I'd like to open this post with a thank you to those who have replied to my rather vague and cryptic questions of the last post. I'm happy to hear that this workshop has helped in some respects - but while I'm a staunch supporter of consciousness-raising, I am hoping I can offer a few concrete suggestions on the projects you all have described to me. Since this is the first workshop I've offered on the topic of language design, I've been feeling my way a little, and I'm grateful for your patience.
Here is where I have arrived in my thoughts on the various projects, and my suggestions for what you might submit to me:
pyraxis: I'm happy to see you thinking through the phonology of rsakki and systematizing the names. I appreciate you posting the excerpt, also. I wonder if you could show me a short (up to 250 words) excerpt which demonstrates the rsakki interacting with non-rsakki, perhaps showing some of the ways you indicate language contrasts.
wordjinn: I'm happy to see you thinking through how to express the various nuances of the djinni speech. Since I was most intrigued by the idea of sung vs. spoken and spoken vs. telepathically communicated, I'd like to see a short (up to 250 words) sample conversation which involves some of these distinctions - hopefully also one that hints at the main conflicts of your story.
K: I'm happy to see you thinking about the relation of language and culture to your story on so many different levels. I was very intrigued by the idea of the contrast between languages that Kei has to bridge, so if you could I'd like you to try making a list of phrases that might be used for social purposes among the Eyans - trying of course to let the content of these phrases indicate people's attitudes toward various types (psychic and non-psychic) of communication. Here's an idea that might start you off: see if you can construct a compliment or two, something you'd say in admiration of someone else's restraint, for example. Or perhaps an insult that deals with insincerity of emotional projection.
David: I'm happy to see you attempting a project so thoroughly permeated by language. There are so many things I could ask about that I find it a bit daunting, but I think I'd most appreciate it if you could give me a rough timeline of language development among the arcati. Points that I'd really like to see you address would be:
1. Why language use evolved among the arcati before the inundation (why did they need to speak? Why was it adaptively successful to communicate using the auditory or visual channel that they do?
2. What form written language took before the inundation
3. From the point of view of a genetic engineer, how they planned to deal with the problem of living and communicating underwater
4. From the point of view of a genetic engineer, how they justified a complete abandonment of air-breathing capability (or not).
5. What kind of attempts were made to preserve written information through the inundation (waterproof floating libraries :-) ?)
Catreona: I'm really happy that you've found the workshop to be illuminating. I feel for you in the story dilemma that you're facing - but I feel strongly that it's important to face such issues and work through them. While your story may emerge different, you may find that it becomes stronger and more compelling for you as well as others. I don't want to put you under pressure for a final product here, because after all this is all about making the story better. If you feel you would be better served by explaining the premise problem you're facing, then feel free to do so. I'll leave it up to you - but you should know this: none of the effort spent on a story is ever wasted. I have enormous quantities of text that I've created that no one will ever see, but all those words have served to deepen my understanding of created worlds and writing, and sometimes I'll find phrases or concepts I hated to discard showing up in unexpected places in my newer work.
Thanks, everyone. I'd like to see replies from all of you by the end of Wednesday if that's not too much of an imposition. In the meantime I'll try to compose some posts that have been inspired by our discussions in this workshop.
More soon...
Friday, February 20, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Workshop: Where to go next
I've really been enjoying the discussions about all of your stories and languages. I also really appreciate all the effort you've put in to quick replies and extensive explanations; these have helped me to understand what's going on, and I hope they've enabled me to be of some use to your projects.
My last workshop (worldbuilding) began and ended with a writing sample. Because this workshop began with a description rather than an excerpt, I've been wondering how best to bring it to a meaningful close. What I'd like to do is this: first, ask you if there are any areas of your project that need desperately to be addressed but which I either haven't touched on or haven't understood; second, ask you to give me something that you feel uses and demonstrates something you've benefited from in our discussion.
So, first off, consider yourselves asked. I'd appreciate it if you could comment on this blog post with any last-round questions you might have.
Once I've had a chance to address those concerns, I'm going to ask you to push yourself and do a little experiment. What this is will depend on where you think the workshop has been of most benefit, and we can discuss what you would like it to be. It could be to create a timeline of language development. Or it could be to describe a section of your plot showing how language will take on a new influence. Or it could be to describe culture and world details and how you think they will be relevant to either plot or character. Or if you're working on dialogue and voice, it could be to write an experimental conversation (250 words or so) between two characters where you can dig into the questions you've addressed.
