O'Jesperson,lowercase,&RussoFuturistZaum. (wasRe: CONLANG+AF0- Vowel romanization)

In a message dated 2004:02:22 08:23:24 AM, ray.brown@FREEUK.COM writes:

>In "Novial Lexike" (1930) Otto Jespersen proposed using only a single >form
of the modern Roman alphabet for Novial:
>"In an international language we might, perhaps we should, write
>everything with small letters, as the rules for capitals are more or less
>arbitrary in all languages - at present, however, I dare not propose that
>reform."
    too bad jesperson was not "gutsy" enough - unlike the people in the
bauhaus movement, iirc contemporary with jesperson- like herbert bayer (who also
liked lowercase*btw more than coincidentally, there _is_ a fairly recent musique
electronique mvmt. called "lowercase sound" that has emerged out of the
techno and ambient scenes & many of their font-typefaces, grafix, design, etc. are
directly bauhaus influenced).
    now only if the bauhaus were as radical as jesperson when it came to
language and linguistics...
    ... and no wonder i am - recently - quite taken with the russian
cubo-futurists and _zaum_... btw: that's _primitif brut_ russian conlanging!

RussoFuturist Zaum

    "It is not new objects which should be used in art, but a new and
fantastic light should be thrown upon the old ones." - Alexei Kruchenykh

-
    - - - from the _zaum_ poetry of Alexei Kruchenykh:

cerzhamyelyepyeta
cyenyal ock
rezum
myelyeba
alik a lebamax
le le lyoub byoul

dyr bul shchyl
ubeshshchur
skum
vy so bu
r l éz

 {"Kruchenykh's zaum seems to be taking an extremist stance on language
deconstruction, on closer examination an interesting duality is presented: Kornei
Chukovsky, a literary critic, commented on the primeval nature of this poetry.
He said that trans-sense language was not a 'language', but a "pre-language,
pre-cultural, pre-historical, when there was no discourse, conversation, only
cries and screams." The strange irony of the situation was that in their
passion for the future, the futurists had "selected for their poetry the most
ancient of the very ancient languages."}

from the _zaum_ poetry of Vasily Kamensky :

Zgara-amba
Zgara-amba
Zgara-amba
Amb.

Amb-zgara-amba
Amb-zgara-amba
Amb-zgara-amba
Amb.

tsar-tsor-tsur-tsir.
Chin-drax-tam-dzzz

{"A Russian futurist critic wrote that "perhaps none has felt the sound as an
aim in itself, as a unique joy as Vasily Kamensky." The structure is based
both on the vocal rhythms in one of his sound poems, and the musical structures
of Indonesian gamelan}

--- Velimir Khlebnikov, _Zangezi_:

    Quiet! Quiet! He will speak!

Zangezi: Ring the glad tidings of the mind! All the different shades of the
brain will pass before you in a review of all the kinds of reason. Now!
Everyone sing after me!

Goum.
Oum.
Uum.
Paum.
Soum of me
And of those I don't know
Moum.
Boum.
Laum.
Cheum.
Bom!
Bim!
Bam!


Another interesting text gradually imposes, a poem by Vasily Kamensky that
deconstructs a word fragment by fragment. The fact that the removal of every
syllable or letter produces a new word demonstrates the Russian language's
natural tendency for fragmentation:


Izluchistaya Radiant
Luchistaja Beaming
Chistaya Pure
Istaya Melting
Staya Flock
Taya Concealing
Aya Groaning
Ya

    "For the Russian futurists this attitude to art, language and performance
was 'an appeal to a higher sense, one that is implicit only in the form of
the work itself. The spatial-temporal universe is one that is destroyed for the
sake of a simultaneous universe, one that is stable and pervasive.' "
    "This interpretation of Russian futurism as a transcendent movement is
comparable to Zen Buddhism, which treats alogical language as the key to
enlightenment and a complete understanding of the world. This is totally fitting
considering the Russian futurists' link with Asia, and seems to have almost poetic
significance considering my own interest in Asian theatre and music. Now that
Eastern philosophy and culture plays such an important role in contemporary
art, and we are attempting to integrate elements taken from the past in order
to discover new forms of meaning and experience, perhaps Russian futurism will
finally take its place as the most important and revolutionary art movement in
the twentieth century."
                    - from a German (!) _Russian Futurist_ website




--- *DiDJiBuNgA!!* Hang Binary,baby...---

Hanuman "Stitch" Zhang, ManglaLanger (mangle + manga + lang)

     Language[s] change[s]: vowels shift, phonologies crash-&-burn, grammars
leak, morpho-syntactics implode, lexico-semantics mutate, lexicons explode,
orthographies reform, typographies blip-&-beep, slang flashes, stylistics
warp... linguistic (R)evolutions mark each-&-every quantum leap...

...languages are "naturally evolved wild systems... So language does not
impose order on a chaotic universe, but reflects its own wildness back." - Gary
Snyder

"Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New Ones" -
a chapter on pidgins & creoles, John McWhorter,
_The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language_

= ¡ gw'araa legooset caacaa !
    ¡ reez'arvaa. saalvaa. reecue. scoopaa-goomee en reezijcloo ! =
[Fight Linguistic Waste!
    Save, Salvage, Recover, Scavenge and Recycle!]