Re: LeGuin was Re: Introduction

On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 01:12:22PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:

> Well, what I liked about the film was the replacement of Glorfindel with
> Arwen.  We needed Arwen to participate more fully in the film than she does
> in the book.
I actually wished we'd had Glorfindel, especially for that "elf lord
revealed in his fury" bit.  But I agree there needed to be more Arwen.
The scene that illustrates Elrond's fears for her future is stunning.

> My problem with Tolkien's prose is that despite some really stunning
> passages  it can get so grandiose and removed,
Yeah, I think he was better at the folksy writing-for-kids style of The
Hobbit, but I'm sure glad he wrote the Lord of the Rings anyway!  Just
imagine if we'd never known about his work... oh wait, that was what your
survey was about (partly ;)

> > Oh, here we go.  The tape insert says "Distributed by Valley Productions,
> > P.O. Box 3220, Ashland, Oregon 97520".  Maybe it's available separately?
> > The name of the composer for the music was Todd Barton.
Aaaand... Valley Productions has a web page, http://www.mind.net/music/,
and an email address, tabit@mind.net.  The above postal address is apparently
still good.  Can't tell whether the tape is still in print or not.

> > They are sung by multiple people, including snippets of "background
> > conversation" and stuff.  It's meant to sound like real field recordings,
> > I guess.  Musicians are credited on the cassette insert, but nothing as
> > to whether they are playing or singing.
>
> ENVIOUS! :)
Sally, was it you who years ago dreamed that a rich aunt had hired a
Renfaire's worth of people to dress and act and speak like Teonim?  Or
was that someone else's conworld?  I remember "No Rich Aunt" became a
catchphrase on the list for a while afterward :)

> > I suspect that she may be the voice on the one "Teaching Poem", which
> > seems rather strongly to be a statement of her philosophy.
>
> Now that I'd like to hear!
Well, you'll be able to *see* it in the next email where I transcribe
the lyrics to the tape...

> Keep copies, Amanda!  Put them on a desktop computer.  I've lost vocabulary
> through the computer.  At least you have it on-line.
Yeah... after the February 2000 Palm Pilot Disaster, in which a few new
words and a productive derivational process I haven't been able to remember
were lost, I've been religious about backing it up :)  The PC and Palm
would have to fail simultaneously (or one after the other within one Ebay's
replacement-shipping timeframe) for that to happen again.

> Yeah, and Tolkien didn't include clear grammatical instructions, or at least
> he didn't systematize them or put them all in one place.
He never stopped working on it or cleaned up loose ends :)  A common
problem.  Perhaps we should all take software development as a model and
implement "code freezes" long enough to document a particular version
before moving on to 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 :)

> What I love about the computer is its ready-made
> library system, where you can put something on disk in categories, and find
> them easily.
Heavens yes.  The Palm Pilot is cool too, since its somewhat simplistic
search function is usually good enough to find the right merechi word for
something, wherever I am.

> Aah, don't worry about this.  I think your letter to UKLG is a marvelous
> story, and maybe you could find the letter eventually.
I should be able to unearth it within a week or two.  I'm not sure if I
kept a copy of what I wrote to *her*, though.  I looked through my old
diaries the other day to see if I'd mentioned it, found stuff written in
six different scripts (two forms of commercial shorthand, Tolkien's
tengwar, LeGuin's alphabet, and two of my own sekrit notetaking alphabets),
and found my highschool best friend's gift to me of a notebook containing
*her* conlangs, but did not find what I'd written to LeGuin.

> And LG is so elegant, so kind.  I met her when she came to the
> UR about thirteen years ago.
I've always regretted not going to one Readercon that she was the guest of
honor at.

> Translation in another conlang is one thing, especially if you've got
> directions and a lexicon.  Composing is completely hard!
Yeah, I bet :)  Especially if they don't have the word you want :)

Heck, it's hard even to compose in one's *own* (non-core) conlang.  All
my small offshoot conlangs are deliberately challenging, since they
explore some aspect of exotic grammar, and it takes a really surprisingly
long time to do anything at all in them, from deciding which aspect of a
concept should be lexicalized to making a sentence.  One key thing is to
be able to get into the *spirit* of it, which can be hard with someone
else's conlang.

> > Ooooh... now what a cool idea that is!  Getting married in one's conlang
> > (especially if it has spritual significance!)  Only problem is that one's
> > partner would be rather short-shrifted by it :)
>
> I was thinking of the couple who got married in Klingon.
Yeah... but in that case, or in the cases of people who have been married
in Elvish, it's a shared interest.  In my own conlang it wouldn't be ;)

> > > Maybe we should be doing more with each other what Amanda did with
> > > Ms. Le Guin.
Out-of-the-blue correspondence in the recipient's language, you mean?
That would be kind of neat, though the recipient should definitely have
a good dictionary up :)

> You shouldn't.  Do you remember the sentence?
Sadly, no.  Who knows, though.  Maybe it will come back to me.

> Just on-line?  That's a real plus.  We used to exchange paper grammars, and
> they'd become obsolete in a few months.
True, there is that.  But who can *keep* a grammar up-to-date, even
online?  Instead of becoming obsolete, all too many (like most of mine)
never get completed.

