Re: OT: Non-human languages (was OT: Dolphin intelligence (...))

Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:

> Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> writes:
>
[snip]
> One "solution" I used in a con-universe (which I have put aside
> a few years ago) was the one from the Traveller RPG: an alien race
> once colonized the vicinity of the solar system many thousand years
> ago, and for unknown reasons relocated humans to hundreds of
> planets; then the aliens conveniently disappeared.  Thus,
> I could mess around with lots of exotic but still human cultures
> which also were fairly homogenous with regard to their tech level.
The solution I adopted was to have human expansion into extrasolar space way
back in the past, so that there have been plenty of time for different
cultures to develop on different planets and in different regions.

[snip]
> > I've never tried to make any of my conlangs 'truly non-human', not even
> > Yargish, which is supposedly spoken by non-humans, because I do not believe
> I
> > could possibly succeed. Anything I create will be either a human language,
> or
> > not a language at all.
>
> It is fairly easy to design a language with a *phonology* that violates
> well-established universals of human language; but it is much more
> difficult to come up with a clearly non-human *grammar*.
You're, of course, right on the phonology bit. But it'd still be a "relex", so
to speak, of human speech. It would be if anything less deviant than sign
language!

> A language with a non-human phonology and a human-like grammar
> is the linguistic equivalent of the usual "humans-in-disguise" aliens.
> One of the more successful attempts towards a non-human grammar
> is Jeffrey Henning's Fith, a sketch of which can be found at
>
> http://www.langmaker.com/fith.htm
I'll be checking it out.

> which has a grammar based on a LIFO stack.  But even that is probably
> more "human-like" than what actual extraterrestrial intelligences
> might use.
>
> I for my own part don't seriously mess with non-human languages,
> at least not with languages for extraterrestrials.  (I occasionally
> sketch languages of non-human fantasy races such as trolls
> or magically animated toys, but my main conlang projects
> involve human languages.)  I know that whatever ideas I can
> come up with will mostly lie within the range of human languages,
> and thus I feel little need to invoke non-human speakers.  The diversity
> of human languages is interesting enough, anyway.
My Yargish is supposedly spoken by Orcs, who, in good Fantasy tradition, are
essentially quarrelsome humans with big teeth and green skin. They're not
_supposed_ to be a plausible non-human race. I've got some ideas for an Elvish
language on the backburner, but these Elves are, of course, little more than
long-lived humans with pointy ears.

                                                           Andreas