Well Rounded SF Planets
Clark McIvor
Someone in the "Nightfall" thread got me thinking ...
Most on-planet action in SF&F seems to take place in an area no more than
the size of England, with either a sea of nothing for the rest of the
planet, or there's an implicit assumption that the rest of the planet is
much the same.
But what if our intrepid heros, exploring a planet a bit like Earth a
couple of thousand years ago, had landed in ancient Egypt instead of the
east coast of Australia ? !! (or on the plains of the US, or in India, or
ancient China, or ancient Rome or Greece, or next to Stonehenge, or in
Alaska, or ...) What differences in friendliness (as in "the natives are
friendly"), language, artifacts, etc. etc.!
(... and I understand that in places around the world, _adjacent_ tribes
had/have different languages, beliefs, etc.)
So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
Jane
--
clar...@gil.com.au : Clark McIvor - Brisbane, Australia
djinn
news:01c365c9$73a179a0$LocalHost@kenmcivo:
>
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or
> hear about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity?
> (Not Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
>
> Jane
> --
> clar...@gil.com.au : Clark McIvor - Brisbane, Australia
>
DeCamp had planets with multiple cultures and languages, particularly the
Viagens Interplanitarias stories. Krishna has monarchies, republics and
other types of government, as well as several distinct religions. ISTR a
situation where a character was learning a language only to find that it
wasn't spoken in the area where he would be traveling.
--
Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull dies,
Look on thy children in darkness. Oh take our sacrifice!
Many roads thou hast fashioned—all of them lead to the Light,
Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright!
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<clar...@gil.com.au> writes
>Hi all,
>
>Someone in the "Nightfall" thread got me thinking ...
>
>Most on-planet action in SF&F seems to take place in an area no more than
>the size of England, with either a sea of nothing for the rest of the
>planet, or there's an implicit assumption that the rest of the planet is
>much the same.
The "sea of nothing" is acceptable in some cases; if it's irrelevant to
the story then if the author added material to show things are different
over the mountain range
>
>But what if our intrepid heros, exploring a planet a bit like Earth a
>couple of thousand years ago, had landed in ancient Egypt instead of the
>east coast of Australia ? !! (or on the plains of the US, or in India, or
>ancient China, or ancient Rome or Greece, or next to Stonehenge, or in
>Alaska, or ...) What differences in friendliness (as in "the natives are
>friendly"), language, artifacts, etc. etc.!
>
>(... and I understand that in places around the world, _adjacent_ tribes
>had/have different languages, beliefs, etc.)
>
>So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
>about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
>Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
Asimov retconned Trantor - see Prelude to Foundation, if I recall the
correct novel, but the Foundation (and Robot) novels do have a tendency
to fall into the one culture per planet error.
Poul Anderson was usually fairly good about this, e.g. Fire Time.
Silverberg's Majipoor and Aldiss's Helliconia are designed as diverse
places - I think that they're both failures as world-building (other
persons' mileage does vary), but at least they're ambitious failures.
Vance, at least sometimes (Big Planet, etc), wrote diverse settings.
In fantasy, there's writers such as Eddings, Jordan and Feist, and
Moorcock (Elric novels). Maybe Donaldson as well, but I've expunged the
1 1/2 Covenant novels I've read from my memory (but I do recall thinking
it was rather derivative of Middle Earth).
Then, there's always my planet Dis, with a population of about
2,000,000, circa 200 languages, and perhaps 500 polities (mixture of
bands, chiefdoms and states, not that I really understand the technical
distinction).
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Mike Schilling
"Clark McIvor" <clar...@gil.com.au> wrote in message
news:01c365c9$73a179a0$LocalHost@kenmcivo...
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
Mesklin.
Johnny1A
>
> Someone in the "Nightfall" thread got me thinking ...
>
> (... and I understand that in places around the world, _adjacent_ tribes
> had/have different languages, beliefs, etc.)
>
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
>
> Jane
That's not entirely fair.
It takes a lot of time to explore the full diversity of a planet, and
if most of the events of a story take place off a given world, an
impression or a local look may be all there's space and time for in
the book.
Also, if a world has been high-tech for a long time, or since
settlement, it probably _won't_ have the kind of cultural diversity
Earth has known. Even today, on Earth, the linguistic, cultural,
religious, and social diversity of past ages is decreasing, as the
'winning' examples of each spread and absorb or displace the others.
Already, it's thought that many still-used but fading languages will
be essentially extinct within another 100 years, for ex.
OTOH, there's no reason a high-tech world couldn't have its own
_kinds_ of diversity, and an entertaining story could be set exploring
such.
Shermanlee
Johnny1A
It's not necessarily an error. If a world was settled by a relatively
homogenous group, and retained the technology that enabled
interstellar settlement to begin with, there's a fair chance it will
end up with one culture per world. There might little varying
details, but the overall shape is likely to be singular.
Consider England. At one time, Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South
Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons), Kent, East Anglia, Mercia,
Northumberland, etc were separate political kingdoms, with their own
royal families, customs, laws, etc.
Mercia remained pagan long after Wessex was Christianized. The Saxon
society overlaid an older society that was a mixture of Roman and
native Briton people and ideas. Kent was something of a cultural
oddity amid the other Saxon states.
The Norse created the Danelaw, which had _very_ different customs than
the remaining independent Saxon areas, and different yet again from
the older Roman/Briton ways. The Normans brought in a different set
of Viking customs, intermixed with a very French mindset, and the
French language.
One thousand years later, what remains of all that diversity?
Shermanlee
Bill Woods
Surely Mesklin counts as 'well flattened'.
--
Bill Woods
In California, we have a name for students
who believe in hard work, perseverance,
self-discipline and respect for authority: Nguyen.
-- Joanne Jacobs
Bill Woods
> In article <01c365c9$73a179a0$LocalHost@kenmcivo>, Clark McIvor
> <clar...@gil.com.au> writes
> >Hi all,
> >
> >Someone in the "Nightfall" thread got me thinking ...
> >
> >Most on-planet action in SF&F seems to take place in an area no more than
> >the size of England, with either a sea of nothing for the rest of the
> >planet, or there's an implicit assumption that the rest of the planet is
> >much the same.
Allegedly Jerry Pournelle summarized this failing:
"It was raining on Mongo that morning."
>
>
> The "sea of nothing" is acceptable in some cases; if it's irrelevant to
> the story then if the author added material to show things are different
> over the mountain range
> >
> >But what if our intrepid heros, exploring a planet a bit like Earth a
> >couple of thousand years ago, had landed in ancient Egypt instead of the
> >east coast of Australia ? !! (or on the plains of the US, or in India, or
> >ancient China, or ancient Rome or Greece, or next to Stonehenge, or in
> >Alaska, or ...) What differences in friendliness (as in "the natives are
> >friendly"), language, artifacts, etc. etc.!
> >
> >(... and I understand that in places around the world, _adjacent_ tribes
> >had/have different languages, beliefs, etc.)
> >
> >So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> >about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> >Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
>
> Asimov retconned Trantor - see Prelude to Foundation, if I recall the
> correct novel, but the Foundation (and Robot) novels do have a tendency
> to fall into the one culture per planet error.
>
> Poul Anderson was usually fairly good about this, e.g. Fire Time.
Anderson leapt to my mind for a different example:
_The Day of Their Return_. I was struck on first reading
by the variety of cultures and landscapes on a single planet.
To get the well-rounded effect, it's probably important
to build the world early on and then decide how your story
will exploit the possibilities, rather than writing only
those bits of background that are necessary to the story.
