archives of the CONLANG mailing list
------------------------------------
>From ponds!squink!biljir@dg-rtp.dg.com Sat Apr 9 05:11:56 1994
Date: Sat, 9 Apr 94 09:11:56 EDT
Message-Id: <9404091311.AA00v5j@squink.UUCP>
From: ponds!squink!biljir@dg-rtp.dg.com (Alan Beale)
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Cut English spelling
The following exposition of another English spelling reform project showed up
recently on comp.risks, and I thought it was interesting enough to share.
The initial part seems to be a followup to an earlier discussion which I
missed.
Enjoy!
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 18:38:29 +0000
From: c.upward@aston.ac.uk
Subject: English spelling design
I just picked up the Don Norman/Mark Jackson/Alayne McGregor exchange on
'its', 'it's', and English spelling design generally.
Don is right about bad spelling design being the cause of endless problems
of written English. But Halle & Chomsky were wrong about underlying deep
consistency in English spelling. For one thing, their analysis ignored such
fundamental inconsistencies as in 'speak/speech'. For another
thing, they ignored the whole historical dimension, which Don Norman
rightly alludes to.
The truth is that for 1,000 years no one has been able to ensure consistency,
deep or otherwise, in English spelling, ie since the Norman Conquest of
England in 1066, English spelling, unlike that of most languages, has not been
"designed with the user in mind", as Don Norman very sensibly puts it.
Webster's contribution was a small step in the direction of greater
consistency, which the British have still largely failed to follow. Various
people have tried using extra symbols (Benjamin Franklin was one), but they
have always run up against the problem of needing to teach all th millions
(billions?) of potential readers what these new symbols stand for.
As for the apostrophe,the deep INconsistency of English rears its head there
too. Mostly the possessive apostrophe precedes final with singular nouns:
'the dog's kennel', but follows it in the plural: 'the dogs' kennels'. But
sometimes we find the reverse: 'men's' is plural, but 'Achilles'' is singular.
A different set of inconsistencies affects the possessive pronouns mentioned
by Mark Jackson. As he rightly says, most don't use apostrophes, so that we
write 'hers', 'ours', 'yours', 'theirs', and of course 'its', and not 'her's',
'our's' etc. But 'one's' is an exception: for some reason we DO write that
with an apostrophe. However, the craziest inconsistency is 'whose', where we
add an at the end!
If Alayne McGregor implying that all languages are written as inconsistently
as English, he is mistaken. English is unique - as are its problems of
illiteracy. Both the USA and Britain have recently published major reports on
its appalling extent.
We do need to get to grips with this question of spelling design. Let me now
attach a recent paper put out by the Simplified Spelling Society on the
subect.
Simplified Spelling Society World HQ c/o Bob Brown, 133 John Trundle Court,
Barbican, London, EC2Y 8DJ, tel. 071-628 5876.
US HQ c/o Ken Ives, 401 E 32, Apt 1002, Chicago IL 60616.
CUT SPELLING
A Streamlined Writing System for English
a proposal for modernizing English spelling by removing redundant letters
Enquiries to Chris Upward
Chairman of the Society's Cut Spelling Working Group
61 Valentine Road, Birmingham, B14 7AJ, England
Tel. 021-444 2837, Fax. 021-359 6153.
THE BACKGROUND
Why reform English spelling?
English spelling is notoriously hard to master. It is a centuries-old writing
system whose contradictions and eccentricities were never designed for a fully
literate society. We all suffer from its clumsiness and inconsistency: it
takes far longer to learn than more regular systems; it limits people's
ability to express themselves; it causes mispronunciation, especially by
foreign learners; most people acquire at best an erratic command of it (even
skilled writers are prone to uncertainty and error); and many millions are
condemned to functional illiteracy. It is therefore small wonder there is such
concern about standards of literacy in English-speaking countries today. Yet
many of those countries have in recent decades seen the benefit of modernizing
equally antiquated systems of currency and weights & measures. Similar
modernization of English spelling is badly needed.
Is reform possible?
Spelling reform is an unfamiliar idea to the English-speaking world, but other
languages show it is feasible and indeed a normal way of preserving a writing
system from obsolescence. The letters of the alphabet were designed to stand
for the sounds of speech, but pronunciation evolves in the course of time, and
confusion sets in when letters and sounds cease to match: the way we speak
words now no longer tells us how to write them, and the way they are written
no longer tells us how to speak them. That is the central problem of English
spelling. In the past century many languages have modernized their spelling to
improve this match between letters and sounds, and so aid literacy. To ensure
continuity, only small changes are usually made, and while schoolchildren
learn some new, improved spellings, most adults continue to write as before.
It may therefore take a lifetime before everyone uses the new forms. Ideally,
spelling reform needs to be an imperceptibly slow, but carefully planned and
continuous process.
Problems of regularizing
Many schemes have been devised for respelling English as it is pronounced, but
apart from some small improvements in America none has been adopted for
general use. Several fully regularized systems have however been tried in the
past 150 years in teaching beginners, with dramatic success in helping them
acquire basic literacy skills, the best known recently being the i.t.a.
(initial teaching alphabet). However, all these schemes have required learners
to transfer to the traditional irregular spelling as soon as they can read and
write fluently, and much of the advantage is then lost.
