Re: Conlangs in History

On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > The seeming lack of language change in the Foundation trilogy really
> > bothered me when I first read it a month ago <ducking>, but there were so
> > many other things I loved about it that I forgave Asimov.
>
> In "Foundation's Edge", Janov Pelorat, a comparative mythologist/amateur
> linguist mentions, in talking about languages, something about how
> Seldon sounds distinctly archaic.  This is in 498 FE.
>
> Of course, there's also a reference to the fact that "you" is both
> singular and plural in Standard Galactic.  What are the odds that a
> language spoken 25 millennia from now, even if descended from English,
> would replicate our strange 2nd person?
<wry g>  I honestly don't know....

A book that I found interesting, BTW, was Walter Meyer's _Aliens and
Linguists_--has anyone else read it?  I'd love to hear a real linguist's
thoughts on it; I know it's dated (he refers to Chomsky as "new") but I
found his analyses of sf (mis)portrayals of language/linguistics fascinating.

YHL