Re: LUNATIC SURVEY: 2005
| From: | H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, February 25, 2005, 23:47 |
|---|
On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 01:41:04PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
> LUNATIC SURVEY 2005, by Sally Caves
[...]
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> A. PROFESSION, DEMOGRAPHICS, INCLINATION:
>
> 1. Who are you, and what is the name of your invented language or
> languages? Pseudonyms allowed. (Are you using one? asked "Sally
> Caves")
H. S. Teoh; I have two (main) conlangs: Ebisédian and Tatari Faran.
> *2. Are you new to the Lunatic Survey or have you filled out a
> version of this survey before?
Yes, in 2003 I believe, but I'm approaching it anew and my answers may
have changed since then.
> 3. Do you have a website for you language/world(s)? If so, please
> list the URL address.
http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/
> 4. What is your email address? name at hostsite dot whatever.
hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx
> 5. What is your age? (vague answers allowed, but it is an important
> demographic)
10755 days as of the time of this writing. :-)
> 6. What is your gender?
Masculine. I mean, male. :-P
> 7. What is your nationality? Where do you live now?
Blood-wise, southern Chinese (Fuqian); birth- and nationality-wise,
Malaysian; and place-wise, British Columbia, Canada.
> 8. What is your native language?
Hokkien. Also known as Fujian, Fuqian, Fukien, Minnan, Taiwanese
(although strictly a different variant of Minnan from Taiwanese), and
probably several other names.
> 9. What natural languages foreign to you have you studied or do you speak?
Mandarin: fluent in conversation, but illiterate.
(Hokkien: ditto, unfortunately.)
Malay (Bahasa Malaysia): moderate, can read at 80-90% comprehension.
English: most fluent by far (even more so than my L1).
Classical (Attic) Greek: studied for a year, but only know basics.
> 10. What is your level of education? i.e., your highest degree
> achieved or sought?
MSc in Computer Science.
> 11. What is your profession? Are you a professional linguist? If so,
> what also makes you a conlanger?
Computer programmer by profession. Officially, "software engineer",
although I find that term amusing for various reasons I won't get into
here.
[...]
> 14. How long have you been developing your invented language(s)?
Ebisédian since 2000, which is around the time I found this list,
although many of the ideas in its grammar has been brewing for many
years before.
Tatari Faran since October (or thereabouts) of 2004.
> 15. At what age did you first start inventing a language? Can you
> briefly describe your early efforts?
Around 24, when I first found this list. Did conlangy stuff before
then, but never had an actual conlang to show for it.
> 16. What drew you to start inventing a language and/or constructed
> world? What was the inspiration?
Ferochromon, the con-world where Ebisédian is spoken, is a
conglomeration, a unification, of myriad ideas, story fragments,
fantasies, minor con-worlds, etc., dating back to childhood. Being a
radically different universe from ours, it demands that its
inhabitants not speak English. :-)
Fara, the land of fire, was prompted by Mount St. Helens' recent bout
of bad temper, although most of the ideas came from childhood
fascination with volcanoes. Also, wanted to start a new conlang after
realizing some of the design flaws in Ebisédian that are too
foundational to fix in Ebisédian itself.
> 17. Did you start inventing before you had heard of the list or
> after? Before you had heard of Esperanto or Tolkien? (I name the two
> most common inspirations)
The banally unrealistic prospect of having the inhabitants of
Ferochromon speak English drove me to think about a prospective
conlang. However, I never got very far until I found the list.
I always thought of Esperanto and its other auxlang ilk as misguided
efforts by misguided people who have been misguided to believe that
inventing a language would somehow achieve world peace, solve world
hunger, cure the environment, and so forth. Certainly, it did not
motivate me to conlang, although it did at least inform me before I
found the list that conlangers, at least the auxlanger variety, do
exist.
Tolkien never interested me. I hated medieval fantasy (and still do,
even though I've been caught playing computer games based on it). :-S
> 18. Tolkien calls it a "shy art" and a "secret vice"; but that was
> before the Internet. How secret do you keep it from others outside
> this list for much the same reasons?
Still very much a closet conlanger, known only to very few people. My
roommate only found out about it after he got used to my general
weirdness, such as how I "think in 4 dimensions", as he puts it, my
general obsession with and collection of Rubik's-cube-like twisty
puzzles, and my general disinterest in everything everyone else is
interested in. But he still doesn't know the names of my conlangs. :-)
The reasons... There is some element of fear of rejection, or creating
a image of myself more bizarre than I believe myself to be, ;-) but
mainly it's because I'm not one to, for example, lecture about 4D
visualization to some random person I just met.
> 19. Yaguello has called it "pathological," influenced,
> unfortunately, by a lot of psychiatric writings such as _Le Schizo
> et la langue_. To what extent have you encountered such reactions by
> outsiders you had taken into your confidence?
My roommate thinks it's strange, but befitting my other weirdnesses.
:-) I've actually managed to get him interested in my other unusual
hobbies, such as solving Rubik's-cube-like puzzles, and found out that
he had also made a conlang of sorts in high school (an English relex
that sounds like nonsensical babbling---probably deliberately).
> *20. Do you consider it nerdy to be doing this? This is a term that
> gets tossed around a lot. Or actually sophisticated? Do you need to
> get a life, or is this your life? What is a life?
I'm generally completely indifferent to what people think of my
unusual hobbies/interests. In fact, after being pressed about it at
one time or another, I've resorted to taking pride in being nerdy,
geeky, weird, etc.. Labels are meaningless to me.
As for getting a life... I consider my unusual hobbies to be not any
more pointless than the other equally useless, if only more
socially-accepted, hobbies that more "typical" people have. That's not
what life is about.
> 21. There has been a connection noted between linguistic and musical
> ability. Are you musically inclined? Do you sing and/or play a
> musical instrument? Do you compose music?