Ideal though total regularization may ultimately be, the effect such
schemes have on written English is so drastic as to be a major deterrent to
their adoption. The following sentence, in the Simplified Spelling Society's
New Spelling (1948), perhaps the best thought-out and most influential of
these fully regularized orthographies, demonstrates the effect:"Dhe langgwej
wood be impruuvd bie dhe adopshon of nue speling for wurdz". Less radical
proposals have therefore been made since then, so as to avoid such visual
disruption, suggesting for instance that at first only the spelling of one
sound, like the first vowel in any, should be regularized; or a single
irregularity, like , should be removed. However, the immediate benefit of
such a reform would be slight.
A new approach is called for if today's readers are not to be
alienated, yet learners are to benefit significantly.
STREAMLINING
Cutting redundant letters
In the 1970s the Australian psychologist Valerie Yule found that many
irregular spellings arise from redundant letters. These are letters which
mislead because they are not needed to represent the sound of a word. Writers
then cannot tell from a word's pronunciation which letters its written form
requires, nor where to insert them, while readers are likely to mispronounce
unfamiliar words containing them. A group within the Simplified Spelling
Society therefore decided to explore which letters are redundant in English,
and the effect their removal has on the appearance of the resulting 'cut'
text. This Cut Spelling (CS) is now demonstrated.
Esy readng for continuity
One first notices that one can imediatly read CS quite esily without even
noing th rules of th systm. Since most words ar unchanjed and few letrs
substituted, one has th impression of norml ritn english with a lot of od
slips, rathr than of a totaly new riting systm. Th esential cor of words, th
letrs that identify them, is rarely afectd, so that ther is a hy levl of
compatbility between th old and new spelngs. This is esential for th gradul
introduction of any spelng reform, as ther must be no risk of a brekdown of
ritn comunication between th jenrations educated in th old and th new systms.
CS represents not a radicl upheval, but rather a streamlining, a trimng away
of many of those featurs of traditionl english spelng wich dislocate th smooth
opration of th alfabetic principl of regulr sound-symbl corespondnce.
FURTHR ADVANTAJS
Savings
Th secnd thing one notices is that CS is som 10% shortr than traditionl
spelng. This has sevrl importnt advantajs. To begin with, it saves time and
trubl for evryone involvd in producing ritn text, from scoolchildren to
publishrs, from novlists to advrtisers, from secretris to grafic desynrs. CS
wud enable them al to create text that much fastr, because ther wud be fewr
letrs to rite and they wud hesitate less over dificlt spelngs. Scoolchildren
cud then devote th time saved in th act of riting (as wel as that saved in
aquiring litracy skils) to othr lernng activitis. Simlr time-saving wud be
experienced by adults in handriting, typng, word-procesng, typ-setng, or any
othr form of text production. Th reduced space requiremnt has typograficl
benefits: public syns and notices cud be smalr, or ritn larjr; mor text cud be
fitd on video or computer screens; fewr abreviations wud be needd; and fewr
words wud hav to be split with hyfns at th ends of lines. Ther wud also be
material savings: with around one paje in ten no longr needd, books and
newspapers wud require less paper (alternativly, mor text cud be carrid in th
same space as befor), and demands on both storaj and transport wud be less.
And th environmnt wud gain from th loer consumtion of raw materials and enrjy
in manufacturng and from th reduction in th amount of waste needng to be
disposed of.
Targetng spelng problms
Less imediatly obvius is th fact that CS removes many of th most trublsm
spelng problms that hav bedevld riting in english for centuris. Ther ar thre
main categris: ther ar silent letrs, such as in isle or in business,
wich ar so ofn mispelt eithr as ilse, buisness, or as ile, busness; th latr ar
th CS forms. Anothr categry is that of variant unstresd vowls, as befor th
final in burglar, teacher, doctor, glamour, murmur, injure, martyr, wich
CS neatly alyns as burglr, teachr, doctr, glamr, murmr, injr, martr. Thirdly
ther ar th dubld consnnts, so ofn mispelt singl today, as found in such words
as accommodate, committee, parallel(l)ed; CS simplifys these to acomodate,
comitee, paraleld.
RULES OF CUT SPELLING
Cutting rules
These three problem areas of traditional spelling correspond to the three
main rules of Cut Spelling (CS).
Rule 1 Letters irrelevant to pronunciation
About 20 of the 26 letters of the alphabet are sometimes used with no bearing
on pronunciation at all. Some, like in love, in though and in
answer, were once sounded, but fell silent centuries ago. Others were taken
from foreign languages, like in yacht (Dutch), in honest (French),
and in psyche (Greek), but are always silent in English. Yet others were
inserted by analogy ( in haughty to match naughty, in could to match
would) or to show a dubious or imagined derivation ( in doubt, in
scythe). Two vowel letters are often written when the pronunciation only needs
one; thus in measure, in hearth, in friend, in people, in
build are all redundant. CS removes letters such as these from hundreds of
often common words; most strikingly, CS eliminates that most grotesque of all
English spelling patterns, the .
Rule 2a Unstressed vowels before
Thousands of English words contain or after an unstressed vowel,
though the pronunciation fails to tell us which vowel letter to write. In
fact, it is often redundant and can be cut, as seen from such rhyming pairs as
apple/ chapel, centre/enter: CS Rule 1 cut the silent in apple, centre,
and the resulting appl, centr show that unstressed can be cut in chapel,
enter too, giving CS chapl, entr. Likewise the forms rhythm, mustn't show that
the unstressed can go in fathom and the unstressed in resistant,
insistent, giving CS fathm, resistnt, insistnt. Sometimes two letters can be
cut: CS reduces curtain, luncheon, fashion to curtn, lunchn, fashn. CS Rule 2
cuts a swathe through one of the areas of greatest uncertainty in English
spelling.
