Re: Conlangs in History

On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Steg Belsky wrote:
> > The first Pern book i read was _Dragonsdawn_, which is first
> > chronologically but was written later than the first Pern books
>
> Yeah, that was my first book too.  I wish I'd read
> Dragonflight/Dragonquest/White Dragon first, since part of the charm of
> Dragonsdawn is things like "Oh, so that's where the name Benden came
> from!"  :-)
Yes.  :-)  I started reading Pern before _Dragonsdawn_ existed.  Up to
_All the Weyrs of Pern_ I bought 'em as they came out (well, the newer
ones--I wasn't alive when she published "Weyr Search"!).

> Also, altho this is more concultural, I love the practice of combined
> names.  Children are sometimes named by combining part of the father's
> name and part of the mother's name, so that Alemi and Kitrin had Aleki
> and Kitral, and two other children who they didn't follow that custom
> with.  And the custom of shortening Dragonriders' names, like Felessan
> -> F'lessan, Rangul -> R'gul, or sometimes more drastic as Fallarnan ->
> F'lar.
<nod>  Purely Pern question, though--I'd wondered about F'lar's name.
Where'd you find 'em?  Were they in the later books (_Masterharper of
Pern_, etc.)?  I don't remember 'em being mentioned in the ones I read.

> It's classified as sci-fi, but there really isn't that much sci-fi in
> it, especially not in the early novels, before she went into details
> about where the Dragons came from and the like.
I think possibly because you can see the sf basis--a lot of the story's
background emphasis *is* on recovering technology, especially in
_Dragonquest_.  Also possibly because if I recall correctly, "Weyr
Search" was published in Analog (or whatever it was called back then?).

YHL