Ursula LeGuin's novel pronouns

It's interesting, in re-reading Ursula LeGuin last year, how my understanding of the relationship between language and thought has changed since I read these books as an adolescent. LeGuin is a notably language-obsessed author. And I'm sure the first time around, I interpreted the quirks of language in her novels through some kind of simplistic Sapir-Whorf frame, whereby the language people use determines how they think about things. But re-reading them, the novels themselves easily allow another more plausible relationship, whereby people reflect in their language use their meta-linguistic values and understandings. Here's from The Left Hand of Darkness, which explores the world of a species of androgynous near-humans:

When you meet a Gethenian you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corresponding role dependent on your expectations of the patterned or possible interactions between persons of the same or the opposite sex. Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?

Yet you cannot think of a Gethenian as "it." They are not neuters. They are potentials, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish "human pronoun" used for persons in somer, I must say "he," for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the Karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman. (65-66)

Not only do their pronouns reflect their gender and sex, but also other elements of basic vocabulary.

"Some are blacker," I said; "we come in all colors," and I opened the case (politely examined by the guards of the Palace at four stages of my approach to the Red Hall) that held my ansible and some pictures. The pictures—films, photos, paintings, actives, and some cubes—were a little gallery of Man: people of Hain, Chiffewar, and the Cetians, of S and Terra and Alterra, of the Uttermosts, Kapteyn, Ollul, Four-Taurus, Rokanan, Ensbo, Cime, Gde and Sheashel Haven... The king glanced at a couple without interest.

"What's this?"

"A person from Cime, a female." I had to use the word that Gethenians would apply only to a person in the culminant phase of kemmer, the alternative being their word for a female animal.

"Permanently?"

"Yes."

..."So all of them, out on these other planets, are in permanent kemmer? A society of perverts? So Lord Tibe put it; I thought he was joking. Well, it may be the fact, but it's a disgusting idea, Mr. Ai, and I don't see why human beings here on earth should want or tolerate dealings with creatures so monstrously different." (25)

In the ambiguous utopia on Anarres, on the other hand, as depicted in The Dispossessed, the Odonians speak Pravic. According to their ideology, personal possession is forbidden or avoided; this is reflected in their language, most obviously in their avoidance of personal pronouns:

The singular forms of the possessive pronoun in Pravic were used mostly for emphasis; idiom avoided them. Little children might say "my mother," but very soon they learned to say "the mother." Instead of "my hand hurts," it was "the hand hurts me," and so on; to say "this one is mine and that's yours" in Pravic, one said, "I use this one and you use that." Mitis's statement "You will be his man," had a strange sound to it. Shevek looked at her blankly. (58)

As when a person chooses to use singular "they" as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, which reflects and not determines their ideas about gender equity and non-sexist usage, these children learn a way of linguistic behavior that is reflective of their broader social values of nonpropertarianism. Their extralinguistic norms and values are reflected in their norms of language use, rather than their received language determining their patterns of thought, and it's those social norms that the children are learning as they gather up language.

How hard is learning Klingon?

...by which I mean not "how hard it is to pronounce" (challenging) or "how hard/complex the grammar is" (varies, for a conlang), but something more on the order of "how much language there is to learn"?

So I did a quick analysis of The Klingon Dictionary. The heart of the Klingon language is in the morphology, the system of affixes that derive and inflect the root words of the language. As for the affixes, there are 21 noun suffixes that fit into five slots, 32-35 pronominal verb prefixes, and 31 verb suffixes that fit into nine slots. Almost half of the total suffixes mark person in some way. Additionally, the grammatical sketch introduces seven dozen or so roots, almost a dozen stand-alone pronouns, a dozen or so numbers (as well as two suffixes for numbers), almost a dozen conjunctions, a half-dozen question words, and three dozen or so adverbials and exclamations. So you could probably fit a very solid working knowledge of Klingon onto about 230 flash cards. That's large but manageable.

As for the dictionary, I estimate that there are about 1,460 words in the Klingon-English section. With the morphology, that's a lot of expressive power, although the vocabulary intentionally doesn't cover a lot of semantic space.

On Klingon

I'm no Klingonist, but I've been reading more about it the past few days (a used copy of the Klingon Dictionary and an instructional audiobook doesn't break $10). I really like Mark Okrand has a subtle sense of humor. And Klingon has a strangely appealling phonoaesthetic for such a choppy language: it's like a tour of the points of articulation that are difficult for an Anglophone.