JoatSimeon
>Anderson leapt to my mind for a different example: _The Day of Their Return_.
I was struck on first reading by the variety of cultures and landscapes on a
single planet.
-- Poul always remembered that a planet the size of Earth is a _big_ place.
Stargate SG1 did a takeoff on this -- a malfunction strands the team in an ice
cavern in Antarctica.
Major Carter manages to climb out onto the top of the ice sheet and then comes
back with the news: "It's an Ice Planet!"
Actually it's about 25 miles from the American scientific base...
>
Leif Magnar Kj|nn|y
Clark McIvor <clar...@gil.com.au> wrote:
>
>So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
>about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
>Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
Golter, from Banks' _Against a Dark Background_. And the rest of
that solar system. It's been home to interplanetary civilization for
thousands of years, every terraformable celestial body has been
terraformed, there have been multiple instances of just about every
cycle of civilization and barbarism you can imagine, and the state
of affairs in the "present day" is nothing if not pluralistic. The
story goes to several rather strange places.
--
Leif Kjønnøy, Geek of a Few Trades. http://www.pvv.org/~leifmk
Disclaimer: Do not try this at home.
Void where prohibited by law.
Batteries not included.
JoatSimeon
technology on one planet being cultural homogeneity.
Earth is much less "multicultural" than it used to be, for exampe.
Eg., more than half the languages spoken 100 years ago are extinct, and
considerably more than half the remainder are moribund -- no longer being
learned by children.
Meanwhile, 1 in every 5 human beings can speak English, and a continuation of
present trends will see that up to 1 in 2 by 2050.
The same holds true with a lot of other things; building styles are much more
uniform than they were in 1903, as are clothes, food, economic systems, etc.
Give it a couple of centuries, and the logical end-product is a single global
culture, speaking English, with a few minor regional variations kept alive by
hobbyists and the sort of type who likes the SCA.
Krijn Mossel
> Stewart Robert Hinsley <{$news$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<d6XrITAIfUQ$Ew...@meden.demon.co.uk>...
>
>>In article <01c365c9$73a179a0$LocalHost@kenmcivo>, Clark McIvor
>><clar...@gil.com.au> writes
<snippety>
>>>(... and I understand that in places around the world, _adjacent_ tribes
>>>had/have different languages, beliefs, etc.)
>>>
>>>So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
>>>about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
>>>Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
>>
>>Asimov retconned Trantor - see Prelude to Foundation, if I recall the
>>correct novel, but the Foundation (and Robot) novels do have a tendency
>>to fall into the one culture per planet error.
>
>
> It's not necessarily an error. If a world was settled by a relatively
> homogenous group, and retained the technology that enabled
> interstellar settlement to begin with, there's a fair chance it will
> end up with one culture per world. There might little varying
> details, but the overall shape is likely to be singular.
>
> Consider England. At one time, Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South
> Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons), Kent, East Anglia, Mercia,
> Northumberland, etc were separate political kingdoms, with their own
> royal families, customs, laws, etc.
So what happened to the kingdom of the North Saxons, Nossex?
Krijn
Steve Coltrin
>> Consider England. At one time, Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South
>> Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons), Kent, East Anglia, Mercia,
>> Northumberland, etc were separate political kingdoms, with their own
>> royal families, customs, laws, etc.
>
> So what happened to the kingdom of the North Saxons, Nossex?
Didn't they become the Shakers?
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org WWVBF?
"Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product."
- Ferenc Mantfeld
Karl M Syring
>
> So what happened to the kingdom of the North Saxons, Nossex?
It is called "Yorkshire" today, me thinks.
Karl M. Syring
Paul F. Dietz
> So what happened to the kingdom of the North Saxons, Nossex?
I've heard about that place...
"Nossex, please, we're British."
Paul
bgaudet0801
"Bill Woods" <wwo...@popd.ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:3F41D10E...@popd.ix.netcom.com...
> Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
>
> > In article <01c365c9$73a179a0$LocalHost@kenmcivo>, Clark McIvor
> > <clar...@gil.com.au> writes
> > >Hi all,
> > >
> > >Someone in the "Nightfall" thread got me thinking ...
> > >
> > >Most on-planet action in SF&F seems to take place in an area no more
than
> > >the size of England, with either a sea of nothing for the rest of the
> > >planet, or there's an implicit assumption that the rest of the planet
is
> > >much the same.
>
> Allegedly Jerry Pournelle summarized this failing:
> "It was raining on Mongo that morning."
I was thinking of the Pournelles, Drakes and others of the military genre
are probably more likely to show diverse planetary cultures - Hammer's
Slammers, the Co-Dominium [Haven being the penultimate in diversity] stories
frex. I guess diversity works - or is needed - more so when you need them to
fight each other.
Another common theme in stories that would lead to homgeneity is the
tendency for social/ethnics groups to settle planets as a group. Think of
Utah [Mormons] or Boston [Irish] as historical examples to extrapolate from.
Of course they become more diverse with more migrations. If inter-planetary
is sufficiently difficult then monocultures wouldn't be so unreasonable.
mike stone
>>From: Bill Woods wwo...@popd.ix.netcom.com
>
>>Anderson leapt to my mind for a different example: _The Day of Their
>Return_.
>I was struck on first reading by the variety of cultures and landscapes on a
>single planet.
>-- Poul always remembered that a planet the size of Earth is a _big_ place.
Indeed, in the final section of _Orbit Unlimited_, the point is explicitly
raised
Jan Svoboda and Joshua Coffin are out in the wilderness looking for Coffin's
lost child, when one comments to the other about the way they "used to talk
about this planet or that planet, as if it were some kind of a city - an entire
world!" I suspect he had certain sf writers in mind
And in _After Doomsday_ he returns to the same point "And never forget; any
planet is a world, as complex and mysterious in its own right, as full of its
own patterns and contradictions and histories, as ever Earth was"
--
Mike Stone - Peterborough England
Call nothing true until it has been officially denied
mike stone
>present trends will see that up to 1 in 2 by 2050.
>
Of course, these trends are _not_ irreversible
A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people over
a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
[Acknowwledgment to Professor Toynbee]
mike stone
>(Not
>> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
>
>
In that series (and esp the original trilogy) the whole _Galaxy_ didn't seem
all that diverse
Karl M Syring
>
> Meanwhile, 1 in every 5 human beings can speak English, and a continuation of
> present trends will see that up to 1 in 2 by 2050.
Can quickly change: See, the language is seen as associated with
xenophobobic, agressive militarist nutcases now (too many words, simply
say "fascists").
Karl M. Syring
Charlie Stross
as <sherm...@hotmail.com> declared:
> The Norse created the Danelaw, which had _very_ different customs than
> the remaining independent Saxon areas, and different yet again from
> the older Roman/Briton ways. The Normans brought in a different set
> of Viking customs, intermixed with a very French mindset, and the
> French language.
>
> One thousand years later, what remains of all that diversity?
Speaking as one who, back at University, had to act as a
sodding interpreter between fellow students from the Danelaw
and those who grew up in Sussex, I'd have to say it's still
there. When dialects are thick to the point of mutual
incomprehensibility it's a fair sign that the diversity
hasn't exactly vanished into some kind of melting pot ...
-- Charlie
Riboflavin
news:20030819035628.22008.00000186@mb-
> Stargate SG1 did a takeoff on this -- a malfunction strands the team in an
ice
> cavern in Antarctica.
