29.1306, A History of Pop-Culture ConLangs--Sindarin to Today

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1306. Fri Mar 23 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.1306, A History of Pop-Culture ConLangs--Sindarin to Today

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Sarah Robinson <srobinson at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2018 15:21:56
From: LINGUIST List [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: A History of Pop-Culture ConLangs--Sindarin to Today

 
A History of Pop Culture ConLangs from Sindarin to Today

Like many English-L1 linguists, the world of J.R.R. Tolkien was my first
introduction to linguistics--and to ConLangs. My father read aloud to me from
the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings when I was eight years old, and by the
time I was fifteen I was attempting my own first constructed languages. (They
were bad.)

For this week's spotlight on pop culture linguistics, we've decided to talk
about the proud history and modern practice of constructing languages to fill
fictional worlds--so don't look out for Esperanto, or any other language
constructed with the intention of filling the real world. 
We'll be handling ConLangs in a three-part series, because, well, we're
passionate about languages, fiction, and the role that language plays in the
imaginative lives of people and cultures. 

Part I: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Invention of Invention

Although J.R.R. Tolkien was not the first person to attempt constructing a
language--that honor goes to the ancients, who constructed languages not for
fictional speakers but for the purposes of philosophy, cross-linguistic
communication, and aesthetics--his groundbreaking ConLangs can be credited
with beginning the rich new era of 20th and 21st century language-creation.
Tolkien was a philologist and a professor, who spent much of his time immersed
in the same kinds of texts that linguists and philologists today work with,
but his efforts at ConLanging began when he was only a child. Elvish
languages--of which there were several--and their accompanying writing systems
were among the first things he imagined for his epic world-changing mythos. In
fact, one could say he created his mythos to give a world to his languages, to
give them native speakers and L2 speakers and pragmatics and conversations, to
launch them into life, rather than creating his languages to populate and
enrich his world. 

His first Elvish language (though not his first ConLang) was called Quenya,
which was inspired in the early stages by languages he was familiar.

And then he discovered Finnish. He was so taken with it that he immediately
implemented features of Finnish grammar and phonology into his ConLang, to the
extent that a hundred years after he began his work, I can still remember
showing my friends a song in Finnish and having them comment, "that's
beautiful. It sounds like Elvish."
 
According to his letters--published in Parma Eldalamberon, a fan magazine
devoted to the study of Tolkien's ConLangs, and retrieved through the wonders
of Wikipedia--the influence of Finnish was initially considerably more
extensive, but later trimmed significantly in what became Late Quenya.
Elements he borrowed from Finnish and that remained in Late Quenya included
syntax--lack of grammatical gender, and parts of the case system, including
what appears to be the inessive case, and the inflectional ending -nna
(movement toward) and -llo (movement away from), cases which were borrowed
from Finnish, though I can't say whether the actual phonological
representation of them came from Finnish too or was invented by Tolkien to
fill a grammatical category--and phonological, such as the absence of a voiced
stop series, except in NC clusters in which the stop undergoes voicing
assimilation toward the voicing setting of the preceding nasal. (Any Finnish
speaking readers are welcome to comment on the case endings, which I had a
hard time identifying! Are the case endings themselves borrowed, in your
opinion?) 

As Tolkien's ConLangs developed, he developed the world if Middle Earth around
them, to accommodate a diachronic vision that included contact-induced
language change, diachronic shifting in phonology and semantics. Tolkien even
got metascholastic and included a scholarly tradition of philology among the
Elves themselves. There were Elvish linguists in his world! Like R�mil thie
Elvish philologer who was the invented inventor one of Tolkien's invented
scripts, Sarati--later Tengwar. Tolkien created other scripts like Cirth,
Quenyatic, and Gondolinic Runes. There were even families of related languages
with shared ancestral roots, and eventually it all led to the world's first
Mythopoeia. The man, the myth-maker, and pop culture's first ConLanger.

Tune in soon for Part II of our ConLang Series: How Human is Alien Language?
Science Fiction, Klingon, and Language

What are your favorite ConLangs, and Conlangers? Are there any you'd like to
see us talk about? Have you ever constructed one, or been hired to construct
one? Tell us about it in the comments! Send us your favorite examples! And
don't forget to donate to support the LINGUIST List! We are so grateful for
your support over the last three decades--you keep us afloat! 







------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1306	
----------------------------------------------------------