Things I'm learning about language.
Apr. 27th, 2010 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasThere exists a company called "The Teaching Company" which sells DVDs and CDs of lecture series. Each lecture is half an hour; the series are typically 24 lectures. Some of the libraries Lis has access to have some of them, and they also typically sell each set for a reasonable price. List price is, like, three hundred dollars per lecture, but they every month put a selection of them on sale for 90% off, so you actually buy them for $30.
Or get them out of the library.
Right now, I'm watching a DVD series on "The Human Body: How We Fail, How We Heal", which I watch while I fold laundry. I've just finished five lectures on the Inflammation Response -- swelling, macrophages, and all that stuff. It's nifty.
And, while we're in the car, Lis and I are listening to a series of lectures on "The Story of Human Language", by John McWhorter. Some of you may know his name from various political things; he's liberal in ways that make conservatives hate him, and conservative in ways that make liberals hate him. He's also a brilliant linguist, and wonderful lecturer.
Anyway, I'm learning so much cool stuff about language.
Has anybody ever played with a alt-history, science fiction, or fantasy conlang based on "linguistic trainwreck"? That's when two unrelated languages end up smashing into each other and creating a bastard language. English is, of course, an example of this, but there are lots of other ones. And it could be fun to try to create two distinct conlangs, and then age them, and then smash them into each other.
Over time, languages tend to simplify in certain ways, and complexify in others, so creating a conlang and then aging it could be fun.
Another fun fact: the more widespread a language is, the simpler it is. If a language is spoken by just a few people, isolated from other communities, they will typically have a language that preserves most of its complexity over time, and accretes more, so you'll end up with a nightmare of a language, with case endings, tones, difficult phonemes, and just other random complex things. Lots of 'em.
But if a language is used over a wide area, by many cultures, and is often learned as a second language by adults, the difficult bits will drop off. People will learn to speak it only enough to get by, ignoring the difficult bits, and, over time, that will become the standard language -- the difficult bits will drop away.
Mandarin Chinese, for instance, is the simplest of the Sino-Tibetan languages. It has only four tones, while other languages in the family have from six to nine, or even more, depending how you count. It's got some complex features, but not as many as other languages in the family. And that's because it was the Imperial language. It was the language which everybody in the Empire learned in order to deal with the government. But they all spoke their own languages at home. So everybody learned enough Mandarin to get by in court and in other official, government things -- and, over time, "enough to get by" became the de facto standard, and eventually, the recognized standard.
One of the most extreme examples is in Indionesia. Indionesia has something like 350 languages in it, in several language families. They have one official language that everyone speaks, Bahasa Indonesia. And it's a pretty darned simple language.
The thing is -- informally, there's an even SIMPLER version based on Malay, which basically takes away almost everything in a language, except the absolute basics. Plurals? Gone -- it uses reduplication. You want to say "chairs"? You say "chair-chair". Tenses? Gone. If it's important, you just say when it was. "Yesterday, I go to store." "Tomorrow, I go to store." Otherwise, context takes care of it. Articles (the/a/an)? Nope, don't need 'em. The verb "to be"? Nope -- not necessary. Irregular nouns or verbs? Nope -- everything is regular. Word order? Nope. Throw the words in whereever you feel like it -- it'll all sort out somehow. With no case endings and no word order, functions within a sentence get . . . unclear.
Apparently, "chicken eat" could mean, "The chicken is eating," "the chicken that is eating", "Eat the chicken", "feed the chicken", "the chicken is feeding someone". . . basically, anything that involves a chicken and eating. Context covers everything.
The people who speak it don't even really think of it as a language -- they think of it as just a sloppy form of Malay that they're speaking, just because they're being lazy. They'll switch to another language if they're dealing with more complex things.
But the thing is -- it works. Despite its simplicity, it's a fully-functioning language. And if two people only have that language in common, they can communicate.
Or get them out of the library.
Right now, I'm watching a DVD series on "The Human Body: How We Fail, How We Heal", which I watch while I fold laundry. I've just finished five lectures on the Inflammation Response -- swelling, macrophages, and all that stuff. It's nifty.
