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Weird English

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Re: Weird English

#21

Post by dghf »

rich_sasha wrote: post #16
rvba wrote: post #8

What I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one. Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new. And I dont think politics is the reason here.

Tolkien also invented at least three full languages (Elvish, Orkish, Dwarvish). Though I believe he was well-versed in languages in the world so it's not learning laziness from his side.

Incoming pedantry: IIRC, Tolkien "only" invented two full languages, Sindarin ("Grey Elvish") and Quenya ("High Elvish"), if "full" means you could write a letter or have a conversation in it. He did create the foundations and some vocabulary for several others, like (as you mentioned) Dwarvish, and the Black Speech of Mordor, and Westron (a.k.a. the Common Speech), the language represented in the books by English (with "real" Westron words, names, etc. confined to the appendices): but I don't think he fleshed these out to the same degree he did the Elvish languages.

Many of these were influenced by real languages: Sindarin by Welsh, Quenya by Finnish, and Dwarvish by (I think) Semitic languages. As you pointed out, he knew a lot about linguistics.

As for Orkish: I'm sure Tolkien makes a point of saying orcs had no language of their own; rather, they used a particularly crude form of the Common Speech, often peppered with words from the Black Speech. (This is the in-story reason why the protagonists in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are able to understand and be understood by goblins and orcs.)

Anyway, none of this detracts from your point: invention of fictional languages does not imply a reluctance to get to grips with actual non-English languages, at least not in the case of J.R.R. Tolkien.

/end pedantry

Re: Weird English

#22

Post by kergonath »

rich_sasha wrote: post #16
rvba wrote: post #8

What I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one. Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new. And I dont think politics is the reason here.

Tolkien also invented at least three full languages (Elvish, Orkish, Dwarvish). Though I believe he was well-versed in languages in the world so it's not learning laziness from his side.

He was a philologist, and by all accounts a decent one. He played a lot with the evolution of his languages (how they turn into new languages and how languages interact within a multi-lingual population), not only with the languages themselves. He couldn’t have done that with a single language.

As an aside, I don’t think we could call his rough sketch of dwarvish as “full”. AFAIK we only know a couple of words of it. He did develop 2 elvish languages quite extensively, though (Quenya and Sindarin), and worked on several other dialects.

Re: Weird English

#23

Post by kergonath »

dghf wrote: post #13
rvba wrote: post #8

What I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one. Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new. And I dont think politics is the reason here.

Wouldn't it break the illusion if Klingons and Dothraki just happened to speak a real Earth language? And Belter is meant to be an English-based creole, reflecting the in-book/in-show history of the Belters as the descendants of speakers of several different languages who needed a lingua franca.

> Wouldn't it break the illusion if Klingons and Dothraki just happened to speak a real Earth language?

Would it matter? None of the characters are supposed to speak English in-universe either.

Re: Weird English

#25

Post by ArchieMaclean »

rich_sasha wrote: post #16
rvba wrote: post #8

What I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one. Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new. And I dont think politics is the reason here.

Tolkien also invented at least three full languages (Elvish, Orkish, Dwarvish). Though I believe he was well-versed in languages in the world so it's not learning laziness from his side.

I wouldn't really call Orcish / Dwarvish 'full languages' - they aren't developed that much. However, the two major Elvish languages (Quenya and Sindarin) are both a lot fuller.

Re: Weird English

#26

Post by BerislavLopac »

rich_sasha wrote: post #16
rvba wrote: post #8

What I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one. Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new. And I dont think politics is the reason here.

Tolkien also invented at least three full languages (Elvish, Orkish, Dwarvish). Though I believe he was well-versed in languages in the world so it's not learning laziness from his side.

Not quite.

He created Quenya and Sindarin as more or less complete languages, with detailed grammar, extensive vocabulary and several writing systems. They are both Elvish languages, descending from "proto-Elvish", so he carefully tracked their evolutions, sound changes. The other Elvish languages and dialects were mentioned and/or alluded to, but not developed in detail.

Next, there is a series of languages he has developed to a far smaller extent than the previous two. The best known examples are:

1. Khuzdul, or Dwarvish, which exists as only a few words and phrases, spoken and/or written in his works, plus some general grammar rules. The explanation for it not being more known is that the Dwarves were keeping it secret, and used other languages for talking to any non-Dwarves.

