Re: NPR interview?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2004 3:30 AM
Subject: NPR interview?


> Hey Sally,
Hi Tom!  Nice to hear from you!

> Do you still have an audio file of the NPR interview you did
> about conlanging three years ago?  I went to their website
> recently, and they appear no longer to have it in their
> archives.
Yikes.

I have the NPR tape somewhere; Brenda Tremblay gave it to me, and I could
probably get it from her again if I can't locate it.  I'm terrible about
little audiotapes.  It's probably downstairs by the stereo.  I'm very good
about CDs, CD-ROMs and Zipdisks. :)  .

> (I'm sending this to the list because there are obviously
> many who would also be interested in hearing it for the
> first time.)
Well, it's interesting only because it's the first majorly broadcasted
information about our list and our work.  But I was very disappointed with
it.  I had been told that it would be fifteen minutes, but it got whittled
down to four, and it is so reductive, takes what I said quite out of
context, and gets some facts wrong.  I spent 45 minutes with Brenda, who is
a very nice lady, telling her the most interesting details about CONLANG and
its participants, about Tolkien, about Teonaht, and commenting on the
various philosophies of invention.  I left the station thinking with a
sinking heart that I should have reminded Brenda to give my affiliation--I
don't know why I had a sense of foreboding since she asked me who I was and
where I worked--and sure enough, after it was cut, I'm some "English
professor" somewhere in the United States. :)   She had asked me for the
names of  linguists at the University of Rochester that she could consult
for the interview, and I had suggested the one who had co-taught an
Independent Study with me to Doug Ball (remember Doug Ball?  He was a
student of mine who was briefly on the list, had invented Skerre, had turned
it into a project for which he got college credit.  He's now in graduate
school at Stanford).  But my colleague was reluctant to go on air.  So she
got another linguistics professor to "validate" my "hobby."  (Prior to this
event he had expressed mild amusement and condescension to me about
conlanging, so I was a little aghast that she consulted him.)  What amuses
and annoys me slightly, is that I was considered the "subject" of curious
scrutiny, and not an authority on the topic, presumably because I'm not in
the linguistics department..  I like this man, but he knows squat about the
invention of languages.  Yet he's the one to get the title and the
affiliation to the UR, and the authorization, and he basically compares
conlanging to working the crossword puzzle or making a model boat.  All of
my discussion was reduced to the simplest terms possible:  "She even added
grammar!"  "In graduate school, she started inventing unusual words like
"tay" for "yes" and "vai" for "no."  That was completely out of context!  I
told her about my earliest forays at invention when I was nine or ten, and
she applies these words to my later developments of Teonaht!  I had given
her words like dazrydel, which means "in a state of magic," "enchanted":
from tasry, "magic," plus -tel, "state of."  I mentioned that it sounded
like "bedazzled," but that's all that got recorded, as though I was pulling
words out of the visionary mist.  Basically, people don't know anything
about language or its structure.  Or the invention of language.  The notion
that I would add "grammar" to Teonaht instead of making it a simple relex of
English is considered amazing.  It's also considered, somehow, SEPARATE from
language.  So what makes the interview interesting, then, is its record of
lay astonishment (and incomprehension) about not only private language
invention but language in general.  No CONCEPT of the intricacies we apply
to it.  To be fair, though, the recording of Tolkien singing "A Elbereth
Gilthoniel" is really quite beautiful.  And I got some compliments from
several people around the nation who emailed me and said my reading sounded
like a real language, or who confessed to doing this themselves.  That was
nice, but because I wasn't affiliated with any university, they had to guess
where I was or remember my name.  Brenda researched all this diligently,
bless her, and it's a nicely put together four minute segment.  But
Descartes didn't invent a language: he wrote enthusiastically to a colleague
about the importance of developing a philosophical or universal language.
So she didn't get that from me!  :)

If you're determined to hear this you can go to the link on my faculty page:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/wesun/20010805.wesun.13.ram

The link to the transcript of the interview is gone.  If I can find the tape
I'll write out a transcript, but the whole thing and the memory of it
embarrasses me a bit, at the same time that I was happy that it aired in
some form at least.

Does anyone know how to convert .ra files or .rn files into .mp3 files or
.wav files... or into any format that the new Windows Media Player can play?
I can't even play my own Teonaht recordings anymore on this computer, or
even on my old one.  And WAV files are enormous.  Would Roxio Easy CD
Creator be up to the task?

Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teoreal2.html

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