Re: Conlangs in History

On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> [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.
That would be cool.  :-)  I wonder how you'd get it to work.  The only
thing I come up with is things like boustrophedon or concrete poetry,
which isn't really the same thing at all.  :-(

> [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... :-/
That's pretty much  what I do with Korean.  :-/  French and German aren't
*that* similar, but from the perspective of Korean (isolate or grouped
with Japanese or Altaic, depending on whom you believe--I haven't heard
any definite answer on what family it belongs to!), they're bloody
similar.  I can use Korean to get a pretty good (though limited) sense
for particles and how another language can divide semantic space
differently, not to mention honorifics <groan>.  I *hate* honorifics.
Someday I'll stop being reactionary and design a language to use them
(well, Aragis, Chevraqis' ancestor-tongue, does somewhat) but in the
meantime I'm following my own twisted sense of aesthetics.  :-)

YHL