archives of the CONLANG mailing list ------------------------------------ From: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com (John Cowan) Subject: Thoroughly Useless Conlangs Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 17:32:17 -0500 (EST) A small selection of 'em. First there is the Blod language, devised by the Armenian-American poet and novelist William Saroyan. It was used to compose his poem titled "Blod", reprinted in its entirety here: Blod Then we have the latest John Weitz advertisement. John Weitz is a maker of men's clothing whose print ads consist of what appear to be excerpts from short stories, sometimes narration, sometimes dialogue, and which mention John Weitz somewhere. This example employs a conlang: Nuut reno uttna joou ip terri reu John Weitz beet bo juur xo ou nup callen og buud loaom John Weitz nilli orgip ta nomn Finally, we have the following Ode, in part. I don't remember the whole thing, and I can't remember where I saw it in print, and furthermore the author of the book in which I found it called it anonymous, so tracking it downis hopeless. It is built solely from current or former trademarks; I will spare all of us the usual legal mumbo-jumbo required when using trademarks in text. [first line missing] Resinol fiat bacardi camera ansco wheatena, Antiskid pebeco calox oleo tyco barometer Postum nabisco! Prestolite arco congoleum karo aluminum kryptok, ?? bellopticon lysol, jello bellans, carborundum. [seventh line mostly missing, ended with:] necco britannica Encyclopedia? Two extra points to whoever can name the conlang alluded to by the title of this posting. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban. Subject: Re: Thoroughly Useless Conlangs Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1993 15:27:15 PST From: Michael P Urban Your message dated: Thu, 04 Feb 1993 17:32:17 PST > Prestolite arco congoleum karo aluminum kryptok, > ?? bellopticon lysol, jello bellans, carborundum. > [seventh line mostly missing, ended with:] necco britannica > Encyclopedia? These verses are reminiscent of the Elvish parodies in the Harvard Lampoon's remarkable `Bored of the Rings': A Elbereth Gilthorpiel Gibberish en drivel With a hey derry tum gardol. A yuban necco glamorine? Enden nytol, vaseline! Sing hey nonny nembutol. There is another bit somewhere that ends with Nixon dirksen nasahist, Rebozo boogaloo! BotR has some wonderfully silly moments, and the occasional mind-bender, as when the characters (having received gifts like a plover's egg the size of a diamond) board a boat-shaped swan... From lock60!gvls1!ctr.columbia.edu!shoulson (Mark Shoulson) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 93 14:42:38 -0500 Subject: More on negative commands I was thinking about the discussion we had here not too long ago about terms of necessity and command, and their negations (how "il ne faut pas" in French meant "one must not" and not "one need not"). I've been playing with another language which has a reasonably interesting way of handling this, so I thought I'd write about it. Welsh has an impersonal way of indicating necessity, like French: "Mae rhaid..." "There is a need/necessity..." So, "Mae rhaid i fi fynd" (or just "Rhaid i fi fynd", the verb "Mae" is often ommitted in this construction in present tense) is "There is a necessity for me to go", or "I must go". The negative, "Does dim rhaid i fi fynd" means what its literal translation would imply: "There is no need for me to go". That is, lack of obligation, not negative obligation (cf. "il ne faut pas", which works the other way). To indicate negative obligation, you have to use another verb-noun, "peidio", literally "to cease". So it becomes "Rhaid i fi beidio ^a mynd" "I must not (lit. cease to) go." ('peidio' becomes 'beidio' because of mutation after "fi", and "mynd" became "fynd" above for the same reason). Interestingly, this same method is used for commands. "Ewch" would be used for "go!" (irregular verb, like "to go" is in many languages), and "don't go" would be "Peidiwch ^a mynd!" (lit. cease going) (or, in familiar 2nd person, "Paid ^a mynd"). I suppose this leasds to interesting literal translations of commands involving "don't stop", e.g. the Fleetwood Mac line which got so much coverage in the recent American Presidential campaign, "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow," which would probably (if you trust my translating abilities) come out to "Peidiwch ^a pheidio ^a meddwl am yfory" (hope "yfory" can be used as a noun; it's listed as an adverb I think). "Cease stopping to think about tomorrow!" Neat. (btw, note that "peidio" became "pheidio" under Yet Another mutation...) I thought you might like this usage... More on Welsh eventually, it's an interesting language. Has a cool tense and voice system, and an unusual method of doing pronominal objects (as possessives, actually.) ~mark From lock60!gvls1!ctr.columbia.edu!shoulson (Mark Shoulson) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 10:57:26 -0500 Subject: Another "conlang" poem I knew I had this around somewhere, took me a while to dig it up. I was reminded of it by John Cowan's postings of conlang poems. It's a poem written in some hackish pronunciations of ASCII characters. >From: davez@ashtate.a-t.com (Dave Zobel) Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny Subject: Re: Stuck shift key poetry Keywords: chuckle Message-ID: Date: 18 Aug 90 23:30:04 GMT Lines: 20 Approved: funny@looking.on.ca A fragment of a drinking (or financing?) song called "Hatless Atlas": ^<@<.