Re: OT<?>: Linguist Heros was Re: No pronoun, no article

On 21 Oct 2003 at 7:14, J. K. Hoffman wrote:

> And "Stargate" isn't *that* bad.  Sure, there's a lot of mediocre, and
> even down-right bad, science, but once you set that aside it's a fun
> adventure story.
[snip]
> Now, the *series* has some
> really funky linguistics in it.  *Nothing* seems regular about the
> languages they use there.
Of the languages where enough about each language is given for
judgements to be made, each language is self-consistent (i.e. not
just subtitled gibberish[*]) and they seem to me to be derived fairly
straightforwardly from existing "classical" languages on Earth.

OTOH, having a Latinate, Germanic and Egyptian language all described
as "dialects" of Goa'uld (the main alien culture) smacks more than a
little bit of the wackiness with the science, especially when another
Germanic language is described as one of the Ancients' languages (a
totally unrelated group of aliens).

> Of course, I'm not a linguist, so I may be
> just perceiving it all wrong, but...  Anyway, at least it has some use
> of conlangs, that aren't Elvish, on TV!
Yes. My vision of the Stargate-SG1 writing pit includes a small
faction of hard-pressed and creative conlang- and conculture-types,
fighting the daily battle of sense-against-nonsense with the vast
hordes of suits trying to make the show more "viewer-friendly", with
the excuse that "nobody's paying that much attention, anyway".





Paul

[*] Bonus point for anyone else who kept that little conlang-l quote
in their brains as long as I did.