nostalgicI'm one of the people who has kept that language alive and in use. I'm not fluent -- few people are -- but I own the dictionary/grammar and I taught a class on it in the Grey School of Wizardry. That included me adding a few suggested augmentations to make the language more useful to spellcasting, because if you look at the grammar, you can see how well it lends itself to certain locking and unlocking features.
I also use certain words whenever I need them. Radíidin is certainly one of them, but so is ranem (nonpearl: an ugly thing such as a festering hatred to which one pays attention). I use the emotion grids to explain why people feel the way they do, based on reason, blame, and futility; or the quality of reason behind it.
There is so much in this language that speaks to things that people are just now beginning to discuss in public, in large numbers, rather than a handful of us canaries saying, "Hey, y'all, might could be you'd want to pay attention to this fire over here before it spreads." Not just vocabulary, but grammar. Grace and efficiency and power.
In a word, super-gizomology, and Suzette would dislike me saying that because she was a very unassuming person who avoided being made much of. Sorry, old friend, I call 'em like I see 'em. Like Nikola Tesla, you built something ahead of its time, and it's going to take a while for the rest of the world to figure out how it even turns on. But linguistic super-gizmology it is, because it's full of fresh encodings, and those are rare as hen's teeth. <3
January 16 2019, 12:56:00 UTC 2 years ago
It's a pity she didn't get to write more of both!
The one time I had a chance to teach an English Comp. class I had my class keep a writing journal for daily writing practice of at least one paragraph each day.
Several of the entries that went into that journal were based on her book The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense.
I figured most of the class would need it once they entered employment.
I actually saw this book for sale at the local Goodwill last week--for the first time ever.
(Really good books seldom are seen at the Goodwill.)
:^)
January 16 2019, 16:27:05 UTC 2 years ago
January 16 2019, 17:27:37 UTC 2 years ago
I nag our local library to do a lot of inter-library loans for me rather than buy new books.
:^|
January 16 2019, 17:39:41 UTC 2 years ago
The first time I watched a dropped book (a cheap paperback, NOT a keeper) slide along an icy gutter and down the drain, I had no idea why librarians seemed so skeptical when I reported it lost & paid for it!
January 16 2019, 19:22:34 UTC 2 years ago
"Many didn't because they were books people tended to latch on to..."
And THAT is something I've never understood! People don't latch onto books they don't want to read and if people don't want to read a certain book, why have it hanging around collecting dust in the library???
Makes no sense whatsoever.
:^)
January 16 2019, 17:43:20 UTC 2 years ago
January 16 2019, 20:48:31 UTC 2 years ago
"They lacked ways to express emotional information conveniently, so that -- especially in English -- much of that information had to be carried by body language and was almost entirely missing from written language."
Yes. Because body language is the 'secret language' that already exists for things that are secret/private, such as emotional information, and it's missing from written language because once something is written down, it's not going to reliably remain either secret or plausibly deniable. Láadan would be more useful if it was in barely-perceptible signs rather than spoken words, like the house language of House Atreides.
"Meanwhile, the Klingon language thrives -- from which you are free to draw your own conclusions."
Awell, y'know, until Peter Jackson's movies came out, nobody but us old-school Tolkien geeks spoke Sindarin; then practically overnight it was All The Rage and everyone wanted to learn it. Maybe if the Native Tongue trilogy was made into movies - good movies, or at least not lousy ones - Láadan would enjoy a similar surge of popularity.
Thoughts
January 16 2019, 22:20:41 UTC 2 years ago
It's just a more visual representation of what happens when you overload the nervous system. At normal human strength, people don't usually "turn inside out" although it is possible to break bone -- a risk bodybuilders have. It's totally possible to jam a nervous system fatally. More implausible for me was that it happened with infants. For fucksake, we have interspecies imprinting all over the place here. We have dog-imprinted humans. Unless you're trying to imprint non-oxygen-breathers, don't worry about it, they'll be fine.
>>Láadan has some useful words, but so has every conlang; the problem is that they're only useful when speaking to others who've read the same books. <<
Or anyone you explain it to. Any time a conversation is bogged down by missing words, I drop in whatever I know that fits or make new ones on the spot. A lot of people have quickly picked up bits from foreign langauges from me, and it doesn't matter to them whether it's ranem or picante.
>>Yes. Because body language is the 'secret language' that already exists for things that are secret/private, such as emotional information, and it's missing from written language because once something is written down, it's not going to reliably remain either secret or plausibly deniable. Láadan would be more useful if it was in barely-perceptible signs rather than spoken words, like the house language of House Atreides.<<
Depends on the culture and the context. Láadan would make a terrible business language but a fantastic home language.
>>Awell, y'know, until Peter Jackson's movies came out, nobody but us old-school Tolkien geeks spoke Sindarin; then practically overnight it was All The Rage and everyone wanted to learn it. <<
LOL yes. I liked Frodo before liking Frodo was "cool." I have linguistic books on Tolkien's languages brought back by a friend who visited England.
Re: Thoughts
January 18 2019, 02:41:05 UTC 2 years ago Edited: January 18 2019, 02:46:50 UTC
Babies' bones are extremely flexible, though, and if the researcher knew the babies would probably be having convulsions, it would only make sense for them to be swaddled, to minimize the potential damage. Convulsions are often accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea, and babies tend to the 'explosive' type of both, even when they're not really sick, but still... "inside out"? Like the pig-lizard in Galaxy Quest? It just doesn't fly for me.
"More implausible for me was that it happened with infants."
Exactly. What are the aliens supposed to be doing to the babies, to overload their plastic little brains so fatally? Emitting some kind of hyper-sonic frequency or electromagnetic radiation? But if that were so, it would be easy to detect, and probably not that hard to screen out. As I say, suspension of disbelief not found.
"Or anyone you explain it to. Any time a conversation is bogged down by missing words, I drop in whatever I know that fits or make new ones on the spot."
That works in circles where people tend to read the kind of books that have conlangs in them, so even if they don't know the specific word, they're familiar with the idea of having invented words and languages. LOL, today the conversation in my Thursday luncheon got pretty bogged down when I had to explain Cthulhu and filk to eight highly-educated people who'd never heard of them, nor of Burning Man, and who'd never seen South Park. Not everyone has spent their lives in the Pagan/SCA/Fantasy/SF/Comics/Gamer/'Alter
"LOL yes. I liked Frodo before liking Frodo was "cool."
I found The Lord of the Rings in my Dad's old paperback collection the summer I turned 16, and I was totally hooked. Then Tolkien DIED that very Autumn, and I was heartbroken that there'd never be any more Middle-Earth! But then The Silmarillion came out in my Junior year of college, when I had just joined the SCA, and there was much rejoicing: not only was there more Middle-Earth, there was more Elvish! And at last I had a community that didn't think it was too, too absurd to learn it! Woohoo, eglerio!
EDIT: sorry for all the edits; bad code.