Klingon intentionally has a weird phonology. Not in the actual sounds that are used, which are normal human language sounds, but rather the pattern of sounds: it has several prominent holes in its phonology.

For example, Klingon has the velar nasal /ŋ/ and velar fricatives /x/ and /ɣ/ (which sound like sounds from French and German), but it does not have the velar stop /k/. Meanwhile, it has the uvular stop /qʰ/ and uvular affricate /qχ/, but no other uvular sounds. It would be very likely, in a natural language, if this kind of weird gap arose, for either the two series to converge on one point of articulation (for example, shifting /q/ to /k/ and /qχ/ to /kx/), or alternatively for new consonants to spring up to fill out the phonology at each point of articulation (for example adding /k/ and /χ/ as phonemes).

And while Klingon has the affricate /tɬ/ and the affricate /tʃ/, but the only alveolar or postalveolar fricative is the retroflex /ʂ/, which seems like it would merge with either /ɬ/ or /ʃ/.

Similarly, while Klingon contrast the voiceless stop /p/ with the voiced stop /b/, it contrasts the voiceless stop /t/ not with the voiced stop /d/, but rather with the voiced retroflex stop /ɖ/. It's pretty weird, to articulate it as retroflex rather than plain voiced, and it seems likely that Klingon would undergo a sound change: first the retroflex consonant would be in variation with the plain stop /d/, and then it would be dropped in favor of /d/. Of course, any description of a language is just a snapshot of it in time, with changes behind it and changes to come.

Now in practice, these uvular consonants are very difficult consonants for native English speakers to produce, and I think that a great deal of spoken Klingon has speakers using /k/ instead of /q/, or /d/ instead of the retroflex /ɖ/. Marc Okrand seemingly addressed this somewhat in The Klingon Dictionary:

There are a number of dialects of Klingon. Only one of the dialects, that of the current Klingon emperor, is represented in this dictionary. When a Klingon emperor is replaced, for whatever reason, it has historically been the case that the next emperor speaks a different dialect. As a result, the new emperor's dialect becomes the official dialect. Those Klingons who do not speak the official dialect are considered either stupid or subversive, and are usually forced to undertake tasks that speakers of the official standard find distasteful. Most Klingons try to be fluent in several dialects.

Some dialects differ only slightly from the dialect of this dictionary. Differences tend to be in vocabulary (the word for forehead, for example, is different in almost every dialect) and in the pronunciation of a few sounds. On the other hand, some dialects differ significantly from the current official dialect, so much so that speakers of these dialects have a great deal of difficulty communicating with current Klingon officialdom. The student of Klingon is warned to check into the political situation in the Klingon Empire before trying to talk.

There does seem to be a great deal of continuity in spoken Klingon between different eras (as much as in the English of these periods), although some of this might result from the prominence of Colonel Worf (an official of the Klingon Empire who defended Captain Kirk in court) and Lieutenant Worf (a later officer of the USS Enterprise). Interestingly, according to Okrand, English has a position of high prestige in the Klingon Empire, serving as a signal of elite status and a private means of communication among starship officers. If Klingons use English as a signal of social prestige, it doesn't seem implausible that, in Klingon, they would use a somewhat artificial, archaic, and difficult-to-pronounce sociolect as a prestige dialect as well.

Dialect can explain some of the problems with voice acting in Klingon. But it's just too difficult for Anglophones to pronounce. Christopher Plummer's General Chang in "Star Trek VI" is a great character, quoting Shakespeare even more than Kirk does in some of the earlier movies. Except when he's speaking Klingon: the only time he does it, at Kirk's trial, it is a bunch of disconnected syllables that don't display the interesting morphology of the language.

Mark Okrand talks about the creation of the Klingon language in this series of videos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Since the Klingon language was created on the set of "Star Trek III", Okrand was able to incorporate the actors' performance errors into the canonical version of the Klingon language. "My sort of 'role model' of what Klingon sounds like is Christopher Lloyd saying it, because he was my first big speaker," Okrand says.

However, Michael Dorn, who played Worf on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine", as well as three of the movies, has probably spoken more lines of Klingon than any other actor. He's also done a lot of voice work narrating audiobooks on the languageand videogames (such as Star Trek: Klingon), although in the audiobook of Conversational Klingon, Okrand pronounces all the Klingon words and phrases. Dorn is also kind of awesome.