@* }"_# | -@$&/_% !( @|=> ;`+$?^? ,#"~|)^G hat less at less point at star backbrace double base pound space bar dash at cash and slash base rate wow open tab at bar is great semi backquote plus cash huh DEL comma pound double tilde bar close BEL -- Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply. Remember: Always give your jokes a descriptive "Subject:" line. Not "joke." ~mark From: D Anton Sherwood Message-Id: <199302100340.AA29885@well.sf.ca.us> Subject: gold mining pidgin? Michael Palin in "Pole to Pole" visits a gold mine in South Africa. In the mine is a classroom where workers from many tribes learn a common language. Does anyone know about this? Is it a pidgin, a conlang or a tribal language? Anton Sherwood dasher@well.sf.ca.us +1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 05:58:22 -0500 From: lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group) Subject: response to Robin Gaskell's of a month ago Robin Gaskell wrote about a month ago: >So, one alternative to the interchangeability of parts of speech is to >have no marking of the words to indicate their POS function, at all, and >to let the syntax sort their funtion out, as occurs in Glosa. Thus, the >job of :he POS suffixes is done by the small words in the sentence, >between the concept-words. There is every reason to believe that these two approaches in the long run amount to the same thing. Remember that languages evolved in the absence of written representation. What is the difference between a small word delineating the function of the preceding word, and a suffix delineating the function? Eventually, when a function word occurs often enough adjacent to another word, the two together come to be thought of as a unit. Then morhophonemic sound variations may cause minor changes in the phonemes of the attached function word, so that it become less recognizable. Meanwhile semantic evolution may cause the meaning to evolve somewhat from the original word without the attached ending. In some languages, the process is only partially complete, and linguists talk about "clitics", usually pronouns or prepositions. This process also happens with prefixes. Russian abounds with words that appear to be based on a shorter root with a prefix which resembles one of the prepositions. It is easy to imagine that some Slavic ancestor had the preposition separate, but the two became condensed into a single word. For a spoken language, I see no particular advantage to structure words over suffixes/prefixes as a means to sorting out grammar, and if the morphophonology doesn't work, then fluent usage will cause the language to evolve changes in the structure words' sounds, and/or they will come to blend together with the adjacent words. There may be some advantage to separate words in written language, however. lojbab Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 21:50:25 +1100 From: Robin F Gaskell Subject: Re: Response to Robin G's Bob wrote:- > Robin Gaskell wrote about a month ago: > >So, one alternative to the interchangeability of parts of speech is to > >have no marking of the words to indicate their POS function, at all, and > >to let the syntax sort their funtion out, as occurs in Glosa. Thus, the > >job of the POS suffixes is done by the small words in the sentence, > >between the concept-words. > > There is every reason to believe that these two approaches in the long > run amount to the same thing. Remember that languages evolved in the > absence of written representation. What is the difference between a > small word delineating the function of the preceding word, and a suffix > delineating the function? ...... and:- > In some languages, the process is only partially complete, and linguists > talk about "clitics", usually pronouns or prepositions. > > This process also happens with prefixes. Russian abounds with words > that appear to be based on a shorter root with a prefix which resembles > one of the prepositions. It is easy to imagine that some Slavic > ancestor had the preposition separate, but the two became condensed into > a single word. I will agree: the forced use of small words as particles is possibly less acceptable than the natural aglomeration of these small words with the ones they modify, together with the rounding off of such suffixes for ease of use and the improvement of sound. Glosa might appear a bit raw through the use of unchanging particles rather than the addition of suffixes that vary to blend with adjacent sounds. This seems like a valid comment, and is in line with the comment made by Prof. M.A.K. Halliday when I visited him to discuss Glosa, "Designed Languages