Re: Conlangs in History

On Sat, Aug 19, 2000 at 08:54:32PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:
[snip]
> > Can't be worse than my first three efforts... which weren't even conlangs
> > proper, just odd writing systems for transliterating English :-) Actually,
> > I invented those mainly as a cryptographic system for writing "English
> > that can't be read". I was somewhat aware of how weak a straight
> > transliteration would be, so I included several common double-letter
> > sequences to foil up a simple frequency analysis, as well as several
> > different symbols representing inter-word spaces.
>
> <excited nod>  I did that!  I had symbols for "th," "st" and a couple
> others I don't remember.  Some of the characters were taken from runes
> (not Tolkien's version, but the one I got out of World Book, in which
> certain characters looked different).  Consonants-with-vowels grouped as
> per Korean, so the system went right-left up-down per syllable.  (People
> familiar with the Korean alphabet probably know what I mean.)
Hehe... actually, I "borrowed" most of the double consonants from a
computer game that used runes (some runes stood for double letters), and
added a few of my own.

[snip]
> Orson Scott Card in _Hart's Hope_ mentions a writing system that works as
> numerals as well, and in which you can read/add across or down, maybe
> even diagonal, in some very elaborate double-meanings/wordplays.  I was
> fascinated by the concept, though I can't figure out how you'd implement
> something like that.
Hmm... I was thinking more of diagrammatic representations that actually
stood for phrases or sentences in a two-dimensional way, so that it
represents the intended meaning rather than a linear representation of
words. That way, you can read the diagram in many different orders, but it
will amount to the same thing.

Now of course, adding double-meanings would be fun, but that would make it
extremely complicated to design a workable system.

[snip]
> I shift to French or German (unsatisfactory--they're too similar to
> English) and Korean (interestingly different), but in that last my lack
> of knowledge of formal grammar is a considerable handicap.  My mom sent
> me some books on Korean but they're "business Korean" oriented, and I
> can't extract linguistics out of 'em.
Hmm... although I know two Chinese dialects, I don't really know the
grammar behind it. I just go by "gut feeling", which somehow gets it
"right" when I think in that language, if you know what I mean. But that
also means that I don't get as much grammatical ideas from it... :-/


T