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Re: Hurrah for Woodstock (was Re: New to list)

From:taliesin the storyteller <taliesin@...>
Date:Saturday, June 10, 2000, 22:46
* Robert Hailman <robert@...> [000610 22:46]:
> Jonathan Chang wrote: > > > > In a message dated 2000/06/10 04:30:38 PM, Padraic. wrote: > > > > ><<SNIP>>Of course, one the greatest > > >cartoonists (Mr Schultz) must have been a conlanger, having devised > > >Woodstock's tongue (with native orthography!). ;) > > > > l l l ll l l llll ll ! > > > > lol > > I'd be fascinated if there actually was a grammar and such behind that, > and impressed if anyone could figure it out. I always dismissed it as > just marks to indicate the rhythym of bird chirps or something like > that.
Time for educating these young whipper snappers methinks... here's a classic, for your reading pleasure: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Porpoise Poetry Revisited Multaj homoj skribis al ni por demandi pri la "Porpoise Poetry" de S-ro F. Foceno en la lasta numero de Vortpunoj. Ni, kompreneble, turnis nin al Profesoro Mifaras Bontrompon je la Porpoise Linguistics Institute. Jen lia responda^jo: In recent email with the Editorial staff of Vortpunoj, I received the following message which is purported to be poetry written by a porpoise. My assignment was to produce a translation of the meaning of the poem, with the understanding that the poetic nature of the original might be lost. This task was considerably more difficult than the usual run-of-the-mill assignment translating geckos or cockroaches. Although non-standard transliterations are quite common, in this case the choice of transliteration scheme nearly rendered the task impossible. Representing porpoise speech entirely with the characters "E" and "e" meant that much of the nuance of the individual words was lost. However, I believe I have accomplished the task. Standard representation of porpoise speech, which consists of a pitch/volume/duration triplet for each squeak. Of course, the original is lacking in all three of those values. However, we made the simplifying assumption that the number of "e" characters correspond to a duration, we also assumed that the capital "E" characters indicated a higher volume than the "e" characters. We created for each squeak an estimated *range* of possible values, based on our simplifying assumptions. Then, we ran a computer matching program that generated every possible word that the might be indicated. In several cases there was only one possible word. Based on these we could eliminate some of the possibilities for other words, in some cases due to grammatical impossibility and in others on consistancy in meaning. Here are the results of our efforts: Glossary E I-see-it [via echo-location] seaweed tentacle Ee good-luck! EeEeEeEe right [correct, exclamation of agreement] Eee thermocline Eeee behold or to-bite-the-flukes of EeeeEeeeE underneath-and-to-the-right EeeeeEeeeeE go-for-it [exhortation to strive, whatever the odds] Eeeeeeee so-near-and-yet-so-far [exclamation on the unatanable] you've-almost-got-it you're-almost-there Eeeeee look-out [exhortation to take care]
> Eeee! Eee! EeeeEeeeE?
Behold! Look underneath that thermocline and to the right!
> EeEeEeEe.... E E E!
Right.... I see it! There's [seaweed or tentacle] there!
> Eeeeeeee. Eeeeeeee.
So near and yet so far!
> Eee! Eeee! EeEeEeEe! E!
At the termocline! Look! You can get it! The [seaweed or tentacle]!
> EeeeeEeeeeE? Ee!
Go for it! Good luck!
> Eeeeeee. Eeeeee. E! E!
You're almost there! Look out! I see it! The [seaweed or tentacle]!
> E! E!
I see it! The [seaweed or tentacle]! E E E! I see it! The [seaweed or tentacle]! I see it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For more in the same vein, see: http://www.rick.harrison.net/langlab/l-humor.html or http://www.geocities.com/4oqpcc89/ Enjoy :) t.