2. Black Speech, used by Orcs and other Sauron's minions. Developed by Sauron and also only present in a few sentences and words -- as well as, of course, the Ring inscription.

3. Adunaic, or Numenorean - the most detailed described human language, similar to Khuzdul in some grammar aspects.

And finally, he has used real world languages to "represent" Middle-earth languages. The best examples are English representing Westron - the lingua franca of the western Middle-earth - and Anglo-Saxon representing language of the Rohirrim, to show its relation to Westron. That said, in later years ye has started "developing" those languages more, inventing e.g. Westron words to replace the English ones used in the books (e.g. "Suza" for "Shire").

Re: Weird English

#27

Post by BerislavLopac »

kergonath wrote: post #23
dghf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it break the illusion if Klingons and Dothraki just happened to speak a real Earth language? And Belter is meant to be an English-based creole, reflecting the in-book/in-show history of the Belters as the descendants of speakers of several different languages who needed a lingua franca.

> Wouldn't it break the illusion if Klingons and Dothraki just happened to speak a real Earth language? Would it matter? None of the characters are supposed to speak English in-universe either.

You're forgetting the actual speakers of those languages.

Re: Weird English

#28

Post by bradrn »

rich_sasha wrote: post #15
altacc wrote: post #12

English is a beautiful slow motion car crash of multiple languages & influences and the result is a great language but I do pity anyone trying to learn it. When I was having difficulty learning the rules & oddities of another language, it really helped me to look back at English and remember that there are so many oddities, inconsistencies and variances, that most other European languages are easy to master in compar…

I sympathise with the view (non-native English speaker from Europe). While it's true English has a ton of inconsistencies, complications etc. they tend to happen at a slightly higher level I think. There is a reasonably big subset of English that is quite easy. French and German, not to mention Polish, are much harder to learn IMO, since the difficulties are up-front. Some examples: - French conjugation of verbs is a…

> Tenses in English are quite nicely organised into a Cartesian product of {past, present, future} x {simple, perfect, continuous}

Alas, they are not. You can have a perfect continuous, for instance: ‘I had been waiting’. Furthermore, the future doesn’t fit into the same paradigm as the other two tenses, both syntactically and semantically. I prefer to think of it as follows, at least in the realis case: {non-prospective, prospective} × {non-perfect, perfect} × {simple, continuous} × {past, present}. (The irrealis is more difficult, and overlaps somewhat with the realis.)

> Polish … double numbers

This is usually called the ‘dual’.

> … verb aspect (whether an action is completed or not)

English has this too (simple vs continuous is fundamentally an aspectual distinction), though not quite as pervasively as Polish or other Slavic languages.

Re: Weird English

#29

Post by bradrn »

rvba wrote: post #8

What I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one. Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new. And I dont think politics is the reason here.

I — a native English speaker — conlang as a hobby. I do it simply because I find exploring linguistics fun. I also want to learn another language one day. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the best conlangers I know are all intensely multilingual, even those who are native English speakers.

(TV shows are a totally different thing, of course. They definitely try to create something new, but that’s because they’re TV shows, not because they don’t like other languages. It’s the same reason they’re set in outer space instead of being set on Earth.)

Re: Weird English

#30

Post by dghf »

kergonath wrote: post #23
dghf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it break the illusion if Klingons and Dothraki just happened to speak a real Earth language? And Belter is meant to be an English-based creole, reflecting the in-book/in-show history of the Belters as the descendants of speakers of several different languages who needed a lingua franca.

> Wouldn't it break the illusion if Klingons and Dothraki just happened to speak a real Earth language? Would it matter? None of the characters are supposed to speak English in-universe either.

But implied translation into the language of the audience is a long-standing convention. We don't watch Ben Hur or Spartacus or I, Claudius and wonder why the Romans are all speaking English instead of Classical Latin.

But it might jar to hear a group of aliens natively speaking Dutch, for example. (Unless it's a Dutch film for a Dutch audience, of course, in which case it might equally jar to hear them speaking English.)

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