Welcome to February, and the Language Design Workshop. Consider yourself invited.
If you would like to participate in this workshop (for free, of course!), please submit answers to the following questions in my comments area by 5pm PST on February 8th:
1. Is your language spoken by humans or by aliens?
1a. If spoken by humans, in what climate do these humans live? Please describe.
1b. If spoken by aliens, what kind of aliens? Please describe.
2. How do your people (humans or aliens) live? Please describe as much as you can about their social interaction.
3. What divisions are there between groups of people (aliens or humans or both) in your world?
3a. What kind of language differences are there between these groups?
3b. What kind of value judgments are placed on these language differences?
4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?
4a. Does your story use names? If yes, give examples.
4b. Does your story use object labels? If yes, give examples.
4c. Does your story use extended sequences of created language material (dialogue, songs, poetry etc.)? If yes, give examples.
4d. Do you have any created-language point of view characters? Please describe.
5. Do you expect language issues to influence the story's plot? If so, how?
Please answer all these questions to the best of your ability. If you can't answer every single one in detail, don't worry. I'm not looking for people who have already got perfectly designed languages here, but people to whom I can be of help. That said, please provide the best and most complete answers you can, because I'll need a good sense of the language you're aiming for in order to help you flesh it out. I urge you to read through my "How linguistics can help you!" posts from the past month. This should help you get some ideas.
Since I'm not sure what kind of answers I'll get, or how many people will submit, I'm being cautious about numbers, but I'm hoping to have five to ten participants.
I look forward to hearing from you!
1. I have two possible projects that could be used for this workshop. In one, the language is spoken by beings that look human but which, of course, cannot interbreed with Homo Sapiens. Since they live on a planet far from Earth, they probably qualify as aliens. However, their speech apperatis is indistinquishable from that of Homo Sapiens. The other possible species is definitely alien. They look very much like large, fuzzy, variously colored Teddy bears with, er, antennae on their foreheads. Their language is, shall we say, not easy for the human settlers to master, since it seems to consist mostly of strings of consonants.
ReplyDelete1.A. The Nova Britannians live on a planet, pretty much all over the landmasses of the planet. Some, for instence, live in the tropics, some live in the borial region, some in subtropicaal regions, etc. However, all indigenes speak one language, doubtless with regional variation that I haven't yet had occasion to document. All also speak British, a language descended from English and for the purposes of the narrative indistinguishable from the English in which the story is written.
1.B. See above.
2. *shrug* What's to describe? They're people. They interact. As far as I can tell, there is a fairly wide range of economic divercity, but fairly limited class distinctions and tension. Also, the society is pretty well integrated both with respect to indigenes and with respect to Plague Children (the cohort of disabled).
3. Not sure, but I think I answered that in 2.
3.A. Not too many imediately obvious language differences among groups that I know of. One thing is that, while all indigenes speak both the indigenous language and British, many or most Settlers (Homo Sapiens from Earth) speak only British.
3.B. Though I only have one instence to go on, apparently Settlers who speak the indigenous language fluently are very highly thought of by indigenes.
BTW not sure this is relevant, but Nova Britannia is part of a larger system, the Nova Europa system, where other Earth-based languages are spoken. At one point a young viewpoint character, whose own French and Italian leave a lot to be desired, lowers his opinion of an adult who cannot speak or understand either language either. Interestingly, this same viewpoint character is fluent in the indigenous language.
4. The languages in both project cases don't at the moment penetrate the stories much at all. More so in the case of Nova Britannia, where at least we have placenames. Not much at all in the case of Strlinkmrlad, for perhaps obvious reasons. The planet is Strlinkmrlad, the indigenous intelligent species, Strlinkmr.
4.A. We have placenames. It seems that people have adopted British or Briticized names, e.g. Ringo Treeplanter. But there are plenty of placenames. Raklebad, Falibanna, Roban Island.
4.B. I don't understand the question.
