<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>This is fascinating. I did some brief research into this myself, and am still interested in pursuing it further at some point. To get an idea of just how prevalent the hobby of creating languages is, check out <a target="_blank" href="http://www.langmaker.com">www.langmaker.com</a>.</span></div><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><br><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Harold Schiffman <hfsclpp@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> lp <lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Sun, June 20, 2010 11:40:01 PM<br><b><span
style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [lg policy] Klingon and other "crazy ideas" in book about invented tongues<br></font><br>
Klingon and other "crazy ideas" in book about invented tongues<br>By John Timpane<br><br>Inquirer Staff Writer<br><br>Arika Okrent was studying languages at the University of Chicago. The<br>languages people use and how they work. The rules, the changes, the<br>charts. She was in the library, poking around. "And then," says<br>Okrent, relaxing in her Germantown home recently, "I drifted down to<br>the shelves with all the books on invented languages. It was a sad<br>little collection. I felt sorry for it." But something called to her.<br>Tales of made-up languages and their makers. Esperanto, the most<br>widely spoken of all; Volapük, once the most popular; Klingon, the<br>bark of space invaders. She learned artificial tongues, then wrote<br>about going to a 2003 Esperanto conference for the American Scholar -<br>and the seed of a book was planted.<br><br>That book is the delightful In the Land of Invented Languages<br>(published last month in
paperback), which tells tales - often sad,<br>often hilarious - of made-up tongues, Okrent's forays into the realms<br>of Esperanto, Klingon, and Blissymbolics, and the personalities,<br>political battles, and fates of linguistic makers-up. Niece of the<br>journalist Daniel Okrent, Arika met her husband, research linguist<br>Derrick Higgins, at Chicago. They came east when Higgins got a job at<br>Educational Testing Service in Princeton. Okrent says, "I did almost<br>all the research for the book before I had kids" - Leo, 5, and Louisa,<br>1. "As I got further and further into this world," says Okrent, 40,<br>"at first, I'd say, 'Look at all these crazy ideas,' but I'd also find<br>touching clues about the lives of the inventors." Her book "reflects<br>the humor and the craziness, but also has compassion and<br>understanding, since I'm a language person myself."<br><br>A graveyard of flops<br><br>Land of Invented Languages is a history of a "vast
graveyard,"<br>brilliant projects that failed. Some inventors, such as James Cooke<br>Brown, become famous for other things (he created the board game<br>Careers), but not for their pet languages. We meet Suzette Haden<br>Elgin, who in the early 1980s created Láadan, a "woman's language"<br>("the only language textbook I know of," Okrent writes, "that gives<br>the word for menstruate in Lesson 1"). We visit the nutty, simpatico<br>world of Esperanto, and the gestural world of sign languages. There's<br>the occasional success, as with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who fought in the<br>late 19th and early 20th centuries to resurrect a near-dead priestly<br>language (Hebrew), and retrofit it for a modern age; it is now the<br>national language of Israel. Or Lazar Ludwik Zamenhof, who grew up in<br>the 1860s and '70s in the Russian Empire town of Bialystok, a Babel of<br>Russian, Polish, German, and Yiddish. He dreamed of a language that<br>cut through the tangle -
and his brainchild, Esperanto, is still the<br>most widely practiced made-up tongue.<br><br>Rage for order has led many to remake language. In the late 1940s,<br>Austrian engineer Charles Bliss invented Blissymbolics, which he hoped<br>could become a writing system for all languages, "logical writing for<br>an illogical world." And Brown invented Loglan, a language that<br>followed the rules of logic. In one of her saddest stories, Okrent<br>recounts how Brown fell into a long-running feud over rights, egos,<br>and direction. A project titled Lojban carried on his vision, despite<br>him.<br><br>Why fix what isn't broken?<br>Language makes us human. So - why mess with it?<br><br>"Well, there is a lot of messiness and ambiguity in language," Okrent<br>says. "We need it. We need that wiggle room. But if you have an<br>engineering mind, you'll see irritating things. Why do words have more<br>than one meaning?" (Look up the word set in Webster's: Its very
first<br>entry lists 25 possible meanings.) "Why do we have irregular verbs?<br>Why are pronouns in English so messed up?"<br><br>Problem is, language probably isn't fixable. "When you try to fix the<br>world of ideas, fix the meanings of words," Okrent says, "it's hard to<br>keep it steady. Times change, words change, and besides, we tend to<br>mean what we mean not by strict rules, but by agreement."<br><br>That won't keep people from trying. One motive is the altruistic dream<br>of tearing down the linguistic walls that divide us. "It's the dream<br>of oneness," says Okrent, "the idea that if everyone could communicate<br>with one another, we could eliminate strife - an idea that is,<br>unfortunately, easy to disprove."<br><br>Ludwick invented Esperanto with that idea. Bliss of Blissymbolics grew<br>up in the many-languaged Austro-Hungarian Empire and dreamed of<br>unifying the world through a common system. Even the names for these<br>languages hint