SG-1 also has a decent in-story explanation for any planets that look like
"one city that the heroes go to, some suburbs, and then hinterlands"; most
of the planets they visit are settled through the stargate and their trade
and government runs back through the gate, so it's not unreasonable for
there to be only a little bit of settlement.
Any written SF that plays around with either justifying 'one city per
planet' or making fun of it?
--
Kevin Allegood ri...@mindspring.com
"Personally, I hold by the Clarke - Sturgeon law:
90% of any sufficently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from crap." - Larry Lennhoff
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<syr...@email.com> writes
>>
>> So what happened to the kingdom of the North Saxons, Nossex?
>
>It is called "Yorkshire" today, me thinks.
No. They was a Wessex, a Sussex (including a Hastingsshire), an Essex,
and a Middlesex (including Surrey and Norrey), but their never was a
Northseaxe. The regions further north was considered Anglian, rather
than Saxon, and including East Anglia (including the lands of the North
Folk and the South Folk), Middle Anglia, Mercia (the marchlands of the
time, later including the Hwicce, etc), Lindsey, and Northumbria
(including Deira (=Yorkshire) and Bernicia).
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<wwo...@popd.ix.netcom.com> writes
>
>Anderson leapt to my mind for a different example:
>_The Day of Their Return_. I was struck on first reading
>by the variety of cultures and landscapes on a single planet.
>
showing of all the diversity for the sake of showing of the diversity.
Merseia in "The Day of Burning" shows how much diversity can be packed
into a short story.
[1] Pejorative term for novels/series where the hero walks about the
landscape collecting plot tokens, e.g. the Belgariad, Malloreon, Tamuli,
and The Redemption of Althalus.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Karl M Syring
>
> No. They was a Wessex, a Sussex (including a Hastingsshire), an Essex,
> and a Middlesex (including Surrey and Norrey), but their never was a
> Northseaxe. The regions further north was considered Anglian, rather
> than Saxon, and including East Anglia (including the lands of the North
> Folk and the South Folk), Middle Anglia, Mercia (the marchlands of the
> time, later including the Hwicce, etc), Lindsey, and Northumbria
> (including Deira (=Yorkshire) and Bernicia).
Hmm, the derivation of the name is from the saxon word
for "boar". I did not say, that is was ever called Nosex.
Karl M. Syring
Steve Coltrin
> SG-1 also has a decent in-story explanation for any planets that look like
> "one city that the heroes go to, some suburbs, and then hinterlands"; most
> of the planets they visit are settled through the stargate and their trade
> and government runs back through the gate, so it's not unreasonable for
> there to be only a little bit of settlement.
If only they had even a poor in-story explanation of why Interstate 25
between Colorectal Springs and Albuquerque looks like a secondary road
in British Columbia.
A.T. Hagan
>
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
>
Silverberg's Majiipoor stories come to mind. It's been a long time
since I've read them but I was always bowled over with the feeling of
the *size* of the place in terms of the differing cultures there.
Pournelle's Codominium stories had a lot of diversity. All exported
from Earth, of course, but it was there.
Niven's Ringworld had a fair amount though you seemed to discover it
mostly after the fact.
Not SF, but Middle Earth certainly didn't lack for diversity.
You had to read several of the novels but Bujold's Barryar had a bit
of diversity considering that the planet was mostly settled by one
group.
Hmm, diversity in a very odd way can be found in Farmer's Riverworld
stories. All the cultures of Earth from the beginning of humans to
post 20th century scattered hither and thither on one planet at the
same time.
.....Alan.
David Cowie
>
> Speaking as one who, back at University, had to act as a
> sodding interpreter between fellow students from the Danelaw
> and those who grew up in Sussex, I'd have to say it's still
> there. When dialects are thick to the point of mutual
> incomprehensibility it's a fair sign that the diversity
> hasn't exactly vanished into some kind of melting pot ...
>
When _I_ went to university (mid 1980's) my friends included people from
Derbyshire, Scotland, London, and various parts of the Home Counties [1].
We all had accents, but none of us had dialects, and interpetrers were not
required.
[1] Home Counties: the area around London.
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
David Cowie
>
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
>
_Perdido Street Station_ and _The Scar_ by China Mieville. Both set on the
world of Bas-Lag, which is inhabited by many different races. In PSS we
only see the city of New Crobuzon (but it's very cosmopolitan), TS takes
us out into the world a bit.
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<see...@lineone.net> writes
communication (except for the people who couldn't hack my hybrid
Hullensian/Scots accent), as everyone either spoke an approximation to
RP, or were bidialectal [1]. (There were people who could switch into
untelligible dialects, such as Geordie.) However when working in the
telecoms industry in the early '80s my employer acquired a job lot from
a tech college in Liverpool, and I definitely had problems with their
Scouse dialect.
[1] spoke both RP and a regional dialect.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Mike Schilling
> When I was at university (late '70s) I had no trouble with language
> communication (except for the people who couldn't hack my hybrid
> Hullensian/Scots accent), as everyone either spoke an approximation to
> RP, or were bidialectal [1]. (There were people who could switch into
> untelligible dialects, such as Geordie.) However when working in the
> telecoms industry in the early '80s my employer acquired a job lot from
> a tech college in Liverpool, and I definitely had problems with their
> Scouse dialect.
I'm reminded of Bill Bryson's story about his friend from (dammit, I can't
recall, but some part of Great Britain remote from London) Bryson always
assumed the friend had a speech impediment, until he visited him at home and
found out that the entire village spoke that way.
William George Ferguson
It became extinct in one generation, of course.
(what was that tv show where the invading aliens were suffering from
hereditary sterility?)
--
DAWN: ... and my sister is a vampire slayer, her best friend is a witch
who went bonkers and tried to destroy the world, um, I actually used to
be a little ball of energy until about two years ago when some monks
changed the past and made me Buffy's sister and for some reason, a big
klepto. My best friends are Leticia Jones, who moved to San Diego
because this town is evil, and a floppy eared demon named Clem.
(deleted scene from the shooting script of BtVS:Lessons)
Christopher Adams
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars.
--
Christopher Adams - SUTEKH Functions Officer 2003
When I awakened, I was not as I had been.
"A portfolio of erotic 'Buffy' fan-fiction does not a writer make."
- Neil, www.goats.com
JoatSimeon
>A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people
over a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
-- people learn languages because they're the useful within their interaction
sphere.
Since the size of the interaction sphere to which most people are exposed is
growing and growing fast, and since English is the most useful language, more
and more people speak English. Note the speed with with Russian was dropped as
a second language after 1989 in Eastern Europe, and what replaced it.
When Greek was a widespread elite language, most people lived in peasant
communities in which the local patois was far and away the most useful tongue.
Even in preindustrial times, this could change -- look at the number of people
who speak languages derived from Latin.
But it's definitely changed now, and barring a civilization-destroying
catastrophe, it's unlikely to change back.
Eg., the primary second language in Germany is English -- 8x more speakers than
French -- despite France being right next door.
Despite all the desperate efforts from Paris, as the EU gets bigger, English
becomes more dominant.
There are immigrant neighborhoods in Amsterdam where the immigrants learn
English as their second language and never bother to pick up Dutch.
Why bother? All the Dutch-speaking people speak English, too, and Dutch is
useless outside the Netherlands and Flanders. English is useful everywhere.
JoatSimeon
>Speaking as one who, back at University, had to act as a sodding interpreter
between fellow students from the Danelaw
and those who grew up in Sussex, I'd have to say it's still there
-- but those University students probably all understood each other well enough
by the time they graduated.
