Fictive languages
Fredrik Ekman
What languages have been invented by different authors through the
years, and how detailed/useable are they?
I know of Tolkien's languages (about 15, I believe), a Venutian
language invented by E. R. Burroughs for his "Venus" series, and,
of course, Klingon.
/F
Don Harlow
languages list (con...@diku.dk; run by list...@diku.dk).
I believe that Austin Tappan Wright developed the Islandian language in
some detail for his massive social novel _Islandia_; but after his death,
if I remember correctly, his background notes (all n x 100,000 words of
them) were lost.
There's also Suzette Haden Elgin's "women's language" _la'adan_. From what
I've heard, it's as usable as Klingon, though otherwise the two have little
in common. :-)
Burroughs' Martian language in his John Carter novels is at least as
well developed as Carson Napier's Venusian language, though not as well
covered in a single description anywhere in the series.
--
Don Harlow do...@netcom.com
Esperanto League (Info only) (800)828-5944 or el...@netcom.com
Turnig^as la Rado de la Tempo,
kaj postlasas multajn vojkadavretojn. (Lau^ Robert Jordan)
Mark Line
>What languages have been invented by different authors through the
>years, and how detailed/useable are they?
>I know of Tolkien's languages (about 15, I believe), a Venutian
>language invented by E. R. Burroughs for his "Venus" series, and,
>of course, Klingon.
Marc Okrand, the author of the Klingon Dictionary, has at least
appeared in film credits referring to, as far as I know, Vulcan and
Romulan. I don't know of any publications on these languages, though.
-- Mark
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jef...@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us
In his "novel" _Pale Fire_ (I use the term novel loosely in this case)
Vladimir Nabokov invented the language Zembla (or Zembalan?). The narrator
of the "story" purports to be the deposed king of Zembla and uses words
and phrases here and there within the "story", sometimes translated,
sometimes not. Zemblan seemed to be a language in between Germanic and
Slavic in origin, at least in its vocabulary. The language was by no
means complete in this book, although knowing Nabokov he probably had
the language fairly well worked out. He could probably have written the
novel in Zemblan, and who knows, maybe he did and then translated it to
English.
I highly recommend _Pale Fire_ to anyone who likes strange fiction, by
the way. It is written as a 99 line poem with forward and extensive
notes by the self-proclaimed best friend of the late poet. The index
is not to be missed.
-Andrea Webster
(writing from my partner, Jeff's account)
Gregory S Prince-1
How "complete" of a grammar and vocabulary do you want? There's always
the "slang" of _A Clockwork Orange,_ which makes reading the book pure
hell for the first few chapters (the book is "written" in the slang,
instead of merely containing passages of it), until you've become
accustomed to it.
greg
Gregory S Prince-1
>>years, and how detailed/useable are they?
>
>>I know of Tolkien's languages (about 15, I believe), a Venutian
>>language invented by E. R. Burroughs for his "Venus" series, and,
>>of course, Klingon.
>
>Marc Okrand, the author of the Klingon Dictionary, has at least
>appeared in film credits referring to, as far as I know, Vulcan and
>Romulan. I don't know of any publications on these languages, though.
I've seen an article discussing Vulcan and Romulan, in Trek literature
dating back a few years, but there hasn't been much "work" on them.
Mostly isolated words and phrases, etc. It's a good article, but I don't
know how "scholarly" you'd consider it. ;) There may have been (probably
has been) more written since then, since I don't follow it all that closely.
greg
Minneapolis
Per C. Jorgensen
S Prince-1) wrote:
> How "complete" of a grammar and vocabulary do you want? There's always
> the "slang" of _A Clockwork Orange,_ which makes reading the book pure
> hell for the first few chapters (the book is "written" in the slang,
> instead of merely containing passages of it), until you've become
> accustomed to it.
>
> greg
It's helluva lot easier if one knows some Russian...
Per Christian Jørgensen
Graduate Student and Teaching Assistant
Department of East European and Oriental Studies
University of Oslo
Norway
Patrick Jost
C.S. Lewis invented various things for his "Perelandra" novels.