> Okay, you're a veteran at this!  I don't know which word to use for salt.
> As for very common words, many of them I have to reinvent, because in my
> old, naive notes, they were completely stupid.
merechi has multiple words for lots of things, reflecting changing
asthetic standards, less reliance on derivation, or just "I was writing
a poem and needed something in a trochee" :)

        rain: 1985: brariliel (from "buraritapi liel", "falling water")
              1987: sinit (to fit poem)
        snow: 1985: kablait (from root KAB, cold)
              1987: forn (to fit the same poem as sinit)
        life: 1985: eaty (from roots EA be and TY light)
              1987: lama (poem again)
        thought: 1985: cilideaty (from "ciliditapi eaty", "rising life")
                 later: lide "to think" (simple simplification this time)

Generally older forms are obsolete, but I don't write them out of the
language.  They're available if I feel like using them.  There's a certain
awkward grandeur to "cilideaty", and "brariliel" *sometimes* feels righter
for rain.

> That got me into a spell of word-invention!  I have a grandiose list called
> "Teonaht Taxonomy," copied shamelessly from Hildegard's list of words.  She
> systematizes her words by going from God to crickets, listing all the things
> of her world,
This is really neat.  I've at times tried to use the ULD (Universal
Language Dictionary)'s list, and correlate all my words to it, but never
got terribly far (and I don't think the list is all that universal
anyway, but it does have the useful property of being arranged by
subject areas).

> The CITY.  BUILDING MATERIALS.  GOVERNMENT.
> COMMERCE.  WAR.  RELIGION. MEDICINE.  LEARNING.  No lifetime could
> accommodate this.
That's why we have to take it one word at a time :)

> > (In both languages I had a word for sister, which was meant to be used
> > non-biologically, one for my best friend and one for my personal goddess.)
>
> I hope you will tell me about this goddess.
One of twenty, she is known as Kadoni or The Undark.  She is the moon
and stars in the night.  She's the white spot in the black half of the
yin-yang.  She was the only one I felt on personal terms with, and I would
always pray to her to intercede with whichever other one was relevant
to the matter at hand.

The twenty goddesses were arranged in four tiers.  The goddesses'
naming poem (the one I made up "sinit" and other words for) goes as follows
(imagine 2-3 diacritical marks per word that don't really matter):

        sesche hecata,          Firstly Hecata,
        tyano tylch.            light-of goddess.

        homno kadoni,           night-of Kadoni,
        foleno; te              moon-of; and
        rini alia,              bright Alia,
        hovarno tylch;          day-of goddess;
        hrikno tecala,          ice-of Tecala,
        sirop'r forn;           makes-she snow;
        povi catale,            powerful Catale,
        tyaci tylch;            fiery goddess;
        solno olora,            moisture-of Olora,
        dap'r sinit;            causes-she rain;
        fundra alalti,          Fundra windy,
        tirrdeno; te            bird-of; and
        chacta, na-dap'r        Chacta, who-causes-she
        tince te drom:          lightning and thunder;
        esop'te ponsche,        are-they second,
        kamlion tylch't.        those goddesses.

        rishliri chepra,        wisest Chepra,
        terkano; te             writing-of; and
        lamano yarda,           life-of Yarda,
        ???                     (I forget)
        nilteno delle,          music-of Delle,
        alcari tylch;           flute-y goddess;
        lilte pepicum,          Lilte dancing,
        rinliri tylch;          brightest goddess;
        clitafno udra,          time-of Udra,
        mirn'r??:               (something about peace)
        esop'te torsche,        are-they third,
        kamlion tylch't.        those goddesses.

        semle pelitam,          Semle circling,
        liturno; te             spiral-of; and
        femari cire,            beautiful Cire,
        luthino tylch;          flower-of goddess;
        seia, canda,            singular, Canda,
        tylch no ennu;          goddess of loneliness;
        lefe pehocim,           Lefe reaching,
        faldeno; te             love-of; and
        mardra na-trop'r,       Mardra who-weaves-she,
        tyssini tylch;          magical goddess;
        delcheno modra,         earth-of Modra,
        tacilno; te             mountain-of; and
        efna trahovi,           Efna heavy,
        dap'r surmur;           causes-she sleep;
        esop'te lensche,        are-they fourth,
        haliri tylch't.         last goddesses.

(Quick pronunciation guide: c as /k/, sch as /tS/, ch as /tS/ initially
and /x/ elsewhere, y as /i/ not /j/, a as /A/, e as /e/ or /E/ except in
fole /'fOli/, i as /i/, o as /o/ usually but /O/ occasionally, u as /u/
or /U/ usually but /v/ in surmur /sur'mvr/.)

Cire (under her old name Luthi Tyano) and Kadoni (who actually has a
personal name, Kilite; she's the only one in the poem whose personal
name didn't make it in) predated the pantheon.  In making the pantheon,
the functions of the goddesses were invented first, after reading the
beginning of Lost Tales Book I where Tolkien's pantheon is laid out,
followed by their names (which bear a striking similarity to Tolkien's
names Manwe, Varda, Ulmo, Orome, etc).

If the bottom three tiers are laid out in a kind of periodic table
with properly positioned blank spots in the middle row, the columns
sort of match up, provided I remembered the order right.

> > Should I type in the songs and poems?  One of the neat things about
> > them is the way they illustrate the postpositions and derivational
> > processes so neatly.
>
> YES!
Ok, that will be in its own email for clarity.

> And give me some background on your main conlang.  If you've answered the
> survey, I'll look at it there, and get to your website if you gave one.
I did, I do have one, and the Goddess poem above should give some of
its flavor (except for the diacritic-soup flavor, which would have
required switching text editors :)

Amanda