It's the trend that matters, not where the graph is at any single point in
time.
JoatSimeon
>Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars.
-- ah, yes, the Pink Planet, with lots of tradtional food and dancing, but no
basic political disagreements in the end... 8-).
Berkeley's idea of diversity.
Justin Bacon
>between Colorectal Springs and Albuquerque looks like a secondary road
>in British Columbia.
Heh. Reminds me of the X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully are in
Minneapolis. They leave the airport and head towards Downtown... passing down a
secluded road without a building in sight.
The Mpls/StP airport is in the middle of town. The only way you could end up on
a secluded road is if you're leaving the airport and heading towards Rochester
or Duluth.
JB
Justin Bacon
>> Mesklin.
>
>Surely Mesklin counts as 'well flattened'.
And in a similar vein (if I'm reading between the lines correctly; unfamilar as
I am with Mesklin): Iain M. Banks in general, and Larry Niven for his Ringworld
(among others).
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Justin Bacon
>A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people
>over a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
Sure. But that's the result of civilizational collapse and the ascendancy of a
different cultural heritage. Once you've got a monoculture, you'd have to have
a civilizational collapse severe enough to be capable of creating the
generations of isolation necessary for cultural diversity to assert itself so
that when contact was re-established cultural competition could take place.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Justin Bacon
It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who isn't a kook disagrees with you.
Certainly New Zealand will be surprised to learn of their new status as
xenophobic, militarist nutcases.
JB
Errol Cavit
news:20030820045745...@mb-m16.aol.com...
> Karl M Syring wrote:
> >JoatSimeon wrote on 19 Aug 2003 07:59:34 GMT:
> >> Meanwhile, 1 in every 5 human beings can speak English, and a
continuation
> of
> >> present trends will see that up to 1 in 2 by 2050.
> >
> >Can quickly change: See, the language is seen as associated with
> >xenophobobic, agressive militarist nutcases now (too many words, simply
> >say "fascists").
>
> It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who isn't a kook disagrees with you.
The second sentence by itself is reasonable. You can argue with the
likelihood of the observed perception changing the trend given.
> Certainly New Zealand will be surprised to learn of their new status as
> xenophobic, militarist nutcases.
Not that this statement follows from Karl's statement, but check with the
Moriori, or the King Movement. Oh sorry, you mean currently? I'm sure you
can get a good quote from the Malaysian PM. The King of Tonga isn't that
impressed either.
--
Errol Cavit
to email, my middle initial is G
"Whatu ngarongaro he tangata, toitu he whenua."
"Man passes away, but the land endures for ever."
Maori Saying, recorded by Elsdon Best, anthropologist c.1900
Karl M Syring
> Karl M Syring wrote:
>>JoatSimeon wrote on 19 Aug 2003 07:59:34 GMT:
>>> Meanwhile, 1 in every 5 human beings can speak English, and a continuation
> of
>>> present trends will see that up to 1 in 2 by 2050.
>>
>>Can quickly change: See, the language is seen as associated with
>>xenophobobic, agressive militarist nutcases now (too many words, simply
>>say "fascists").
>
> It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who isn't a kook disagrees with you.
It is a kind of cool war now, quite clear, were the delibeations are.
Who would believe in enemy propaganda? And believe me , I am pretty
mild in my statements about the Shrub administration.
> Certainly New Zealand will be surprised to learn of their new status as
> xenophobic, militarist nutcases.
Tsk, it is the Shrub Junta, stupid. Some associated sycophants are always
around, but even the London Lackey is severely bleeding. Does not look
as if he will make it that long.
Karl M. Syring
Thomas Womack
Errol Cavit <err...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Justin Bacon" <tria...@aol.com> wrote
>> Certainly New Zealand will be surprised to learn of their new status as
>> xenophobic, militarist nutcases.
>Not that this statement follows from Karl's statement, but check with the
>Moriori, or the King Movement. Oh sorry, you mean currently? I'm sure you
>can get a good quote from the Malaysian PM. The King of Tonga isn't that
>impressed either.
I thought it was Australia that got regarded by the rest of the region
as a collection of militarist xenophobes: what on Earth did New
Zealand do to irk Tonga? [irking Malaysia appears fairly
straightforward at the moment ...]
Tom
James Nicoll
It's the little known secluded country road contained within the
Mall of America, along with the full sized ferris wheel.
First time I was in the Mall I thought it would make a great
setting for a suspense thriller but the owners would never allow
it.
--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-
James Nicoll
The manner in which Latin lost out to Greek is interesting. I
bet there were Romans grumpily asking who won those darn wars, anyway?
Michael Stemper
>> 1 in every 5 human beings can speak English, and a continuation of
>>present trends will see that up to 1 in 2 by 2050.
>
>
>A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people over
>a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
A sizeable chunk of the earth's surface, or a sizeable amount of the
area that was well-known to the Mediterranean culture? For some reason,
I have trouble believing that Greek was used by educated people in (what
are now) Finland, Denmark, Congo, Kamchatka, and so on two millenia back.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
No animals were harmed in the composition of this message.
Errol Cavit
news:9dx*Mv...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
> In article <bhvikn$cof$1...@lust.ihug.co.nz>,
> Errol Cavit <err...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >"Justin Bacon" <tria...@aol.com> wrote
>
> >> Certainly New Zealand will be surprised to learn of their new status as
> >> xenophobic, militarist nutcases.
>
> >Not that this statement follows from Karl's statement, but check with the
> >Moriori, or the King Movement. Oh sorry, you mean currently? I'm sure you
> >can get a good quote from the Malaysian PM. The King of Tonga isn't that
> >impressed either.
>
> I thought it was Australia that got regarded by the rest of the region
> straightforward at the moment ...]
He certainly has made plenty of comments about the evils of the West,
without limiting it to the USA and Oz. I doubt recent events in the Solomons
will have improved his mood.
> what on Earth did New
> Zealand do to irk Tonga?
Official and unofficial displeasure at Tonga attempts to stifle free
speech - specifically extreme moves to stop the distribution of the 'Tonga
Times' in Tonga, published by an ex-pat Tongan in NZ. More like patronising
Imperialists than militarist xenophobes.
JoatSimeon
>I'm sure you can get a good quote from the Malaysian PM. The King of Tonga
isn't that impressed either.
-- and they express their opinions in... English, for the most part.
"Usefulness" is independent of fluctuations in opinion, for the most part.
It's objective fact with which people have to deal.
China is a geopolitical rival of the US.
250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
John F. Carr
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>>From: Bill Woods wwo...@popd.ix.netcom.com
>>Anderson leapt to my mind for a different example: _The Day of Their Return_.
>I was struck on first reading by the variety of cultures and landscapes on a
>single planet.
>
>
>Stargate SG1 did a takeoff on this -- a malfunction strands the team in an ice
>cavern in Antarctica.
>
>Major Carter manages to climb out onto the top of the ice sheet and then comes
>back with the news: "It's an Ice Planet!"
>
>Actually it's about 25 miles from the American scientific base...
There's an original Twilight Zone where a spaceship crashes on
a barren asteroid. After panic, death, and hysteria, it turns
out to be a rocky part of Earth.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Moron
>
Really, really annoying accents from various midlands and northern towns?
Steve Coltrin
> When _I_ went to university (mid 1980's) my friends included people from
> Derbyshire, Scotland, London, and various parts of the Home Counties [1].
