Re: Fakelangs
| From: | And Rosta <a.rosta@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, June 25, 2004, 1:21 |
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Danny:
> From: "Christian Thalmann" <cinga@...>
>
> > (Feel free to coin a better word for "fakelangs"...)
>
> First thing that came to mind was 'altlang', short for 'alternative
> history language' or 'alternative Earth language'. Or is that already
> taken?
I had supposed that Christian was describing not 'altlangs' (or,
as David Peterson called them, 'histlangs') but rather languages
whose description is part of the greater fiction. So, for example,
the description of Kinya is (or at least was) replete with full
scholarly apparatus, footnotes, bibliography (whose entries are
fictional). The fiction surrounding the description of Miapimoquitch
is so convincing that it can and has deceived people into believing
it to be real.
In the field of Alternate History, a famous exemplar of this sort
of thing is Robert Sobel's _For want of a nail_: it reads like an
ordinary scholarly work of history.
--And.
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