Re: CHAT: Phoebe's auxlang

Daniel Andreasson wrote (Feb 5,99)
>...watching an old episode of 'Friends',...episode six from season four
[there occurred the following:]

>Phoebe: Ooo, a crossword! Can I help?
>Rachel: No! I'm sorry, honey, it's just that last week I got all but three
answers and >I really want to finish a whole one without any help.

>Phoebe: Fine. But you can't help me develop my new universal language.
----------------
Daniel didn't mention the canned laughter but we must assume it was there.
Still, although we must assume the matter to have been but a joke, for the
time being, (not [a] having witnessed the show ourselves, and [b] not being
terribly familiar with the characters), it does raise certain questions.
1. Is it not a joke aimed more or less at conlang activity, and therefore
deserving of a reply, to the effect perhaps that Phoebe having said it she
could at least be doing it?
This would turn the insult to an advertisement, actually. You see, I don't
even know if
Friends is still running!
2. Spoken as a joke intending not to let Rachel have the intellectual parity
she seems so definitely to need, or else to respond in such a way as to
(ridiculously) try to make Rachel feel left out the way Phoebe feels left out,
the actual existence of the auxlang is not implied.
3. Still the possibility of its existence is, in fact introduced. We have the
possibility of a running gag where Phoebe asks Rachel for words that Phoebe
has the (difficult)
concept of, put very Phoebe-ishly, but Rachel never knows what she is talking
about, but everyone else does. She could later win an award for most unusual
constructed language, and go to comedically interesting meeting of interesting
people such as you and I. A conlanger might even be put on the staff to ghost
write her language!
4. Someone really should contact the network!

Dan Baisden

-

A. A violent order is disorder, and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)

>From "A Connoisseur of Chaos"  by Wallace Stevens