Language on Barsoom

I read the heck out of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and Caspak novels when I was a kid. Ten years or more later, I was part of the "generations of 8-year-olds", as Carl Sagan put it, whose perspective was expanded by this fantasy:



So I've been curious about the new movie. It's gotten some bad press, like The New York Times panning the marketing effort in "Ishtar" Lands on Mars...but the NYT is generally a bastion of foolish snobbery against genre fiction, especially science fiction or fantasy. The word-of-mouth is pretty good. Erik Mona praised the movie on FB, James Maliszewski points to the clear influence of Barsoom on Gygax. Michael Chabon, interviewed on io9, loved the books too.

But of course it wasn't until I learned that Paul Frommer worked on the Barsoomian language for the film that I started getting really interested. Clearly the creators cared enough about the source material to treat it better than Star-Warsy gobbledygook. The words in the Barsoom novels are not a language, not even a systematic naming language, so it's great that the filmmakers hired someone to expand that linguistic writing and make it more systematic. The novels are dated, and do tend toward juvenilia, but E.R.B. did a lot of underappreciated work in worldbuilding, including fun little elements like jetan. Perhaps Barsoomian was E.R.B.'s linguistic handwaving, a version of the "universal translator".

Fiat Lingua has an interview by Swedish E.R.B. collector Fredrik Ekman with Paul Frommer (PDF). Frommer explains that his expanded Barsoomian is nearly isolating, with very little inflectional morphology. There's no case marking, and the language instead relies heavily on word order. Barsoomian uses VSO, which is a nice choice to avoid re-lexing English, and is a logical, underappreciated word order in conlangs more generally, IMHO. Possession is as in Indonesian/Malay: the possessor follows the possessed with no special marking. Frommer based the language on the 400+ words pulled from the books, mostly names, interpreted into a coherent system. He made some interesting choices, such as including a voiced velar fricative alongside the rhotic alveolar approximate of American English. The most interesting feature is certainly the pronominal system:

Perhaps the most interesting feature is the pronominal system, where there are distinct cases for subject and object (akin to English I/me, he/him, we/us, etc.). To form the objective case, you take the initial consonant of the pronoun and repeat it at the end of the word. So I = tu, me = tut; he = ki, him = kik. Then to form the plurals of these pronouns, you simply “voice” the unvoiced consonants—in these examples, t becomes d and k become hard g. So we = du and us = dud.

There's also some good discussion of Frommer's method and the training of the actors in "John Carter: Inventing a New Language". Willem Dafoe discussed his experiences playing Tars Tarkas with io9, with a nice video clip of him speaking a line (at about 03:29).

Pagelady has transcribed some phrases from the movie, and links to this lexicon at Langmaker (by Jeffrey Henning), culled from the same source material Frommer used. The Conlanging Librarian also has a number of posts exploring this material.

Some graphic designers at Disney came up with a "Martian alphabet"; it's pretty unsophisticated, a simple substitution cipher. And it's exactly the sort of this a graphic designer might make to look "alien" but no-one would ever use to actually write with: it would be a nightmare trying to write those characters at speed with a pen and paper, or any other tool other than a keyboard and mouse. But they have a "Martian Translator" to cipher texts and a "Martian Decoder" to decipher them; there's also a PDF. How to Count in Barsoomian has an overview of the numerals of this script.

I don't have time to read fiction these days, but Librivox has the first five books available as M4Bs or MP3s:

• A Princess of Mars
• The Gods of Mars
• A Warlord of Mars
• Thuvia, Maid of Mars
• The Chessmen of Mars

& here's the first still that got me hooked. Girallons!

Conlanging is a great excuse to not write

Conlanging is perhaps the best excuse ever invented for NOT writing. Many of the people attracted to this hobby are science fiction or fantasy writers or other people who have reason to invent a detailed, verisimilistic fantasy world. Language can contribute to that in powerful ways; creating and using a coherent naming language or some phrases can help evoke a sense that the author is describing a dynamic, existant, alien world.

But it's very easy to go way overboard with this. Many writers spend as much or more time seeking excuses to avoid writing, because writing is hard. It's an inclination perfectly skewered by Merlin Mann's parody of distraction-free writing environments (via forkbombr via DF):

While some so-called environments that are less free of distraction may display one, three, or even more lines of text—all at the same time—we understand that if you could only achieve the theoretical removal of all theoretical distractions, you would finally be able to write something. And we want ū— to help you almost do that.