Very much so. Since my musical interests were sparked off belatedly in
my teenage years, I've always had this irrational urge to compose. I
improvise on piano (self-taught), play basic guitar accompaniment,
dream in harmonic progressions, and compose with the orchestra that
lives in my head.
> 22. There has been a connection noted between linguistic and
> mathematical ability. Are you mathematically inclined or inclined
> towards computing in any way?
I've always had a knack for abstract mathematics, even though I was
convinced I didn't when I was younger. Found calculus trivially easy
while the more down-to-earth finite math (such as probability or
arithmetic) quite difficult, much to the chagrin of my highschool
classmates. Discovered in college that I actually liked set theory,
which I had avoided up till then 'cos I was convinced I wouldn't be
interested in it.
As for computing... that's my profession. :-) I've always had an
active interest in programming, and often do it for fun. ("What?!"
my friends used to tell me. "You're programming FOR FUN?! Why don't
you go out or something? What's wrong with you??")
Speaking of which... I remember posting in a thread about synaesthesia
a while back, about mixed-up dreams of mine where the act of composing
a wicked chord progression solves a math equation, which somehow
carries out a verbal utterance successfully, which in turn results in
the debugging of some software bug.
> 23. What other passions do you pursue that give you creative
> pleasure? (painting, drawing, sculpting, calligraphy,
> model-building, novel or story-writing, role-playing games,
> map-making, book-making, poetry, web-designing, star-gazing or
> other?)
Music composition, con-worlding (non-conlang-related ones), Rubik's
cubes and its ilk, visualizing 4D objects, programming for sheer fun,
inventing algorithms, fantasizing over random doodles, inventing math
theories, theorizing about astronomy, etc..
> B. FEATURES OF YOUR INVENTION
>
> 1. Pick the best term for the invented language you are currently
> invested in: auxlang, artlang, engelang, loglang, lostlang,
> philosophical language, or "other." etc.
I'm a hardcore unrepentant artlanger. :-)
> 2. Is your conlang a priori (devised from scratch) or a posteriori
> (based on an existing natural language or drawing from a language
> class such as Semitic)?
Definitely a priori, although my conlangs exhibit many influences from
natlangs. I've never believed in taking an existing thing and making a
variation of it, and then calling it my own. If I'm to create
something, I have to *create* it. From scratch.
> 4. Do you have a script for your conlang? What is it called? Could
> you provide me at a later date with a sample of it? Is it on
> Langmaker's "neography" site?
Ebisédian has (at least) 3 different writing systems. The one actually
worked out in any detail is sanokí, displayed on the Ebisédian
website. Unfortunately it's not on Langmaker yet because I haven't
figured out how to translate "langmaker" into Ebisédian yet.
The other systems are koromokí, a way of writing Ebisédian using color
patterns, and an as-yet unnamed method of writing Ebisédian in an
extensible, 2D layout (similar to René's pictorial conlang).
Tatari Faran is supposed to have a script, but it's not worked out
yet. My current conception of it is a cuneiform-like system with
radial symmetry.
> 5. Briefly describe the outlines of your invented language
> (syntactical structure--VO, OV, etc.; class or type--analytic,
> synthetic, agglutinating, incorporative, accusative, ergative,
> active, trigger, other, combinations, etc.), noting what you have
> done with it that is innovative in your opinion.
The most distinguishing feature of Ebisédian is its radically
non-European typology, based on a system of 5 semantically-chosen noun
cases, with a syntax where active and passive are one and the same.
There is no syntactic subject, and all verb arguments are optional.
Nouns are inflected for gender, number, and case using an ablaut-like
mechanism. Other less prominent but still novel features include
nominator sentences (basis of topic-comments constructions); a
sideways pronominal system which has no 2nd and 3rd person but an
"intimate" vs. "distant" deixis; the nullar number for nouns; the
lack of adjectives; the ability to nominalize an entire paragraph and
inflect it for noun case (AND nest this arbitrarily). Oh yes, and a
vocabulary that defies all earthly categorization (as relay
participants can testify). :-)
Tatari Faran is a lot tamer, but still very unique. It is adamantly
head-initial, and so has postpositions instead of prepositions. It
also features an Ebisédian-like syntax, in which nouns are marked for
case semantically rather than syntactically, except that there are
only 3 core cases rather than 5, and there are secondary cases such as
genitive, partitive, and compositive. There is a syntactic subject,
but it is completely decoupled from noun case. There are two ways of
marking the 3 core noun cases: using postclitics for main-clause
nouns, and using prefixes for nouns inside relative clauses.
One unique feature of Tatari Faran is the class of words called
'complements', which AFAIK has no natlang equivalent. They are
basically end-of-sentence markers that are synonymous with the main
verb or predicating adjective, and every single verb and adjective in
Tatari Faran has a matching complement, and the use of different
complements with the same predicate allows different nuances.
Complements also have other uses, including the unusual way of forming
'X because Y' constructions: _isi_, the word for "because", is present
in BOTH the antecedent and the consequent clauses. Which clause is
which is determined by the presence or absence of the complement: the
antecedent has no complement but the consequent does. The complement
is what gives the bang to the c(l)ause, you see, so the result clause
ends with a bang whereas the antecedent just leaves you waiting for
more, as it should.
> 7. How extensive would you say your invented language is, now? How
> big the vocabulary? Do you provide a vocabulary list or taxonomy on
> your website if you have one?
The Ebisédian lexicon is currently pegged at 581 entries.
Grammar-wise, it is around 80% complete (can handle most
constructions, but probably needs a bit more work). You can get a
book-quality printable version of the lexicon from the Ebisédian
webpage.