Iain Banks is beginning to develop the Marain language in his
"Culture" novels.
Jack Vance invented several in "The Languages of Pao".
The language of metaphors in Star Trek the Next Generation's "Darmok"
(Darmok and Jelaad at Tenagra; Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel) is
developed enough to give you the idea.
There are a few *gems* in Madeleine L'Engle's "Wrinkle in Time" (besides
all of the quotations).
Last, but not least, Frank Herbert (RIP) synthesized the language of
Arrakis from languages of desert cultures.
PJ
--
Patrick Jost / U.S. Department of the Treasury / jo...@itd.nrl.navy.mil
semi-tame computational linguist / fretless bassist / troublemaker
Jacob Galley
Just curious, does anyone know how hard H.P. Lovecraft worked to make
realistic the languages of his alien/evil deities and their minions?
How were they constructed?
=====
What, in substance, both the Eskimo wizards and the Louisiana
swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very
like this---the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional
breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud:
"Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."
Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among
his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had
told them what the words meant. This text, as given, ran something
like this:
"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
(from "The Call of Cthulhu")
--
* What's so interdisciplinary about studying lower levels of thought process?
<-- Jacob Galley * ga...@midway.uchicago.edu
sl...@cc.usu.edu
> What languages have been invented by different authors through the
> years, and how detailed/useable are they?
Please, let's not forget Lucas' "Huttese" and "Jawa". Are there others?
Antai
Jeff Robertson
Elosian, Stofonian, and Knarrian are various languages spoken on a fictional
world that I'm going to write about when I get around to it. Because they
are related in their history, these languages have certain similarities.
To emulate the way these are spoken you have to speak in an "alien" tone of
voice (a LITTLE BIT like that dolphin on "SeaQuest", not quite though).
And that which is transcribed as "k", Knarrian pronounces with a smack of the
toungue.... thus its own name for itself "Knar's", pronounced like (smack)nars.
(The ' indicates longer duration, not stress, of the preceding syllable)
Sample sentences from these languages :
Stofonian : Na yayt yatin ijer natas ! (Give me my sword!)
Elosian: Elockanta Andria belsue om Ckeptofuz. (Empress Andria dwells in
the land of the gods)
Knarrian: An't tan jefasck om As Renog ? (Which man laughed at His Majesty?)
Then there's Gerrk, sort of the private slang of my group of friends, as in
"Its all Gerrk to me". Everything in Gerrk is a joke.
For example, to "lose your bowling hand" means to suffer losses because you
persisted when you should have stopped. I'm not telling you why, because if
I did I would be a Gerrk Jerrk, and the penalty for Gerrk Jerrks is to be sat
on by Delta Burke. The Burking of Jerrks is a very serious occasion.
The sister language of Gerrk is Kerzic (that name is Gerrk. Kerzic has
no word for itself). It is my theory that most of what we usually consider
to be acronyms are actually words borrowed into English from Kerzic.
For example, DOS is usually thought of to mean "disk operating system", but
is actually from the Kerzic meaning "frustration".
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
() JEFF ROBERTSON <JROB...@UA1VM.UA.EDU> ()
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
() UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA -_ _- ()
() PO BOX CO TUSCALOOSA, AL 35487 -____- ()
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THESE ARE SOMEBODY ELSE'S OPINIONS, NOT MINE....
Damjan Bojadziev, Inst. J.STEFAN, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Sir Thomas Urquhart, an English poet, supposedly invented a
"universal" language (somehow) based on palindromes; can
anyone tell me more about this, or provide some reference?
Robyn Louise Kells
This kind of backfired, since these guys were speaking a REAL
language. When Star Wars played in the African country where
this language is used (pardon the vagueness; it's been a long
time since I heard this story), the audience unexpectedly broke
into guffaws.
It seems the Jawas were badmouthing the film and bemoaning
the amount of pay they were getting.
If anyone knows this story in more detail, please feel free to
jump in here. It's one of my favorites.
