[lg policy] Klingon and other "crazy ideas" in book about invented tongues

Mon Jun 21 13:21:41 UTC 2010

Yep I referenced that paper briefly in my PhD thesis /[shameless plug: 
downloadable via my academia.edu page, linked in my signature]/, albeit 
only having read an English summary by someone else - please continue 
pestering him to translate it!

Another interesting paper is:

Deacon, B. (2006). 'Cornish or Klingon? The standardisation of the 
Cornish language'. In P. Payton (ed.), Cornish Studies Fourteen, Exeter: 
University of Exeter Press (pp.13-23).
http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/cornishcom/documents/CornishorKlingon.pdf

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow
School of the Environment and Society
Swansea University
d.sayers at swansea.ac.uk
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers

On 19:59, Humphrey Tonkin wrote:
>
> Dave, as you may know, the most extensive discussion of the concept of 
> artificiality as it relates to corpus revival is probably KIMURA Goro 
> Christoph's study of Cornish and Sorbian in relation to Esperanto, 
> /Gengo ni totte 'jin-i-sei' towa nanika? /[What does "artificiality" 
> mean to language? Case studies of Cornish and Sorbian as exemplars of 
> language construction and language ideology], Tokyo: Sangensha, 2005.  
> The book is highly thought-of by those able to read it.  Several of us 
> have been trying to convince Kimura to translate it into English or 
> German.  The question you raise is very interesting.
>
> Humphrey
>
> *From:* lgpolicy-list-bounces+tonkin=hartford.edu at groups.sas.upenn.edu 
> [mailto:lgpolicy-list-bounces+tonkin=hartford.edu at groups.sas.upenn.edu] *On 
> Behalf Of *Dave Sayers
> *Sent:* Monday, June 21, 2010 4:36 AM
> *To:* Language Policy List
> *Subject:* Re: Re: [lg policy] Klingon and other "crazy ideas" in book 
> about invented tongues
>
> An interesting piece of work that's yet to be done is a (probably 
> ethnographic) comparison of artificial language makers and the 
> creators of revived languages, i.e. reconstructed versions of long 
> dead languages, where much of the grammar and vocab has to be 
> invented, perhaps using borrowings from related languages. I found a 
> lot of this among the creators of the modern Cornish language (dead 
> since 18th century), borrowing heavily from Welsh and Breton.
>
> Dave
>
> --
> Dr. Dave Sayers
> Honorary Research Fellow
> School of the Environment and Society
> Swansea University
> d.sayers at swansea.ac.uk <mailto:d.sayers at swansea.ac.uk>
> http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers
>
>
>
> On 19:59, Jeremy Graves wrote:
>
> 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 www.langmaker.com <http://www.langmaker.com>.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* Harold Schiffman <hfsclpp at gmail.com> <mailto:hfsclpp at gmail.com>
> *To:* lp <lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu> 
> <mailto:lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu>
> *Sent:* Sun, June 20, 2010 11:40:01 PM
> *Subject:* [lg policy] Klingon and other "crazy ideas" in book about 
> invented tongues
>
> Klingon and other "crazy ideas" in book about invented tongues
> By John Timpane
>
> Inquirer Staff Writer
>
> Arika Okrent was studying languages at the University of Chicago. The
> languages people use and how they work. The rules, the changes, the
> charts. She was in the library, poking around. "And then," says
> Okrent, relaxing in her Germantown home recently, "I drifted down to
> the shelves with all the books on invented languages. It was a sad
> little collection. I felt sorry for it." But something called to her.
> Tales of made-up languages and their makers. Esperanto, the most
> widely spoken of all; Volapük, once the most popular; Klingon, the
> bark of space invaders.  She learned artificial tongues, then wrote
> about going to a 2003 Esperanto conference for the American Scholar -
> and the seed of a book was planted.
>
> That book is the delightful In the Land of Invented Languages
> (published last month in paperback), which tells tales - often sad,
> often hilarious - of made-up tongues, Okrent's forays into the realms
> of Esperanto, Klingon, and Blissymbolics, and the personalities,
> political battles, and fates of linguistic makers-up. Niece of the
> journalist Daniel Okrent, Arika met her husband, research linguist
> Derrick Higgins, at Chicago. They came east when Higgins got a job at
> Educational Testing Service in Princeton. Okrent says, "I did almost
> all the research for the book before I had kids" - Leo, 5, and Louisa,
> 1. "As I got further and further into this world," says Okrent, 40,
> "at first, I'd say, 'Look at all these crazy ideas,' but I'd also find
> touching clues about the lives of the inventors." Her book "reflects
> the humor and the craziness, but also has compassion and
> understanding, since I'm a language person myself."
>
> A graveyard of flops
>
> Land of Invented Languages is a history of a "vast graveyard,"
> brilliant projects that failed. Some inventors, such as James Cooke
> Brown, become famous for other things (he created the board game
> Careers), but not for their pet languages. We meet Suzette Haden
> Elgin, who in the early 1980s created Láadan, a "woman's language"
> ("the only language textbook I know of," Okrent writes, "that gives
> the word for menstruate in Lesson 1"). We visit the nutty, simpatico
> world of Esperanto, and the gestural world of sign languages. There's
> the occasional success, as with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who fought in the
> late 19th and early 20th centuries to resurrect a near-dead priestly
> language (Hebrew), and retrofit it for a modern age; it is now the
> national language of Israel. Or Lazar Ludwik Zamenhof, who grew up in
> the 1860s and '70s in the Russian Empire town of Bialystok, a Babel of
> Russian, Polish, German, and Yiddish. He dreamed of a language that
> cut through the tangle - and his brainchild, Esperanto, is still the
> most widely practiced made-up tongue.
>
> Rage for order has led many to remake language. In the late 1940s,
> Austrian engineer Charles Bliss invented Blissymbolics, which he hoped
