Herman Miller wrote:
>On Tue, 19 Jun 2001 20:07:17 -0400, Shreyas Sampat <nsampat@...>
>wrote:
>
>>On nonhuman tongues in general:
>>These seem to be rare birds in the conlang world. How many are there
flying
>>around?
>>At one point I had a conlang for very long-lived beings who had a
longevity
>>gender system; humans fell under 'transient', the same category as
mayflies
>>and sea turtles. I lost my otes on it, though.
>
>I've taken the general approach of saying that language in my con-universe
>originated with elves, including human language. Some species can't
>pronounce all of the sounds easily (Mizarian languages tend to lack nasals
>and rounded vowels), and others include sounds not generally found in human
>languages (voiced and voiceless Neyasai whistles), but all humanoids can
>generally produce the same sounds, and they have similar mental abilities.
>The idea of a *really* alien language would be interesting, but I've never
>had enough interest to actually develop something like that in detail.>
I wonder: could _we humans_ even conceive of a really alien language?
Kash and the languages of the other intelligent species of planet Cindu--
Gwr-- are spoken by non-humans; but in order to avoid exo-physiology, and to
create a speakable language, I've assumed their vocal tracts have evolved
_more or less_ along the same lines as ours.