St. Sebastian's Day
Friday, January 21st, 2005 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniThe patron saint of archers. January 20 is the day set aside in his honor. That would have been yesterday, yes. I'm a little behind.
It was -18F (which is Ghodawful Cold(tm) in C) when I got up an hour ago. The weathercritters are calling for a high of 6F (a piddling -14C) and sunny, which is nice, because I'm taking the car into town to gym this morning. Late, but like I said, I'm a little behind.
More tax stuff was accomplished yesterday, along with the carnival of phone calls. In the evening, we watched "Adventures in Babysitting," which is one of my all-time favorite movies (Yes, its stupid; I like it anyway. I like the resonations, like Sara saying, "All the superheroes live in the city." and Behold! there are superheroes in the city, as well as Really Bad Guys. I like the upward-spiralling net of promises. I adore "Ain't nobody leave here 'til dey sing duh blues." I worry about what's going to happen to Joe Gipp, the car thief who couldn't break a promise. Ahem.).
Yesterday's email brought a note that I almost threw out, realizing at the last minute that "Entranzia volecta" was not a nonsense spam phrase, but High Liaden. So, an Earnest Reader writes that he has discovered our books and loves them, which is always nice to hear, and then offers an elegant dissection of High Liaden grammar that he's been able to puzzle out, using only the context of the books, which I thought very clever. He then asks for a Liaden grammar. Surely, there must be a Liaden grammar.
Except, there's not.
That's not to say that we don't have rules for making up Liaden words when we need them, but there is no comprehensive Liaden grammar or lexicon. In fact, the whole Liaden-Terran Dictionary in my notes file is only a couple pages long. We don't know anything about verb position in Liaden sentences. Our job, as storytellers, was to make the Liaden language sound alien and give a solid foundation for certain habits of Liaden thought. I'm glad we've been able to pull that off so convincingly, but -- no grammar. No lexicon. No exchange student semester at the University of Solcintra.
Gym.
It was -18F (which is Ghodawful Cold(tm) in C) when I got up an hour ago. The weathercritters are calling for a high of 6F (a piddling -14C) and sunny, which is nice, because I'm taking the car into town to gym this morning. Late, but like I said, I'm a little behind.
More tax stuff was accomplished yesterday, along with the carnival of phone calls. In the evening, we watched "Adventures in Babysitting," which is one of my all-time favorite movies (Yes, its stupid; I like it anyway. I like the resonations, like Sara saying, "All the superheroes live in the city." and Behold! there are superheroes in the city, as well as Really Bad Guys. I like the upward-spiralling net of promises. I adore "Ain't nobody leave here 'til dey sing duh blues." I worry about what's going to happen to Joe Gipp, the car thief who couldn't break a promise. Ahem.).
Yesterday's email brought a note that I almost threw out, realizing at the last minute that "Entranzia volecta" was not a nonsense spam phrase, but High Liaden. So, an Earnest Reader writes that he has discovered our books and loves them, which is always nice to hear, and then offers an elegant dissection of High Liaden grammar that he's been able to puzzle out, using only the context of the books, which I thought very clever. He then asks for a Liaden grammar. Surely, there must be a Liaden grammar.
Except, there's not.
That's not to say that we don't have rules for making up Liaden words when we need them, but there is no comprehensive Liaden grammar or lexicon. In fact, the whole Liaden-Terran Dictionary in my notes file is only a couple pages long. We don't know anything about verb position in Liaden sentences. Our job, as storytellers, was to make the Liaden language sound alien and give a solid foundation for certain habits of Liaden thought. I'm glad we've been able to pull that off so convincingly, but -- no grammar. No lexicon. No exchange student semester at the University of Solcintra.
Gym.
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Ah--
Date: 2005-01-22 11:26 am (UTC)Stay warm--
Re: Ah--
Date: 2005-01-22 01:29 pm (UTC)Re: Ah--
Date: 2005-01-23 08:48 am (UTC)I'll tell him that you enjoy theories and would love someone to tie things together correctly, but you don't have a lot of grammar input to offer.
I remember reading that LeGuin felt she intuitively knew the language of Earthsea when she wrote the book--hence certain words and the poem--but no longer remembered it. (This was before TEHANU and THE OTHER WIND, so she may remember more than she thought...)