Baffled

[rolanni]

After we come back from vacation, we'll have a week to do laundry and make it All Right with the cats before we hare off to Trinoc*coN in North Carolina for the last GoH gig of the year.

The good folk at programming have sent us a list of panel topics to mull over, along with a question: Would either or both of us be interested in being on a panel about creating languages? Seems this is a topic the programming chair has long wished to have a panel discuss, and, indeed, if there were such a panel at Trinoc*coN, I'd love to be in the audience, because I'm really interested in linguistics and how the words we know shape the thoughts we can think; and how culture changes the meanings of words so that two people can say the exact same sentence and mean things that are worlds apart. But.

I don't know the first thing about creating a language. Never done such a thing. Granted, we've made up some Liaden words here and there, and linked them to concepts and philosophy, but that's, like, worldbuilding. The idea that we've made up a Liaden language, well ... it just ain't so.

Nor is this the first time that we've been asked to lend our expertise to a panel discussing language construction. There seems to be a group of folks under the impression that we have performed the prodigious act of creating a whole new language. I don't know where the idea has come from, frankly.

Ah, well... Lots of other interesting things on the list, here. Just hate to disappoint somebody....

Comments

[galeni.livejournal.com]

Maybe they got the idea because it's implied by the words you created for your various folk. For exmaple your Turtles' names imply lots about their culture, whether you intended it or not. And the Liaden words track ways of thinking with its modifiers, etc. You may not have done a complete language, but you certainly did a great job using the language to imply/reinforce the culture.

(I pay attention to languages and their rules as a hobby.)

Caryn