...We also understand that the only way to truly remove an unproductive distraction is to replace it with potentially dozens of more highly productive distractions.

That’s why ū— provides the theoretically serious writer with an incomparably powerful range of options, preferences, and customizations that can literally be tweaked forever without writing a single word—let alone half a character.

Conlanging may be similar to this kind of trap: A language is such a complicated thing that you can fiddle with how it handles voice, aspect, and morphology forever, rather than making a decision and going with it. Which is the perfect excuse not to spend the time working on plot, character, or dialogue.

Nonetheless, I certainly do wish that many more writers would pay more attention to the quality of their linguistic writing. Coherent naming languages would be an enormous improvement over the standard practice in science fiction of presenting gobbledygook as language (as Huttese) or sprinkling words with apostrophes, Qs, and Xs in order to exoticize weak linguistic writing (as Punctuation Shaker). The recent introduction of conlanging to film is a good step in this direction, be it neo-Sindarin or Na'vi.

Or David J. Petersen's Dothraki, created for the HBO tv adaptation of novelist and executive producer George R.R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones". I wasn't impressed by the quality of the linguistic writing on the show at first; the names were mostly warmed-over, exoticized English. When the first words of Dothraki dialogue was spoken, I was amazed because the sophistication of the linguistic writing there was so much higher than the rest of the show. And so it didn't surprise me to learn that the producers had hired someone besides Martin to write the Dothraki language and dialogue.

But it helps demonstrate how different these types of writing are: solid linguistic writing, as in a good naming language, is good for a fantasist. But conlanging is a more specialized, time-consuming, (and non-remunerative) type of artistic writing.

Letters to a future age

...on the Georgia Guidestones, an American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse (Wired).

It's kind of amazing how relatively easy it is to send Rosetta Stones forward into the future, although I wonder how this monument would hold up over 10,000 years. That is a truly mind-boggling distance of time, and yet but a pittance if our species is to continue to survive in geological time.

EDIT
The third directive is "unite humanity with a living new language".

An extensible number system

Earlier this year, I pointed to John Nystrom's 1862 proposal for a tonal (hexadecimal) number and measurement system to replace that of English in lieu of the metric system, and speculated that a system similar to Nystrom's could be used to generate a flexible number system that can be extended to describe any base. I've been noodling around with the idea since then, and here's what I've come up with.

Each of the numbers from 1 to 20 has a simple word that represents its basic identity. These words are simple consonant-vowel syllables; these should be generally accessible to speakers of numerous widespread languages, and contrast in place and manner of articulation as much as possible.

A table of the numbers and their names is below. The numbers are named as follows: "Ye" is 1; "bi" is 2; "sa" is 3; "te" is 4; "fu" is 5; "go" is 6; "mi" is 7; "pa" is 8; "ze" is 9; "du" is 10; "vo" is 11; "ki" is 12; "hu" is 13; "be" is 14; "su" is 15; "to" is 16; "fi" is 17; "ga" is 18; "me" is 19; and "pu" is 20.

The consonants are pronounced roughly as in English, and the vowels are pronounced as in Spanish or Japanese. A different orthography might be appropriate for English speakers: the word for 2 rhymes with "bumblebee", and the words for both 14 and 19 rhyme with "meh", but the words for 2 and 14 have different vowels. It'd probably be almost impossible to get English speakers to pronounce everything properly, though ;)

Each of these numbers can be used as the basis for a number system. To indicate that a number is the base, append "-n" to that number's name. For example, the word "du" represents the idea of 10. Thus, "dun" represents 10 within the context of the decimal (base-10) system. Effectively, appending "-n" to "du" means "10 raised to the 1st power".

This may not seem terribly useful. But the system can regularly extrapolate a word for any position in the number system as an exponent of the base. The decimal word for 100, for example, means literally "10 raised to the 2nd power". To do this, append "-l" to the word for the base, and follow it with the word for 2 ("bi") appended by "-n". So the word for a hundred is "dulbin". The word for 1,000 is "dulsan".

Overall, the system is strict place-value notation, similar to East Asian numbers. Numbers larger than the base are said as they are written in positional notation, multiplying and adding as necessary. Within the context of decimal math, "dun ye" (literally, "ten and one") is 11. "Bi dulbin dun bi" (literally, "two hundreds, ten, and two") is 212. "Sa dulsan ye dulbin bi dun sa" (literally, "three thousands, one hundred, two tens, and three") is 3,123. Since "dun" is the word for 10 in a base-10 context, the decimal system is internally known as the "dunal system".

