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Re: What exactly IS a dictionary anyway?

From:taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...>
Date:Thursday, November 2, 2006, 9:05
* Benct Philip Jonsson said on 2006-11-01 18:42:06 +0100
> taliesin the storyteller skrev: > > - dictionary stories, which can be read in any order and > > where the definitions+headwords make up the tale > > - etc. etc. > > Cool. Can you recommend any?
Ozarque (Suzette Haden Elgin) discussed the techniques of dictionary stories on her livejournal, complete with an example (which I can't google up and Livejournal has lousy internal search facilities), but my favorite such story have not been translated into English, it is a surrealistic story about life in a dystopia. I think it was in Tor Åge Bringsværd's "SF" (samlede fortellinger) from 1999. The story is titled something like: "-> Åh -> Nå har dem -> senka -> takhøyden -> igjen" where each of the words/phrases separated by "->" was an entry in the dictionary. The second entry started on A or B and went something like "this is a dictionary-story and you're reading it all wrong, go -> look up -> takhøyde instead" :) I've moved house and haven't unpacked all the books yet but I'll get back to you with an ISBN when I have. Should be possible to get it by interlibrary loan or similar. TÅB is one of Norway's handful of science fiction-writers btw, together with Jon Bing and a few others. The golden age of SF in Norway was the seventies. Bibliography: http://www.gyldendal.no/toraage/innhold/bibliografi/index.html Bibliography of translated works: http://www.gyldendal.no/toraage/innhold/bibliografi/andrespraak.html Short biography: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%C3%85ge_Bringsv%C3%A6rd t.

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Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>