I'll then comment on (and invite comments on) those experimental results and we'll bring the workshop to a close.
I look forward to hearing from you...
My last workshop (worldbuilding) began and ended with a writing sample. Because this workshop began with a description rather than an excerpt, I've been wondering how best to bring it to a meaningful close. What I'd like to do is this: first, ask you if there are any areas of your project that need desperately to be addressed but which I either haven't touched on or haven't understood; second, ask you to give me something that you feel uses and demonstrates something you've benefited from in our discussion.
So, first off, consider yourselves asked. I'd appreciate it if you could comment on this blog post with any last-round questions you might have.
Once I've had a chance to address those concerns, I'm going to ask you to push yourself and do a little experiment. What this is will depend on where you think the workshop has been of most benefit, and we can discuss what you would like it to be. It could be to create a timeline of language development. Or it could be to describe a section of your plot showing how language will take on a new influence. Or it could be to describe culture and world details and how you think they will be relevant to either plot or character. Or if you're working on dialogue and voice, it could be to write an experimental conversation (250 words or so) between two characters where you can dig into the questions you've addressed.
I'll then comment on (and invite comments on) those experimental results and we'll bring the workshop to a close.
I look forward to hearing from you...
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Workshop: Rendering a Created Language in English
I thought I'd pay attention today to an issue I sometimes call "the translation problem," which effectively is the issue of rendering a created language in English. After all, no matter how much work you put into creating a language, a culture, etc. the language that carries the story will be English. So in some manner, you have to find a way to give the flavor of your created language to your English.
This issue covers two of the items from my last post: dialogue, and voice. This is because both of them have directly to do with the content of the language you put down on the paper.
Let me start with a couple of examples from my own work.
The alien dialogue in "Let the Word Take Me" (Analog July/August 2008) was based on the principle that the Gariniki would speak only in oblique references to a set of canonical sacred stories. Some of you may be familiar with this language concept, which I first encountered in Star Trek: The Next Generation's fascinating episode entitled "Darmok."
What I did for the dialogue was design references without actually writing the underlying stories themselves. Examples include "Kridia's head-scales shone," "Rosbas drew strength from the sedi," "In the desert Herremi could not see her face." These were deliberately intended to be opaque. The linguist's son, David Linden, could understand most of them because he'd worked out correspondences between context and utterance along with his father for several years. So I could use his understanding to help the reader's understanding - of the dialogue.
The voice of Allayo's point of view was a different matter. Because culturally she knew of contexts in which the language was used productively (normally), she could think to herself in the language without using the oblique style - a good thing, or I wouldn't have been able to use her point of view at all. But if I tried to make her voice like the English I speak, that would not have worked either. So I looked for ways that her attitude toward language and the world could show up in the way that her voice came across. Since she considered all language sacred, I aimed for a tone that would suggest reverence - using words and meter (stress patterns) that would hint at Biblical verse or incantation. This also meant avoiding slang and contracted forms like "don't" "I'm" etc.
The language of the Aurrel in my forthcoming story, "Cold Words," depends on a distinction between high-status and low-status talk. The high-status talk I designed as the dialect spoken by a tundra-dwelling species of Aurrel, who used talk for coordination of their pack hunts. Thus I decided that they would begin by getting one another's attention on the run with an initial word that both announced the intent to speak and indicated the functional content of what would follow. The low-status dialect didn't use these same initial words, but had some of the same functional things - like submitting, or dominating, or asking for attention - simply mixed into the general talk.
This may all sound pretty complicated. Well in fact, seeing it done is much easier than trying to explain it. However, I did have a tought time at first making it readable in English. I had to make two attempts! Thank goodness for my critique group who basically said "Are you nuts?" and made me try again. However, the end result was both readable and distinctive once I introduced it properly early in the story. An example of the contrast between dialects might be as follows (where the word "belly" refers to a canine apology):
Low status:
"I belly to you, but I don't think so."
High status:
"Bel-belly: I don't think so."
Again, this is the dialogue. I could NOT do this comprehensibly in the character voice. The character voice was made distinctive in part by using first person present tense, in part by completely avoiding the present progressive tense "am __ing," and in part by keeping intense focus on the kinds of world metaphors that my character used. These metaphors were related to dominant and submissive relationships, hunting, animal behavior, etc. When possible I also tried to use a loping meter suggestive of running on the hunt.