The Tatari Faran lexicon is at 690 entries, although if you discount
phrases, affixes, and pseudo-entries it's 632. The Tatari Faran pages
in the URL I gave earlier has a full-fledged regex-capable search
engine for the Tatari Faran lexicon. The grammar is about 60%
complete---there are still many constructions that need to be added.
> 8. How do you build vocabulary? Some people pull words out of the
> air; others build up a base of root words and affixes. Many do both.
There are essentially two different processes at work when I build
vocabulary.
One process is driven by need, as during a conlang relay or a
translation exercise. With Ebisédian, certain phonemes have certain
connotations associated. So it's a matter of pulling random syllables
containing these phonemes out of the air, and choosing the one the
best "sounds" like what its intended meaning is to be. Over time, some
affixes and roots start to recur, and I occasionally make use of them
when coining a new word. There are also a number of highly-recurrent
syllabic roots with particular connotations; these occur very
frequently and add subliminal nuances to words.
I do the same with Tatari Faran, except that there is not as many
phonemic connotations. There are also recurrent roots and affixes,
but much less so than in Ebisédian, since I intend Tatari Faran to
have a large set of unique roots. This gives it a distinctly different
'taste' from Ebisédian, which recycles certain roots left, right, and
center.
The other process is when a new, particularly euphonous word inspires
itself into my mind, dripping with potential meaning. I then ponder
over the new word to 'feel out' its meaning, and once I've set that
down, I play around with it see if it has cognates or derivatives, or
other related meanings which need new words assigned to them. This
often leads to needing a new word for the cool concept I just thought
of, or realizing another euphonic combination of syllables that are
just begging to be assigned a meaning, and so these two processes
sometimes feed off each other repeatedly, resulting in bouts of
conlang fever that yield 10-15 new words per cycle.
> 3. Does a constructed world accompany your invention(s)? What is it called?
Ebisédian is spoken by the Ebisédi (that's a plural noun BTW, the
singular is Bisédi) in a con-universe called Ferochromon.
Tatari Faran is spoken by the _san faran_ ("people of Fara") in a
highly volcanic land called Fara.
IMHO, language cannot exist outside of culture. Therefore, all my
conlangs have a conculture/con-world associated with them.
> *9. Has your language and conworld ever served in a role-playing
> game or a world shared by other conlangers?
No, but Ebisédian/Ferochromon certainly fits well in such a setting.
(In fact, much of Ferochromon is inspired by RPG's.)
> *10. Briefly describe your conculture (is it within the bounds of
> this world? on another world, etc.?)
Ferochromon is not merely another world; it's an entire universe in
itself. A radically different universe from ours, I might add,
complete with its own laws of physics and its own cosmological
origins, which results in physical structures uniquely its own. The
Ebisédi live on landmasses amid a sea of flowing color that constitute
'space'. I won't try to describe this any more here since there is not
enough space to do it justice; interested readers can read about
Ferochromon on my website and/or search the list archives for
'Ferochromon'.
Fara forms the floor of a large, volcanically active caldera
surrounded by impassable mountains, in an unspecified location on
Earth. The climate there is supposed to be temperate, although with
all that internal heat and volcanism weather can be rather odd for a
temperate climate. The san faran live in tribal villages, and keep
wolves as guard animals.
> *11. Are the beings who speak your invented language human or alien?
> If alien, what features have you given the language to make it alien
> or how have you restricted or expanded its phonology? vocabulary?
The Ebisédi are essentially human manifestations in the Ferochromon
universe.
The san faran are, of course, humans living on good ole Earth. :-P
IMHO, an alien language would be so utterly foreign that it would not
only be incomprehensible to puny human minds, but also incapable of
human description. The "aliens" you see on TV with eyes and skin and
flesh and blood are no aliens, just diseased distortions of Terran
creatures. Chances are that true aliens would not even have bodies
remotely resembling ours, let alone share any characteristic that may
allow communication between us. If we can't even converse
intelligently with rabbits and sea urchins, what makes us imagine we
can understand beings that originated outside the Earth?
> 12. What do you write in it? Poems? chants? lullabyes? prayers?
> history? stories? recipes? Are any of these exhibited on your
> website?
Sample Ebisédian texts are found on the mentioned website. So far,
there has only been an anecdote or two and a tiny philosophical poem.
I have a longer story but it is incomplete and nowhere near ready for
public consumption. The rest of Ebisédian corpus is in relay entries.
I'm no prolific writer, unfortunately.
Currently, I have plans to write the Legends of Tekekuhakirakisan (the
legendary ancestor of the san faran) in Tatari Faran, although that is
currently in the outlining stage and no actual text has been written
yet. Existing Tatari Faran texts include some sample sentences, an
exercise in which I'm going through every entry in the lexicon and
making a sentence each (I'm about 40% through at the moment, at
sentence #221), and the translation of Lewis Carroll's poem
"Jabberwocky", which I posted to the list a while back.
*Note: Tekekuhakirakisan is pronounced [,tE,kEkuhaki4a'kisan]. He is
also referred to as Teke, for short. :-)
> 13. Can you speak your conlang? Are you fluent in it? Is this a goal
> for you? Have you tried to teach it to an intimate? a companion
> animal? :)
I used to be able to speak Ebisédian, semi-fluently, but lack of use
has eroded that away. I can say simple phrases in TF but I don't have
enough vocab in memory to be able to construct sentences on the fly.
This *is* a goal, however remote. :-)
I've never tried teaching my conlangs to anybody, because nobody
around me has been interested enough to learn. Some fellow conlangers
on #conlang have learned some Tatari Faran phrases, though. :-)
> 14. Have you made any soundbytes of your language? Could you provide
> me at a later date with a sample of them?
Unfortunately I do not currently have suitable recording equipment
with which to record any samples.
