Re: The Story of Guper the Foolish Troll

On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, FFlores wrote:

> dunn patrick w <tb0pwd1@...> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > The Story of gUpr the Foolish Troll
> >                       as told by hakr, Loremaster of HOkqar tribe
> >
>
> Excellent! Those simple ironical stories are my favourite.
> And the preface telling how you were told the story
> is a nice detail. I hope we'll see some more troll stories
> over here.
>
>
> --Pablo Flores
Thanks.  I intend to.  I've noticed that translating texts alien to the
culture of the Trolls -- say, the Babel text, which besides being
cumbersome is just plain silly to a Troll -- tends to shape the language
in undesirable ways.  Writing original works in the language, at least
at first, allows the grammar and vocabulary to grow somewhat naturally.

To whoever criticized the phonology.  Damn.  Got me.  Now you know I'm
not only *not* a professional linguist, I'm an English teacher who can't
spell.  Mea culpa.  Ic nis snotor.  heteke trme.  ("I act like a bird", a
troll idiom meaning "I'm foolish, useless, and noisy.")

But ya know what?  Voiced glotal stops may be impossible, but if so, I
deserve some money, cause I'm making one right now all *over* the damn
place!  Guess bumblebees can't fly, either.

Glotal approximants?  Nope, I can't really make 'em either.  I can
*imagine* them, and come pretty close (sort of a really raspy h, mixed
with a half a gargle).  But then, I'm not a troll.  It's purposfully
alien, since Trolls are alien from humans.  And if you can't figure out a
glotal nasal, well, "I will weep for thee.  Methinks this fall of thine
is like another fall of man."

I thank you for your advice, though; actually had me going for a minute,
considering modifying my pretty little chart.  But then I realized
something: I didn't spend hours yesterday building up grammar and
vocabulary and translating a Troll's children story (cubs' story?) into
English in order to make a linguist sniff and declare a voiced glotal
stop impossible (damn then, what sound *am* I making, if not that?) No.
I did it (a) to avoid grading papers, and (b) to make something beautiful
and cool and share it with people.  Good advice, I'll take.  In fact, I
welcome advice and criticism.  Thank you.

But trolls can *make* a glottal approximant.  They can make voiced glotal
stops.  Believe it or not they have a hard time making a labial fricative
without chewing a lip off.  Their t, d, s, z, r, & l are farther back in
their mouth than alveolar-palatal.  Why?  Well, their tongues aren't very
long, for one thing, compared to humans.  If you don't think I've given
Troll anatomy a thought, you're wrong.  I didn't just fill in all the
ugly sounds on a chart -- for one thing, I don't think glottal sounds are
ugly, but apparently I'm in the minority on that one -- but I
deliberately considered which noises a Troll would make and then tried to
describe them using the fraction of knowledge I have about linguistics.
Maybe I got some wrong; if so, correct me.

Well, that's all I got to say about that!

QorakOx qr mecumtr pekemtr!

--Patrick