tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 02 23:51:44 1995
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Re: vIHadbogh Holmey
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: vIHadbogh Holmey
- Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 02:50:26 -0400
Although I completely agree that we do not orally speak ASL, we do convey
concepts amongst persons, thus meeting the definition of language. My club
does call this ASL--I am not sure of the difference with Signed
English--there must be several differences. I often encounter the words
Signed English; but, what my girlfriend who MUST sign and I use to
COMMUNICATE we call ASL (American Sign Language).
My real reason for including ASL in a list of languages of which I have at
least scratched the surface is that conveyence of concepts in it has its own
peculiarities. It is not a direct translation of words and/or phrases from
the English.
As to Tengwar Quenya, also Quenya II, I certainly do agree it is difficult to
convey complete, or even come close, is extremely difficult. Although JRR
devised 14 languages (??), perhaps none of them truly meets the definition of
language: the conveyence of concepts amongst beings. Now, if this is the
end of the definition, numerous animal species do convey concepts. In
general, S. I. Hayakawa's definition of language goes farther: ... spoken
and/or written ...
As to Tengwar Quenya II, this is a phrase I have picked up from several
articles, bookstore advertisements, and Internet postings. It looks like all
of you are correct, after all, that the whole phrase refers more to a
conglomerate font collection. "The Languages of Tolkien" uses Tengwar,
Quenya, and Tengwar Quenya interchangeably; but, then, the book could be
wrong.
I did say that I had merely scratched the surface of some of these languages,
and usually as studies of language psychologies. Our college classes wanted
to know how various languages are structured, how the users "probably" think
from analysis of their medium, and what the languages reflect of cultures. I
will claim here that I gained quite a bit of insight from these exerciese
into such languages as Atayal, Navajo and Lakota.
FYI: Navajo has an extremely limited lexicon and the sentence word order is
Object before Verb. And, the Verbs add suffixes to convey aspect, etc.
Still, Navajo-speakers have found phrases to say virtually everything,
formally and in slang!