> *15. If you use Roman script, how recognizably "phonetic" is your
> writing system? In other words, do you use unconventional letters or
> letter combinations to represent sounds? Why or why not? I'm
> thinking, of course, of Etabnannery, for those who remember it.
Ebisédian's sanokí is completely phonetic. It does tend to be hard to
read, though, 'cos vowels are omitted except where needed to resolve
ambiguities. (And given that nouns inflect via an ablaut-like
mechanism, this can be rather difficult without active memory of the
lexicon.) The Roman transcription of Ebisédian is phonetic.
The Roman transcription of Tatari Faran is phonetic. The native
writing system, OTOH, may be a bit different.
The reason Roman transcriptions of my conlangs are so boring is
because the explorers who first encountered them devised the simplest
possible way to write them in the Roman alphabet. They really have no
reason to deliberately devise a convoluted system. ;-)
> 16. How many of you sing in your language and have invented songs
> for that purpose?
I've never figured out how lyrics would work in my conlangs,
unfortunately. I generally dislike singing, and prefer poetry that's
read.
> *17. How many of you, for entertainment or any other reason, resort
> to gibberish? (This is in response to Adrian Morgan's question in
> December). Does it give you ideas for conlanging? (Have you ever
> fooled anyone?) How many of you have sung gibberish?
The only gibberish I resort to is writing Perl regular expressions.
:-P :-P
(For non-computer people: Perl is a programming language infamous for
its rampant use of such symbols as $, @, %, and its very flexible---
some say *too* flexible---syntax that allows programmers so inclined
to write in a way that's extremely dense and difficult to understand
even for the programmer himself. A major cause of this is its syntax
for 'regular expressions', a way of defining pattern matches on
character strings, that is very heavy in using all sorts of symbols
that make it look like line noise---the garbage you get when your
modem hangs up.)
I do, however, doodle with odd conscript-like lettershapes. Sometimes
totally random sequences of such glyphs. Perhaps that's an unconscious
way of exploring letterforms.
> *18. What on-line games do you play? (or devise?) Translations,
> Babel-text, Relays, etc.
Relays. The occasional translation exercises (haven't been keeping up
with that, though).
I've stayed away from translating Babel texts, because (1) it doesn't
fit with the conculture, (2) I resent the obsession with this
particular passage in the Bible over others, (3) it doesn't
necessarily showcase the unique features I've built into my conlangs,
which I think is the whole point behind doing such an exercise in the
first place.
> 19. Which do you prefer doing: devising phonology? script?
> structure? building vocabulary?
Grammar, grammar, grammar. And perhaps, afterwards, some grammar. :-P
Although, with the recent pleasant experience with Tatari Faran
phonology, I think phonology is beginning to make its way onto my
list. :-)
> 20. Do you start and stop several different conlangs, or do you tend
> to stick with one and develop it over years?
I prefer to stick with one. I'm the kind of person who refuses to
start anything unless I can do more than a half-assed job at it. Which
is why Ebisédian is on hold and Tatari Faran is currently active. I
can't focus on more than one at a time.
> 21. What do you think makes a "complete" conlang, if a conlang can
> attain completion? What are your goals for completion? When do you
> grow "tired" of your conlang, or don't you?
I'd consider a conlang "complete" if I can carry out an everyday
conversation in it without needing to coin reams of new words or
invent new grammatical constructs.
I've grown tired of Ebisédian, somewhat, not because it's "complete",
but because I found that I didn't really some of the features I threw
into it after all, but they're too foundational to change now. I just
don't know how to develop Ebisédian any further.
> *22. Which came first: the conlang or the conworld?
For Ebisédian, the conworld came first.
For Tatari Faran, it's a bit of both... I wanted to create a conlang
spoken in a volcanic land, and I also wanted to create a volcanic land
for situating a conculture. A happy tautology.
> C. PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETIC:
>
> 1. What aesthetic features do you value in inventing language? Be
> specific as to phonology, structure, script, etc.
The overriding aesthetic criteria for me is that a conlang must have
its own personality. It can't just be an arbitrary assemblage of
random pieces. It can't just be a matter of plugging in some random
numbers to a phonology generator, some other random numbers to a
syntax generator, and yet other random numbers to a script generator,
and then throwing the results together and calling it a conlang. The
parts have to fit together in a consistent way. There has to be a
'logic' behind it, not necessarily a mathematical logic, but a
personality that manifests itself through the many facets of language.
There must be an overall, consistent feel or character that uniquely
identifies itself as that conlang. In other words, I dislike
cookie-cutter conlangs.
In terms of phonology, my aesthetic sense is not a set of preferences
that apply globally across all conlangs. Rather, the sound of the
language must be consistent with itself. In other words, a phonology
is just thrown together carelessly sounds ugly, no matter how
'mellifluous' (by whatever arbitrary measure of mellifluousness one
has) the individual phonemes are. But a phonology that is carefully
and meticulously sculpted is aesthetically very pleasing, even if it
consists of stereotypically harsh, orcish sounds.
The same applies to structure. An aesthetically pleasing conlang can't
just be a matter of slapping a typical accusative typology on top of a
bunch of words just so you have a grammar to work with. Personally, I
hate accusative typologies, but even an accusative typology can be
pleasing if it is done with care. It has to be lovingly tweaked to fit
the character of the conlang. Even the most novel syntax is boring if
it feels like a square peg in a round hole. The square peg at least
has to be sanded down and smoothed so that it fits the round hole in
its own idiosyncratic way. :-)
As for scripts... the few conscripts that are more than just re-glyphs
of the Latin alphabet are so impressive that I think all of them are
aesthetically pleasing. :-) I especially admire non-linear scripts, or
cursive/connected scripts like Arabic (which I don't have enough
experience to create on my own).
