics, when I explained that "colorless green
ideas sleep furiously" is perfectly cromulant syntactically despite being
meaningless semantically.
But then again, I had to, because of this discussion.
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 5:39 PM, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:10 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Embiggen is certainly a word. I'm not sure how much use "cromulent" gets
> > -- I've only really heard it in contexts talking about that episode
> (where
> > it is, of course, presented as an on-the-spot coinage for humor value).
>
> I've never seen the episode in question, and the first several times I
> heard the word used I didn't recognize the reference, and yet the
> meaning was clear from context. And I'm pretty sure I've seen it used
> more recently in ways that aren't simply references to the Simpsons
> episode.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
> http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
>
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (8)
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4c. Re: Lexical existence (was The evolution of Angosey: 5 Translations
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Fri Feb 22, 2013 4:35 pm ((PST))
Okay, so while googling cromulent to find uses NOT related to or mentioning
The Simpsons (like The Cromulent Shakespeare Company and Cromulent Records)
I found another word to love and promote -- fauxcabulary! I love this
word! And it seems that cromulent has been featured as a "word of the day"
by several vocabulary building sites. I found a football site talking
about being a cromulent quarterback! Oh and this!
http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2007/3/21/165625/530/hotels/Vietnam's_Evason_Hideaway_is_Romantically_Cromulent
It's still pretty much a joke word, but it is starting to get use sans
Simpson refernce and without the near obligatory "perfectly" fronting it.
Adam
On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 5:59 PM, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
> I used it today in linguistics, when I explained that "colorless green
> ideas sleep furiously" is perfectly cromulant syntactically despite being
> meaningless semantically.
>
> But then again, I had to, because of this discussion.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 5:39 PM, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:10 PM, George Corley <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > > Embiggen is certainly a word. I'm not sure how much use "cromulent"
> gets
> > > -- I've only really heard it in contexts talking about that episode
> > (where
> > > it is, of course, presented as an on-the-spot coinage for humor value).
> >
> > I've never seen the episode in question, and the first several times I
> > heard the word used I didn't recognize the reference, and yet the
> > meaning was clear from context. And I'm pretty sure I've seen it used
> > more recently in ways that aren't simply references to the Simpsons
> > episode.
> >
> > --
> > Jim Henry
> > http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
> > http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
> order from Finishing Line
> Press<
> http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
> and
> Amazon<
> http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2
> >.
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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