Re: Martian conlangs?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fredrik Ekman" <ekman@...>

> On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Sally Caves wrote:
>
> > So what's YOUR article about?
> > :)
>
> Funny you should ask. I do have a half-finished article about Burroughs'
> Barsoomian that I intend to finish some day. My question, however, was
> entirely unrelated to that. I asked purely out of personal interest.
>
>   /Fredrik
You should finish the Barsoomian article.  I'd be interested in reading
that.  I'm sorry your query wasn't as fully addressed as it should have
been... it got me all riled up again about Yaguello.  I'll make a better
stab at it: the book that made Helene Smith and her Martian language famous
is by Theodore Flournoy, _Des Indes a la planete Mars: Etude sur un cas de
somnambulisme avec glossolalie_ (Paris: 1900), edited by no less than Dr.
Yaguello herself.  So while I disagree in part with the opinionated
linguist, I find her a rich source of material.  In fact, most of the
material on Smith's Martian is in French:  a certain V. Henry wrote _Le
Langage martien_ (Paris: 1901).  I don't know of anybody on the list who has
invented a Martian language, or even of anybody in history who has done so
besides Smith, but Bishop Godwin wrote _The Man in the Moon or a Discourse
of a Voyage_ in 1638 where he has a brief description of the "Lunar
Language" which is basically musical, he says.  Voyages to planets or worlds
where one finds invented languages is not novel, of course; there are
Swift's quasi-invented languages for _Gulliver's Travels_ and of course the
snippet of the Utopian language offered by Thomas More.

Come back to us when you can!  (What's YOUR invented language?--another
question).


Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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