Re: Conlangs in History

Jonathan Chang wrote:
> [I kinda wish more sci-fi writers were into
> futuristic ConLangs, esp'ly pidgins & creoles, futuristic Englishes,
> Spanishes, Chineses, and Hindis & various mixes of some and all... etc.]
Nadsat, from "A Clockwork Orange" is about the only other attempt I can
think of.  What I think would be fascinating is an entire show, perhaps
a TV series, done entirely in a future English, not so far future that
it would be unintelligible, just enough to give it a "feel", perhaps
something about as distinct as Contemporary English and, say,
Shakespearean English.

But, it would probably be a big flop.  :-/

Anne McCaffery in her Pern novels has a sort of English dialect, with a
few differences in terms, like "Turn" for "year", "healer" for "doctor",
etc.  But, I've always felt that it was unnecessary.  Most of the
stories take place 2500 years after landing, by that time, they'd be
speaking essentially a different language (granted, Pern is completely
isolated, no contact with the outside universe, but it's still a large
place, with 4 or 5 million people spread out over a landmass roughly
twice the size of Europe), so that one could think of the books as being
"translated", so why leave a couple of terms untranslated?  That would
be like translating from Spanish to English, but leaving in a few words
like "año".  "The 23-año-old man ..."  :-)  Also, the word Thread was
used for a certain parasitic organism, and apparently even after 2500
years, the homophony between "thread" and "Thread" remained.  My
linguistic mind revolted at that - surely since Thread is such a huge
threat, they'd use another word for "thread", perhaps "string" or
something.  And the worst was when they rediscovered the AIVAS
(Artificial Intelligence Voice Activated System), a sophisticated,
self-maintaining computer complex left by their ancestors, AIVAS merely
had to adjust for a shift in pronunciation, and learn the few new terms.

Oh, well, I guess that's better than pretending that absolutely no
change had occurred.

--
"Their bodies did not age, but they became afeared of everything and
anything.  For partaking in any activity at all could threaten their
precious and ageless bodies! ... Their victory over death was a hollow
one."
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