This system's main feature is that it can predictably extend any base up to 20. The octal, or base-8, system, is the "panal system", since "pan" is the word for 8 in a base-8 context. "Te pan fu" (literally, "four 8s and five") is decimal 37. "Mi palbin fu pan sa" (literally, "seven 64s, five 8s, and three") is decimal 491. In hexadecimal, "te tolbin" (literally, "four 256s") is decimal 1,024.

This is more limited than scientific notation, of course. But without resorting to scientific notation, in vigesimal, the system can count to more than decimal 2 octillion. In decimal, the highest it can count is one short of one sextillion.

For convenience and clarity, binary can be handled in a somewhat different manner, the short binal system. In short binal, 1 is "ye", 2 is "bin", and 4 is "tel". Subsequent numbers are created by appending "-b" to the name of the power of 2. For example, "sab" is 8 (rather than "bilsan"), and "teb" is 16 (rather than "bilten"). Thus, "teb sab tel ye" is decimal 29.

One clear drawback is the high level of rhyming. These words are more similar than the same words in English; the example of decimal 212 above adequately demonstrates how repeating the same sounds could be confusing. Of course, explicitly repeating the base might make it easier to break the number up. And the difference in scale between "dulsan", "dulgon", and "dulzen" might be more readily apparent than between "thousand", "million", and "billion", given that people often fail to easily conceptualize the difference in degree. Certainly, this is a limited system deficient for the purposes that John Nystrom envisioned (replacing the number system of a natural language); but it may be useful within the scope of its intent.

Number	Name	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Vigesimal	Short Binal
1	Ye	ye	ye	ye	ye
2	Bi	bi	bi	bi	bin
3	Sa	sa	sa	sa	bin ye
4	Te	te	te	te	tel
5	Fu	fu	fu	fu	tel ye
6	Go	go	go	go	tel bin
7	Mi	mi	mi	mi	tel bin ye
8	Pa	pa	pa	pa	sab
9	Ze	ze	ze	ze	sab ye
10	Du	ye dun	du	du	sab bin
11	Vo	ye dun ye	vo	vo	sab bin ye
12	Ki	ye dun bi	ki	ki	sab tel
13	Hu	ye dun sa	hu	hu	sab tel ye
14	Be	ye dun te	be	be	sab tel bin
15	Su	ye dun fu	su	su	sab tel bin ye
16	To	ye dun go	ye ton	to	teb
17	Fi	ye dun mi	ye ton ye	fi	teb ye
18	Ga	ye dun pa	ye ton bi	ga	teb bin
19	Me	ye dun ze	ye ton sa	me	teb bin ye
20	Pu	bi dun	ye ton te	ye pun	teb tel
21	—	bi dun ye	ye ton fu	ye pun ye	teb tel ye
22	—	bi dun bi	ye ton go	ye pun bi	teb tel bin
23	—	bi dun sa	ye ton mi	ye pun sa	teb tel bin ye
24	—	bi dun te	ye ton pa	ye pun te	teb sab
25	—	bi dun fu	ye ton ze	ye pun fu	teb sab ye
100	—	ye dulbin	go ton te	fu pun	gob fub tel
256	—	bi dulbin fu dun go	ye tolbin	ki pun to	pab
400	—	te dulbin	ye tolbin ze ton	ye pulbin	pab mib teb

Nystrom's hexadecimal numeral system, and others

Google Books is so cool. They have John Nystrom's 1862 proposal for a hexadecimal numeral system. Nystrom called it the "tonal system", because "ton" is the word for 16.

It's a pretty well-thought out system, with new numerals and base-16 addition and multiplication tables. Nystrom's ambition is pretty remarkable, and clearly a reason for the system's failure to gain traction. He proposes an entirely new system of words to replace the English number words, although perhaps there's more the replacing English's number words than he discusses. However, the number words he proposes as a system are actually pretty good. The words for numbers are generally simple CV syllables, and the words for the powers of 16 (16, 256, 4096...) are closed with a nasal consonant. The numeral system in general is similar to East Asian numbers, and the simple syllable structure prevents complex consonant clusters. "Vy" is the word for eleven, and "vytonvy" ("eleven 16s and eleven") is 187.