These are my own examples, so they are extreme - but I'm hoping you can get some ideas from them. One of the things I tend not to do is use altered spelling to suggest pronunciation. However, this can be done well. Mike Flynn, author of The January Dancer, does it beautifully in his work. He not only alters spellings systematically, but backs them up with surrounding description that connects the spelling changes to the local dialects he is creating.
Before I finish this entry, I'll take a brief look at two of the language models in this workshop that might benefit most from a deliberate language-to-English representation strategy. One is wordjinn's partial psychic dialogue, and the other is David's underwater dialogue (pyraxis may also find this useful, but I don't know enough about rsakki at the moment).
In order to have two people speak to each other, you need to have linguistic content. That linguistic content is going to be most easily expressed in English words. So take the meaning of what one entity says to another, put it in words, and use that for the verbal dialogue. To give it a unique flavor, concentrate on giving unique color to the meanings expressed. So far you will be working free of obligation as to the precise sounds involved in the exchange.
Things like slang and contractions are responses to social and speaking conditions, and as such, they draw attention to the social and speaking conditions surrounding the dialogue in question. If your social context does not match that of a particular slang term, avoid it. Contractions are less distracting, but still, watch out for them if you're trying to create a formal impression with the communication.
Any created word that you insert into your interaction will instantly imply sounds in the pronunciation of the alien language. If that language is never ever pronounced in an air medium, the type of sounds that can be transmitted goes way down (indeed, most or all of our consonants would have no hope of being transmitted under those circumstances; this might be worth researching in more detail). If it is sometimes pronounced in an air medium, you can get away with saying that the word is not fully pronounced in that context, but implied, and the full word would be evoked in the speaker or hearer's mind.
If you have crucial components of communication that are not delivered verbally, then you need to decide what they are and how exactly they are transmitted. While color and scent languages could evolve to a level of sophistication, I have a hard time believing that they could be easily developed for the conversion of verbal material, which is why I'm advocating sign language for David. Sign languages already exist, and the primary time burden would be in learning the amount of material that these people wanted to preserve. It would be far easier to write with indelible ink on stone or another water-durable material to preserve records than to marshall a large population into memorizing cultural content in a newly learned language. Color or scent might be more effective for conveying mood, which I think would fit well with the discussion to this point. Wordjinn: with telepathy, you can presumably send words if you want, and thus those would have a soundlike representation. The harder trick is interweaving it with dialogue without ending up with something that reads like a script, because people will generally find this more difficult to follow. Also you'll probably want to have it represent the content, instead of having it look like an explanation of the content. So you might want to give some thought to how the djinn talk about their own telepathy. What do they call it? How do they refer to the keys, and what is the content of the keys? Etc. In our language, we have words that we use for opening communication, identifying ourselves, and asking permission for various things; I think these could be relatively easily adapted in a unique way to give the impression of the psychic content you're looking for. These are complex messages, and thus I think words are the best communicators for such content, but I think you can use words to gesture toward what is being expressed. Think of it almost as an English translation, and you'll find the content will become much easier to handle.
I hope this helps...
This issue covers two of the items from my last post: dialogue, and voice. This is because both of them have directly to do with the content of the language you put down on the paper.
Let me start with a couple of examples from my own work.
The alien dialogue in "Let the Word Take Me" (Analog July/August 2008) was based on the principle that the Gariniki would speak only in oblique references to a set of canonical sacred stories. Some of you may be familiar with this language concept, which I first encountered in Star Trek: The Next Generation's fascinating episode entitled "Darmok."
What I did for the dialogue was design references without actually writing the underlying stories themselves. Examples include "Kridia's head-scales shone," "Rosbas drew strength from the sedi," "In the desert Herremi could not see her face." These were deliberately intended to be opaque. The linguist's son, David Linden, could understand most of them because he'd worked out correspondences between context and utterance along with his father for several years. So I could use his understanding to help the reader's understanding - of the dialogue.
The voice of Allayo's point of view was a different matter. Because culturally she knew of contexts in which the language was used productively (normally), she could think to herself in the language without using the oblique style - a good thing, or I wouldn't have been able to use her point of view at all. But if I tried to make her voice like the English I speak, that would not have worked either. So I looked for ways that her attitude toward language and the world could show up in the way that her voice came across. Since she considered all language sacred, I aimed for a tone that would suggest reverence - using words and meter (stress patterns) that would hint at Biblical verse or incantation. This also meant avoiding slang and contracted forms like "don't" "I'm" etc.