> We all had accents, but none of us had dialects
Exactly backwards.
Bill Woods
> Bill Woods wrote:
> >> Mesklin.
> >
> >Surely Mesklin counts as 'well flattened'.
>
> And in a similar vein (if I'm reading between the lines correctly;
> unfamilar as I am with Mesklin): Iain M. Banks in general, and
> Larry Niven for his Ringworld (among others).
You haven't read _Mission of Gravity_? But no, Mesklin is a planet,
but an extremely oblate spheroid, with a equatorial diameter of
48,000 miles and a polar diameter of only 20,000.
--
Bill Woods
In California, we have a name for students
who believe in hard work, perseverance,
self-discipline and respect for authority: Nguyen.
-- Joanne Jacobs
Justin Bacon
>> It's a pretty safe bet that anyone who isn't a kook disagrees with you.
>
>It is a kind of cool war now, quite clear, were the delibeations are.
Could you translate that sentence into some kind of sensible English? Thanks.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
was utterly unintelligible.
Though apparently some of the locals felt her Mandarin wasn't much
better.
mike stone
>JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>>-- Poul always remembered that a planet the size of Earth is a _big_ place.
>>
>>Stargate SG1 did a takeoff on this -- a malfunction strands the team in an
>ice
>>cavern in Antarctica.
>>
>>Major Carter manages to climb out onto the top of the ice sheet and then
>comes
>>back with the news: "It's an Ice Planet!"
>>
>>Actually it's about 25 miles from the American scientific base...
>
>There's an original Twilight Zone where a spaceship crashes on
>a barren asteroid. After panic, death, and hysteria, it turns
>out to be a rocky part of Earth.
Poul Anderson (again) did a spoof on this in _Eve Times Four_
As near as I remember, the one man among the "castaways" convinces the four
women that not only are they on an alien planet, but that there is a law
requiring all of thenm to have children by him in oreder to produce the most
diverse gene pool.
I forget exactly how they rumble him
--
Mike Stone - Peterborough England
Call nothing true until it has been officially denied
Charlie Stross
as <joats...@aol.com> declared:
>>Speaking as one who, back at University, had to act as a sodding interpreter
> between fellow students from the Danelaw
> and those who grew up in Sussex, I'd have to say it's still there
>
> -- but those University students probably all understood each other well enough
> by the time they graduated.
Only in one direction. The guys with the serious Yorkshire
accents could understand the pronounced-RP accents of the
home counties natives (it is, after all, the standard dialect
on television and radio programming) but the home counties
folk still had serious difficulty with Yorkshire accents --
real ones, not the fake ones you'd get on TV. Word use as
much as anything else made it difficult to cope with.
I've lived in Scotland for nearly a decade; I still have
difficulty coping with some Scots accents, when the speaker is
drunk and/or agitated. (Not nearly as bad as dealing with a
Boston accent, though. One time, trying to buy a subway
ticket, I had to resort to slowly and loudly asking, "do you
speak English?" before the clerk realised that I wasn't deaf
or stupid and started trying to enunciate her words audibly.
On the fourth attempt I actually managed to give her some
money in exchange for a ticket ...)
-- Charlie
Christopher Adams
>> From: "Christopher Adams"
>
>> Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars.
>
> -- ah, yes, the Pink Planet, with lots of tradtional food and dancing,
> but no basic political disagreements in the end... 8-).
>
> Berkeley's idea of diversity.
I think that's a pretty egregious misreading of at least "Red Mars". No
political disagreements? That's where *all* the drama comes from, man.
James Nicoll
Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>On 20 Aug 2003 19:06:50 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>
>>250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
>
>Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
>as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
>was utterly unintelligible.
>
quotation of mine is the first thing a lot of Chinese see when they
crack open their texts. Properly credited, too.
David Allsopp
Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> writes
>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>as <joats...@aol.com> declared:
>
>>>Speaking as one who, back at University, had to act as a sodding interpreter
>> between fellow students from the Danelaw
>> and those who grew up in Sussex, I'd have to say it's still there
>>
>> -- but those University students probably all understood each other well
>enough
>> by the time they graduated.
>
>Only in one direction. The guys with the serious Yorkshire
>accents could understand the pronounced-RP accents of the
>home counties natives (it is, after all, the standard dialect
>on television and radio programming) but the home counties
>folk still had serious difficulty with Yorkshire accents --
>real ones, not the fake ones you'd get on TV. Word use as
>much as anything else made it difficult to cope with.
I'd just like to confirm this, as someone who had[1] a serious Yorkshire
accent on going to university. It was obvious some people had
difficulty following me, and when a few friends from home visited early
in my first term, our conversation in the bar was met with baffled
incomprehension. I got the impression some people thought we were about
to take the bar apart.
A brief aside on the subject of fake TV accents: Robert Carlyle did an
excellent job on his Yorkshire accent in "The Full Monty". However,
those of us from South Yorkshire could spot that it wasn't a *Sheffield*
accent. They're all Deedars, there, you see...
[1] Mostly gone, unless I spend a while with the people in my home town
(my sister in particular), when it comes back in all its glottal glory.
--
David Allsopp Houston, this is Tranquillity Base.
Remove SPAM to email me The Eagle has landed.
Christopher Adams
> Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>> (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>>
>>> 250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
>>
>> Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
>> as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
>> was utterly unintelligible.
>>
> sf/x: extremely smug: That 'Purity of the English Language'
> quotation of mine is the first thing a lot of Chinese see when they
> crack open their texts. Properly credited, too.
Bravo, James. :)
Anecdotal support for the poverty of English teaching in Asia:
Someone, it may even have been on this newsgroup, told a story about he and his
wife going to Japan, meeting some Japanese students, and being unable to
communicate except in written English, because (after N generations of native
Japanese speakers teaching English to native Japanese speakers) there is a
distinct Japanese dialect of English: perfectly intelligible to other users of
the dialect, and providing excellent written English skills, but utterly
incomprehensibly to native English speakers.
mike stone
>Someone, it may even have been on this newsgroup, told a story about he and
>his
>wife going to Japan, meeting some Japanese students, and being unable to
>communicate except in written English, because (after N generations of native
>Japanese speakers teaching English to native Japanese speakers) there is a
>distinct Japanese dialect of English: perfectly intelligible to other users
>of
>the dialect, and providing excellent written English skills, but utterly
>incomprehensibly to native English speakers.
Reminds me of a line in Toynbee's _Study of History_ in which he talks about
the attempted revival of Erse in the Irish Free State. Toynbee observes that
the "revived" Irish language produced by Dublin scholars is reportedly
incomprehensible to the surviving Erse-speakers on Ireland's west coast, who
learned the language at their mothers' knees
Daniel Frankham
>There's an original Twilight Zone where a spaceship crashes on
>a barren asteroid. After panic, death, and hysteria, it turns
>out to be a rocky part of Earth.
In 'Abbott and Costello Go to Mars', they land in New Orleans, which
they take to be Mars (its Mardi Gras).
--
Daniel Frankham
wth...@godzilla2.acpub.duke.edu
>
> I'd just like to confirm this, as someone who had[1] a serious Yorkshire
> accent on going to university. It was obvious some people had
> difficulty following me,
Some years ago in Texas I saw a Yorkshire TV program on
PBS. It had subtitles.
The accents couldn't have been particularly thick as I had no
trouble understanding them - and I've spent all of a week
in Yorkshire.
