Re: Star Trek conlangs besides Klingon and Romulan

On Sun, 3 Jan 1999, Tim Smith wrote:

> clustering" (see the Alexander Jablakov quote in my sig file).  On the other
> hand, maybe it's possible to take random data and create a pattern into
> which it can fit.  Although I know virtually nothing about information
> theory, it seems to me intuitively that this should work if the pattern is
> large enough relative to the amount of random data.  (As an extreme example,
> if there's only one data point, you should be able to fit it into any of a
> very large, perhaps infinite, number of patterns.)
In a sense, this is what I've had to do with Vilani, a conlang I've been
trying to develop based on a random syllable/word-generation formula and a
few dozen names and phrases with English translations (published over the
course of a decade or so for the role-playing game Traveller).  It's a
pain in the butt, but it's doable.  Barely.  Creatively.

Okay, it really sucks.  But it's more satisfying than just ignoring what's
already been done and starting over; and it's not like anyone's likely to
"prove me wrong" on it, either ;)

Kenji Schwarz