Rule 2b Vowels in certain suffixes
Similar is the cut of vowel letters in some major suffixes: the plural of
ax(e) is cut to CS axs, distinguishing it from the uncut plural of axis
(axes); the verb form learned is cut to CS lernd, but the adjective is
distinguished as lerned. Strange at first is the cut of <-ing> to just <-ng>
in verbs whose root ends in a consonant (waiting, hating diverge as CS waitng,
hating), but an important gain from this cut is that it allows numerous
troublesome doubled consonants to be simplified by Rule 3. A notable
simplification is that the confusing <-able, -ible> suffixes are mostly
reduced to just <-bl>, turning eatable, edible into CS eatbl, edbl.
Rule 3 Doubled consonants simplified
Doubled consonants sound like single consonants, so the writer cannot tell
when doubling is required: frequent errors are the inevitable result. CS
simplifies nearly all of them, as in CS abreviate, embarass,
omitd/comitd/benefitd, travld/ compeld and (by Rule 2) hopng/hoping for
hopping/hoping. The main exceptions are disyllabic words ending in and
words ending in ; furry, tinny, hiss, discuss therefore remain distinct
from fury, tiny, his, discus.
Substitution rules
The key feature of CS is that it removes rather than replaces letters.
However, 3 simple substitutions are also made:
1 When are pronounced /f/, they are spelt . This produces
forms such as CS cof, tuf, fotografy, sulfr.
2 When are sounded as , they are spelt . This produces
forms such as CS juj, jeolojy, jinjr.
3 When is pronounced as in flight, sign, it is spelt ,
producing aligned forms such as fly, flyt, sty, sy, syn.
THE CUT SPELLING HANDBOOK
This leaflet barely outlines the CS proposal for modernizing English spelling.
A full account is given in a three-part Handbook. Pt I (pp1-160) discusses the
rationale of CS, its main features, its advantages, its psychological,
linguistic and educational implications, and ways in which it could be
implemented; but above all Pt I gives a detailed analysis of the present
irregularities of English spelling and how cutting redundant letters improves
the crucial interface of writing and speech. Pt II (pp163-231) illustrates the
various cuts and provides exercises for literate adults to practise converting
traditional spelling to CS and writing CS for themselves. Pt III (pp233-297)
is a dictionary of over 20,000 of the most common words with redundant
letters, giving their simpler CS equivalents. At the end is a bibliography of
works for readers planning further study of the complexities of English
spelling and the possibilities for its simplification.
Unfortunatly th first edition of th Handbook is now out of print. A secnd
edition is now in prepration, but th publication date is not yet nown.
Details:
Christopher Upward
CUT SPELLING: a Handbook to the simplification of written English by
omission of redundant letters"
306pp, Simplified Spelling Society, 1992, #10 or US$20
to non-members + p&p #2 or US$10 outside Europe,
ISBN 0 9506391 3 3
Christopher Upward
Editor-in-Chief, Simplified Spelling Society
Senior Lecturer, Modern Languages Department, Aston University, Aston
Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, England.
Christopher UPWARD
Aston extension 4215, fax 021-359 6153
Home address and telephone
61 Valentine Road
Birmingham B14 7AJ
tel. 021-444 2837
--
Alan Beale ponds!squink!biljir@dg-rtp.dg.com
"Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages."
Terry Pratchett
______________________________________________________________________
>From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Sun Apr 10 23:08:56 1994
From: ucleaar
Message-Id: <72353.9404102108@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk>
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Re: Vorlin update
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 94 22:08:56 +0100
> It's Vorlin's 3rd birthday, so whoop it up! Once again I am making
> changes in Vorlin; I can't stop tinkering with it.
Happy birthday, Vorlin, & 3 cheers for tinkerers.
> All five vowels are now in service as suffixes:
>
> -a (adjectival) leva = upper
> -e (adverbial) leve = up, upward(s)
> -i (intransitive) levi = rise
> -o (transitive) levo = raise
> -u (prepositional) levu = above
This paradigm looks a bit funny to me: the 'levu' doesn't seem
to fit.
leva = 'which is up'
leve = 'being up/becoming up'
levi = 'become up'
levo = 'cause to become up'
levu = 'be more up than'
The meaning of 'levu' ought surely to belong to a different paradigm
(if Vorlin is rationalist (& if it isn't, ignore my remarks)):
-a = 'which is more up than'
-e = 'being/becoming more up than'
-i = 'become more up than'
-o = 'cause to become more up than'
Or put another way, 'up' is one place predicate, 'above' is a 2 place,
& this (I'd have guessed) is independent of the part-of-speech. '-o',
which appears to be a causativizing suffix (at least in so far as it
contrasts with '-e') obviously adds an extra place onto the predicate
for the causer.
----
And
[p.s. Sorry if any of this has come up on the list. I'm weeks behind
on my email.]
______________________________________________________________________
>From j.guy@trl.oz.au Mon Apr 11 18:53:56 1994
From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy)
Message-Id: <9404102253.AA23233@medici.trl.OZ.AU>
Subject: Re: Cut English spelling
To: conlang@diku.dk
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 08:53:56 +1000 (EST)
Not bad at all, actually. Definitely one of the least
zany and least impractical spelling reforms.
______________________________________________________________________
>From Edmund.Grimley-Evans@cl.cam.ac.uk Mon Apr 11 12:11:47 1994
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 11:11:47 +0100
From: Edmund.Grimley-Evans@cl.cam.ac.uk
Message-Id: <9404111011.AA13608@nene.cl.cam.ac.uk>
To: conlang@diku.dk
Cc: edmund.grimley-evans@cl.cam.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Cut Eglish spelling
> benefits: public syns and notices cud be smalr, or ritn larjr; mor text cud be
=== ===
If that's the way they write "could", I would be interested to know how
they write "cud", which is not a homophone.
