Re: The League of Lost Languages (was Re: Fakelangs)

Hallo!

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 15:17:56 -0400,
Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jörg Rhiemeier" <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
>
> > Hallo!
> >
> > On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 16:32:11 -0400,
> > Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Tristan Mc Leay"
> > >
> > > Sally krespr:
> > > > > I have to say I love this idea of a "fake" natlang.  Put me on
> board!
> [snip]
> > > If I hadn't been so enthused about CONLANG, I might have considered
> putting
> > > Teonaht on-line as a real but somewhat obscure language.  The T. however
> > > have too many bizarre properties, though, to convince anyone.  I might
> list
> > > some reference works, though!  That would be fun.  :D
> >
> > I see two problems with including Teonaht in the LLL:
>
> I wasn't asking for Teonaht to be included in LLL.
Then I misunderstood you.  Sorry.  Your enthusiastic "Put me on board!"
sounded just like that.  But if you don't intend to contribute Teonaht
to the LLL, there are no problems with it not fitting into the LLL
world, are they?

>       I liked the idea of LLL,
> and I thought it was something everybody could contribute to; I got the
> impression that some of these languages could be group invented.
Yes, why not?  Languages could be group-invented, or one participant
could base a modern language on an ancient language contributed by
someone else.

>       However,
> since I like faking things, I can easily pretend that T. is a language of a
> lost diaspora, which it is in many ways.  Those members who travel and don't
> make it back in time for the "melting" are stranded in our world.  They also
> have a distorted literature of world events.  That's a very strong feature
> of Teonaht literature: what they do with the "Alexander" legend, for
> instance, etc.  Are we being so dismissive here?
It was never my objective to dismiss your creation as such; indeed, it
is nicely done.  The ONLY thing I said is that it doesn't fit into the
general scheme of the LLL.

> > 1. It is spoken by an entirely fictional non-human race.
>
> The Teonaht are not non-human.  They have some features that distinguish
> them from most other humans, such as polydactylism.  The feature about their
> eyes may be "legendary."
OK, so they are not non-human.  However, I had the impression
that they are a separate race, with their polydactylism and all that.
I always had the impression that they are visitors from another world,
and that clearly lies outside the scope of the LLL.  The LLL world has
no "other" races, and no visitors from other worlds (though it has
legends of such races and visitors, as has the real world).

> > 2. It is spoken in an entirely fictional country which winks into
> >    and out of existence in a very counterfactual way.
>
> True.  But this could be one of their many "myths."  So the League of Lost
> Languages must come from non-fictional countries?
Yes; my idea is that the LLL world differs only minimally from ours;
so no entirely fictional countries (and especially no countries that
are sometimes there and sometimes not), just a few more languages.
I know that this is not devoid of problems; see below.

> > The League of Lost Languages is about the survival of languages that
> > existed or could have existed in the world we live in, but disappeared
> > without leaving any living descendants.  The idea is that in the LLL
> > world, some languages survived that died out *here*, without changing
> > the world more than necessary to accomodate the languages in question.
> >
> > Examples include European languages of pre-Indo-European origin,
> > modern East Germanic languages, fictional branches of Indo-European,
> > sister groups of real-world families and isolates, etc.
>
> Just to be ornery... Teonaht could be considered Indo-European with some
> outstanding departures.  After all, the Germanic languages have words in
> them for ordinary things that are not shared by any other IE language, and
> they have developments that are unique with Germanic.  The same could be
> said for Teonaht.
I see no problems, LLL-wise, with the Teonaht *language*.  Teonaht
is an excellent, plausible, realistic language, indeed one of my
favourite conlangs!  It is the Melting, the "alien" features of the
Teonim and all that which clashes with the basic premise of the LLL.
And I see no fault in that; part of Teonaht's beauty lies in this
well-crafted fantastic background, and the language would lose quite
much if it was severed from that backdrop.  So I don't suggest that
you strip Teonaht of the more fantastic elements of your conculture
in order to squeeze it into the scheme of the LLL.

What regards the Indo-Europeanness of Teonaht, judging from what
I have found on your website, I wouldn't call Teonaht an Indo-European
language, though some similarities exist.  It looks like a non-IE
language that has existed in contact with IE languages for extended
periods.

> > Of course, this is not limited to Europe.  An LLL language could be
> > yet another of the many diverse languages of the North American
> > Pacific coast, a modern-day descendant of Sumerian or a pre-Bantu
> > language in the Congo basin.  It is also not ultimately necessary
> > that the languages are spoken today; they might be extinct but having
> > left written records.
> >
> > The participants would contribute their conlangs, say where and when
> > they are spoken, and write fake scholarly papers and similar stuff
> > about them.
>
> I already do that!  (You haven't seen them)  Consistency is not one of the
> Teonim's best features: sometimes they exist outside this world, sometimes
> they exist within this world.  Sometimes it's JUST a language.  I can write
> about it as JUST a language, and in another context write about it as a
> language attached to a people (more fun).  These comprise Teonaht's
> literature.
I understand.

> > So far, these seem to be LLL members:
> >
> > Name                    Language(s)
> >
> > Tristan McLeay          Føtisk
> > Jörg Rhiemeier          Albic
> > Christian Thalmann      Hajro
>
> You've left out Matt's Tokana, which seems an ideal candidate.  I suppose he
> has to agree to be part of your club, though.
I was only listing people who had actually voiced their interest to
join.
Matt Pearson's Tokana is indeed an excellent candidate for the LLL,
and I'd be delighted if Matt decided to join!

