Re: CHAT: Hello

[snip]

First of all, thanks for the welcomes.

> > Has anyone else done something like that for a lark - coming up with the
> > most unrealistic (at least for humans) language possible? Not fully
> > formed of course, but in sketch form anyway?
>
> Such langs are colloquially known as "freaklangs". There's a few of them
> lying around here--Maggel is known for its orthography, and Ebisedan for
> its unusual case system (though Teoh will be quick to point out that he
> didn't *mean* for Ebisedan to be a freaklang). I'm sure there's others out
> there, but these are the only ones I can think of right now.
>
> I myself take the opposite approach--making languages that resemble real
> languages. In this I count myself in good company in this endeavor, with
> Tolkein, LeGuin, and a good portion of the list having similar goals.
That would be the norm, I would expect. The freaklang, as you called it, that I
came up with was meant as an exercise: in order to deliberately break the
rules, you have to know what they are. It was still lots of fun though -
definitely one of the most enjoyable pieces of homework I've ever done!

[snip]

> > I'm also helping my friend and co-author develop her conlang for her
> >> conspecies, whose language is completely pitch-based (they have
> >> incredible hearing and their vocal tracts can produce up to I think 6
> >> tones at a time. Their planet is kind of isolationist because although
> >> their civilization and technology are very advanced, their culture is
> >> completely oral so they have no written form, and no one offworld can
> >> learn to understand or produce it because they lack the physical
> >> capacity, and it's bloody hard for them to get the hang of phonetic
> >> languages).
> >
> > Out of curiosity, anyone else have a non-phonetically-based conlang?
>
> There are some of those, too. Just a while ago someone was talking about
> making a language based on bat sounds. Though, technically, both this and
> your friend's language are phonetic, as they involve sound. (And even
> non-vocal language can have "phonology", as I've read some fascinating
> articles on the phonology of American Sign Language.)
Interesting. And I suppose technically it's still phonetic, but I mean non-phonetic as in
lacking what people generally tend to think of phonetics as: changing the shape
of one's mouth (etc.) around to change the quality of the sound coming out.

Speaking of bats, Solayans (the conspecies) have poor vision and use echolocation to
get around. They would describe an object in terms of texture the same way that
we would describe it in terms of colour.

The unfortunate thing about Solayan is that there's no way to represent it other
than in translation, lacking a written form or a means of transcription. Though
I guess one could do something with pitches in Hertz or something, so a word
made up of, say, four pitches would look like [467-80.5-5832-4370]. But I think
that would even top that "featural code" orthography in terms of sheer
ugliness. :)

Heather

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