On the other hand, I still think that spelling reform is not a relevant
subject for "conlang" and would prefer there to be a separate list for
such discussions.
______________________________________________________________________
>From tom_greer@fammed.washington.edu Sat Apr 12 02:15:21 1994
Message-Id: <9404121716.AA15479@shivams.cac.washington.edu>
Date: 12 Apr 1994 10:15:21 -0800
From: "Tom Greer"
Subject: Aesthetics
To: "conlang"
I'd like to ask a somewhat nebulous two-part question.
1. Has anyone seen any research on what might be called the aesthetic
universals of language? Certain languages have developed formal
systems of poetics that set forth which combinations of sounds, which
patterns of words, and even perhaps which grammatical strategies, are
most pleasing. Is such an endeavour even possible across language
boundaries? We all know that speakers of one language will often say
that some other language sounds more beautiful than their own.
(English speakers are prone to express this opinion of French or
Italian.) Is it possible that certain phonological patterns are in
fact *universally* more pleasing? Or are our aesthetic preferencs in
languages like our preferences in clothing styles: i.e., probably just
conditioned by habit, exposure and personal experience?
2. Has anyone ever tried to construct a language for primarily
aesthetic purposes: i.e., so that it would be delightful to use, would
please the ear and gladden the eye, would be fun to play with,
eliciting poetry or wordplay? Would the beauty of such a language be
equally apparent to learners coming from radically different
linguistic/cultural backgrounds? That is, could its beauty be based
on some non-trivial universals?
Thanks for considering this!
-Tom Greer
______________________________________________________________________
>From rauch@CS.YALE.EDU Wed Apr 13 07:33:12 1994
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 11:33:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Erik Rauch
Subject: Re: Aesthetics (fwd)
To: conlang@diku.dk
Message-Id:
> 2. Has anyone ever tried to construct a language for primarily aesthetic
Tolkien was the master; his Elvish languages are not only pleasing, they
evoke a mythical culture. I would say a speaker of Russian, or even one of
Chinese, could learn to find it the same way. I would love to see an
aesthetic conlang created by a speaker of Chinese.
I think aesthetic preferences can be learned. Not only that, but there isn't
a single standard of beauty. I find German beautiful in one sense, but
Sanskrit beautiful in quite a different sense. The fact that an
appreciation for these two languages is not often expressed in
English-speaking culture (and that one for French is) is probably due to
factors not related to their sound or look.
| Erik Rauch rauch-erik@yale.edu |
______________________________________________________________________
>From KNAPPEN@VKPMZD.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE Wed Apr 13 18:51:52 1994
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 17:51:52 +0100
From: KNAPPEN@VKPMZD.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE
Subject: Re: Aesthetics
To: conlang@diku.dk
Message-Id: <01HB4V27DPLE984J46@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>
The question of aesthetics is a really interesting one. Out of the conlangs
I'm familiar with, only esperanto has incorporated some aesthetical aspects
_by design_. I emphasise this last point, because another conlang might
develop its own aesthetics not foreseen by the designer.
Zamenhof considered the sound pattern of italian as aesthetically pleasing
and therefore designed the full vowel endings to nouns, adjectives, adverbs
and ifinitives. He also wanted the international language to be used and
usefull to poetry, therefore he designed special exceptions to the general
rules for poetry by allowing the last vowel being elided. This provides
richer rhythm patterns in poems.
I think the best contrast to this is Gode's Interlingua, which was designed
with a rather ration calculus in mind. Its use in poetry was rather
discouraged by its author, he wanted to have it as a language for technical
and scientific publications. I have read some texts in Interlingua and have
always the feeling that this language has an internal disharmony and
friction. Since I'm familiar with latin and two modern romance languages,
the friction may come from the point that incompatible features of italian
and spanish are arbitrarily mixed (There is no way to derive Interlingua by
a chain of sound and grammar shifts from latin).
I'm not famialiar with languages contructed for literary purposes, like the
languages created by Tolkien. Someone else might comment these.
--J"org Knappen.
______________________________________________________________________
>From C.J.Fine@bradford.ac.uk Wed Apr 13 18:54:01 1994
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 17:54:01 +0100
Message-Id: <24185.199404131654@discovery.brad.ac.uk>
From: Colin Fine
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Re: Aesthetics (fwd)
Erik says:
++++++>
Tolkien was the master; his Elvish languages are not only pleasing, they
evoke a mythical culture. I would say a speaker of Russian, or even one of
Chinese, could learn to find it the same way. I would love to see an
aesthetic conlang created by a speaker of Chinese.
>+++++++
I thought somebody might mention Tolkien, but in a different context.
He somewhere wrote about a Spaniard (I think) who remarked that
the most beautiful phrase he ever heard was the English
'cellar door'.
Colin
______________________________________________________________________
>From urban@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov Wed Apr 13 02:56:53 1994
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Re: Aesthetics
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 09:56:53 -0700
From: Michael P Urban
> I think the best contrast to this is Gode's Interlingua, which was designed
> with a rather ration calculus in mind. Its use in poetry was rather
> discouraged by its author, he wanted to have it as a language for technical
> and scientific publications. I have read some texts in Interlingua and have
> always the feeling that this language has an internal disharmony and
> friction. Since I'm familiar with latin and two modern romance languages,
> the friction may come from the point that incompatible features of italian
> and spanish are arbitrarily mixed (There is no way to derive Interlingua by
> a chain of sound and grammar shifts from latin).