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 16:08:55 -0400,
Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:

> I guess I'm not done with my response, here.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sally Caves" <scaves@...>
>
> Jo:rg writes:
> > > 1. [Teonaht] is spoken by an entirely fictional non-human race.
>
> What do you mean by "fictional"?  Because your lost languages will be
> fictional as well, even though they are parading as fact.
Of course the "lost" languages are fictional.  This is what the LLL
is all about!  There is little point in creating a world without
fictional elements.  But that doesn't mean that because one admits
fictionality with regard to one facet of a world, one must admit
fictionality with regard to others.  Ill Bethisad, for example, has
fictional languages and fictional history, but neither fictional races
nor fictional natural geography.  The same way, the LLL world has
fictional languages, but no fictional races, no islands that wink into
and out of existence, no major divergences from real-world history,
etc.  Any collaborative project needs some kind of rules or guidelines
which determine what goes in it and what not, otherwise it degenerates
into a monstrous, inconsistent mish-mash of just about everything.
And if you don't agree with the guidelines of a given shared world,
join another shared world, start a shared world project yourself,
or build your own world all alone.

My experience with Ill Bethisad was that the guidelines that exist
turned out to be insufficient: for example, some people assume that
Ill Bethisad is as modern as our world as regards politics, technology
and other things, while others understand it to be a world where all
sorts of archaic ideas and institutions survive to the present day;
the alternative histories of the various countries of Ill Bethisad do
not really form a unified whole, the entire thing looks very patchy.

It was problems of this kind which caused me to withdraw myself and
Nur-ellen (the forerunner of Albic) from Ill Bethisad.  Nevertheless,
I thought the idea of a collaborative world that serves as the
backdrop for the participants' conlangs to be a good one, and considered
the idea of starting a new project of that kind.  I saw the problem
that the new project could end up the same as Ill Bethisad, hence I
decided that the world would be just different enough from ours to
accomodate the conlangs.  These considerations finally led to the LLL.

>       Teonaht minus the
> Black Sea and the melting could "parade" as fact.  Teonaht plus the Black
> Sea and the melting could "parade as legend."
Yes.  For example, Teonaht could be a language of an ethnic group
whose mythology tells of a lost original homeland that occasionally
winks into existence and winks out again.  But that would be just
mythology, not actual reality, at least not in the LLL.

> > > 2. It is spoken in an entirely fictional country which winks into
> > >    and out of existence in a very counterfactual way.
>
> I think there is something you don't quite understand about my many uses of
> Teonaht, and frankly I'm a little taken aback that you would exclude me and
> my language project from something on the basis of the various creative ways
> I employ it--or that you think that I employ it *monolithically.*
I am sorry that I haven't grasped it correctly.

>       Teonaht
> has several fictional "venues": the myth that it is a different world
> altogether, the myth that its people melt into and out of this world; the
> fact that it is a rich (invented) language that has many Indo European roots
> and borrowings (some being from Eurasia and the Middle East), and the
> ductile way I use it, and its very different use in a novel I'm writing.
> I'm not uncomfortable with these contradictions.  You seem, however, to want
> to "fix" Teonaht within one of my several schemas of explaining it.
OK, so the matters concerning Teonaht and its speakers are more
complex than I realized.  Indeed, a version of Teonaht spoken by
normal humans in a plausible location would fit into the LLL without
problems if you like to.  But I indeed encourage you also to pursue
further the more "fantastic" aspects of Teonaht independent from the
LLL.

> > > The League of Lost Languages is about the survival of languages that
> > > existed or could have existed in the world we live in,
>
> There you go!
>
>  but disappeared
> > > without leaving any living descendants.
>
> Where are Teonaht's "living" descendents?
What I meant is this: there are languages (such as Sumerian, Hittite
or Gothic) that do not have modern descendants, but plausibly could:
a posteriori conlangs.  And there must have been languages which died
out without leaving written records, thus being unknown to us.  These,
too, could have living descendants: a priori conlangs.  Teonaht,
if it was a member of the LLL, would be an example of the latter:
a living descendant of some language that in our world died without
trace.

> The idea is that in the LLL
> > > world, some languages survived that died out *here*, without changing
> > > the world more than necessary to accomodate the languages in question.
>
> Now that's toying with the butterfly effect, and already you are calling
> upon some fictional tropes, here.
I am aware of this problem.  The mere existence of a language surely
has consequences.  Consider, for example, the effect a surviving
Indo-European language that preserves laryngeals to the present days
would have on the history of Proto-Indo-European reconstruction:
laryngeal theory would have been accepted much earlier, indeed the
Neogrammarians would have reconstructed PIE with laryngeals.

> Why not include all of Ill Bethisad?  That, however, is an alternate
> history,
...and thus lies beyond the scope of the LLL.  Yet many of the
languages of Ill Bethisad could exist in the LLL as well.

>       but medieval Kernu, for instance, could be employed creatively in
> this respect.  What if Padraic were to say that he could supply some
> articles on the existence of this once extant dialect and the remains of its
> literature, especially its romances about King Mark?
If he wishes, he may join!  I see no problems with his language.
But as far as I know him, he'll prefer concentrating his efforts
on Ill Bethisad.

>       His world is more
> fixed, however, than even Teonhea, and he might not agree. The thing about
> Teonhea is that it is both a legend of a language and a people AND a world
> where that legend becomes a reality... sometimes.
I understand.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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