Re: Jack Vance's languages Re: Musical conlangs

> >Now I come to think of it, Jack Vance wrote a story about an alien race,
> the
> >Kaa, who had a flutish/flutey language.  And they had large sections of
> >continuous narrative to indicate states of mind, requests, arguments,
> >whathaveyou ...  I also can't recall the novel's title, but the central
> >character was an interesting muso called Gastel Etzwane.
I am at work and don't have my Jack Vance with me, but one of Vance's more
well-known stories, _The Moon Moth_, concerns a race where communication is
by playing various instruments.  This may be the story you're thinking of,
or it may not.

> Jack Vance has a book called "The Languages of Pao", hasn't he? Is it
good?
> What is it really about? Is this novel, perchance, in it?
It's good.  It assumes an extreme interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, and has a ruler who tries to mold his subjects' by designing
conlangs that are supposed to accentuate certain aspects of life--mercantile
expertise, for example.

--Eli