> 2. What commonly applied aesthetics have you ever tried to avoid in
> your invention? This has been an oft debated question, especially
> when it comes to Tolkien.
As I said, every conlang needs to have its own character, and that
includes its own perception of which sounds are 'ugly' and which are
'pleasant', which may be different from, or even flat out
contradictory to, another conlang's preferences. Just because
Tolkien's elves consider those r's and th's and s's to be mellifluous
doesn't mean that in another conculture, the same sounds might be
considered sneaky, sly, and craftily evil. Just because Tolkien
considers those gh's and grabh's characteristic of the bad guys
doesn't mean that a nomadic hunter tribe wouldn't consider them frank,
forthcoming, and sociable, not devillishly sneaky like those sly elven
sounds. In fact, there's no reason another conculture wouldn't
consider those sibilants and trills to be cacophonous, and those
grabh's and bargh's to be mellifluous.
I disagree that any set of aesthetics should be applied globally
across all conlangs. What matters is what sounds good *within the
context of that conlang*.
> 3. Is difficulty or obscurity a goal in inventing a language?
No, but originality and unique character certainly is, and sometimes
uniqueness results in features that may be construed to be difficult
or obscure simply because of its unfamiliarity, not because it is
inherently difficult.
> 4. Is efficiency a goal in inventing a language? This question
> needn't cancel out the previous one.
To a certain extent, yes. For example, if I were to choose between a
greeting that's 20 syllables long because it has precise specifiers on
every single word and particle to demarcate every grammatical
parameter leaving no room for any doubt, and an idiomatic 2-syllable
greeting almost ungrammatical in conciseness, I'd choose the latter.
> 5. How natural do you wish to make it, or is that a concern? Or
> rather, how unnatural do you wish to make it?
I tried to make Ebisédian as naturalistic as possible (within the
limits of its goal as a language in a very foreign universe), but I
guess I didn't quite succeed.
With Tatari Faran, however, I believe I achieved a much better balance
of naturalistic feel vs. novelty.
> 6. Can conlanging be sexy? sensual? obsessing? how does it heal or
> harm you?
A conlang is sensual only if you're coining erotic terminology and
such. There's nothing inherently sensual about it.
As for obsessing... I guess conlanging is widely regarded as an
obsession, but it's certainly engrossing when it starts taking on a
life of its own beyond the initial formality of laying down the basic
rules, and develops enough character of its own to become immersive.
For example, I am reading here the Tatari Faran translation of
Jabberwocky, and it has a "rhythm" or "feel" to it that's just
inexplicably amusing and intoxicating. I've been known to laugh out
loud at the sound of an Ebisédian word, just because it fits its
humorous lexical meaning so well.
As for healing/harming... conlangs, like any other of my creations,
however entertained I am by them, are inherently dissociated from me,
and so can't possibly have such effects.
> *7. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of obscenities?
Ebisédian has a few overloaded words, but nowhere near 'rich
vocabulary'. I've never considered it a major enough part of my
conlangs to spend much time on it.
> 8. Can it be mystical? To what extent does conlanging fulfill a
> spiritual purpose for you? Or a magical one? Did it ever start out
> that way?
Like I said, my conlangs are essentially dissociated from me, even if
I may be mentally stimulated by or emotionally attached to them. I
treat them as the toys that they are to me.
> 9. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of magical,
> religious, or incantatory terms?
Not really, although Ebisédian certainly has the potential to, what
with the whole physics-meets-magic thing behind the "flame powers" of
the Ebisédi (a relic of Ferochromon's RPG inspirations).
> *10. How many of you have striven to invent words that express novel
> ideas, or are not expressed in any natural language that you know?
Ebisédian has quite a few, and Tatari Faran no doubt will have many as
well.
> 11. Name a few of the words in your language(s) that you are most
> pleased with and are the most original to you.
Ebisédian: _gii'j3li_ ['gi:dZ@\li]. One of those untranslatable words
that can't be adequately expressed in English except crudely with such
phrases as "all that mess", "all those happenings", "all that
tomfoolery", "the whole shbang", "chaos", etc.. It expresses that
inordinately complicated procedure one has to get through in order to
accomplish something - all that _gii'j3li_ I went through in order to
get my papers! Or, all that _gii'j3li_ those obstacle-course
competitors have to workaround to reach the goal! Or, "what's all that
_gii'j3li_ that's going on with that wild party next door?!". You get
the idea.
Tatari Faran: I really can't think of any word that stands out as
being "most original". Many words in TF are very vivid. Some random
examples:
_kiapat koko_ - an adjective meaning stupid, crazy, incapable of
coherent thought. The complement _koko_ suggests a person with
bulging, staring eyes and O-shaped lips rocking his head from
side to side senselessly.
_kiapan_ - fool, brute, a foolish person. Cognate with _kiapat_, which
sounds like something is wrong with the person's head that
makes him stubborn and unreasonable.
_kiapitai_ - a verb meaning 'to scold' or 'to argue'. It has different
nuances depending on which complement is used:
_nana_ - a complement meaning 'to ridicule'. When used with
the verb _kiapitai_, it means to mock, to scold, to
insult, to deride, to provoke. (Imitative of "Nyah
nyah! You are stupid! Nyah nyah!")
_ihia_ - a complement denoting breathlessness or gasping. When
used with _kiapitai_, it means to argue, to quarrel.
The verb _kiapitai_ itself is cognate with _kiapat_; to mock
someone is to deride him as stupid, while to argue is to call
each other stupid until you're out of breath. :-)
The complement _ihia_ is also used of anger: _pahas ihia_, adj.,
"angry", "furious". It depicts an angry person panting with rage until
he is out of breath.
_misa' toto_ - to meddle, to be nosey, to interfere with affairs
that's not one's business to mind. The complement _toto_
suggests a plump cartoony figure with small eyes wandering
about and poking its big sniffy nose into other people's
affairs.
