Re: CONLANG Digest

> From:    Peter Clark <pclark@...>
> Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?L=E1adan_and_woman's_speak?=
>
>         So: does anyone have a word list of Láadan? Actually, what I am
> interested in are the "extensions": the words that are meant to convey
> what most languages do not have a word for. And I hope that the
> definitions are a little more clear than "what a woman does during the
> sexual act." Without turning our beloved CONLANG into a smut list, this is
> a rather vague definition, and not very helpful at describing _which_ act
> is being performed or _what_ the woman is doing.
Well, I read somewhere that the Láadan word is usually translated as "to
engulf"... That may put the picture in your head.

>         One parting comment: would someone mind explaining me what
> Goedel's theorem is? The bit about "for every record player there are
> records it can not play because they would lead to its indirect
> self-destruction," sounds like someone was smoking a little too much weed
> one day. :) If I played, say, a record covered with sandpaper, then
> I would wreck the needle, but the player itself would not
> _self_-destruct. Perhaps this would be better off-list, however.
Well, imagine the stereotypical
opera-singer-that-can-shatter-a-glass-with-a-high-pitched-note.  A
sufficiently advanced record player would be something like this--there must
be some record that would break it in a similar way.   If you "dumb it
down", however, so that it can't play that kind of record, then 1) it will
no longer be "sufficiently advanced" and 2) it most likely will still be
breakable--in a different way.

The book _Gödel, Escher, Bach: An E* Golden Braid_ explains it better.
[I forget if it's an _Endless_ braid or an _Eternal_ braid.]

> From:    Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
> Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_L=E1adan_and_woman's_speak?=
>
> >        But perhaps that is why some of us conlang, to provide those
> >missing words.
>
> In some cases, I think that might be so. I have a few words of that sort,
> like "ghaidja", a general word for the kind of reckless and inconsiderate
> drivers that always try to get ahead of everyone else, weaving back and
> forth between lanes, taking advantage of random gaps by passing on the
> right, squeezing in in front of you without signaling, and generally
acting
> as if they're on a race track rather than a public highway.
H'haw!  I have a word, "frath", very much a turtle's word:  I would describe
it, Láadanesquely, as a word for what the turtle feels against who keeps him
in his shell.

> >this lackage. What Kramarae seems to be suggesting (I can't say for sure,
> >having never read the book) is that women are _severly_ crippled,
> >handicapped even, by the fact that they cannot express themselves
> >adequately.
>
> Handicapped is more severe than crippled? It used to be the other way
> around.
Sad state of affairs, that.  It's like "hearing impaired" and "deaf"--you
can be "a bit deaf" or "going deaf", or even "half deaf" but you're either
"hearing impaired" or you're not, and if you are, you're likely not able to
hear at all.

I tried earlier to convince someone it was a kind of regular process (they
had jumped at me for describing "clothing optional" as an equivalent to
"nudism", where the sense is quite identical, at least for me).

> From:    Matt Pearson <jmpearson@...>
> Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-1?Q?L=E1adan?= and woman's speak
>
> Probably my favourite was a verb which had three meanings:  (1) "to become
> suddenly vividly aware of part of one's body, as if it no longer belonged
> to one", (2) "to stare at oneself in the mirror so long that one no longer
> entirely recognises one's own face", and (3) "to give birth".
Well, that _is_ interesting.  I tried to remember a word I had heard like
that, but all I can remember now is this dream I had about the Iberian
Peninsula [!!] where in some language the word for one part (Spain?) was
same as 'throat' and the word for the other part (Portugal?) was "mouth".
[Anatomically this can't be related to the other weird idea I had where the
Mediterranean sea is some kind of a distorted cross-section of a mouth.
Say, just move the tongue in http://www.zompist.com/kitcons.gif to the top
of the mouth instead of the bottom and...]

> From:    John Cowan <cowan@...>
> Subject: CHAT: "John Doe" equivalents sought
>
> I've been asked on another mailing list to collect "dummy names" from
> other cultures. In Anglo-America, the names "John Doe" and "Richard Roe"
> (and female equivalents with "Jane") are used in the legal system and
> elsewhere for people whose names are not known.
And of course there's "John Q Public" for the average American.

    *Muke!

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