This is barely on topic; when it comes to alien languages being written down, to keep from breaking suspension of disbelief too much for myself, I assume that written text of alien languages is just the best equivalent that author could figure out or the 'convention' for writing it, however incorrect that may actually be, like writing Chinese words and place-names in English. How many different spelling variations have there been, anyway?
This is barely on topic; when it comes to alien languages being written down, to keep from breaking suspension of disbelief too much for myself, I assume that written text of alien languages is just the best equivalent that author could figure out or the 'convention' for writing it, however incorrect that may actually be, like writing Chinese words and place-names in English. How many different spelling variations have there been, anyway?
Letters based on sound
Letters based on concepts
I think that is it...
I believe she's referring to spelling variations like "Beijing" and "Peking".
As far as the kind of variations you are talking about, as I recall there are alphabetic languages, syllabaries which are based on syllables not letters, and one-symbol-for-a-concept writing ( I don't recall the formal name for it offhand ). And various systems that are hybrids of these.
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Lord of the Abyss wrote:I believe she's referring to spelling variations like "Beijing" and "Peking".
Yes, I was referring to spelling variations. Especially in English, no matter what spelling convention gets used, though, it's never quite right (and often very horribly wrong compared to how the locals and natives say it), and this is without having to handle thirty slightly different sounding clicks, or flashing colored luminescent patches on a carapace, or something. Things are always cooler in my imagination.
Anyway, sorry for the little hijack.
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Zixinus wrote:All very true, however I have to ask: do you think the average trooper wants to find out by first-hand if adjusting to the new air mixture will not harm him? After all, divers have to prepare and spend time adjusting to their different mixture of air. That could seriously hamper combat ability.
Military people have a lot of very good reasons for not wanting to walk around on an alien planet without some kind of protection, yeah.
A language spoken without sounds at all made from the mouth per se- no consonants or vowels. You sing, or whistle. The tone contours after a carrier note carry information just like phonemes do.
Human languages that can do this: Guanachos of the Canary Islands (extinct), Piraha, although perhaps womens-language only for them (which is such a 'simple' language in terms of phonetics it is uniquely readable when hummed, sung, drummed, etc. and doesn't have to be simplified by speakers at all to fit in the new way of playing it- indeed, apparantly Piraha women teach their babies to speak the language partially by singing to them.), and at least one other sheep and goat-herding peoples' language which I cannot remember from somewhere in europe who used it to communicate with other herders at a distance.
Have an alien with no mouth but instead a 'trumpet' and you have a good alienese, or just give them a culture wherein something like history chants by griots or other reasons for such a mode of communication are important. For extra fun, figure out a way to romanize it with or without ripping off SolReSol.
There's all sorts of weird shit in languages like that you can steal for aliens, and if you don't explicitly point it out, nobody but a crazy person like me will go "Oh, she's ripping off the extinct Guanacho whistled language of the canary island natives!"
(pssst - It's actually spelled "Guanche", you had an extra "a" in there. And I think you meant "Silbo", which refers to the whistled form of Guanche)
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Broomstick wrote:(pssst - It's actually spelled "Guanche", you had an extra "a" in there. And I think you meant "Silbo", which refers to the whistled form of Guanche)
Yeah, good catch. I was running off memory rather than looking it up, and so apparantly I didn't fix all the 'pronounce this faux-spanish-like" instinct. And I hadn't even considered that they called it something else, mostly because I would have assumed a name for the whistled language would be, well, whistled and thus untranscribeable [silly in retrospect.]
Duckie wrote:and at least one other sheep and goat-herding peoples' language which I cannot remember from somewhere in europe who used it to communicate with other herders at a distance
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
Duckie wrote:and at least one other sheep and goat-herding peoples' language which I cannot remember from somewhere in europe who used it to communicate with other herders at a distance
No, although a similar type of language. The Shepherds of Aas in Haute-Bearn had a whistled form of French, although it has since died out. They were who I was thinking of.
Just one example of how insanely comlex a vocal apparatus can get, here's some footage of a lyrebird:
Here's another video: listen carefully from about 31-36 seconds and from about 50-53 secinds, and you can actually briefly hear the bird briefly make the sound of two kookaburras at the same time.
Just imagine what an alien language with that vocal range would sound like. Even if we could understand it, there would be no way that we could reproduce it (though they might be able to copy us).
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I don't know about that last part. We could probably reproduce it via the magic of computers once more - not perfectly, but more like a pre-recorded phrase book if we could establish some way to first understand each other. Just tell the little palm pilot to play 'AlienA'.wav or whatever, bam, you're saying 'Hello' in Alienese. They could use the same for whatever language the human they're dealing with speaks.
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Yeah, well, I was thinking more without technological help.
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"Why does it look like you are in China or something?" - havokeff
It would be better if future people had some kind of nanocommunications, like Metal Gear's CODEC, or some kind of artificial enhancement that allows them to auto-translate alien language and speak Chinese to the gaijins and stuff. While also being able to take digital pictures with their eyes and surf the internet with their brains.
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"
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