New Book by Guy Deutscher
One of my favorite books on language is Guy Deutscher’s The Unfolding of Language. It’s accessible, informative, and just a lot of fun to read. Well, I just discovered that he’ll be coming out with a new one on August 31 (That’s in 2 days!): Through the Language Glass. Here’s the product description from Amazon.com:
Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for “blue”?
Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a “she”—becomes a “he” once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery.
Of course, I haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to posting a review. There is an adaptation from an excerpt posted as an article online: “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?”. It’ll be interesting to see Deutscher’s take on the classic debate. Can’t wait.
New World-Building Resource!
I just began reading a book that appears to have much to offer in the way of world-building ideas: What If the Earth Had Two Moons? And Nine Other Thought-provoking Speculations on the Solar System by Neil F. Comins. I’ve just finished the first chapter and even there I’ve already found the following “thought-provoking” ideas:
And this is just the first chapter! Granted, there are a number of interesting web sites in which to get similar information (e.g., World Builders), but Comins’ book provides an easily-digestible way to get the creativity flowing. He also includes new names for the alternate Earths and their moons (or lack thereof) like Dimaan (“Earth”), Kuu (“Moon”), and Lluna (the 2nd captured moon in the first chapter). He also includes brief narratives introducing each new chapter’s concepts, like a Dimaanian Galileo Galilei getting arrested by the Dimaanian Inquisition in the first chapter.
Although not a conlanging resource per se, this book has the potential to serve as a jumping off point for those who want to lend the environment in which their conlangs are spoken a firm footing in (an alternate) reality. I’m already thinking of the implications of the two quotes I mentioned above.
Fiat Mundos!
(Note: That’s supposed to be “Let there be worlds!” in Latin. I’m open to corrections ;-))
The Results Are In!
Our twtpoll received 38 responses. The question, you might remember, was:
Who has had the most impact/influence/inspiration on you in your own conlanging?
The single person with the most votes was JRR Tolkien with 14; however, the “others” received more votes overall. Here is the raw data:
Other – 15 votes (39%)
JRR Tolkien (Quenya, Sindarin, etc) – 14 votes (37%)
LL Zamenhof (Esperanto) – 5 votes (13%)
John Quijada (Ithkuil) & Sonja Elen Kisa (Toki Pona) – 2 votes each (tie) (5% each)
Marc Okrand (Klingon) – 0 votes
I will admit I cast my one vote for Tolkien.
The comments left by those responding to “other” were the most interesting pieces of information to come out of the poll. There were 13 in all. Some were general:
- No-one has had any significant impact
- various fantasy novels with naming languages, but not Tolkien (haven’t read him)
- No one, really. I just read somewhere that artificial languages existed, and I thought it was a neat thing to do.
Others named persons who were influential. One comment on the previous post said, “I think only to have conlangers here is a bit of an issue. I mean… my philosophy teacher was a big reason for me to start conlanging…” This is exactly why I was so glad we got the following responses to the “other” category:
- Von Wahl (Occidental-Interlingue)
- Suzette Haden Elgin (Láadan)
- Kindaichi Haruhiko, linguist of Japanese
- Farrell Ackerman
- M.A. Foster
- (Latin), ? (?), Elzinga (Tepa)
- Rick Morneau (Latejami)
- David Peterson (Kamakawi)
- Edward Nelson Bridwell
- Jan van Steenbergen for his “historical bogolang” Wenedyk
The links are all my own, and the comments are typed here as they were at the poll. If any links point to the incorrect person, I sincerely apologize. That being said, I was fascinated to find that someone attached to MAD Magazine (Edward Nelson Bridwell) was instrumental in coming up with a “language” for Superman. I was glad to see our own David J. Peterson (or Mr. Dothraki as I like to call him) was mentioned. Suzette Haden Elgin is one conlanger that deserves more mention. All in all, a nice collection of esteemed names, both linguistically and conlanguistically.
Thanks for taking part in the poll! Head over to twtpoll.com/r/nl7r0j to see the colorful graph created by twtpoll from our data.