In general, this framework seems very elegant, and seems to point towards a framework easily extended to represent other bases. By adding a nasal consonant to the end of a CV numeral, you could establish that number as a base, as long as you developed words for the powers of that number. For example, "vyn" would be the basis for a base-11 "vynal system". There are problems with this system; Nystrom breaks the CV structure with the word for "one" and allows an initial nasal consonant, and the pronunciation he intends is somewhat unclear to me. I also suspect that the designs for the digits Nystrom chooses might be confusing (tho of course, that perception might simply reflect my inexperience with them). Adding some numbers for 17 to 20 could extend the system to cover vigesimal, allowing it to represent nearly any human numeral system.

I'm somewhat sympathetic, at least with mathematical thinking, to an weak inversion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that rather than an absence of words limiting the possibilities of human thought, the presence of words for counterintuitive concepts can be a "cognitive technology" that makes thinking in terms of those concepts easier. There's probably a much broader field of research on this than I'm aware of, but some relevant papers are "Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirahã language and cognition" and "Notation as a tool of thought".

Hex Headquarters has a system of English-inspired hexadecimal number words; Nystom's "vytonvy" (hexadecimal BB) would be "levtek eleven". Base42 is another hex system.

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"The most beautiful toy in the world"

The Lousy Linguist is amused by this rather breathless profile of Paul R. Frommer, who created the Na'vi language for the film "Avatar".

"In fact, the average second year grad student in linguistics can do it, and typically they do, just for fun," Chris notes. Indeed. But that bar is too high; anyone can "create a language." Many conlangers began when they were children, including some fairly well-known ones; it's just harder to create something that's interesting to other people, or not merely a relexified English when English is the only language you can think in; and people with exposure to more languages can have a broader view of the variety of options.

To be fair, it sounds like much of the story's enthusiasm comes from Frommer, who (it seems) had a blast with this. A U.S.O. interview gives some more detail on the language (ejective consonants, infixing, and tripartite alignment) [EDIT: See also the NYT story Skxawng!, and the NPR interview with Frommer].

There appear to be few or no consonant clusters in the names of the film's Na'vi characters, to judge by IMDB. It sounds like Frommer is interested in further developing and releasing more information on the language, which is a good sign. Marc Okrand's instructional video on how to speak Atlantean on the "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" DVD was great fun.

The comments of this LanguageHat consideration of the most interesting language points us to this lovely quote: "I was fallen in love beyond limites with languages, for, as the renowned Italian Orientalist Alessandro Bausani told, languages are 'the most beautiful toy of the world.'"

Interlingua

Interlingua is a naturalistic, constructed, international auxiliary language. As far as such languages go, Interlingua is nearly the opposite of Esperanto, and the two demonstrate the difference between naturalistic and schematic languages.

The international auxiliary languages are a quixotic group, since they are so inherently riven by contention. Esperanto is a language with a strong utopian and ideological tradition; many of the international auxiliary languages see themselves as a means to an end (world peace, human unity, hope for progress), and this trait may be most highly developed in Esperantism. L.L. Zamenhof was a proponent of religious humanism, and the idea of international auxiliary languages (or Esperanto) as a means for human unity was embraced by Bahá'í and Oomoto (大本), practiced by the founder of aikido. Some Esperantists aim for the "Final Victory", in which Esperanto has become the world's predominant second language.

Esperanto is a quirky language; though its creator, its phonology and orthography were heavily influenced by the Slavic languages, and so isn't as easily written in ASCII. It's reminiscent of the risk of conlanging, to merely relexify one's native language, although Esperanto is clearly more interesting and sophisticated than that. And it's greatest strength (its agglutinative structure, easy formation of new compounds, and reliance on few roots) can be a weakness. I've heard that while Esperanto has a word for "right" (dekstra), the word for left is the similar-sounding maldekstra ("un-right").

Interlingua takes a very different direction, attempting to resolve the differences between its control languages. It does seem in some ways like le latino moderne, if only because it has a very Romantic phonology like Spanish or Italian, and re-borrows many grammatical words and phrases directly from Latin. They're very different philosophies on language creation, which create two different, interesting conlangs.

The purpose of an international auxiliary language doesn't interest me, aside from the novelty of a conlang that it might be possible to communicate to other people with. I think I am more interested in Interlingua, even just as an artistic language, as an easy-to-learn Romance language that remains similar to, but still different from, some of the existing languages of Europe. Like the language of a Mediterranean country that exists only in the imagination. Or the fictional settings of Miyazaki Hayao's films...although Esperanto may actually be used for often for a purpose like that. "Incubus" was a very entertaining movie, in its way.