I have posted the Tolkien quote too many times, so I am inflicting it
on you by private mail :-) Your post reminded me of Tolkien's swipe
at Novial:
N__, for instance, is
ingenious, and easier than Esperanto, but hideous -- ``factory
product'' is written all over it, or rather,``made of spare parts'' --
and it has no gleam of the individuality, coherence and beauty, which
appear in the great natural idioms, and which do appear to a
considerable degree (probably as high a degree as is possible in an
artificial idiom) in Esperanto -- a proof of the genius of the
original author ...
______________________________________________________________________
>From pathall@uclink.berkeley.edu Wed Apr 13 04:13:58 1994
Message-Id: <199404132005.NAA11962@uclink.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 12:13:58 -0800
To: conlang@diku.dk
From: pathall@uclink.berkeley.edu (Pat Hall)
Subject: Re: Aesthetics
> N__, for instance, is
> ingenious, and easier than Esperanto, but hideous -- ``factory
> product'' is written all over it, or rather,``made of spare parts'' --
> and it has no gleam of the individuality, coherence and beauty, which
> appear in the great natural idioms, and which do appear to a
> considerable degree (probably as high a degree as is possible in an
> artificial idiom) in Esperanto -- a proof of the genius of the
> original author ...
Tolkien wrote this? I would like to read more of his observations about
conlangs... Could you post the source? Multajn dankon.
Patrick Hall
pathall@uclink.berkeley.edu
______________________________________________________________________
>From urban@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov Wed Apr 13 07:03:32 1994
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Re: Aesthetics
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 14:03:32 -0700
From: Michael P Urban
Your message dated: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 22:20:39 PDT
> Tolkien wrote this? I would like to read more of his observations about
> conlangs... Could you post the source? Multajn dankon.
The quote was in a 1987 special unnumbered `jubilea' issue of the
Brita Esperantisto, and attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien, 1932. The style
of the passage is unmistakeably Tolkien. Here it is in its entirety,
followed by some more comments from a private email discussion with
Patrick Wynne, noted Elvish scholar.
================================================================
I take an interest, as a philologist, and as every philologist should,
in the international-language movement, as an important and
interesting linguistic phenomenon, and am sympathetic to the claims of
Esperanto in particular. I am not a practical Esperantist, as it
seems to me on reflection an adviser should at least in some measure
be. I can neither write nor speak the language. I know it, as a
philologist would say, in that 25 years ago I learned and have not
forgotten its grammar and structure, and at one time read a fair
amount written in it, and, since I am trained to that sort of thing, I
feel competent to have an opinion concerning its defects and
excellencies. That being so, I feel that I could make no useful
contribution, except as a philologist and critic. But it is precisely
my view of the international language situation, that such services,
however good in theory, are in practice not wanted; in fact, that a
time has come when the philological theorist is a hindrance and a
nuisance. This is indeed the strongest of my motives for supporting
Esperanto.
Esperanto seems to me beyond doubt, taken all round, superior to all
present competitors, but its chief claim to support seems to me to
rest on the fact that it has already the premier place, has won the
widest measure of practical acceptance, and developed the most
advanced organisation. It is in fact in the position of an orthodox
church facing not only unbelievers but schismatics and heretics -- a
situation that was foretold by the philologist. But granted a certain
necessary degree of simplicity, internationality, and (I would add)
individuality and euphony -- which Esperanto certainly reaches and
passes -- it seems to me obvious that much the most important problem
to be solved by a would-be international language is universal
propogation. An inferior instrument that has a chance of achieving
this is worth a hundred theoretically more perfect. There is no
finality in linguistic invention and taste. Nicety of invention in
detail is of comparatively little importance, beyond the necessary
minimum; and theorists and inventors (whose band I should delight to
join) are simply retarders of the movement, if they are willing to
sacrifice unanimity to ``improvement''.
Actually it seems to me, too, that technical improvement of the
machinery, either aiming at greater simplicity and perspicuity of
structure, or at greater internationality, or what not, tends (to
judge by recent examples) to destroy the ``humane'' or aesthetic
aspect of the invented idiom. This apparently unpractical aspect
appears to be largely overlooked by theorists; though I imagine it is
not really unpractical, and will have ultimately great influence on
the prime matter of universal acceptance. N__, for instance, is
ingenious, and easier than Esperanto, but hideous -- ``factory
product'' is written all over it, or rather,``made of spare parts'' --
and it has no gleam of the individuality, coherence and beauty, which
appear in the great natural idioms, and which do appear to a
considerable degree (probably as high a degree as is possible in an
artificial idiom) in Esperanto -- a proof of the genius of the
original author ...
My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern
themselves with the international language movement would be: ``Back
Esperanto loyally.''
-- J. R. R. Tolkien (1932)
================================================================
("There is no finality in linguistic invention..." I doubt that
even JRRT realized how much he would be revising his own Elvish
languages in the years to follow!)
JRRT had learned Esperanto as a teenager, well enough to write some
Boy Scout material in the language in 1909. He apparently was fooling
with an alphabet for recording Esperanto in natural materials as a
sort of woodcraft. This is doubtless what he referred to, in 1932,
when he said that he had learned the language `25 years ago'.
However, Tolkien's feelings toward Esperanto cooled over the next
twenty years. In a 1956 letter, he wrote:
"It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that
'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language
depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. (For example,
that the Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its
language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its
content than people realize, though of course it depends on both. And vice
versa. Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader
than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented
any Esperanto legends."