4.C. No
4.D. No
5. No
"4b. Does your story use object labels? If yes, give examples."
ReplyDeleteI'm not really interested in the workshop. Most of what you discuss is already familiar to me. I think I'm probably better off to just keep reading in anthropology and linguistics when I can. Still, I'm always looking for new insights into language and culture and I'm not completely sure what you mean by the above statement.
By labeling, are you talking about the way different languagues structure the world? For example, one language might have birds and bats and rocketships all under the same umbrella as things that fly, using the infix "-kom-" to indicate this similarity. Therefore in this language you get words like "dikomtik" for hawk, seskompov for bat and gatkomjut for rocketship. Or are you talking about something else?
Juliette, ideally, indigenous flora and fauna, as well as features like rivers, would have indigenous names. My world is not yet fully enough developed for this to have kicked in, though as stated I do have placenames. I think it's a matter of realization and development.
ReplyDeleteByron, what a fascinating idea. Think I'll squirl that one away.
(Cosmos Cat)
Just stumbled on your blog today. Hope I can join.
ReplyDelete1. Is your language spoken by humans or by aliens?
Humans
1a. If spoken by humans, in what climate do these humans live?
Badlands/desert
2. How do your people (humans or aliens) live? Please describe as much as you can about their social interaction.
The rsakk are a violent and proud sub-species of human/lizard shapeshifters. They breathe fire but do not fly. They live as extended families, communally raising children until maturity (14) when the children develop the ability to shapeshift and move out to their own lives. Their homes are domed adobe or stone buildings with a large central firepit around which daily life revolves. Their technology level is neolithic and the written word is restricted to elite priests. Cultural history is recorded in intricate weavings. Merchants record simple information with beads and knotted strings.
3. What divisions are there between groups of people (aliens or humans or both) in your world?
The rsakk are one of several races of "human". Others shift into other forms. All can interbreed. Rsakk clans often compete, but the lowest rsakk is considered superior to the highest non-rsakk. Males and females are heavily segregated, with men taking more than one wife and sheltering them in the clan compound.
3a. What kind of language differences are there between these groups?
Rsakki is spoken by rsakk and those who live close to them. Other regions where the population predominantly have another shape speak their own language. Trading is done in other languages at times, but religious rituals, home life, and military operations all are held in rsakki.
3b. What kind of value judgments are placed on these language differences?
Rsakki is a romantic language and considered prouder and more poetic than other languages.
4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?
Language is a reflection of culture, so I want it to give clues into the otherness of rsakk culture. Fire is central to rsakk society, and they have about as many words for it as the Inuit have for snow. Because children are raised communally by nurses, the words for brother, mother etc. have different meanings than on Earth.
4a. Does your story use names? If yes, give examples.
Yes. Hsobi(f), Hsien(f), Rhys(f), Elhaso(m), Akhad(m), Rai(clan), Vahtani(clan).
4b. Does your story use object labels? If yes, give examples.
Su(high rank), hikaj(heart of rsakk in shape), nari([my] fire, tender term for lover), taralk(herdbeast), jhueh(sound of blowing fire), kajub(heartbeat)
4c. Does your story use extended sequences of created language material (dialogue, songs, poetry etc.)? If yes, give examples.
Excerpt from a rsakk lament:
Rsa hiri rsafi s’ghmas ahleji jhueh
Rsa nu hizhi kroh hizhi zeh bueh
Rsa hikaj ahleji qom shu i iri
Rsa jhueh hrreth ifa, ahlu tekhas ni
Literary translation:
My fire roils inside me and seeks release
My mind flutters like a caged bird against walls of stone
My heart seeks flight on a pillar of smoke and ash
My breath sears only air, no enemy in sight
4d. Do you have any created-language point of view characters? Please describe.
If you mean are any main characters native speakers of rsakki, yes.
5. Do you expect language issues to influence the story's plot? If so, how?
Characters deal with outsiders who do not speak their language and have to figure out how to communicate.