William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
> (Not nearly as bad as dealing with a
>Boston accent, though. One time, trying to buy a subway
>ticket, I had to resort to slowly and loudly asking, "do you
>speak English?" before the clerk realised that I wasn't deaf
>or stupid and started trying to enunciate her words audibly.
>On the fourth attempt I actually managed to give her some
>money in exchange for a ticket ...)
I grew up in the suburbs of Boston, but when I had occasion to ride
the Orange Line on a recent visit... well, you have my sympathies. I
think the MBTA must somehow select for employees with really strong
accents.
Except calling it a "Boston accent" isn't precisely right; they're
mostly Dorchester or Southie or Cambridge or something. You won't
find anyone with a Beacon Hill accent working in the subway. Boston's
not as varied as London, but it's definitely got half a dozen or more
distinct accents without even going outside the city limits.
Walter Bushell
> >"Clark McIvor" <clar...@gil.com.au> wrote in message
>
> >(Not
> >> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
> >
> >
>
> In that series (and esp the original trilogy) the whole _Galaxy_ didn't seem
> all that diverse
One wouldn't expect to find much variety, it was possible to ship
*wheat* from Trantor to the 2nd Foundation, profitably. That is from the
center to the rim of the Galaxy.
--
The last temptation is the highest treason:
To do the right thing for the wrong reason. --T..S. Eliot
Walter
Walter Bushell
<Snip>
> Give it a couple of centuries, and the logical end-product is a single global
> culture, speaking English, with a few minor regional variations kept alive by
> hobbyists and the sort of type who likes the SCA.
<Snip>
s/English/Chinese/
Walter Bushell
> In article <20030819091914...@mb-m29.aol.com>,
mws...@aol.com (mike stone) writes:
> >> 1 in every 5 human beings can speak English, and a continuation of
> >>present trends will see that up to 1 in 2 by 2050.
> >
> >Of course, these trends are _not_ irreversible
> >A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people
over
> >a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
> A sizeable chunk of the earth's surface, or a sizeable amount of the
> area that was well-known to the Mediterranean culture? For some reason,
> I have trouble believing that Greek was used by educated people in (what
> are now) Finland, Denmark, Congo, Kamchatka, and so on two millenia back.
Yes, but it was used by *all* the educated people, in Finland and
Denmark.
Eric Jarvis
> begin "David Cowie" <see...@lineone.net> writes:
>
> > When _I_ went to university (mid 1980's) my friends included people from
> > Derbyshire, Scotland, London, and various parts of the Home Counties [1].
> > We all had accents, but none of us had dialects
>
> Exactly backwards.
>
when I went to University (late 70s) we had a chap from
northern Northumberland in our hall of residence who
genuinely HAD to have a chap from North Yorkshire
translate what he said to most of us...he's probably
talking in a rather dull BBC accent by now...which is sad
I was already multilingual...I could use North
Lincolnshire dialect, but it isn't what was spoken at
home
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"Hey Lord don't ask me questions
There ain't no answer in me"
Timothy McDaniel
"Learned the language from the other rugrats around" is how I am told
language acquisition goes -- that is, children learn primarily from
their peers, though a language spoken only at home can have an
influence.
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
Jack Tingle
> In article <bi1mco$l53$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>,
> Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
> >On 20 Aug 2003 19:06:50 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
> >
> >>250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
> >
> >Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
> >as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
> >was utterly unintelligible.
> >
> sf/x: extremely smug: That 'Purity of the English Language'
> quotation of mine is the first thing a lot of Chinese see when they
> crack open their texts. Properly credited, too.
OBTW, is that Canadian english, English english, Yankee english(1),
Southern English(1), Std. American english, or Oz english that's
assaulting other languages in alleys. Or is it a gang thing?
Regards,
Jack Tingle
(1) If you think Eudora Welty and Robert Frost used the same language,
you need to travel more. Try ordering a milkshake, a frappe,
cornbread, and a hoecake all at the same place. [My Qualifications:
I'm a Georgian/Kentuckian long ago transplanted to Essex Co., MA.]
mike stone
>One wouldn't expect to find much variety, it was possible to ship
>*wheat* from Trantor to the 2nd Foundation, profitably. That is from the
>center to the rim of the Galaxy.
Er - the Second Foundation was _on_ Trantor
James Nicoll
Jack Tingle <wjti...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote in message news:<bi2crv$385$1...@panix3.panix.com>...
>> In article <bi1mco$l53$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>,
>> Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>> >On 20 Aug 2003 19:06:50 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>> >
>> >>250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
>> >
>> >Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
>> >as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
>> >was utterly unintelligible.
>> >
>> sf/x: extremely smug: That 'Purity of the English Language'
>> quotation of mine is the first thing a lot of Chinese see when they
>> crack open their texts. Properly credited, too.
>
>OBTW, is that Canadian english, English english, Yankee english(1),
>Southern English(1), Std. American english, or Oz english that's
>assaulting other languages in alleys. Or is it a gang thing?
John M. Gamble
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <bi1mco$l53$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>,
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>>On 20 Aug 2003 19:06:50 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>>
>>>250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
>>
>>Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
>>as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
>>was utterly unintelligible.
>>
> sf/x: extremely smug: That 'Purity of the English Language'
>quotation of mine is the first thing a lot of Chinese see when they
>crack open their texts. Properly credited, too.
>
The first time i saw it was in an e-mail from a friend. I thought What
a coincidence, there's a James Nicoll on rec.arts.sf.written.
Come to think of it, it's in my quotes file, but without a time&place
credit. Did you write in in r.a.s.w.? What was the date?
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
Walter Bushell
> >From: pr...@panix.com (Walter Bushell)
>
> >One wouldn't expect to find much variety, it was possible to ship
> >*wheat* from Trantor to the 2nd Foundation, profitably. That is from the
> >center to the rim of the Galaxy.
>
> Er - the Second Foundation was _on_ Trantor
1 st Foundation sorry! BTW that's a big spoiler.
Keith F. Lynch
> (Not nearly as bad as dealing with a Boston accent, though. One
> time, trying to buy a subway ticket, I had to resort to slowly and
> loudly asking, "do you speak English?" before the clerk realised
> that I wasn't deaf or stupid and started trying to enunciate her
> words audibly. On the fourth attempt I actually managed to give
> her some money in exchange for a ticket ...)
Really? I thought I was completely familiar with the story, but I'm
sure I don't remember that verse of "Charlie on the MTA".
--
Keith F. Lynch - k...@keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is not acceptable. Please do not send me
HTML, "rich text," or attachments, as all such email is discarded unread.
Bill Woods
> >From: j...@mit.edu (John F. Carr)
>
> >JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >>-- Poul always remembered that a planet the size of Earth is a _big_ place.
> >>
> >>Stargate SG1 did a takeoff on this -- a malfunction strands the team
> >>in an icecavern in Antarctica.
> >>
> >>Major Carter manages to climb out onto the top of the ice sheet and
> >>then comes back with the news: "It's an Ice Planet!"
> >>
> >>Actually it's about 25 miles from the American scientific base...
> >
> >There's an original Twilight Zone where a spaceship crashes on
> >a barren asteroid. After panic, death, and hysteria, it turns
> >out to be a rocky part of Earth.
>
> Poul Anderson (again) did a spoof on this in _Eve Times Four_
>
> As near as I remember, the one man among the "castaways" convinces
> the four women that not only are they on an alien planet, but that
> there is a law requiring all of thenm to have children by him in
> oreder to produce the most diverse gene pool.
