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

* 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:
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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!
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For more in the same vein, see:
http://www.rick.harrison.net/langlab/l-humor.html
or
http://www.geocities.com/4oqpcc89/

Enjoy :)


t.