The UMI has a page to search the Interlingua-English Dictionary, as well as an Interlingua course for English-speakers, Curso de interlingua pro comenciantes anglophone. I also like the Italian version, which has readings of the text in MP3. It's also useful to know Enough Interlingua to Fake It. & it's always interesting to look at the Wikipedia of a language.

Book Review: "Star Wars: Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide," by Ben Burtt

A few weeks ago, while re-watching "Episode I" for no good reason, I turned the subtitles on and realized how much of the dialogue for that film is in Huttese. That stream of utterances emitted by the alien characters was intended to represent a consistent, coherent langurage. With a reasonably large corpus (for a language constructed for a film) and a number of well-known, easily recognizable phrases, could it be made to function as a more full-fledged conlang?

For anyone investigating Huttese as a conlang, the Star Wars Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide is an essental reference. It is a relatively small book, published after the release of "The Phantom Menace", and certainly not a complete reference. The book is divided into two parts: a phrase book by the "in-world" persona Ebenn Q3 Baobab, and a reminisce on the sound design for the original trilogy and other films by Ben Burtt.

Ben Burtt was a sound designer for Star Wars, creating special dialogue and sound effects for the original movie and the franchise from then on. He wrote for the cartoon series "Star Wars: Droids", in which the Baobab Merchant Fleet makes its most notable appearance, and made several cameos, including Baobab Merchant Fleet leader and traveler Ebenn Q3 Baobab in "The Phantom Menace". Burtt was thus significantly responsible for much of the alien dialogue in the series.

The phrase book and travel guide is light-hearted and often very funny. The travel guide section is very brief, offering only a glimpse at bars, hotels, saunas, and other facilities in Mos Eisley on (post-Rebellion) Tatooine, as well as more general advice. The phrase book offers guidance on communicating in Bocce, Huttese, Ewok, Shyriiwook, Droidspeak, Jawa, Tusken, Gungan, and Nemoidian, as well as getting a haircut in Sallustan. The longest chapter is Huttese, followed by Ewok and Bocce; the Droidspeak and Gungan chapters are mercifully short. Bocce is briefly mentioned in the first "Star Wars" movie; it is here described as a trade language created by the Baobab Merchant Fleet. This book must be its most significant corpus.

There are some oddities in the languages; "song peetch alay" is a well-known Huttese phrase meaning "it's too late". Elsewhere, it is described as a Jawaese rallying cry (following their battle cry "Utinni!") to the Jawa band to converge upon their hapless victims. It could have easily been borrowed from one language into another, of course.

Burtt's reflections on his sound design work for the franchise is very interesting, and describes the efforts to create Greedo's dialogue and other Huttese, Chewbacca's varied utterances, and R2D2's beeps and whistles, among other sounds. Greedo's dialogue, the first appearance of Huttese, was largely improvised by linguistics gradute student Larry Ward in an imitation of Quecha; Ward later provided the voice of Jabba the Hutt.

Many of the languages of the movies were roughly inspired by the phrases and sounds of existing natural languages, as Quecha influenced early Huttese. Some of the Sallustan dialogue in "Return of the Jedi" was spoken by a Tanzanian in his native Haya language, which was comprehensible to viewers of the film in East Africa.

Burtt is not always the most artful prose stylist in the latter section, but the information he relates is certainly engaging.

The book concludes with "Selected Alien Language Scenes from Star Wars", which includes transcriptions of the Huttese dialogue from "Star Wars", and Ewok dialogue and the Ewok Celebration Song from "Return of the Jedi".

From a philological perspective, there are several important sources of Huttese in the films. "Star Wars" includes Greedo's dialogue as well as dialogue by Jabba in the Special Edition. "Return of the Jedi" includes significant dialogue in Huttese at Jabba's palace. "The Phantom Menace" also includes long passages of Huttese dialogue. "The Empire Strikes Back" offers a single Huttese phrase, uttered by a droid, and "Attack of the Clones" has a single brief dialogue in Huttese between Watto and Anakin. Huttese has also appeared in the many other games, books, and media that portray the Star Wars universe.

