Baffled

Tuesday, June 29th, 2004 06:51 pm
rolanni: (Scrabble1)
[personal profile] 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....

Date: 2004-06-30 08:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] janni.livejournal.com
I had to invent two distinct-sounding languages for one project. Only a few words got used of each, but they needed to sound distinctive.

It was hard, and I'm still not surfe I did it well.

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