> 12. How do you sense that a word is "right" for its meaning? How
> much do you labor at fitting a sound to its sense? Or don't you
> care?
I spend a LOT of time over every word to make sure its sound fits its
intended meaning. Sometimes a prospective new word can take days
before I assign a meaning to it, because I do not want to 'spoil' it
by prematurely assigning a meaning that may later turn out to be
unfitting. How do I sense when it's 'right'? When pronouncing the word
makes the intended meaning pop up in my mind. This varies depending on
the language. With Tatari Faran, for example, there is a lot of
onomapoeic aspect to it, whereas with Ebisédian, it's more to do with
the inherent connotations of certain phonemes.
> *13. Do you ever rely on a software program to build vocabulary? Do
> those who don't think that's cheating? :)
IMHO vocabulary building is essentially a subjective task that can
only be done by humans, because it involves the association of a
physical gesture, the actual sound of the word, with a subjective
concept, the intended meaning, with all of its connotations, facets of
meaning, colored by the culture behind the thinking that molded the
concept in the first place.
Whether or not generating vocabulary using a program is cheating, the
result is definitely rigid, mechanical, and soulless, a mere outward
shell of language missing the personality within. It would definitely
work for a conlang made for robots, but if the speakers are human,
they must be a pretty dull bunch.
> *14. Is conlang a hobby, a craft, or an art in your mind? This has
> been hotly debated, so the question is not as weird as it seems. Can
> conlanging be considered an art? Why or why not?
Hobby, art, craft, obsession, private insanity, what's the difference?
:-) As Richard Feynman said of theoretical physics, "sometimes
something useful comes out, but that's not why we do it". A true
physicist or mathematician would tell you that while many theories can
explain the data, a particular one is chosen because it is most
aesthetically pleasing. Is this a craft or an art? You hear terms like
the "art of programming". Sure, a highschool hack also accomplishes
the same task, but for the true programmer, the aesthetic beauty of
the solution matters a lot. So is programming an art or a craft?
Perhaps the delineation between art and craft is an arbitrary line
that doesn't really exist?
> *15. If it is, who do you think are its consumers?
Consumers? What's that? ;-) I suppose you could call me an idealist.
I conlang for its own sake, just as I compose music for its own sake,
solve Rubik's cubes for its own sake, and program for its own sake.
The fun is in the act itself. Accomplishment, recognition, and
appreciation are all secondary.
> *16. This question is directed as well at any auxlangers on the
> list. Is it an art, a political tool, both? And who do you think
> could be its consumers?
I consider myself the blind artist/toolmaker who creates for the sake
of creating. Whether the result is a tool or not is irrelevant. Who
the consumers are, or whether there are consumers, is also irrelevant.
> *17. There has been some exciting talk recently (and over the years)
> about what a conlang is or is not. If you could pick a metaphor or
> write a descriptive phrase defining "conlang," what would that be?
A conlang is a constructed language. :-P
I find no need to explain it with metaphors when a simple definition
will do.
> *18. Why or why not would you eschew the metaphors "miniature" or "model"?
I don't see why one should prefer either term over the other.
> *19. Is a conlang more like a glimpse of something lifesize?
> (Irina's suggestion in 2001)
Perhaps. From my point of view, though, the goal is to reach the point
where it is equal at least in size, if not in detail, to a natlang.
Now, it may not be possible to actually attain to this goal in one's
lifetime, but that doesn't invalidate it as a goal to strive towards.
> *20. There has been some invigorating discussion lately about what a
> conlang can do that most natural languages don't (such as produce
> OSV structure, or eradicate verbs) What experiments have you made
> with your artlang(s) along these lines?
Well, IMHO, there's a difference between a feature that is not (yet)
attested in any known natlang, vs. a feature that cannot possibly be
attested in any natlang, known or not, perhaps due to sheer
impracticality. The former can conceivably occur in an as-yet unknown
or not yet fully investigated natlang, and perhaps discovered as such
in the future, whereas the latter is simply implausible.
For example, I consider the Ebisédian case system to be in the former
category, since it a feature that, however unlike any known natlang,
is quite "intuitive" once you grasp it. But a feature such as, for
example, the requirement that every paragraph must be a palindrome, is
obviously in the second category, since it is an impractical burden
upon the mind to keep track of the amount of information necessary to
fulfill this requirement. Of course, this is an extreme example, and
the line between the two categories is not clear cut. Nevertheless, in
my conlangs I try my best to stay within the first category so that
there is ample room for creative features.
It is my thesis that human language has the potential to encompass
much, much more than what has currently been observed by linguists.
Ebisédian pushes the limits quite a bit, in its case system, in having
a strange pronominal system, strange verb conjugation categories (e.g.
the introvertive verbs, that use physical metaphors to describe mental
actions), an overall detached view of the world---all verbal
utterances describe events as entities in themselves, the participants
being secondary and optional. And arbitrary levels of nesting even
with such large-scale constructions as nominalized paragraphs. In
retrospect, some of these features lie a bit too near that region of
implausibility.
Tatari Faran tries to stay strictly within the confines of
plausibility, but at the same time is rather bold in having such
unprecedented features as complements. I found complements to be a
very naturalistic feature, and I'm sure if you study Tatari Faran
complements you will agree---yet AFAIK there's no natlang equivalent
of it! It's a fine example, if I do say so myself, of a feature that's
unattested in currently known natlangs but very plausible to be found
in one.
> *21 What do you think distinguishes a conlang from a natural
> language, if you think so at all? What would it take for a linguist
> to be fooled into thinking a conlang was a natural language?