have got sharp corners, while the national languages have had enough time to lose their sharp edges, and become rounded, through use." However, much of the discussion on Conlang reminds me of the story about Greek philosophers debating the number of teeth in a horse's mouth - instead of inspecting the mouth and counting them. How many millions of research dollars would it take to set up experiments to test the various designed languages ... and observe them in action. Not even one million! If we were using a scientific approach to language construction, then Bob's comments might be expressed in the form of a hypothesis, and the rest of us might volunteer to test this hypothesis experimentally. I know that research money is not allocated for 'amateur' projects like conlangs, and I know that language design is more of an art than a science, and hence, not the subject of systematic research. But I still get a little frustrated. I have a mental picture of Conlangers trying out the various Planned Languages and testing them to see how they "feel" when used. This might be through reading aloud sample texts written by others in the different languages, or by saying the same thing (maybe telling the same story) in variousconlangs. It could involve the swapping of cassette tapes prepared by people speaking particular languages, so that others could follow the written form while also keeping in touch with the meaning by having a parallel rendition in a national language (probably English). This calls to mind the "Sun and North Wind" exercise: I am still waiting to see how we all went. The delay is very probably the result of this research's having been conducted by an unfunded Independent Scholar. On the POS/suffix/syntax puzzle, Bob concludes:- > For a spoken language, I see no particular advantage to structure words > over suffixes/prefixes as a means to sorting out grammar, and if the > morphophonology doesn't work, then fluent usage will cause the language > to evolve changes in the structure words' sounds, and/or they will come > to blend together with the adjacent words. There may be some advantage > to separate words in written language, however. While there are no _structure words_ as such, in Glosa, this misconception might be because I have not explained well enough what I call "syntax-based grammar." I would like to give some more examples ofCGlosa in action, on Conlang - though I am not sure if this is what other subscribers want to see. For my part, I am persuing the _fluent usage_ aspect of Glosa, and have started my work with *retelling* some of the better-known children's stories, in Glosa. When I come to a part of the story that calls for a certain nuance, if I can't express it the way I want to - using ``straight Glosa'' - I get in there and hack away, knocking more of the `rough edges' off. While there are a few of us doing this work, I am still actively searching for others to join us in it. On the matter of _written language_ there is an interesting question. What are the relative importances of written and spoken communication, and might one medium be more resilient than the other? It can be asked should we, in designing a language, lean more towards speech or writing when building rigor into it. An ideal language would be just as easy to use graphically as through sound. Are we striving for this ideal in Glosa: I think so. Looking at communication needs, we can ra7ge from the books of university libraries to the pure sound of radio and telephone; here communication theory impinges on conlangology. If we have the choice, do we favour design factors that facilitate communication through the graphic or spoken medium? Or do we attempt a juggling act, and try for design factors that facilitate communication through both media? Television, with subtitles, offers the best of both worlds; if you were watching a play that featured your favourite conlang as the communication medium, which would you be following, the spoken action, or the subtitles? With apologies to Turing, I would offer a diagnostic test which goes someting like this: a conlang passes the GASKELL TEST if there is no difference in the time it takes to understand an utterance, whether it is heard or read. ______________________________________________________________________ I do not suppose that we will all rush out and buy video camera systems with subtitling facilities. However, this idea would make a nice experimental research project for somebody, and it does even have the glimmerings of a hypotesis to be tested. Cheers, Robin Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 09:26:39 -0800 From: chalmers@violet.berkeley.edu (John H. Chalmers Jr.) Subject: South African language A South African friend once mentioned a language used all over Southern Africa from Zambia, Zimbabwe/Rhodesia into South Africa proper. It was called "Fanigalu" and described as "basic Bantu," with some English and Afrikaans admixture. I assume that it is a creole, not a conlang or a pidgin. -- John From lock60!gvls1!ctr.columbia.edu!shoulson (Mark Shoulson) Date: Wed, 17 