Re: Linguistic knowledge and conlanging (was Explaining linguistic...)

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Indeed, many fictional languages show such traits as ill-defined
> phonologies ("the consonants are pronounced as in English, the vowels
> as in Spanish" and all that), over-regular grammars, unbelievably
> short words for advanced ideas, unbelievably long words for basic
> concepts, violations of any number of universals, etc.
> Some understanding of how languages work would soon correct
> such mistakes and open a door to a whole new world of ideas.
>
> And then there are "alien" languages that look all too human.
In defense of "too human" alien languages, the original version of my
fictional world's history was that all language (human varieties
included) is derived from an original Elvish source. Now in the
redesigned world, there aren't any humans, but it's convenient to
describe the people in more or less human terms. I'm not so much
interested in figuring out how actual non-human beings in the real world
might speak (dolphins might be a good example for that) as in describing
a world where many different kinds of related people coexist, and each
have their own (similar but not identical) varieties of language.

And I wouldn't agree that "unbelievably short words for advanced ideas"
are necessarily "mistakes". Short words tend to be the ones that are
used most often; if these happen to be "advanced ideas" (whatever that
may mean), the originally long words will be worn down (e.g. "taxi cab"
< "taximeter cabriolet", or "panpot" < "panoramic potentiometer").

On the other hand, some of what we consider to be "basic concepts" might
not be "basic" in another culture, even a human one.