The language of the Aurrel in my forthcoming story, "Cold Words," depends on a distinction between high-status and low-status talk. The high-status talk I designed as the dialect spoken by a tundra-dwelling species of Aurrel, who used talk for coordination of their pack hunts. Thus I decided that they would begin by getting one another's attention on the run with an initial word that both announced the intent to speak and indicated the functional content of what would follow. The low-status dialect didn't use these same initial words, but had some of the same functional things - like submitting, or dominating, or asking for attention - simply mixed into the general talk.
This may all sound pretty complicated. Well in fact, seeing it done is much easier than trying to explain it. However, I did have a tought time at first making it readable in English. I had to make two attempts! Thank goodness for my critique group who basically said "Are you nuts?" and made me try again. However, the end result was both readable and distinctive once I introduced it properly early in the story. An example of the contrast between dialects might be as follows (where the word "belly" refers to a canine apology):
Low status:
"I belly to you, but I don't think so."
High status:
"Bel-belly: I don't think so."
Again, this is the dialogue. I could NOT do this comprehensibly in the character voice. The character voice was made distinctive in part by using first person present tense, in part by completely avoiding the present progressive tense "am __ing," and in part by keeping intense focus on the kinds of world metaphors that my character used. These metaphors were related to dominant and submissive relationships, hunting, animal behavior, etc. When possible I also tried to use a loping meter suggestive of running on the hunt.
These are my own examples, so they are extreme - but I'm hoping you can get some ideas from them. One of the things I tend not to do is use altered spelling to suggest pronunciation. However, this can be done well. Mike Flynn, author of The January Dancer, does it beautifully in his work. He not only alters spellings systematically, but backs them up with surrounding description that connects the spelling changes to the local dialects he is creating.
Before I finish this entry, I'll take a brief look at two of the language models in this workshop that might benefit most from a deliberate language-to-English representation strategy. One is wordjinn's partial psychic dialogue, and the other is David's underwater dialogue (pyraxis may also find this useful, but I don't know enough about rsakki at the moment).
In order to have two people speak to each other, you need to have linguistic content. That linguistic content is going to be most easily expressed in English words. So take the meaning of what one entity says to another, put it in words, and use that for the verbal dialogue. To give it a unique flavor, concentrate on giving unique color to the meanings expressed. So far you will be working free of obligation as to the precise sounds involved in the exchange.
Things like slang and contractions are responses to social and speaking conditions, and as such, they draw attention to the social and speaking conditions surrounding the dialogue in question. If your social context does not match that of a particular slang term, avoid it. Contractions are less distracting, but still, watch out for them if you're trying to create a formal impression with the communication.
Any created word that you insert into your interaction will instantly imply sounds in the pronunciation of the alien language. If that language is never ever pronounced in an air medium, the type of sounds that can be transmitted goes way down (indeed, most or all of our consonants would have no hope of being transmitted under those circumstances; this might be worth researching in more detail). If it is sometimes pronounced in an air medium, you can get away with saying that the word is not fully pronounced in that context, but implied, and the full word would be evoked in the speaker or hearer's mind.
If you have crucial components of communication that are not delivered verbally, then you need to decide what they are and how exactly they are transmitted. While color and scent languages could evolve to a level of sophistication, I have a hard time believing that they could be easily developed for the conversion of verbal material, which is why I'm advocating sign language for David. Sign languages already exist, and the primary time burden would be in learning the amount of material that these people wanted to preserve. It would be far easier to write with indelible ink on stone or another water-durable material to preserve records than to marshall a large population into memorizing cultural content in a newly learned language. Color or scent might be more effective for conveying mood, which I think would fit well with the discussion to this point. Wordjinn: with telepathy, you can presumably send words if you want, and thus those would have a soundlike representation. The harder trick is interweaving it with dialogue without ending up with something that reads like a script, because people will generally find this more difficult to follow. Also you'll probably want to have it represent the content, instead of having it look like an explanation of the content. So you might want to give some thought to how the djinn talk about their own telepathy. What do they call it? How do they refer to the keys, and what is the content of the keys? Etc. In our language, we have words that we use for opening communication, identifying ourselves, and asking permission for various things; I think these could be relatively easily adapted in a unique way to give the impression of the psychic content you're looking for. These are complex messages, and thus I think words are the best communicators for such content, but I think you can use words to gesture toward what is being expressed. Think of it almost as an English translation, and you'll find the content will become much easier to handle.
I hope this helps...
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