>
> I forget exactly how they rumble him
IIRC, it really was an out-of-the-way planet. The cad had faked
an Abandon Ship emergency after arranging which passengers were
assigned to his lifeboat.
Buck Dharma
>
> The first time i saw it was in an e-mail from a friend. I thought What
> a coincidence, there's a James Nicoll on rec.arts.sf.written.
>
> Come to think of it, it's in my quotes file, but without a time&place
> credit. Did you write in in r.a.s.w.? What was the date?
As far as I ( well, Google ) recall, it was posted by JDN on 15/05/90
11:53:58 PST to Rec.Arts.SF-Lovers as the first post in a 'Kings
English' thread.
Buck 'Too much time on my hands' Dharma
Jens Kilian
> Some years ago in Texas I saw a Yorkshire TV program on
> PBS. It had subtitles.
Swiss German speakers are often subtitled on German TV.
--
mailto:j...@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
Captain Button
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>In article <f7436651.03082...@posting.google.com>,
>Jack Tingle <wjti...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote in message news:<bi2crv$385$1...@panix3.panix.com>...
>>> In article <bi1mco$l53$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>,
>>> Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>>> >On 20 Aug 2003 19:06:50 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>>> >
>>> >>250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
>>> >
>>> >Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
>>> >as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
>>> >was utterly unintelligible.
>>> >
>>> sf/x: extremely smug: That 'Purity of the English Language'
>>> quotation of mine is the first thing a lot of Chinese see when they
>>> crack open their texts. Properly credited, too.
>>
>>OBTW, is that Canadian english, English english, Yankee english(1),
>>Southern English(1), Std. American english, or Oz english that's
>>assaulting other languages in alleys. Or is it a gang thing?
>
> It's a gang thing.
Now I'm trying to picture an editorial cartoon style picture of this, with
a guy in a top hat, one in a slouch hat, a redneck in a gimme cap, and two
more who aren't jelling in my head. Each with a word balloon in their
dialect, of course.
Who's the right artist for this?
--
American Express says I'm deceased. Boo! Consider yourself haunted.
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Karl M Syring
> wth...@godzilla2.acpub.duke.edu writes:
>> Some years ago in Texas I saw a Yorkshire TV program on
>> PBS. It had subtitles.
>
> Swiss German speakers are often subtitled on German TV.
... and on Swiss TV.
Karl M. Syring
Nancy Lebovitz
Christopher Adams <mhacde...@spammity-spammity-spam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Someone, it may even have been on this newsgroup, told a story about he and his
>wife going to Japan, meeting some Japanese students, and being unable to
>communicate except in written English, because (after N generations of native
>Japanese speakers teaching English to native Japanese speakers) there is a
>distinct Japanese dialect of English: perfectly intelligible to other users of
>the dialect, and providing excellent written English skills, but utterly
>incomprehensibly to native English speakers.
I don't have the exact quote, but there's one to the effect that in the
future everyone will speak English--in a number of mutually incomprehensible
dialects.
OBhypothesis: What happens if there's tech to enable everyone to learn
languages as easily as the people who are best at it now?
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Peter D. Tillman
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> In article <bi1mco$l53$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>,
> Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
> >On 20 Aug 2003 19:06:50 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
> >
> >>250 million Chinese have learned, or are learning, English.
> >
> >Or what they think is English. My daughter spent a month in Tianjin
> >as an exchange student, and some of the alleged "English" she heard
> >was utterly unintelligible.
> >
> sf/x: extremely smug: That 'Purity of the English Language'
> quotation of mine is the first thing a lot of Chinese see when they
> crack open their texts. Properly credited, too.
OK, James, trot it out for us.
Please?
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity. -- George W. Bush
James Nicoll
I prefer:
The problem with defending the purity of the English language
is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't
just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their
pockets for new vocabulary.
James Davis Nicoll
It has the typo fixed.
Huh, First draft of this there was a typo. 'Typo' came out
'ypo'. What are the odds of that?
lynn
"Clark McIvor" <clar...@gil.com.au> wrote:
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
The best one I can tell you is Sheri Tepper's Sideshow. That's the point
of the story, actually, it's a planet that was settled with the purpose
of supporting diversity by giving each culture its own territory and
rigidly enforcing a butt-out policy between cultures.
There's a lot more going on, too, and we find that many of the cultures
are pretty horrid, but a big theme is definitely diversity.
It's the third of a loose trilogy, actually - Grass, Raising the Stones,
and Sideshow - but any of the three can be read on its own. My own
capsule summaries:
Grass - pseudo-English mansions and fox-hunting on an alien world, with
some very interesting twists! I loved it when it came out, but the pace
is kind of slow. To me, it really set an eerie mood that grabbed me at
the time, but never interested me in re-reading it.
Raising the Stones - my favorite Sheri Tepper. Takes place long, long
after Grass, and very little cross-reference, so it stands alone just
fine. Colonists on a new planet discover a funny kind of "god" that
actually "works." Lots of culture clashes, but in contrast to your
subject question, it's a one-culture-per-planet story.
Sideshow - following the story in Raising the Stones, it's about a
planet that has isolated itself with all the different cultures who
wanted to populate it, with the goal of resistance to assimilation. But
it festers in isolation, and events reach a crisis...
Anyway, they're good reading, and starting with Raising the Stones is
fine if Grass doesn't appeal.
- Lynn
lynn
"Clark McIvor" <clar...@gil.com.au> wrote:
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
You know, aside from Tepper's Sideshow (mentioned in another posting),
most of the examples I can think of take place... on Earth. Okay, not
surprising, but there are a fair number of Earth books that travel
around the globe to different cultures. 3 examples off the top of my
head:
Earth, David Brin
Friday, Robert Heinlein
The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson
But that's not your question, so never mind. :-) I guess writers are
more likely to muse on cultural differences when they're extrapolating
from a planet they know well and its cultures.
I agree that most SF has a one-culture-per-planet model, so even in the
books that explore cross-cultural issues, they tend to be spread out
over planets. For example, The Disposessed, by Ursula LeGuin (one
'anarchy' planet, one 'capitalist' planet...)
Which makes me think, maybe there are more fantasy examples... like A
Wizard of Earth-Sea by LeGuin, or Tolkien's Middle Earth, or C.S.
Lewis's Narnia.
Anne McCaffrey's Pern books also have cultural differences - there's the
"holders" and the "weyrs," but also marked differences in Northern and
Southern hold culture - as well as geographic differences as we visit
different sites on the planet.
Ooh - one more great example - Majipoor! Robert Silverberg's Lord
Valentine series take us all around this planet and lots of diversity.
In fact, the blurb I found for Majipoor Chronicles says "This collection
contains ten stories reflecting the endless variety of life on the
planet Majipoor." Caveat - it's been a long time since I've read these.
But I remember enjoying them.
I thought of one more example - there's a book/books where a man finds
himself on a desert planet where he rides a giant lion or cat? I recall
it had several cultures in it, e.g., the rich cities, the poor quarters,
the desert dwellers. Anyone know the name of this book?
- Lynn
Michael Stemper
>Michael Stemper <mste...@siemens-emis.com> wrote:
>> In article <20030819091914...@mb-m29.aol.com>, mws...@aol.com (mike stone) writes:
>> >A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people
>over
>> >a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
>
>> A sizeable chunk of the earth's surface, or a sizeable amount of the
>> area that was well-known to the Mediterranean culture? For some reason,
>> I have trouble believing that Greek was used by educated people in (what
>> are now) Finland, Denmark, Congo, Kamchatka, and so on two millenia back.
