Contributors wanted f or book on "Invented Languages"

[Michael Adams]

As always, the List comes through!  I can't thank you all enough for
your helpful comments and suggestions -- please continue in this vein,
as long as you like.  Some suggestions (Larry's contact information for
Marc Okrand, for instance) have already borne fruit.

Yours gratefully,

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent:         Fri, 22 Jul 2005 10:18:19 EDT
Subject:      Re: Contributors wanted f or book on "Invented Languages"

   A source you probably have not suspected is the US Army, or more
exactly
whoever it is who creates the standardized tests given all new
soldiers.  When I
was drafted (August 1969) one of the numerous multiple-choice tests I
took
during my first week in the Army was called IIRC "the Army Language
Aptitude
Test".

For this test there was an invented language with a vocabulary of, I
can't
recall exactly but at most a few dozen words, but with an elaborate
grammar of
the inflectional type---I recall it as somebody's rather sadistic
combination
of the more annoying features of Russian and Latin grammars.  The
multiple-choice questions were all in this invented language.

Jack Vance wrote a science fiction novel "The Languages of Pao" ABOUT
the
deliberate invention of languages.  I don't recall that any samples
were given
of
the invented languages, but the plot turned on the existence of these
new
languages.

Some science fiction writers have had fun, after specifying the
languages
used in the worlds they create, creating a few words or even sentences
in this
language.  None that I am aware of have gone nearly as far as Tolkien,
though.
The examples I am thinking of are Heinlein's "Glory Road" and a short
story by
C. M. Kornbluth whose title I cannot remember but which I think was in
his
collection "A Mile Beyond the Moon".  Marion Zimmer Bradley in her
Darkover
stories has a few short examples of the language spoken on Darkover,
but it is
not
an invented language but rather a variation of Spanish.

       - Jim Landau