Twtpoll: 1 Day Left
Here is the url to a twtpoll posted via the LCS Twitter account over at Fiat Lingua: http://twtpoll.com/nl7r0j. The topic is “Who has had the most impact/influence/inspiration on you in your own conlanging?” Very small sampling (8 votes as of mid-afternoon, July 25), but I personally hadn’t heard of Von Wahl before, creator of Occidental-Interlingue. I had heard of the language before, but not its creator. Just goes to show you can always learn new things.
Twtpoll is a free application for posting polls to Twitter. The final tally from the Fiat Lingua poll will be published here.
New Articles Posted
I finally got around to posting the three (fairly) recent articles that were tweeted (@FiatLingua) in the Magazine section of the Library. Namely, the one on ROILA (the spoken robot language), the one on “how to write the next great alien language” from io9, and one from Crossed Genres. Á harya alassë!
Conlanging, Quijada, and Kalmykia
David J. Peterson posted the first version of his Conlang Manifesto to the CONLANG-L listserv in January 2002. It has stood the test of time (10 years is a long-time in the conlanging game) as a reasoned, coherent piece of conlang apologetics. One of my favorite portions is:
[Conlanging] gets one thinking about the multifariousness and beauty of language, and one who can appreciate this is less likely to misunderstand, deprecate and stereotype those speaking other languages, which is one of the main causes of racism and ethnocentrism. In short, language creation is one of the keys to social harmony and world peace. If one is going to take anything seriously, certainly world peace is it, and if so, shouldn’t language creation be given some credit too?
The conlanging community had a taste of that “world peace” recently with the experience of John Quijada. John was invited to present a talk on his well-known and well-respected engelang Ithkuil at a conference in Kalmykia in early July. Some will remember the article in the Russian magazine that mentioned Dzhonom Kikhadoy and his language, demonstrating the interest in Ithkuil in that area of the world. John has posted a brief summary (and photos) of his trip to Kalmykia on his website. John’s last line on that page, I believe, echoes the passage in David’s Conlang Maniesto:
I was humbled to discover so many people interested in my work, and whose work in turn I found quite fascinating (to the extent I was able to understand it through my interpreters). I now have several new friends halfway around the world.
John has promised to share more details about his experiences. It sounds like a fascinating adventure. He has also posted the slides from his session online. For anyone interested in an astounding exposition on what you can do with Ithkuil, this is a don’t-miss link.
As an aside, I had the pleasure of making John’s acquaintance way back at LCC2 (even having the honor of standing beside him at the official photo. I remember thinking, “Wow, this is the guy who created Ithkuil!”. He also graciously contributed to the CPL conlang exhibit. John is a man of many talents and interests, and I’m grateful to have met him. He is humble, personable, good-natured, and an all-around conlanger’s conlanger. The community couldn’t ask for a better international ambassador.
Catching up…
It’s been awhile since anything new has been posted to the blog (or the library). Mea culpa. I’ve had some enhancements and improvements planned for The Conlanger’s Library and have slowly been working on them, but they’re still not ready for prime-time. Stay tuned. Some of the proposed additions include new navigation, some back-end coding, and a Contact page. As anyone can see, these have not been implemented…yet. I had intended on doing those and making announcements here on the blog, but “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”. Those things are still in-the-works, but I wanted to post something to keep the blog and the Library at least marginally up-to-date.
First, several new postings have been made to the Library. Check out the “Most Recent Updates” box at the home page of the Library. These include a new paperback edition of Arika Okrent’s book and two Dothraki postings to the Scientific American online Guest Blog (one by Sai Emrys and David J. Peterson (Mr. Dothraki himself!)).
For those who haven’t followed the blog closely, we’ve had a very interesting conversation between David J. Peterson, myself, and several other posters on the topic of “Fantasy” literature, its past and present.
The Conlanging Librarian is also the official “twitterer” (or is that “tweeter”?) of the Language Creation Society (LCS) at Fiat Lingua, also the title of the upcoming journal the LCS.
So, enjoy the Library, and look forward to a few enhancements in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future.
Fiat lingua!!
