Re: Basque & Katzner's Languages of the World

On Wednesday, November 14, 2001, at 02:36 , Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
>> I picked up _Languages of the World_ by Kenneth Katzner a few weeks ago.
>
> I know that book - it's an excellent source for conlangs, since that's
> about how accurate it is :-).
>
<laugh>  I was afraid of that.  But it's perfect for the conlanging
purposes for which I picked it up.

>> .  In particular, I wish his phonological descriptions (which are very
>> anglocentric, perhaps not surprisingly) had used IPA instead of fuzzy
>> things like "There is both a soft r and a hard r" in Basque.  Which
>> brings
>> me to my question: for those who know (something about) Basque, what the
>> heck is he talking about?  Trilled and non-trilled?  Trilled vs.
>> approximant?  Meep?
>
> You should ask Rob Nierse - I think he's nomail now - since he has done
> a stretch of Basque in Leyden.
>
Would it be presumptuous if I attempted to email him privately?  (I don't
remember him--perhaps it was before I joined the list?)

>> The other thing I like about this book, and the real reason I picked it
>> up
>> even though I'm sort of skeptical of its academic usefulness, is the
>> samples of text that he includes.  Some are pretty uninteresting (yet
>> another biblical translation into whatever non-Indo-European language),
>> but there are some lovely poems/passages/script samples, including my
>> favourite Korean poem, Kim Seowol's "Chindallae" (azaleas), with
>> translations.
>
> I remember that a few of his texts were hilariously wrong, but I don't
> know which, since I haven't got the book myself - I once borrowed a
> conlanging friend's copy. The friend soon after acquired Comries
> multi-volume series on the same topic...
<chuckle>  Yeah, I eyed the Comrie, but couldn't justify the expense at
the time, though it's on my wishlist of books.  :-)  I remember a couple
statements in there seemed sort of odd when I browsed it, though I can't
remember which either.  It claims Korean "is the only true alphabet native
to the Far East," which I don't know if that's true, though the rest seems
okay.  'Course, he doesn't say a whole lot either.  ^_^

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

The difference between fiction and reality?  Fiction has to make
sense.--Tom Clancy

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