> could become a writing system for all languages, "logical writing for
> an illogical world." And Brown invented Loglan, a language that
> followed the rules of logic. In one of her saddest stories, Okrent
> recounts how Brown fell into a long-running feud over rights, egos,
> and direction. A project titled Lojban carried on his vision, despite
> him.
>
> Why fix what isn't broken?
> Language makes us human. So - why mess with it?
>
> "Well, there is a lot of messiness and ambiguity in language," Okrent
> says. "We need it. We need that wiggle room. But if you have an
> engineering mind, you'll see irritating things. Why do words have more
> than one meaning?" (Look up the word set in Webster's: Its very first
> entry lists 25 possible meanings.) "Why do we have irregular verbs?
> Why are pronouns in English so messed up?"
>
> Problem is, language probably isn't fixable. "When you try to fix the
> world of ideas, fix the meanings of words," Okrent says, "it's hard to
> keep it steady. Times change, words change, and besides, we tend to
> mean what we mean not by strict rules, but by agreement."
>
> That won't keep people from trying. One motive is the altruistic dream
> of tearing down the linguistic walls that divide us. "It's the dream
> of oneness," says Okrent, "the idea that if everyone could communicate
> with one another, we could eliminate strife - an idea that is,
> unfortunately, easy to disprove."
>
> Ludwick invented Esperanto with that idea. Bliss of Blissymbolics grew
> up in the many-languaged Austro-Hungarian Empire and dreamed of
> unifying the world through a common system. Even the names for these
> languages hint at the dream of one, perfect world: Esperanto ("one who
> hopes"), Volapük ("world language"), Lingua Komun ("common language"),
> Unilingue, Unita, Universel.
>
> "One of my favorite figures in the book," says Okrent, "is Fuishiki
> Okamoto, inventor of a language he called Babm. It's a ridiculous
> language he claims is perfect, and of course it's not - but he is so
> humble and modest, hoping it would be for the benefit of humanity. If
> these people worked that hard in pursuit of a failed dream, I figured
> they deserved to have their stories told."
>
> All this categorical, logical, engineering mentality - isn't this all
> overwhelmingly male? True, Okrent's book begins with Hildegard of
> Bingen, the 12th-century nun who created one of the first known
> made-up languages. And there's the aforementioned Elgin. But Okrent
> doesn't deny that Klingon conventions and logical-language websites
> seem to be a guy thing: "Many people have suggested there's an
> Asperger's-like, hyper-male mind-set at work, and there may be some
> truth to that."
>
> The case for Klingon
> Invented languages say much about their times. In the 19th and 20th
> centuries, when the world was falling apart, people invented languages
> to sew it back together. Today, says Okrent, "it's a much more playful
> enterprise, one that reflects the Internet, celebrity-driven popular
> culture." Klingon, she says, "is much more in the spirit of the
> languages J.R.R. Tolkien invented for his Hobbit and Ring cycle, not
> trying to fix language but take it in an artistic direction."
>
> Okrent is, naturally, a certified Klingon speaker, and she tells how
> she achieved that high distinction - complete with official pin - in
> her book. The Klingon Language Institute is located in Blue Bell,
> along with its founder, psychologist and sci-fantasy writer Lawrence
> M. Schoen.
>
> "Like many people," Schoen says, "I grew up with Star Trek, but as I
> grew older, the role-playing aspect wasn't enough, and I was looking
> for something more challenging." In 1992, Schoen pulled together a
> scattering of Klingon language groups. It even has a peer-reviewed
> journal, HolQeD, Klingon for Linguistics.
>
> Schoen says the language is both "a hobby like any other," and a
> "puzzle that appeals to a certain kind of person. It teaches you about
> your own language and makes it easier to acquire others, such as Farsi
> or Spanish. And people take it in other directions as well - such as a
> Klingon translation of Hamlet [one was published in 2000] or the Tao
> Te Ching [2008]. It speaks to the human spirit that you would even
> take on a challenge like this."
>
> The 17th annual meeting of the Institute - or, in Klingon, the qep'a'
> wa'maH SochDIch - will be held at Comfort Inn in Essington July 21-25.
>
> Klingon was invented by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek films.
> He created, on purpose, a harsh, guttural, alien language that does
> things in ways earthling languages don't. Out of this world.
>
> In the Land of Invented Languages ends with Okrent taking and passing
> a test to certify her as a Klingon speaker. Another aspirant, Louise,
> doesn't pass - but next year, when she tries again and passes, Okrent
> is there to celebrate her. Okrent can see the attraction of an
> endeavor that might perplex the Terra-ngon (earthling) world: Klingon
> speakers "are doing language for language's sake, art for art's sake.
> And like all committed artists, they will do their thing, critics be
> damned."
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> An insult in Klingon, and phrases in other invented languages
> Esperanto
>
> La amiko povos ludi en la granda urbo.
>
> The friend can play in the big city.
>
> To listen:http://go.philly.com/esperanto
>
> Klingon (tlhIngan Hol)
>
> Hab SoSlI' Quch!
>
> Your mother has a smooth forehead!
>
> (This is a terrible insult to Klingons and should never be used in
> their presence, as death - yours - may result.)
>
> To listen:http://go.philly.com/klingonlang
>
> Loglan
>
> .i mi cuxna lepo mi speni tu
>
> I choose the state of being married to you.
>
> Babm
>
> Y uhqck V.
>
> I request you not to reproach me.
>
> Solresol
>
> Dore mifala dosifare re dosiresi.
>
> I would like a beer and a pastry.
>
> Idiom Neutral
>
> Ekse caval, kes mi volu donar a vo.
>
> Here is the horse I want to give to you.
>
>
> Find this article at:
> 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>
>
> -- 
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