Not Conlangs, but…
I just finished reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. Although she states clearly on her web site that “I didn’t consult a linguist to make the languages internally consistent, and I’m aware that some of the patterns of pronunciation contradict each other”, she has included some interesting con-vocabulary.
Most notably, the word esui which is defined in the book as follows: “The Darren language has a word for the attraction one feels to danger: esui. It is esui that makes warriors charge into hopeless battles and die laughing. Esui is also what draws women to lovers who are bad for them — men who would make poor fathers, women of the enemy. The Senmite word that comes closest is ‘lust,’ if one includes the variations ‘bloodlust’ and ‘lust for life,’ though these do not adequately capture the layered nature of esui. It is glory, it is folly. It is everything not sensible, not rational, not safe at all — but without esui, there is no point in living.”
This is just one word, but it demonstrates nicely (from my perspective) the ability of invented words to convey new ideas not available in natlangs. To use a natlang example, it’s like trying to convey in English the meaning of Schadenfreude, but with a con-vocabulary the sky’s the limit.
Although not a conlanger, Jemisin does a nice job of incorporating the idea of language. Her gods (yes, gods) speak their own tongue. Knowing this language allows scriveners to manipulate reality. Different peoples in the hundred thousands kingdoms speak their own languages (although we don’t actually read any of them in dialogues).
On a completely different level, the book was an enjoyable read. The characters were interesting. The plot had plenty of twists. Overall, a thumbs-up. Just don’t go looking for a conlang.
Happy Birthday to Me!
This month, The Conlanging Librarian blog is one year old! In some ways, this is very surprising. I didn’t necessarily think it would keep going…but I’m glad to say it’s kept going on a fairly regular basis. (Insert cheering crowds here.) We’re still working on increasing the traffic to the blog and the Library. A year ago, the Library had 418 unique visitors to the Library who had 2,199 page views. As of today, 485 unique visitors with 2,744 page views. So, in a year, we’ve had 67 new visitors and 545 page views…not bad, but with the new LCS Twitter account (Fiat Lingua), we should see some more traffic as well. In any case, here’s to another year of postings. A elea ei!
Fantasy = (Original) Fiction
I just got finished reading Gilgamesh, specifically the New English Version by Stephen Mitchell. I, of course, knew of Gilgamesh for a long time but never got around to reading the actual epic. Mitchell’s version, while not a scholarly translation (which he readily admits), is a great re-telling of the story and moves right along. The language is masterful, like Mitchell’s other works. There are also copious notes and background information. One of my favorite parts has to be Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s slaying of the Bull of Heaven and then ripping off its leg and throwing it at the goddess Ishtar. That takes some chutzpah!
Okay, but what does this have to do with conlanging? Well, a number of conlangs are products of fantasy literature, not the least of which are Tolkien’s Quenya and Sindarin. Some literary types look down their collective noses at “fantasy” as a lesser kind of literature, just a “genre.” While Gilgamesh does not have any conlangs (although Sumerian and Akkadian would make for great inspirations, not to mention cuneiform as a con-writing system inspiration), it does have numerous “fantasy” story elements: the gods’ interventions in human affairs, Humbaba, the Bull of Heaven, Urshanabi’s Stone-Men, immortal Utnapishtim, and much more. All of these would not be out of place in a modern fantasy novel. And Gilgamesh is sometimes referred to as the “the oldest story ever written.”
Furthermore, consider some other literary works of ancient times: The Odyssey (lots of fantasy elements there), Beowulf (Grendel, his mother, the dragon), various myths from all over (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, etc., etc., etc.), the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (where the protagonist is turned into an ass), and many more examples.
All of these are fantasy literature, so I propose that all literature – in the widest sense – started as fantasy. Fantasy was literature. The other genres – romance, “literary” fiction, sci-fi, westerns, etc. – are simply descendants of fantasy.
So, the next time someone gets on your case for reading “just” fantasy, steer them toward a copy of Gilgamesh…the original fiction…and say “Purus!” (That’s Akkadian for “You decide!”)(Well, “Pursi!” if you’re talking to a woman).