Artificial Languages/Contest
I've spent some time this last week or so at Zompist.com. It started when I ran across a Xurnese grammar, prompting the question, "What the heck is Xurnese?" It turns out it's out of this world. Specifically, it's one of the languages from a made-up world called Verduria whose languages (and their creation) are discussed at Zompist.com. The whole thing is a lot like Borges "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" - a fictional world made real by its meticulous documentation.
One of the things to be found at Zompist is the Language Construction kit, a set of recommendations of things to think about if you want to make up or construct your own con lang (constructed language). Note that there are at least three kinds of con langs, two that come in for a lot of treatment. The first is the so-called IAL (international auxiliary language), like Esperanto, whose authors would like lots of people to use it as a medium of communication. I'm dubious on these - a simple language offered for ease of international communication will most likely be learned by the kind of people who pick up some French, Spanish or English anyway. (Please don't take offense if you're a partisan of an IAL; my skepticism isn't about your language, but about your monolingual's initiative). The second kind is the sort of code, à la Pig Latin, that kids use to chat around grown-ups. This doesn't get much serious treatment.
The third type of con lang, and the one that has caught my interest, is what this guy calls an art language. These are creations carefully brought into being to imitate natural languages with all their flaws, all their inconsistencies, all their life. What you find at Zompist is one specimen of this. The most famous con langs, though, are those put together by Tolkien as he composed the Lord of the Rings and associated books.
The reason art languages caught my interest is that they are generally designed to go with an unknown world, a creation of the author's imagination. If you're making an IAL, you need the words for getting a hotel, buying a newspaper, etc. If you're making an art language, on the other hand, the words may go with lives lived in entirely different ways.
For some time, I've taken an interest in the languages of Central Asia. I study the languages, I listen to the music, I watch videos and movies and read articles. Yet until last few weeks, these studies could have been like reading Borges about Tlön. Sure, Uzbekistan came up in the news now and again. And Afghanistan, at the lower end of Central Asia, has been quite the topic in the news. Yet the violence in Iran and then in Urumqi has suddenly given a new and much starker reality to these places I read about and the languages spoken there. This is in contrast to French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese - I know people who speak all these languages and I speak with them in them, if only to exchange pleasantries. The languages of Central Asia, though, are still exotic creations in far off lands - the lands and the people are imagined to me, more than known.
If you're approaching a brand new language and culture with a past and traditions markedly different from those of your own country, maybe you should approach it more like a con lang. In particular, you need to read, read, read, to know what people actually talk about, and how they think about life. If you're going to the Pamirs, you need to know about the Ismailis. If you're going anywhere in Central Asia, you need to be acquainted with the branches of Islam, where which ones are practiced, and to what extent all those Arabic and Persian phrases arise out of custom vs. belief, not to mention the extend to which ritualized language makes people believe and the extent to which it dulls belief. In English, we say "Goodbye," shortened from "God be with ye." Yet if you say "Goodbye," you're less likely to be thinking fatalistically about the protections God will and won't offer than about the person you're talking to and whether they'll really e-mail. Yet in the last few days, I've met two people who took seriously the idea of adding as an afterthought to an intention a humble, "God willing." I've got a little of the same attitude, but not so pronounced, and it's pretty rare in California. Less so, I imagine, in Central Asia. But then, that's just what I imagine. To what extent it's so will have a lot to do with how things turn out from Iran to Urumqi. In the meantime, though, I'm back to Uzbek, cousin of Uyghur, a language whose speakers live under a nasty dictatorship - a new one after the Soviets - that keeps things mostly calm so that life looks much like what you'd expect in say, Eastern Europe, only with minarets in the background. And they say learning Tolkien's languages is an exercise in fantasy!
So, a final thought to try to make the meandering useful: If you're working to get your head around a language and it's not working, try getting your head around the people first. Your understanding of both the language and the culture will probably be oversimplified - almost as though you're learning an art language created for an invented place - but it just might open your mind to newer and truer understanding with time.
***
Note: Voting has started for Lexiophile's Top 100 Language Blogs. There's voting in four categories, starting with general language learning (which I'm in). You can find the main page here and the page for language learning here. I was too modest to vote for myself, so I'd encourage my readers (both of you) to drop by, that way I might get two votes. While you're there, check out all the nominees. There are a lot of great blogs out there and there's a wealth of sites gathered to explore if you're looking for new ideas.
One of the things to be found at Zompist is the Language Construction kit, a set of recommendations of things to think about if you want to make up or construct your own con lang (constructed language). Note that there are at least three kinds of con langs, two that come in for a lot of treatment. The first is the so-called IAL (international auxiliary language), like Esperanto, whose authors would like lots of people to use it as a medium of communication. I'm dubious on these - a simple language offered for ease of international communication will most likely be learned by the kind of people who pick up some French, Spanish or English anyway. (Please don't take offense if you're a partisan of an IAL; my skepticism isn't about your language, but about your monolingual's initiative). The second kind is the sort of code, à la Pig Latin, that kids use to chat around grown-ups. This doesn't get much serious treatment.
