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My favorite fictional language
Jul. 23rd, 2012 09:48 pmSure, some people love Klingon, for its "even more German than German" tone, or Elvish for its elegance, or some of the other languages J. R. R. Tolkien created by banging his original languages together and running the resultant creoles through thousands of years of linguistic modification. Many people love Láadan for its required use of evidentials, and its work in deconstruction linguistic constructions of gender. And there are plenty of other languages created for fiction that do cool things, and are just emotionally resonant with people -- either because the language itself is cool and has cool features, or because it's associated with a beloved work, or both.
My favorite? The rabbits' language in WATERSHIP DOWN. Sure, Richard Adams isn't much of a linguist -- he never put thought into syntax and grammar and how languages actually WORK, the way, say, Suzette Haden Elgin, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Marc Okrand did. Lapine is pretty much just some vocabulary smooshed together.
But the thing is, "hrair" and "tharn" are words that I actually USE. Like "grok", "hrair" and "tharn" express useful concepts that were not previously so concisely and simply expressible in English.
In case you're not familiar with them, "tharn" means "glazed and frozen in fear and stress -- trapped and locked down in the 'freeze' reaction of 'fight/flight/freeze'." And "hrair" is "a number more than what's easily and obviously countable -- approximately, 'a lot', or, maybe, 'five'."
The argument has been made that hrair >= 5 for rabbits, but for humans, it might be a different number, maybe hrair >= 9.
The point is, if you're facing hrair attackers, you've got NO chance to fight them off; if you've got hrair options, there are too many choices to really deal with (which could make you go tharn).
Indeed, it could be pointed out that Jay-Z didn't actually have 99 problems: if you count them up in the song, he actually had hrair problems.
Also, of course, the reason why everybody loves lapine -- one of the best quotes in all of literature: "Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!"
My favorite? The rabbits' language in WATERSHIP DOWN. Sure, Richard Adams isn't much of a linguist -- he never put thought into syntax and grammar and how languages actually WORK, the way, say, Suzette Haden Elgin, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Marc Okrand did. Lapine is pretty much just some vocabulary smooshed together.
But the thing is, "hrair" and "tharn" are words that I actually USE. Like "grok", "hrair" and "tharn" express useful concepts that were not previously so concisely and simply expressible in English.
In case you're not familiar with them, "tharn" means "glazed and frozen in fear and stress -- trapped and locked down in the 'freeze' reaction of 'fight/flight/freeze'." And "hrair" is "a number more than what's easily and obviously countable -- approximately, 'a lot', or, maybe, 'five'."
The argument has been made that hrair >= 5 for rabbits, but for humans, it might be a different number, maybe hrair >= 9.
The point is, if you're facing hrair attackers, you've got NO chance to fight them off; if you've got hrair options, there are too many choices to really deal with (which could make you go tharn).
Indeed, it could be pointed out that Jay-Z didn't actually have 99 problems: if you count them up in the song, he actually had hrair problems.
Also, of course, the reason why everybody loves lapine -- one of the best quotes in all of literature: "Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!"