If a conlang were large enough, say paralleling a natlang in size if
not in detail, and its unique features fall in the category of
plausible to occur in an as-yet unknown natlang, then an honest
linguist who is not told of its artificial origin would have to admit
that it certainly looks like an actual natlang, no matter how odd its
features may appear to be to the uninitiated.
> *22. How much do you study other languages in order to discover what
> is natural in language? Or to discover how you can stretch the
> boundaries of language to make it do things that are unnatural?
Much of my conlangy tendencies were stimulated by the course I took in
Classical Greek. For the first time, I grokked how noun cases work,
and saw such neat features as free word order, correlatives, and the
awesome (and awful, in complexity) verb conjugation system. I realized
the difference between aspect and tense for the first time. I had my
first taste of sound change---the odd mutations of certain stems were
explained as the effect of losing the digamma in the ancestor
language. It was during Greek class, while confronted with this
amazingly fascinating Greek grammar, that I began to have serious
thoughts about a prospective conlang for Ferochromon with a real
grammar of its own.
Unfortunately, I haven't studied other languages since as I should
have. Perhaps one of these days I will take a course in Russian or
something.
Speaking of stretching things to the unnatural... I once told Mike
Ellis on #conlang that I have a freaklang somewhere in the dark
recesses of my mind, consisting of absolutely no grammar but only
vague 'utterances' which trigger different responses in different
listeners. Animal-like in operation, except that somehow this
'language' can be and is written in the dark tomes of a dark library,
somewhere in the dinghy city blocks of Black Harbour.
> *23. Can such a language function?
Ebisédian was quite a stretch. It seems quite functional, all right.
:-)
> *24. There has been quite a bit of fascinating debate about the
> relevance of conlanging to linguistic study. We all know that
> linguistics can aid conlangers, but in what ways can conlangers aid
> linguists? Or does it matter?
It doesn't matter to me. Who's to say conlanging deserves its own
branch of research apart from (natural) linguistics proper? There's
now a field of research called garbology, where people study garbage.
If that qualifies as a valid field of study, I think conlanging
certainly does too!
[...]
> D. THE LISTSERV
>
> 1. How did you first hear of this list?
I found it whilst searching online for some obscure linguistic
terminology (IIRC, the name of a case).
> 2. How long have you been on this listserv or on other related
> listservs? Continuously? Infrequently? Off and on? More off than on
> and vice versa?
I've been on CONLANG since 2000, although I've lurked/gone nomail on
several occasions. I've never really had any motivation to subscribe
to any of the other related lists. I almost wanted to subscribe to
CONCULTURE, but decided not to because I'm not interested in
recreating human culture as it exists on Earth today. If I'm to create
a culture, my idealist personality demands that I do it from scratch.
And that means foregoing accepted notions about how society operates.
Which seems to be a bit out of the realm of discussions on CONCULTURE.
:-P
> *3. What is the appeal of being on a listserv and contributing to
> it? Do you think you contribute moderately or excessively, or not
> enough? Do you tend to lurk ?
This list has, if anything, motivated me to actually conlang.
Sometimes there's an interesting topic or two that piques my interest,
but to be honest, I delete 90% of the stuff I get unread because it
doesn't interest me.
> *4. For those of you who remember its inception, how has it changed
> over the past decade?
I've only been here for ~5 years, so I don't think I qualify to answer
this question, but I have observed a general increase in members and
the associated dilution of the original list culture (as is common for
online forums with free participation). I think it's beginning to lose
some of its original fellow-enthusiast feeling, and is tending toward
just a social club.
> *5. How helpful has the list been in developing your language? In
> learning linguistic information?
It gave me the push I needed to actually get working on a conlang. :-)
Also, my linguistic knowledge has skyrocketed and my linguistic
horizons have ballooned since I joined the list.
> 6. What books have you consulted? On your own, or because you heard
> of them on the list?
I've been intending to buy a copy of Describing Morphosyntax since
2000, but haven't gotten around to it yet. :-S I'm unfortunately a
very bad reader in spite of my wide range of interests, and have
large, embarrassing gaps in my reading repertoire. I'm generally more
interested to create than to learn.
> *7. Do you peruse the websites of other conlangers?
Yes.
> *8. Do you sense that people on this list are interested in your
> conlang and give you feedback on it?
Sometimes. There used to be more interest, but it seems to have
diminished nowadays. Just my own biased perception, of course.
> 9. Have you ever set out to learn at least a little bit of someone's
> conlang, if only a word or two, or a phrase?
Yes! We had lots of fun on #conlang a while back greeting each other
in the respective conlangs, and having Arthaey give us Asha'ille
lessons while we, uh, create dialects for her. ;-)
> *10. Do you peruse Jeffrey Henning's Langmaker.com site?
I browsed through it a few times, but don't regularly visit it.
> *11. What on-line techniques do you use to showcase your conlang,
> such as Audacity or other sound programs, Dreamweaver, Illustrator,
> Fontography, and so forth? Did you hear of them on the list?
I own a webserver, so I get to publish my conlangy stuff online at my
leisure. :-) Most of the Ebisédian materials are done using that
awesome typesetting software LaTeX, plus tools of my own making that
perform various things such as automatic translation from ASCII
orthography to LaTeX input, lexicon management, etc..
Tatari Faran materials are mainly in HTML format, although I've also
written software of my own to manage the lexicon and so forth. The
search engine is implemented using a Perl script wrapper that calls
the lexicon management tool, which does the actual searching and
rendering into HTML.
> 12. Have you ever tried to introduce a friend to the list?
I might've mentioned it to a few conlangers online, but so far my
roommate's the only one who knows about the list IRL, and he's not
conlangy enough to be interested to subscribe.
> 13. Do you know of anyone who does this kind of thing but who has
> never heard of the list?
