L. Sprague de Camp (was: publisher's typos]

[Mark A Mandel]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Dan Goodman wrote:

#Author  of  the article "Language for Time Travelers" -- published in
#Astounding Science Fiction 1938, reprinted in _The Best of  L. Sprague
#de Camp_.   Also  responsible for what I suspect is the first systematic
#attempt at an alternate-history version of English, in "The Wheels of If".

See also Poul Anderson's "Uncleftish Beholdings". His note to it in the
_All One Universe_ collection says something like "I can't tell you much
about the universe this came from, except that plainly the Norman
Conquest never happened there." The title "translates" as "Atomic
Theory", and it is a very good popular introduction to that topic. The
roundaround board of the firststuffs begins "waterstuff, sunstuff,
stonestuff...". As far as I could tell, the only Latin-derived morpheme
in the whole 20 pages or so is "round / around", which totally drove its
Germanic counterpart, "um- / ym-", out of the language. The text is
readable and understandable, and very enjoyable.

-- Mark A. Mandel