Re: Umberto Eco speaks Volapük!

(Sorry, Ray, I just sent this to you privately, instead of the list!)

"Ray Brown" <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> > Hai coba ggia rild dad, ha babi io sgymta, ha salta io velca..."
>
> They're all conlangs, aren't they?
>
> One can make an attempt at parsing the first five.  The 6th looks rather
> different; but, as the others are almost certainly conlangs [...]
It's the philosophical language of bishop John Wilkins, as exposed in
_Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language_ (1668),
which has a chapter devoted to it in Eco's _The Search for the Perfect
Language_. At least it seems so -- Eco shows the first verse of the
Pater Noster in the original script and transliterates the first two
symbols as "hai coba", read "our father".


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
  "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments
   of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
   No one knows the shape of that future or where it
   will take us. We know only that it is always born
   in pain."  -- G'Kar quoting G'Quon, in "Babylon 5"