>
>Yes, but it was used by *all* the educated people, in Finland and
>Denmark.
Is this like all of the prime multiples of 10?
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Visualize whirled peas!
Konrad Gaertner
>
> Huh, First draft of this there was a typo. 'Typo' came out
> 'ypo'. What are the odds of that?
This being Usenet, I'd say roughly 17%.
--KG
Bill Woods
> In article <nj31b.50119$bo1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
> Christopher Adams <mhacde...@spammity-spammity-spam.yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >Someone, it may even have been on this newsgroup, told a story about he
> >and his wife going to Japan, meeting some Japanese students, and being
> >unable to communicate except in written English, because (after N
> >generations of native Japanese speakers teaching English to native
> >Japanese speakers) there is a distinct Japanese dialect of English:
> >perfectly intelligible to other users of the dialect, and providing
> >excellent written English skills, but utterly incomprehensibly to
> >native English speakers.
>
> I don't have the exact quote, but there's one to the effect that
> in the future everyone will speak English--in a number of mutually
> incomprehensible dialects.
>
> OBhypothesis: What happens if there's tech to enable everyone to learn
> languages as easily as the people who are best at it now?
What seems to be happening is the development of the universal
translator, though it doesn't work in real time, so it's no good
for spoken language -- yet. The need to learn English may fall as
everyone jabbers away in their native language and hears others
in the same tongue.
Bill Woods
> JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
> <Snip>
> > Give it a couple of centuries, and the logical end-product is a single global
> > culture, speaking English, with a few minor regional variations kept alive by
> > hobbyists and the sort of type who likes the SCA.
> <Snip>
>
> s/English/Chinese/
Are there many none-Chinese learning Chinese? Surely the writing system
is a crippling obstacle to general acceptance.
Eric Jarvis
the caveat being that 77.4% of all statistics or
probabilities quoted on Usenet have been made up
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
Johnny1A
> In article <20030820045548...@mb-m16.aol.com>,
> Justin Bacon <tria...@aol.com> wrote:
> >Mike Stone wrote:
> >>A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people
> >>over a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
> >
> >different cultural heritage. Once you've got a monoculture, you'd have to have
> >a civilizational collapse severe enough to be capable of creating the
> >generations of isolation necessary for cultural diversity to assert itself so
> >that when contact was re-established cultural competition could take place.
>
> The manner in which Latin lost out to Greek is interesting. I
> bet there were Romans grumpily asking who won those darn wars, anyway?
By the time Latin lost out to Greek, though the Roman Empire
technically still existed, there weren't any more true Romans.
Shermanlee
Keith Morrison
This being Usenet, I have to say 18%.
--
Keith
Walter Bushell
> In article <1g01nqg.6kqazahzpj7hN%pr...@panix.com>, pr...@panix.com
(Walter Bushell) writes:
> >Michael Stemper <mste...@siemens-emis.com> wrote:
> >> In article <20030819091914...@mb-m29.aol.com>,
mws...@aol.com (mike stone) writes:
>
> >> >A couple of millennia ago, the Greek language was used by educated people
> >over
> >> >a sizeable chunk of the earth's surface. How widespread is it now?
> >
> >> A sizeable chunk of the earth's surface, or a sizeable amount of the
> >> area that was well-known to the Mediterranean culture? For some reason,
> >> I have trouble believing that Greek was used by educated people in (what
> >> are now) Finland, Denmark, Congo, Kamchatka, and so on two millenia back.
> >
> >Yes, but it was used by *all* the educated people, in Finland and
> >Denmark.
>
> Is this like all of the prime multiples of 10?
What kind of question was that? Retorical?
Walter Bushell
> Walter Bushell wrote:
>
> > JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
> > <Snip>
> > > Give it a couple of centuries, and the logical end-product is a single
> > > global culture, speaking English, with a few minor regional variations
> > > kept alive by hobbyists and the sort of type who likes the SCA.
> > <Snip>
> >
> > s/English/Chinese/
>
> Are there many none-Chinese learning Chinese? Surely the writing system
> is a crippling obstacle to general acceptance.
English (or Spanglish) may win out due to founder effects.
I believe the Mainland has adopted an alphabetic system.
>
> --
> Bill Woods
>
> In California, we have a name for students
> who believe in hard work, perseverance,
> self-discipline and respect for authority: Nguyen.
> -- Joanne Jacobs
Robert A. Woodward
lynn <ly...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> In article <01c365c9$73a179a0$LocalHost@kenmcivo>,
> "Clark McIvor" <clar...@gil.com.au> wrote:
>
> > So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> > about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> > Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
<SNIP of several examples>
>
> I thought of one more example - there's a book/books where a man finds
> himself on a desert planet where he rides a giant lion or cat? I recall
> it had several cultures in it, e.g., the rich cities, the poor quarters,
> the desert dwellers. Anyone know the name of this book?
Sounds like the the Gandalara cycle, a seven book series (though perhaps
you only read the first one) by Randall Garrett and Vicki Heydon
(Randall was stricken after the 1st one was finished, though I believe
that the series meta-plot had already been established):
_The Steel of Raithskar_
_The Glass of Dyskornis_
_The Bronze of Eddarta_
_The Well of Darkness_
_The Search for Ka_
_Return to Eddarta_
_The River Wall_
And it wasn't a desert planet (to say more would be a serious spoiler).
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw
Tristan Jones
> There are immigrant neighborhoods in Amsterdam where the immigrants learn
> English as their second language and never bother to pick up Dutch.
>
> Why bother? All the Dutch-speaking people speak English, too, and Dutch is
> useless outside the Netherlands and Flanders. English is useful everywhere.
In places like the Netherlands, is not these migrants refusal to learn
the local language contributing to a political backlash among the
native born population against immigrants?
Karl M Syring
>
> What seems to be happening is the development of the universal
> translator, though it doesn't work in real time, so it's no good
> for spoken language -- yet. The need to learn English may fall as
> everyone jabbers away in their native language and hears others
> in the same tongue.
Yuck, the Babelfish is worse than anything else. I think, English has a
good change to be the base of a global "business" language, but the way
it will be used may be not really to the tastes of the native speakers,
which may have to lern it as second language at some point.
Karl M. Syring
bgaudet0801
"Clark McIvor" <clar...@gil.com.au> wrote in message
news:01c365c9$73a179a0$LocalHost@kenmcivo...
[...]
> So, what are the well-rounded SF planets - planets where we see, or hear
> about, several different sites around the globe, with diversity? (Not
> Trantor [from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series] - no diversity.)
Hernbert's Dune could probably be the most famous. Arrakis had the city
dwellers [and amongst them wealthy merchants and dirt poor beggars] and
Fremen, smugglers and Harkonen, Imperials and Atreides.
The planet itself wasn't too diverse but the cultures were.
Robert J. Kolker
bgaudet0801 wrote:
>
> The planet itself wasn't too diverse but the cultures were.
Only on the surface. In the sub-Arrakian caverns beneath the seiches, it
was a whole different world.
The Spice must flow.
Bob Kolker
MJ Stoddard
<3F4680DD...@popd.ix.netcom.com>:
....
>
>Are there many none-Chinese learning Chinese? Surely the writing
>system is a crippling obstacle to general acceptance.
Hmmm -- given English orthography, and the increasing discrepancy among
orthoepic variants, surely the English writing system will become a
crippling obstacle to general acceptance? <humor intended>
MJ Stoddard / stoddard@u..arizona.edu