Whereas in 1931, Tolkien wrote (in `A Secret Vice'):
"I am a believer in an 'artificial' language, at any rate for Europe",
and also that "I particularly like Esperanto, not least because it is the
creation ultimately of one man, not a philologist, and is therefore something
like a 'human language bereft of the inconveniences due to too many
successive cooks'"
he later revised this. As Patrick Wynne wrote,
In its later revised form (c. 1950) the
essay was apparently not quite so warm about Esperanto and friends; cf.
CJRT's footnote on p. 219: "In what was either a draft for the opening
passage of this essay or (more probably) a draft for its rewriting, my father
wrote that he was 'no longer so sure than [an artificial language] would be a
good thing', and said that 'at present I think we should be likely to get an
_inhumane_ language without any cooks at all--their place being taken by
nutrition experts and dehydraters'.
I think Tolkien's later opinion of Esperanto was wrong, but for the
right reasons. Of course, Zamenhof could not have invented a
fictitious history and legends to go with his language (as JRRT seems
to have thought he should have), but as a real language spoken by a
general public, Esperanto _did_ develop its own myths, histories, and
legends. The somewhat romanticized biography of Zamenhof, with all
the dramatic characters (his father burning his notes, his patient and
supportive wife, de Beaufront and the treachery of Ido) have achieved
a sort of mythic status within the Esperanto community, all tied in
with the `interna ideo' of Esperanto as a means to help bring about a
more harmonious world. In fact, I would argue that it is PRECISELY
the `mythology' of the `interna ideo' and the legendary history of the
language that have kept Esperanto alive while all the `improved'
interlanguages from Ido through Novial, Interlingua, Glosa,
Occidental, Neo, and ghu knows what else have pretty much remained the
domain of a small band of linguistic hobbyists.
______________________________________________________________________
>From bhelm@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu Wed Apr 13 14:11:03 1994
Message-Id: <9404140411.AA04422@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu>
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Pan-Pacific?
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 94 21:11:03 -0700
From: bhelm@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu
I'm curious whether anyone has developed a constructed language
designed to appeal to dwellers of the Pacific Rim. Such a language
would have a vocabulary, sound system, and grammar that appealed
(linguistically, not necessarily practically) to people living in
countries bordering the Pacific, in the same way that most constructed
languages are designed to appeal to Western Europeans.
Such a language would seem VERY HARD to design, but maybe not
impossible. For instance, many languages in the "region" (if one
can call such a huge area a "region") have borrowed words from Chinese
languages and English. Many countries in the region have substantial
minority populations from other countries in the region. So there is
at least a weak basis for a communal vocabulary based on borrowing and
migration, rather than on genetic descent.
It would be hard to find a sound system that would please both
speakers of (for instance) American English and Chinese. On the other
hand, because of migration and contact, we probably have reasonably
good data on second language learning, which could be used to avoid
the worst pitfalls (no tones for the Americans, no distinctive voicing
for the Chinese?).
Similarly, for grammar, it's unlikely that Japanese, Americans, and
New Guineans could all be served. But there are many, many contact
languages (jargons, pidgins, creoles) in the region, that might serve
as a basis for a common grammar. If we adopt the position that
majority rules, speakers of Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia, and English
might band together (along with the pidgin speakers) to rule out most
inflection.
Seen or done any language like this?
Rob
______________________________________________________________________
>From robin@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU Fri Apr 15 11:46:28 1994
From: Robin F Gaskell
Received: (robin@localhost) by extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (8.6.8.1/8.6.6) id BAA03768 for conlang@diku.dk; Fri, 15 Apr 1994 01:46:28 +1000
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 01:46:28 +1000
Message-Id: <199404141546.BAA03768@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>
Apparently-To: conlang@diku.dk
[ I had some correspondence with Wendy Ashby a couple of years ago. My impression
[ from what she told me was that Hogben had said to Ron, essentially, "I release
[ it to you to do with as you see fit." Of course, my source is somewhat biased,
[ but if so, this would mean that Hogben knew about the Glosa project but
[ didn't really try to influence its direction as the language was changed from
[ Hogben's original Interglossa.
I, too, am a biassed source, but do believe that the story is as Bruce
had it told to him. Ron Clark contacted Hogben when he was an old man
with only a few years to live.
Ron Clark originally intended the language to be a "Standard
Internationale" for scientific communication. He planned to develop
and complete the work that was started by Hogben, who published it
basically, in its draft form. Hogben, who was not going to do any
more work on the idea, assessed Clark's motives and abilities to be
acceptible, and gave his blessing to the plan.
The other two questions I can't answer. Re the "Essential World
English," my guess is that, having provided the world with an
excellent outline for an International Auxiliary Language, and having
had it generally ignored, Hogben must have concluded that, in default,
English would become the Munda Lingua, and that he should do his best
to ensure that a suitable standard was set.
I have not heard of anyone using an Interglossa-English dictionary.
In the years just after the war, many plans were altered: Baker's could
have been one of them. I remember visiting Ron Clark while he was
selecting concept/words for the Glosa dictionary (Euro-Glossa as it
was then), and he had a slew of national language dictionaries on the
desk in front of him. He also referred to the dictionaries of Greek
and Latin, and occasionally to that of Esperanto; however, I never
saw him refer to an Interglossa dictionary.
Clark and Ashby laboured with Hogben's two-inflection grammar for some
time, but it was only after Hogben's death that they decided it was
unnecessarily limiting - and that they could do just as well .. and with
much greater simplicity .. using no inflections.