The third type of con lang, and the one that has caught my interest, is what this guy calls an art language. These are creations carefully brought into being to imitate natural languages with all their flaws, all their inconsistencies, all their life. What you find at Zompist is one specimen of this. The most famous con langs, though, are those put together by Tolkien as he composed the Lord of the Rings and associated books.
The reason art languages caught my interest is that they are generally designed to go with an unknown world, a creation of the author's imagination. If you're making an IAL, you need the words for getting a hotel, buying a newspaper, etc. If you're making an art language, on the other hand, the words may go with lives lived in entirely different ways.
For some time, I've taken an interest in the languages of Central Asia. I study the languages, I listen to the music, I watch videos and movies and read articles. Yet until last few weeks, these studies could have been like reading Borges about Tlön. Sure, Uzbekistan came up in the news now and again. And Afghanistan, at the lower end of Central Asia, has been quite the topic in the news. Yet the violence in Iran and then in Urumqi has suddenly given a new and much starker reality to these places I read about and the languages spoken there. This is in contrast to French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese - I know people who speak all these languages and I speak with them in them, if only to exchange pleasantries. The languages of Central Asia, though, are still exotic creations in far off lands - the lands and the people are imagined to me, more than known.
If you're approaching a brand new language and culture with a past and traditions markedly different from those of your own country, maybe you should approach it more like a con lang. In particular, you need to read, read, read, to know what people actually talk about, and how they think about life. If you're going to the Pamirs, you need to know about the Ismailis. If you're going anywhere in Central Asia, you need to be acquainted with the branches of Islam, where which ones are practiced, and to what extent all those Arabic and Persian phrases arise out of custom vs. belief, not to mention the extend to which ritualized language makes people believe and the extent to which it dulls belief. In English, we say "Goodbye," shortened from "God be with ye." Yet if you say "Goodbye," you're less likely to be thinking fatalistically about the protections God will and won't offer than about the person you're talking to and whether they'll really e-mail. Yet in the last few days, I've met two people who took seriously the idea of adding as an afterthought to an intention a humble, "God willing." I've got a little of the same attitude, but not so pronounced, and it's pretty rare in California. Less so, I imagine, in Central Asia. But then, that's just what I imagine. To what extent it's so will have a lot to do with how things turn out from Iran to Urumqi. In the meantime, though, I'm back to Uzbek, cousin of Uyghur, a language whose speakers live under a nasty dictatorship - a new one after the Soviets - that keeps things mostly calm so that life looks much like what you'd expect in say, Eastern Europe, only with minarets in the background. And they say learning Tolkien's languages is an exercise in fantasy!
So, a final thought to try to make the meandering useful: If you're working to get your head around a language and it's not working, try getting your head around the people first. Your understanding of both the language and the culture will probably be oversimplified - almost as though you're learning an art language created for an invented place - but it just might open your mind to newer and truer understanding with time.
***
Note: Voting has started for Lexiophile's Top 100 Language Blogs. There's voting in four categories, starting with general language learning (which I'm in). You can find the main page here and the page for language learning here. I was too modest to vote for myself, so I'd encourage my readers (both of you) to drop by, that way I might get two votes. While you're there, check out all the nominees. There are a lot of great blogs out there and there's a wealth of sites gathered to explore if you're looking for new ideas.
3 Comments:
I think that the realistic choice for the future global language must be between English and Esperanto rather than an untried project.
I agree that we need an international language, but a lingua franca for the World should be for everyone and not just for an educational or political elite. This is the position for English at the moment.
Your readers may be interested in an interesting video which can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU
Alternatively see http://www.lernu.net
This reminds me of things like:
"e shuduna done it" = "he should not have done it"
;-)
Brian,
I think it reasoanbly the case that a world lingua franca should be for everybody. The question is whether it will be. Foreign language people always talking about the desirability of raising a child bilingual and if you go about it correctly, you can even make it happen just so long as the child never ever catches on that he can communicate with all the important people in his life without maintaining both - like if his grandma really and truly only does speak Spanish and she babysits him in the afternoon. Grownups, who have lots of other stuff to learn and maintain too, including the argot of their profession - be it highfalutin terminology for the physicist or the difference between TPS reports and QT reports at the office - probably won't maintain a second language - even an easy one like Esperanto - unless they have to. This means that linguae francae are, by and large, going to be the property of educated and political elites. They will learn a lingua franca, even a messed up one like English, precisely because they gain not just communication opportunities but also social status as internationalist for their effort. To make Esperanto work, you would need an economy where everybody had the real world prospect of traveling to and interacting with foreign cultures on a regular basis. If society can function, on the other hand, with only selected classes doing the international thing, those classes will self-select according to criteria that include the willingness to learn and use another language.
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