at the dream of one, perfect world: Esperanto ("one who<br>hopes"), Volapük ("world language"), Lingua Komun ("common language"),<br>Unilingue, Unita, Universel.<br><br>"One of my favorite figures in the book," says Okrent, "is Fuishiki<br>Okamoto, inventor of a language he called Babm. It's a ridiculous<br>language he claims is perfect, and of course it's not - but he is so<br>humble and modest, hoping it would be for the benefit of humanity. If<br>these people worked that hard in pursuit of a failed dream, I figured<br>they deserved to have their stories told."<br><br>All this categorical, logical, engineering mentality - isn't this all<br>overwhelmingly male? True, Okrent's book begins with Hildegard of<br>Bingen, the 12th-century nun who created one of the first known<br>made-up languages. And there's the aforementioned Elgin. But Okrent<br>doesn't deny that Klingon conventions and logical-language websites<br>seem to be a guy thing: "Many people
have suggested there's an<br>Asperger's-like, hyper-male mind-set at work, and there may be some<br>truth to that."<br><br>The case for Klingon<br>Invented languages say much about their times. In the 19th and 20th<br>centuries, when the world was falling apart, people invented languages<br>to sew it back together. Today, says Okrent, "it's a much more playful<br>enterprise, one that reflects the Internet, celebrity-driven popular<br>culture." Klingon, she says, "is much more in the spirit of the<br>languages J.R.R. Tolkien invented for his Hobbit and Ring cycle, not<br>trying to fix language but take it in an artistic direction."<br><br>Okrent is, naturally, a certified Klingon speaker, and she tells how<br>she achieved that high distinction - complete with official pin - in<br>her book. The Klingon Language Institute is located in Blue Bell,<br>along with its founder, psychologist and sci-fantasy writer Lawrence<br>M. Schoen.<br><br>"Like many
people," Schoen says, "I grew up with Star Trek, but as I<br>grew older, the role-playing aspect wasn't enough, and I was looking<br>for something more challenging." In 1992, Schoen pulled together a<br>scattering of Klingon language groups. It even has a peer-reviewed<br>journal, HolQeD, Klingon for Linguistics.<br><br>Schoen says the language is both "a hobby like any other," and a<br>"puzzle that appeals to a certain kind of person. It teaches you about<br>your own language and makes it easier to acquire others, such as Farsi<br>or Spanish. And people take it in other directions as well - such as a<br>Klingon translation of Hamlet [one was published in 2000] or the Tao<br>Te Ching [2008]. It speaks to the human spirit that you would even<br>take on a challenge like this."<br><br>The 17th annual meeting of the Institute - or, in Klingon, the qep'a'<br>wa'maH SochDIch - will be held at Comfort Inn in Essington July 21-25.<br><br>Klingon was invented by
linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek films.<br>He created, on purpose, a harsh, guttural, alien language that does<br>things in ways earthling languages don't. Out of this world.<br><br>In the Land of Invented Languages ends with Okrent taking and passing<br>a test to certify her as a Klingon speaker. Another aspirant, Louise,<br>doesn't pass - but next year, when she tries again and passes, Okrent<br>is there to celebrate her. Okrent can see the attraction of an<br>endeavor that might perplex the Terra-ngon (earthling) world: Klingon<br>speakers "are doing language for language's sake, art for art's sake.<br>And like all committed artists, they will do their thing, critics be<br>damned."<br><br> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>An insult in Klingon, and phrases in other invented languages<br>Esperanto<br><br>La amiko povos ludi en la granda urbo.<br><br>The friend can play in the big
city.<br><br><span>To listen:<a target="_blank" href="http://go.philly.com/esperanto">http://go.philly.com/esperanto</a></span><br><br>Klingon (tlhIngan Hol)<br><br>Hab SoSlI' Quch!<br><br>Your mother has a smooth forehead!<br><br>(This is a terrible insult to Klingons and should never be used in<br>their presence, as death - yours - may result.)<br><br><span>To listen:<a target="_blank" href="http://go.philly.com/klingonlang">http://go.philly.com/klingonlang</a></span><br><br>Loglan<br><br>.i mi cuxna lepo mi speni tu<br><br>I choose the state of being married to you.<br><br>Babm<br><br>Y uhqck V.<br><br>I request you not to reproach me.<br><br>Solresol<br><br>Dore mifala dosifare re dosiresi.<br><br>I would like a beer and a pastry.<br><br>Idiom Neutral<br><br>Ekse caval, kes mi volu donar a vo.<br><br>Here is the horse I want to give to you.<br><br><br>Find this article at:<br><span><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20100620_Klingon_and_other__quot_crazy_ideas_quot__in_book_about_invented_tongues.html?viewAll=y&c=y">http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20100620_Klingon_and_other__quot_crazy_ideas_quot__in_book_about_invented_tongues.html?viewAll=y&c=y</a></span><br><br>-- <br>**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to<br>its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner<br>or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.<br>Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal,<br>and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message.<br> A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman,<br>Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to<br><a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/"
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