The Interglossa suffixes were: -a on the concept/words for nouns,
and -o for verbs, adverbs and adjectives.
Cheers,
Robin
______________________________________________________________________
>From elf!white@felix.dircon.co.uk Thu Apr 14 20:14:43 1994
Path: white
From: white@elf.dircon.co.uk (Jim Finnis)
Subject: Paternoster
Message-Id:
References:
Distribution: local
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 20:14:43 GMT
Apparently-To: conlang@diku.dk
In article ,
Robin F Gaskell wrote:
>
>Some time back, John Chalmers and Don Harlow were making up a file of
>different conlang versions of the `paternoster.'
>
I had a quick look at Klingon a while back, and was pleasantly surprised
- it's actually quite neat, from an aesthetic and structural point of
view. Anyway, here's an attempt at translating the Paternoster...
Note that the basic sentence is OBJECT-VERB-SUBJECT, and conjunctions
are postfix in noun clauses..
Qi'tu'Daq vavma', quvtaHneS ponglIj.
ghoSjaj wo'lIj 'ej pIlobjaj yavDaq Qi'tu'Daq je 'oHjaj 'e'.
maHDaq Sojmaj yInobtaHneS 'ej
pIchmeymaj yIlIjneS nuHIvbogh chaH pIHmey DIlIjchugh,
ghoyemmoHbe'neS
'ach mIghvo' ghoDevneS,
wo' woQ batlh je Daghajmo',
yIqaSmoHlu'neS.
And here's a gloss...
Qi'tu'Daq vavma',
in-heaven our-father
quvtaHneS ponglIj.
it-is-honoured-continuously-lord your-name
ghoSjaj wo'lIj 'ej pIlobjaj
may-it-come your-empire and may-we-obey-you
yavDaq Qi'tu'Daq je
on-the-ground in-heaven and
'oHjaj 'e'.
may-it-exist (object=the previous part of the sentence)
maHDaq Sojmaj yInobtaHneS 'ej
to-us our-food give!-continuous-lord and
pIchmeymaj yIlIjneS nuHIvbogh chaH pIHmey DIlIjchugh,
our-sins forget!-them-lord they-who-attack-us (their)sins if-we-forget
(no such word as "forgive" in thlIngan!)
ghoyemmoHbe'neS
cause-us-not-to-sin-lord
(gho- = imperative, object "us",
yem = to sin
moH = causative
be' = negative
neS = honorific)
'ach mIghvo' ghoDevneS,
but from-evil lead-us-lord,
wo' woQ batlh je Daghajmo',
empire power honour and because-you-have-them
yIqaSmoHlu'neS
cause-it-thus-to-happen
(yI = imperative, object "he/she/it/none"
qaS= happen
moH= causative
lu'= indefinite subject
neS= honorific)
Jim
______________________________________________________________________
>From lojbab@access.digex.net Wed Apr 13 12:33:00 1994
From: Logical Language Group
Message-Id: <199404132033.AA18009@access2.digex.net>
Subject: Re: Aesthetics (fwd)
To: conlang@diku.dk
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 16:33:00 -0400 (ADT)
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group)
> Erik says:
> Tolkien was the master; his Elvish languages are not only pleasing, they
> evoke a mythical culture.
Indeed, T. believed that every conlang, if you follow it closely, inevitably
generates a legendarium, for languages don't just come into existence:
they have a history (even Klingon has traces of earlier forms). He went
to great lengths to derive his two quite different Elvish languages from
a common "Primitive Elvish", and in the process, the "History of the Gnomes",
aka the Silmarillion, appeared....
Colin writes:
> I thought somebody might mention Tolkien, but in a different context.
> He somewhere wrote about a Spaniard (I think) who remarked that
> the most beautiful phrase he ever heard was the English
> 'cellar door'.
"English and Welsh", repr. >The Monsters And The Critics<. I don't have
the book at hand, but as I remember, he says that for him, "cellar-doors"
are very frequent in Welsh.
In Larry Niven's novel (nivel?) >A World Out Of Time<, there is a reference
to a near-future city named "Selerdor". Always wondered about that one.
--
John Cowan sharing account for now
e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
______________________________________________________________________
>From lojbab@access.digex.net Wed Apr 13 12:28:17 1994
From: Logical Language Group
Message-Id: <199404132028.AA17693@access2.digex.net>
Subject: Re: Beauty in conlangs
To: conlang@diku.dk
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 16:28:17 -0400 (ADT)
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group)
Esthetic [I'm an American] considerations enter into several conlangs on
some level or other. For example, a previous version of Jim Carter's
Loglan-descended conlang "-gua !spi" was called "-gzn !gvr" (the
non-alphabetics are tone marks) and had randomly generated vocabulary, but this
version was rejected on esthetic grounds and replaced by the current version,
which is essentially the same except for relexification.
Here's an excerpt from Carter's 1988 report, "The Language Guaspi".