This book offers canonical transcriptions of significant examples of Huttese speech: all of the Huttese dialogue from "Star Wars"; isolated Huttese phrases drawn from "Return of the Jedi" and "The Phantom Menace"; and the single Huttese insult in "The Empire Strikes Back".

Much of the Huttese dialogue in the prequel trilogy was written in the script (in Huttese and translation) and is available there. However, the Huttese dialogue in "Return of the Jedi" is largely lacking a canonical transcription or translation. Notable phrases such as "bo shueda" have no translation. Nevertheless, Burtt's book does fill in some of the gaps in the "Return of the Jedi" corpus.

Clearly, Huttese is a language created to have a certain sound, without attention to lexical or grammatical consistency. Such inconsistency may make sense for a creole or patois cobbled together from dozens of alien languages and spoken by villainous scum across the galaxy. Assembling a grammar, or even a dictionary, of the language would be...challenging. But we can know and use at least some of its evocative sayings.

The Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide is a fun book for people interested in fictional languages, the speech of Star Wars, or just curious about how Chewbacca's dialogue was made. For those more specifically interested in Huttese linguistics, it is essential, and a source for online resources such as the Huttese language page on Wookiepedia and the Complete Wermo's Guide to Huttese (and other Star Wars languages).

Mithlond on $5 a Day: A Brief Phraseblog of Sindarin

Mithlond, the Grey Havens, was most probably the last settlement of grey elves to remain in Middle-Earth in the Fourth Age of Tolkien's legendarium, for Círdan the Shipwright was to remain there until the last ship sailed west. It seems a fitting place to travel with a handy little phraseblog for Sindarin.

This post draws from the Sindarin corpus and Elvish (&c) dialog from the LotR movies, as well as one Sindarin phrasebook or another. There is consequently much neo-Eldarin: "Navaer", for example, appears to be a neologism derived from the attested Quenya "Namárië".

I've tried to include some useful phrases like "Death to the din-horde!", while avoiding lightning-stuck postillions.

English	Sindarin
Welcome, Well met/	Mae govannen.
Farewell.	Navaer.
Good hunting.	Farad vaer.
Thank you.	Hannon le.
Well done.	Mae carnen.
I am ___	Im ___
Can you speak Elvish?	Pelil peded edhellen?
I don’t understand.	Ú-chenion
Halt!	Daro!
Sit down.	Havo dad.
Run swiftly!	Noro lim!
Silence!	Dîn!
Look out!	Tiro!
Flee!	Drego!
Death to the din-horde!	Gurth an Glamhoth!
Vengeance comes.	Tôl acharn.
How are you?	Manen le?
I’m well.	Im maer.
I am not well.	Im úvaer.
Heal me.	Nesto nin.
Release me.	Leithio nin.
Save me.	Edraith enni.
Forgive me.	Goheno nin.
Sleep well.	Losto vae.

If I had to nominate a lorem ipsum text, I'd use the first Sindarin phrase I could pick out from the movie: "Im Arwen. Telin le thaed. Lasto beth nîn, tolo dan nan galad". Or otherwise, the motto of the movie: "I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen, han mathon ne chae a han noston ned 'wilith."

Carl F. Hostetter notes in "Elvish as She Is Spoke" that Tolkien wrote in a letter to his son Christopher that “Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an 'allegory'. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen sila lumenn' omentielmo, and that the phrase long antedated the book." That phrase is Quenya for "A star shines on the hour of our meeting".

A Lapine Phrasepost

Lapine is a constructed language used by Richard Adams in his 1972 novel Watership Down. It's a lovely conlang, with a music laden with many fricative and liquid consonants, but few plosives. Although the book only lists a few dozen words, fans, furries, and scholars have extended the language into several forms: Frithaes! An Introduction to Colloquial Lapine, and Patrick Jemmer's Lapine.

Here are some Lapine words. North American rabbits build nests like hares, rather than warrens like European rabbits.

naylte - rabbit
nayilf - hare
rooli - kitten
zyzay - sleepy
i - you
a - I
nahl - no

Here are some example phrases in Lapine. The "Four Essential Travel Phrases" or "I Can Eat Glass..." translations may be difficult, as rabbit warrens rarely have either facilities for tippling, or broken windows.

Layi zyzay? (Are you sleepy?)
Layi u naylte zyzay? (Are you the sleepy rabbit?)
Nahl, laya nahl naylte. (No, I am no rabbit.)
Layi elil? (Are you an enemy?)
Nahl, Laya nahl elil. (No, I am no enemy.)