Re: Non-human languages

On Sunday, November 2, 2003, at 05:53 AM, David Peterson wrote:

> Ray wrote:
>
> <<What would the language of angels be like, or the language of
> jinns or the Paracelsian spirits: sylphs, salamanders, undines
> & gnomes?>>
>
> This reminds me of a couple things:
>
> 1.) According to Milton, had man (i.e., Adam and Eve) *not* eaten of the
> tree of knowledge, they eventually would have not only gained all
> knowledge, they would have become angels.  In that sense, they'd be a
> kind of pre-evolutionary step to angels, and so human language might, in
> a sense, be a proto form of angel language.
Yes, but Milton held some views which were heterodox by the standards of
contemporary
Protestantism (and certainly by Catholic & Orthodox standards); I don't
think he would
have lasted long in Calvin's Geneva.

Yet, I guess the saints perceive the divine mind of God as far as they are
permitted to
do so; and that was Dante's view of angels. But saints would have
experience natural
human language & might be expected still to think that way even if they ae
capable of
telepathy.

[snip[

> to "language"--two pages, each.  An example of one was a language spoken
> by dwarves.  According to them, the language had two types of
> sounds--those dwarves could easily produce, and those they couldn't.  The
> ones they could easily produce could be written by "striking a stone with
> an axe in a straight line".  So these would be (we're looking at
> orthography here):
>
> v, x, w, i, l, t, z, y
>
> And the difficult ones:
>
> c, a, o, u, e, s, h, g
But the obvious retort is: Why not use the oghamic script? The whole lot
can be written by striking an ax in a straight line!
> Basically all the ones with curves which would be "difficult to produce
> by striking an axe against a rock".
So use oghams.

> Needless to say, all the letters stood for their English equivalent.
>
> Now, it's easy enough to say, "This is ridiculous!  It's nothing remotely
> even resembling a language!"
Depends what they do with it.  It sounds like the dwarves consciously
refrain from using certain sounds because they can't write them with an ax!
  Gosh - if they're not dumb in the literal sense, they sure are dumb in
the colloquial sense! Just use different writing.

> The more interesting question, in my mind, is: If they feel it worth
> their while enough to devote a section to made-up "language" in every
> issue they put out, how is it that we're not getting paid to create
> languages?
Good point  :)

Ray
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