1. The language is spoken by aliens, but humans should be able to master the basics.
ReplyDelete1a. The only humans in the star system have recently arrived aboard one of the first starships. Climate is adjustable, in the sealed environment aboard ship.
1b. The aliens are my marine species, the arcati. Basic body shape is that of a mermaid.
2. Arcati society and technology has fragmented since the seas rose up and swallowed the land. Arcati cities are grown from a genetically-engineered coral-analog. Each reef is an independent city-state. There are guilds that oversee the training of young arcati in their specialised occupations. There is also an aristocracy of sorts - the leadership of each reef’s guild is hereditary. Thus the Watchers Guild is ruled by the Lord of Astrophysics, even though he has no interest anything but the privileges his position brings him.
When an arcati child hits puberty, they are given one night of freedom from all authority, so that they can choose a guild without any pressure from those who feel that they know better. The guild that they choose is required to take them on, but on a probationary status only. They have one year to prove themselves. Should they fail, they must seek out another guild willing to take on a failure.
3. There are hierarchies in both human and alien groups. The humans have a command structure aboard their ship. They are further divided by specialisation in scientific disciplines.
The arcati have their various guilds, which have command structures based upon skills, knowledge and length of service to the guild. All of which is subverted at the top by the hereditary lordship.
3a. There will, of course, be some jargon based upon scientific/guild specialisations. I am also toying with the idea of an arcati “formal language”, which would normally be used by unworthy apprentices to show respect to honoured guildmasters. The formal language is very difficult (exactly how, I haven‘t decided, but I want it to be so hard that any arcati has to really think before they speak, or it all comes out horribly embarrassingly wrong). When Talioth‘s mother catches her stargazing daughter, she speaks to Talioth in the formal language - for the same reason an angry human might count up to ten before speaking.
3b. The arcati will always introduce themselves by name and rank and guild. This allows other arcati to immediately place them within the hierarchy of the reef, and decide whether or not the meeting requires respectful formal language from either party.
Respectful informal language is also possible, but it is normally reserved for family, or for interactions between those of equal or near-equal rank.
4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?
4a. Some characters (Talioth) and places (Nirael Reef) do use names. Others, such as the arcati god of death (the Eater Of All Life), and the ancient ruin of a flooded land-based city (the Reef Of The Dead), just use a basic description in English as the “name”. Same with most of the predators and prey - bloodray, weedlurker, snaptrap shell, sandlurker, bubblefish, spinedrift.
4b. Not yet.
4c. Not yet. I’m thinking maybe some of the fragments of their history survive as epic poems, but I certainly haven’t written any.
4d. Much of the story is told from Talioth’s POV. Currently, there is a cunning plan to have her speak exactly one sentence of her created-language to the humans.
5. The arcati modify their language with discharges of pheromones that add emphasis. It takes them some time to realise that humans can’t do the same. Cue misunderstandings.
sigh. as usual when i talk too much, i left something out. why would anyone do Kifu, you ask? Because it increases your uza. What good is a Kifu? Think genie in a lamp - men in Kifu have their uza increased a hundredfold (this wears off a little when they get out), and often they are just used by the Raba for things like community development. Alas, even having a lot of Kifu has not been enough to resolve the water crisis. Knowing this has made for some rebellion against being made to do Kifu, particularly for one Raba who even the public think has too many...enter the tension of the story as she chases her sons across the omniverse in an effort to reclaim them and force them into the Kifu. She can do it too, because she is one of the most powerful Raba in the history of Ua (and the only woman to have been in a Kifu). All she wants is to get enough uza to restore water to Ua....needless to say there are lots and lots of tensions that hide behind protocol and behind what is called shielding - telepathic techniques to keep others from reading your mind.
ReplyDeleteI rethought the created language point of view characters question and I think there are others in the book if you count telepathy as a created language. I do because the rules on Ua are a little different - think protocol - for interacting telepathically.
OK I'll stop now