# The words of natural languages appear to be arbitrary symbol strings of
# tremendous variety of sound. Guaspi is similar in that its words were
# generated by a partially random process. To begin, the word lists of
# Loglan [L4] and Lojban [Ljadr] were merged and some
# additional words were added. For most words an English, Chinese and Latin
# translation was determined.
#
# Then experimental phonetic data [NB2] was used to assess candidate words
# for the ease with which speakers could recognize them. For each
# guaspi meaning, randomly generated word candidates were evaluated for
# recognizability, for distance from other guaspi words, and also for
# similarity to their natural language equivalents.
# The final assignments were determined through a process of numerical
# annealing so as to maximize the summed quality scores.
#
# Because the words are modestly similar to their natural language
# counterparts, learners are helped a bit in remembering them;
# and the sound patterns are anchored to forms known to please humans,
# since a prior attempt with purely random sounds was unacceptably ugly.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# The base natural languages included English because it is very widely
# spoken, Chinese (Mandarin) for the same reason, and Latin as a proxy
# for the other European languages, all of which have been influenced
# heavily by Latin. (Latinoid English words were avoided.) Both Loglan
# and Lojban use many more natural languages as word creation fodder.
Here's an off-topic but interesting defense, drawn from the same report, of
conlangs having their own (sc. non-stolen) vocabulary. It's applicable to
Loglan/Lojban as well:
# A question often asked is, why create new words? Why not use Chinese or
# English words? First, some attempt has been made to keep guaspi culturally
# neutral, and if Chinese words were used it would intimidate English speakers
# and vice versa. More important, Chinese words are designed for use with
# Chinese. Many required meanings, like articles, simply do not exist in
# Chinese, and similarly in English. And those meanings that are present are
# only approximations of the guaspi meanings; while users have to invest a lot
# of effort to learn the new words and their definitions, they will find it
# even harder to keep straight what a word of their native language "really"
# means in guaspi. That is why the approach was rejected of simply stealing
# natural language vocabulary.
--
John Cowan sharing account for now
e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
______________________________________________________________________
>From fritz@rodin.wustl.edu Thu Apr 21 22:45:16 1994
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 94 03:45:16 CDT
From: fritz@rodin.wustl.edu (Fritz Lehmann)
Message-Id: <9404220845.AA25535@rodin.wustl.edu>
To: conlang@diku.dk, fritz@rodin.wustl.edu
Subject: Re: Beauty in conlangs
John Cowan mentioned guaspi as a descendant of Loglan. Other than Lojban
and Guaspi, how many other descendants of Loglan are there. What are the
differences in their theories?
Yours truly, Fritz Lehmann
4282 Sandburg Way, Irvine, California 92715, U.S.A.
Tel.: (714)-733-0566 Fax: (714)-733-0506 fritz@rodin.wustl.edu
====================================================================
______________________________________________________________________
>From bhelm@skinner.cs.uoregon.edu Wed Apr 27 12:13:01 1994
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 94 19:13:01 -0700
From: "B. Robert Helm"
Message-Id: <9404280213.AA11636@skinner.cs.uoregon.edu>
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Conservation of Complexity
There does seem to be a folkloric law of "conservation of complexity"
accepted by the linguistic works I have read.
On the other hand, even if all languages, when written and spoken with
native competency, are equally complex, it doesn't follow that all are
equally complex at the same stage for learners. I have heard many foreign
speakers say that English is an easy language to learn poorly and a hard one
to learn well. Perhaps the advantage of constructed languages is that one
can acquire a minimal ability to communicate very quickly. I've often
thought this is why Esperanto has proven "easier" than other Western European
languages such as French in experiments in schools; the children can use
it more quickly for their purposes than they can French, so they apply them-
selves more seriously to learning.
Rob
______________________________________________________________________
>From lojbab@access.digex.net Thu Apr 28 00:30:26 1994
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 04:30:26 -0400
From: Logical Language Group
Message-Id: <199404280830.AA11283@access1.digex.net>
To: conlang@diku.dk
Subject: Re: Conservation of Complexity
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net
> On the other hand, even if all languages, when written and spoken with
> native competency, are equally complex, it doesn't follow that all are
> equally complex at the same stage for learners.
I'm inclined to agree. BUT. I think that there is a significant
factor here on kid-learning vs. adult learning. In other words, i am
NOT sure that a kid could learn Esperanto any easier than French
(though, because it is so regular, a kid would stop making errors
based on inconsitencies in the langauge a lot sooner).
I am close to being convinced that ease/difficulty that adults have in
learning a language and in using it to communicate is strictly tied to
their perception of their own ability to communicate and understand,
which in turn is much more strongly based on vocabulary in an adult.
An adult generally feels a need for a certain minimum number of words
to be able to engage in adult conversation with aanother person.
Those of us with advanced educations have come to expect an even
larger basic vocabulary.
When we try to speak in a new language, the first thing we notice is
the words that we want to use, but don't know. We are engaged in
putting words for concpets that we are thinking out in a stream, and
letting the grammar sort itself out. Thus my Russian for the most
part has been an ungrammatical mess, since my command of the grammar
was not up to my vocabulary (which itself is pretty weak). But for my
kids, who were fluent, ungrammaticalness did not interfere with
communication that much - given content and context, they were able to
get enough structure that my bad Russian still communicated.
In understanding a new language (that is being spoken fluently) we
have a little different problem. Since we don't know the words well,
we have to pick them out of the speech stream. Languages that use
declensions, especially phonological modifications, make it harder to
pick out a word and recognize it as one that we already know. Thus a
language with little declensions like English SEEMS easier at first,
because we get to that word recognition phase a bit quicker.
Foreigners can then talk English in a pidgin, and we can understand,
because, the context overrides the grammar. But the next step for
English is harder, because we put so much subtlety in 'word order'
that other language put into the words themselves (there is another
problem in that English's working vocabulary is so large, but that
seems a decondary issue). A language with more grammatical information
in the words themselves makes it harder to get the intitial word
recognition stage down, but the sheer ability to recognize the words
almost in itself carries some knowledge of the grammar.
lojbab
(
geocities.com/raiu_harrison)