--Robyn L. Kells
Gerald
>A question to all of you out there:
>
>What languages have been invented by different authors through the
>years, and how detailed/useable are they?
You might consider Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoots Macbeth, two related plays by
Havel(?) as having made up languages. The words are recognizable, but the
meaning is quite new.
Lincos (Lingua Cosmica) by Hans Freudenthal and LogLan by ? are synthetic
languages developed rather completely as research, not parts of fictional
work.
--
Gerald Ruderman
g...@vanward.ci.net
Alan Smaill
A small correction: he was Scottish.
Here is a reference (can't say I recall that palindromes were crucial here,
though):
AUTHOR: Urquhart, Sir Thomas , 1611-1660
TITLE: Logopandecteision, 1653
IMPRINT: Menston : Scolar P. 1970
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: [13],40p ; 23cm
SERIES: English linguistics, 1500-1800 : a collection of facsimile reprints ;
no. 239
NOTE: "A Scolar Press facsimile." * Wing U 137 * Facsim. of 1st ed., London, G.
Calvert & R. Tomlins, 1653
SUBJECT: Language, Universal
LC CARD: 72557851
ISBN: 0854173285
--
Alan Smaill JANET: sma...@uk.ac.ed.lfcs
LFCS, Dept. of Computer Science UUCP: ..!mcvax!ukc!lfcs!smaill
University of Edinburgh ARPA: sma...@lfcs.ed.ac.uk
Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK. Tel: 031-650-2710
Karen Kay
>years, and how detailed/useable are they?
I haven't been following this thread that closely, but I've seen
no mention of Klingon. Which seems to be eminently usable.
Karen
kar...@netcom.com
Richard M. Alderson III
>I know of Tolkien's languages (about 15, I believe), a Venutian language
>invented by E. R. Burroughs for his "Venus" series, and, of course, Klingon.
"donh" pointed out Burroughs' Martian, but surprisingly no one has mentioned
the language of the Anthropoid Apes in the Tarzan series, as well as the
languages of the pithecanthropines, the Ant Men, and a couple of African
tribes.
Bradley invented two languages, one rather Celtic and the other rather
Portuguese (based on the ancestry of the elite and common folk, respectively),
for her Darkover series.
Very few invented languages have presented more than a smattering of vocabulary
to us, probably because the writers weren't interested in Language qua Language
but simply needed something "alien" to further their work. There aren't many
Tolkiens or Wrights around.
Oh, yeah. Someone asked about the Elder Tongues of Lovecraft et al. These
aren't *supposed* to be pronounceable, as they are the languages of ancient
alien beings; the written forms are meant to suggest the sound, which was known
only to initiates of the cults of the various Elder Gods.
--
Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
what not.
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_
Geoffrey Simmons
>> What languages have been invented by different authors through the
>> years, and how detailed/useable are they?
No one seems to have mentioned George Orwell's Newspeak. He gives a rather
detailed Appendix called "Principles of Newspeak" (I believe) in 1984. As
to its usability, the language is specifically designed to make certain
notions impossible to express, such as "freedom", "dictatorship", and so on,
so I suppose it would be quite useful to a totalitarian state, but not much
for the rest of us (I hope).
Geoff
--
Geoffrey Simmons | sim...@informatik.uni-hamburg.de | "Insert wise
University of Hamburg | Phone: (++49 40) 4123-6151 | and witty
Bodenstedtstr. 16 | Fax: (++49 40) 4123-6159 | quotation
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freeder@gmuvax
Dr. Seuss is filled with words that aren't real.....
f10 (flo)
Evan Kirshenbaum
>What about the first fictive language we learn?
>
>Dr. Seuss is filled with words that aren't real.....
Of course they're real! The books even come with pictures so you know
what the things they refer to look like. Surely you wouldn't claim
that the *referent* of a word has to be real, or that there is a "more
real" word for *that particular thing*.
In any case, it's probably significant that Dr. Seuss didn't feel he
could come up with new grammar (that I can think of), merely new
vocabulary.
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
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