And, while we're in the car, Lis and I are listening to a series of lectures on "The Story of Human Language", by John McWhorter. Some of you may know his name from various political things; he's liberal in ways that make conservatives hate him, and conservative in ways that make liberals hate him. He's also a brilliant linguist, and wonderful lecturer.
Anyway, I'm learning so much cool stuff about language.
Has anybody ever played with a alt-history, science fiction, or fantasy conlang based on "linguistic trainwreck"? That's when two unrelated languages end up smashing into each other and creating a bastard language. English is, of course, an example of this, but there are lots of other ones. And it could be fun to try to create two distinct conlangs, and then age them, and then smash them into each other.
Over time, languages tend to simplify in certain ways, and complexify in others, so creating a conlang and then aging it could be fun.
Another fun fact: the more widespread a language is, the simpler it is. If a language is spoken by just a few people, isolated from other communities, they will typically have a language that preserves most of its complexity over time, and accretes more, so you'll end up with a nightmare of a language, with case endings, tones, difficult phonemes, and just other random complex things. Lots of 'em.
But if a language is used over a wide area, by many cultures, and is often learned as a second language by adults, the difficult bits will drop off. People will learn to speak it only enough to get by, ignoring the difficult bits, and, over time, that will become the standard language -- the difficult bits will drop away.
Mandarin Chinese, for instance, is the simplest of the Sino-Tibetan languages. It has only four tones, while other languages in the family have from six to nine, or even more, depending how you count. It's got some complex features, but not as many as other languages in the family. And that's because it was the Imperial language. It was the language which everybody in the Empire learned in order to deal with the government. But they all spoke their own languages at home. So everybody learned enough Mandarin to get by in court and in other official, government things -- and, over time, "enough to get by" became the de facto standard, and eventually, the recognized standard.
One of the most extreme examples is in Indionesia. Indionesia has something like 350 languages in it, in several language families. They have one official language that everyone speaks, Bahasa Indonesia. And it's a pretty darned simple language.
The thing is -- informally, there's an even SIMPLER version based on Malay, which basically takes away almost everything in a language, except the absolute basics. Plurals? Gone -- it uses reduplication. You want to say "chairs"? You say "chair-chair". Tenses? Gone. If it's important, you just say when it was. "Yesterday, I go to store." "Tomorrow, I go to store." Otherwise, context takes care of it. Articles (the/a/an)? Nope, don't need 'em. The verb "to be"? Nope -- not necessary. Irregular nouns or verbs? Nope -- everything is regular. Word order? Nope. Throw the words in whereever you feel like it -- it'll all sort out somehow. With no case endings and no word order, functions within a sentence get . . . unclear.
Apparently, "chicken eat" could mean, "The chicken is eating," "the chicken that is eating", "Eat the chicken", "feed the chicken", "the chicken is feeding someone". . . basically, anything that involves a chicken and eating. Context covers everything.
The people who speak it don't even really think of it as a language -- they think of it as just a sloppy form of Malay that they're speaking, just because they're being lazy. They'll switch to another language if they're dealing with more complex things.
But the thing is -- it works. Despite its simplicity, it's a fully-functioning language. And if two people only have that language in common, they can communicate.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 08:31 am (UTC)Tok Pisin gets dismissed as broken English, but it is a legitimate language and very useful in Papua New Guinea with its linguistic diversity. People don't speak their local language with outsiders because of taboos, so it's the only unifying method for such a tribal country. It is somewhat understandable to a speaker of standard English, but the grammar is significantly reduced. For example, possessives are just indicated with the word "bilong" so that, say, "your name" becomes "nem bilong yu."
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 11:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 01:12 pm (UTC)Admittedly, my lack of understanding may be because my Swahili vocabulary is limited to basic greetings, ordering beer, and naming a few types of African animals.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 02:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 06:01 pm (UTC)Hmm. Klingon and Laadan for maximum cultural conflict and interesting syncretism. A couple of different Tolkien languages for something appropriate in-world. There's an argument to be made for modern Hebrew as primarily a constructed language, but I think most of the languages it's crashed into have been non-constructed. The Middle Earth equivalent of Yiddish would be kind of awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 07:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 07:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-28 07:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-30 11:45 am (UTC)Looking forward to your next report.