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Ogrish Global Pidgin (3)

From:Emily Zilch <emily0@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 9, 2004, 19:52
{ Danny Wier } "You would disapprove of my Ogres and their 'global
creole/pidgin', which was given to them by human outsiders since they
were never blessed with their own language. (Ogres are genetically
modified humans, with great strength but weak minds, bred for slave
labor and melee combat. They're directly inspired by Tolkien's Orcs and
Uruk-hai, and Ogre in the Ogre language is ULUKU, from Latin _orcus_.)
I intended this to be politically incorrect, and I'm sure a lot of
people will be offended, but the message is clearly anti-racism, and
the view of these humanoids is highly sympathetic. The first chapter is
on a battle between Ogres and humans, but later in the story, the human
protagonist befriends his former enemy, the leader of the Ogre clan he
fought in the beginning (they turn out to have a common enemy that's
even greater). They will be shown to have a lot of heart, even if they
don't have a lot of brain."

I'm unclear why this would make me disapprove. I disapprove of the
rampantly racist Star Wars racialisation of alien species and then the
use of R/L languages and cultural references to reinforce said
racialisations. The use of a creole language by genetically engineered
Ogres is not an issue. I'm talking about the use of an black-spoken
Caribbean language which is a creolised form of English - basically,
Jar-Jar Binks speaks the Caribbean version of Gullah in a register that
converges on standard English. You can see examples of the exact speech
forms he uses in "Gender Across Languages: Linguistic Representation of
Women & Men, Vol. 1" (Hellinger, Marlis & Bußmann, Hadumod 2001: John
Benjamins Publishing Co.).

Incidentally, I'm interested in your Ogrish Pidgin - is there a reason
it wasn't spontaneously generated by lab-bred generations whose
abilities to speak were ignored? A natural effect would be the children
learning their owner-breeders' language (say, English or T'eq'/Tech)
but in a strained manner (vocabulary items would be limited to what
they heard), leading to a natural creolised form spoken among growing
ogres and a very limited higher-style register used to answer routine
commands from the owner-breeders.

em'ly
********
EMILY0
http://homepage.mac.com/cafewrack

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Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>