tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 05 10:41:02 1993

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Re: House languages




 >Real languages are complicated because life is complicated.

I disagree: real languages are complicated because they are complicated
and for no better reason. Of course, some languages are ceratinly less
complicated than others to learn (from whatever standpoint the
prospective learner is coming from). But linguistic theory takes it as
axiomatic that languages are arbitrary and have no absolute, necessary
link with "life", and also that no natural language is inherently less
capable of expressing thoughts or ideas than any other language. People
who express themselves badly may be using language inelegantly or
imprecisely (just like bad typists like me) but how often is there any
REAL incomprehension? "Context and circumstance" aren't THAT
unreliable, in real life.

As for a "language generator", I take it this means not a machine that
can speak language, which would indeed be impressive, but merely
something to come up with "ideas" for vocab items. Presumably they
should be maximally unlike existing vocab items, for maximum secrecy as
aprivate language; as has been said, Esperanto vocabulary was
(deliberately) built up out of bits and pieces from various different
languages and much of it is easily recognisable to anyone with a fair
smattering of European languages.

As a non-Klingonist, I would have thought tlhIngan-Hol would do rather
well from this point of view, but for the full effect why not take a
tip out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, who often invent quite
advanced "private" languages from scratch; or (another trick some
people develop to a high level as children) simply speak your own
language "backwards", reversing the letters (graphemes) or the sounds
(phonemes). British English ("backslang") and French ("verlan") have
also been used this way by underworld fraternities for this very
purpose.

Harry

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