Two recent books in my life.
Nov. 12th, 2009 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanThe other day, on a whim, I grabbed a book off the recent arrivals shelf of my local library. It was In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent. The author is a young linguist who made a project out of researching the history of "made up" languages--those languages invented whole cloth in most cases by idealists trying to perfect language itself.
She spends a good amount of the book discussing three of the most successful invented languages: First, Esperanto, an attempt at a universal language using mostly Latin roots, with simple grammar and syntax and pronunciation rules, with vague notions of world peace and harmony as its origins. It lives on today, is pretty easy to learn (I'm taking a half-hearted whack at it), and has a body of literature, and even a William Shatner movie.
Of course, the same can be said for the Klingon language, and Okrent explains how a few gutteral hacking noises were assembled by a scholarly linguist into a working language with hundreds of casual users and a couple dozen conversational speakers. She goes deep, taking the Klingon language aptitude exam and accompanying the Klingons as they embarrass the crap out of her at a restaurant.
And she also hangs out with the speakers of Lojban, a mind-bogglingly complicated set of logical rules that comprises a language that enables incredibly precise and non-ambiguous statements to be made. Of course programmers love it, and I can only imagine its appeal to the Asperger's community. This was a good lead in to the modern "comlang" community of people who spend an awful lot of time making up languages and arguing with others about made up languages. I suspect that many of the people reading this know a lot more about this than I do.
I enjoyed the discussion of what made an invented language a success or a failure, and about what each language actually reveals about language itself. The stories about language inventors of the past, and what lengths they took to promote their creations tell us much about human nature, ingenuity and passion. I love the inescapable conclusion that there is no such http://www.livejournal.com/update.bmlthing as a universal set of symbols: they all reveal individual and cultural influences and biases.
Today I came home to discover an autographed copy of The Sibley Guide to Trees on my front step. A friend who still works at Drumlin Farm sent it to me, an extremely thoughtful gift. (I did telegraph my great desire to own it across Facebook and Livejournal.) I haven't even flipped through it yet, but I have a long weekend to try and soak it up and use it. Alexis, her IM voice dripping with vitamin D deprived scorn, said "does it have a way to identify trees using their leafless silhouettes?" Of course it does, where appropriate. Bark, buds, and twigs are also depicted, so I believe it is a guide that will be useful year round.
The friend who got it for me described talking to Sibley about the book: "He had a great analogy comparing bird field guides of 100 years ago with the still current tree ID guides that start with ‘is it opposite or alternate’. 100 years ago the way to ID a bird was to shoot it and then look at it in your hand. He’s trying to get people to look at trees in a similar way to bird guides now where you ID from distinguishing characteristics of the whole organism – the geist of the tree as it were." Well, hopefully after this weekend I'll have an idea of what that means.
ĝis revido!
She spends a good amount of the book discussing three of the most successful invented languages: First, Esperanto, an attempt at a universal language using mostly Latin roots, with simple grammar and syntax and pronunciation rules, with vague notions of world peace and harmony as its origins. It lives on today, is pretty easy to learn (I'm taking a half-hearted whack at it), and has a body of literature, and even a William Shatner movie.
Of course, the same can be said for the Klingon language, and Okrent explains how a few gutteral hacking noises were assembled by a scholarly linguist into a working language with hundreds of casual users and a couple dozen conversational speakers. She goes deep, taking the Klingon language aptitude exam and accompanying the Klingons as they embarrass the crap out of her at a restaurant.
And she also hangs out with the speakers of Lojban, a mind-bogglingly complicated set of logical rules that comprises a language that enables incredibly precise and non-ambiguous statements to be made. Of course programmers love it, and I can only imagine its appeal to the Asperger's community. This was a good lead in to the modern "comlang" community of people who spend an awful lot of time making up languages and arguing with others about made up languages. I suspect that many of the people reading this know a lot more about this than I do.
I enjoyed the discussion of what made an invented language a success or a failure, and about what each language actually reveals about language itself. The stories about language inventors of the past, and what lengths they took to promote their creations tell us much about human nature, ingenuity and passion. I love the inescapable conclusion that there is no such http://www.livejournal.com/update.bmlthing as a universal set of symbols: they all reveal individual and cultural influences and biases.
Today I came home to discover an autographed copy of The Sibley Guide to Trees on my front step. A friend who still works at Drumlin Farm sent it to me, an extremely thoughtful gift. (I did telegraph my great desire to own it across Facebook and Livejournal.) I haven't even flipped through it yet, but I have a long weekend to try and soak it up and use it. Alexis, her IM voice dripping with vitamin D deprived scorn, said "does it have a way to identify trees using their leafless silhouettes?" Of course it does, where appropriate. Bark, buds, and twigs are also depicted, so I believe it is a guide that will be useful year round.
The friend who got it for me described talking to Sibley about the book: "He had a great analogy comparing bird field guides of 100 years ago with the still current tree ID guides that start with ‘is it opposite or alternate’. 100 years ago the way to ID a bird was to shoot it and then look at it in your hand. He’s trying to get people to look at trees in a similar way to bird guides now where you ID from distinguishing characteristics of the whole organism – the geist of the tree as it were." Well, hopefully after this weekend I'll have an idea of what that means.
ĝis revido!
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 03:15 pm (UTC)Esperanto
Date: 2009-11-13 03:26 pm (UTC)Personally I think that the choice of a future of a new global language lies between Esperanto and English, rather than an untried project.
Your readers may be interested the following video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670
A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.esperanto.net
Sibley
Date: 2009-11-13 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-14 02:35 am (UTC)