Re: Conlangs in Literature
From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
Date: | Monday, July 19, 2004, 12:34 |
On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 20:39:10 -0700, Adam Walker <carrajena@...> wrote:
> I'm composing a
> list of all the books, movies, shows, etc. that I can
> think of which use or reference conlangs. I had a
> longer list at one point which I seem to have lost.
> Here's what I have so far. Pleas chime in with
> suggestions for lengthening the list!
_Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius_ by Borges apparently makes reference to
fictional languages, though whether those are well-enough developed to
be considered conlangs in the scope of your project I don't know.
All I know about it is pretty much what's e.g. in the Wikipedia article:
"One of the imagined languages of Tlön lacks nouns. Its central units
are "impersonal verbs qualified by monosyllabic suffixes or prefixes
which have the force of adverbs." Borges offers us, for what would be
our own "The moon rose above the water" a Tlönic equivalent: "Upward
behind the onstreaming it mooned." In another language of Tlön, "the
basic unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective," which, in
combinations of two or more, are noun-forming: "moon" becomes
"airy-clear over dark-round" or "orange-faint-of-sky." ["Tlön...",
p.115]" (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%F6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius
)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Replies