Yep... there's one Steve Oostrom whose website I found online, who
created an interesting conlang for the Star Trek universe. The
idea of using clitics as case markers in Tatari Faran was stolen from
him. :-) I don't remember if I actually told him about the list, I
seem to recall no.
There are others I know of, as well, but they are all online. Haven't
met a live conlanger IRL yet.
> *14. What other lists do you frequent related to conlanging?
This is the only one.
> *15. What do you think will be the future of the list? I see it
> giving birth to alternate lists like Conworld, Lostlanguages,
> Romlang, etc. What improves the present list and its helpfulness or
> entertainment value?
I can't predict the future, and decline to try on this occasion. :-)
The offshoot lists don't seem to be very active, though. I think
CONLANG is still where most of the excitement happens.
As for improvement... I have no idea, having been in a few online
communities which gradually diluted over time as they grew, and became
just another social club, and witnessing how various methods to resist
this trend have failed.
As for entertainment value... frankly I'm still subscribed only
because I need an outlet for my conlangy efforts. :-) A lot of the
recent discussions fail to interest me. I've also not had the time to
read through all the grammar and conlang sketch posts that do interest
me.
> *16. What Internet technology would you most like to see developed
> that would aid you in showcasing your language(s)?
Ooh I know---the universal adoption of LaTeX and METAFONT so that we
can exchange impossibly complex conscripts without having font display
problems! :-)
> *17. What lists like conlang exist in other cultures and languages
> that you know of?
Don't know of any.
> *18. There has been some terrific talk about CONLANG as a community.
> And yet so many of us seem to want the world to know of it and
> respect it. Is the CONLANG community enough?
CONLANG is an online community just like so many other bulletin
boards, mailing lists, weblogs, etc.. I'm not an online community type
of person. I'm only here because the topic of discussion interests me.
> *19. In my 2000 on-line article
> (
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0003/languages.php) I suggested
> that the Internet "may provide a site that, with the impetus of
> competition and showmanship, encourages inutile and obsessive
> activity"; I was quoting Jeff Salamon's article "Revenge of the
> Fanboys." Village Voice 13 Sep., 1994. He wrote that over ten years
> ago. Do outsiders still entertain such notions, do you think, about
> listservs like this one? Do you? To what extent has the list
> increased obsessive development in you? Would you be inventing as
> furiously as you are without the list or knowledge of other
> inventors?
> 20. If asked whether it is not better to turn your linguistic
> talents to the learning and speaking of natural languages (a common
> response I've met with and aimed at criticizing introversion or
> solipsism), how would you answer?
I am acutely aware of my own introversion, and have come to accept
that that's just the way I am, and that there is no need to feel
guilty about it. Besides, conlanging has opened up so many fascinating
little details of natlangs that I've never noticed before---it's only
when you're involved in the active act of creating something new that
you begin to question every detail of why things have to be done the
way they're done in a natlang, and by so doing, you begin to really
understand how the natlang operates rather than just accept its
conventions as the way things are unquestionably supposed to be.
One may argue that this sort of questioning happens in the process of
learning multiple natlangs, but I would point out that you can miss
the forest for the trees when merely comparing natlangs. You see the
superficial differences and accept that the natlangs differ in how
they handle them, but you fail to see the larger-scale structural
differences that underlie these differences, because you don't need to
pay attention to underlying principles when all you care for is to
speak the language. It's only when you conlang that you have no
pre-existing foundation to lean on and take for granted, and therefore
have to face the question of what fundamental principles to found your
language on---and that's when you will suddenly realize that the
superficial differences between the natlangs are due to a difference
in a certain underlying principle, rather than mere ad hoc
circumstantial differences. In this way, conlanging yields linguistic
insights that you would otherwise have never noticed.
> *21. In Elizabethan times there were the inkhorn neologisms. There
> were ciphers and pasigraphies. Today there is conlanging. Do you
> think the contemporary world is more open to language innovation or
> more closed?
I am indifferent to whether the outside world is open or closed to
conlanging. As long as I am happy doing it, that's good enough for me.
> *22. What would Tolkien have done with such a community? He writes
> in "A Secret Vice" that language inventors "hardly ever show their
> works to one another, so none of them know who are the geniuses at
> the game, or who are the splendid 'primitives'." He suggests that
> perhaps in a later time language invention will become respectable,
> and such things can be exhibited. Have we reached that time?
Perhaps. Does it matter? :-)
> *23. Is there a danger that over-exposure can make conlanging
> "banal"? To what extent is it exciting because it is a) considered
> disreputable, "corny" or "mad," or b) largely unknown to the world?
> Does it have a fizzle-out date? In other words, is it just a fad,
> or is it a natural human inclination that will stand the test of
> time?
I've always been known for rooting for the underdog, hating to follow
the crowd, and despising the latest trend just because it's the latest
trend. I'm cynically skeptical about hype, and often remain coldly
unmoved until I perceive some actual value in it. The things I'm
interested in usually have a much longer-lasting appeal than passing
fads. Which means I'll probably still be conlanging regardless of
whether it becomes the Next Big Thing. I might withdraw if it does
become overly popular, as I'm known to hate publicity, but I'd still
do it on my own. :-)
Having said that, though, I do get a kick out of doing things nobody
else does, especially if it provokes them, even though that's not the
reason I do that thing. It's just my way of taking potshots at
people's fickleness towards hype and fads.
> Finally, may I have your permission to use any of this material of
> yours for my academic work on conlanging? First name? last name?
> pseudonym? anonymous?
Yes. Yes, yes, and yes.
[...]
> Thanks!
[...]
Phew! You won't believe this, but I spent *TWO DAYS* writing up this
message. Boy am I verbose. I hope somebody reads it more than in just
a cursory way. :-)
T
--
Don't drink and derive. Alcohol and algebra don't mix.
Reply