Feb 93 17:17:50 -0500 Subject: Physical limitations to speech Hey ho, all. I recently heard something I found unsettling and wanted to ask around here if anyone knew about it. Someone told me that there have been studies that show that a significant number of people out there are *physically* incapable of producing a lingually trilled r. I'm not talking about people with cleft palates or other major oddities of my mouthparts; I'm talking more minor, common ones. Why is this so important, and "unsettling" to me? Because of all the languages I've ever looked at, and all the sounds I've tried, the only one I couldn't replicate reasonably well was the trilled r. What's more, I've recently been informed that I have an unusually high-arched hard palate (this is news to me; my mouth always felt normal-size from the inside). Thus, I'm afraid that if this is true, I may be one of these folks who can't trill r's. And yes, I'd rather have been incompetent all these years at trying than forever unable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to be depressed for years and experience psychic scarring if I find I can't trill my r's, but I'm curious if anyone can confirm/dispute what I heard, and I figure here's a good place to ask about language studies... ~mark Date: 18 Feb 93 02:09:11 EST From: Rick Harrison <71174.2735@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Physical limitations to speech Hi Mark. I can't trill R's at the tip of my tongue either, so I use a uvular trill when a trill is called for. I'm surprised to hear that this might be caused by some genetic defect or some such. Maybe you should post the question to Usenet's "sci.lang" newsgroup... or maybe not, depending on your level of tolerance for crackpots. From lock60!gvls1!is.rice.edu!riddle (Prentiss Riddle) Subject: Re: Physical limitations to speech Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 8:08:08 CST > Someone told me that there have > been studies that show that a significant number of people out there are > *physically* incapable of producing a lingually trilled r. If this is true, it must be a well-known fact among speech pathologists who work in Spanish-speaking communities. I'd check for basic works on the speech pathology of Spanish speakers, and/or I'd call the speech path department of my local university and see if they have somebody around who likes to answer off-the-wall questions. I'm also curious what native Spanish speakers with this impediment substitute for that trilled r. -- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle@rice.edu -- Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. From: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com (John Cowan) Subject: Art Conlang: The Light Of The World Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1993 11:26:41 -0500 (EST) Two days ago, the March '93 issue of >Analog< arrived, containing a story called "The Worting's Testament" by Rob Chilson. Although the story is entirely in English (except for the word "worting", pl. "wortinga", the name of an alien intelligent life form), references are made in it to a human language called "The Light of the World", also spoken by wortinga resident on Earth. There are numerous conversations in The Light of the World, represented in literal translation. I have excerpted these conversations below (no, I don't give away the plot; all excerpts are from the beginning of the story). Interesting points about The Light of the World which are either stated in the narrative or can be deduced include: 1) Each utterance ends with an "Executant", a word specifying the type of utterance. The English gloss for each of these is given here: 'eh?' question 'heh' answer to question 'huh' declaration; often omitted, especially by humans 'ha!' exclamation 'yo' response to vocative 'ho' not defined; performative? 2) The language forms compounds and has bound affixes: the word "wort-ing" means "plant-thing", where "-ing" is bound. ("Wort" is the name of a class of plants in English, of which the bladderwort is probably the best known.) 3) As in Chinese (or Lojban), questions have the same word order as statements. Yes-no questions are distinguished only by the 'eh?'; WH-questions have the WH-word at the normal place, not rotated to the front as in English. In fact, all of these features are quite Chinese-like. One wonders. ******* In the following transcripts, W is the worting protagonist, and H1-H10 are various human beings. H4 is a child, or perhaps several children speaking indistinguishably. Ellipsis marks indicate points where a speaker paused or took some wordless action before continuing. ******* H1: Say, exozootic, you have what in your barrow, eh? W: I have in my barrow the skulls and carapaces of my offspring, heh. H1: I have heard of this custom of some exozootics, of killing their children. It troubles you to kill your children, eh? W: It does not trouble me, heh. H1: Our roads diverge; to each his own road. I could never follow your road, ha! But may the Long Father be with you on your own road, exozootic. W: Eat well. ******* H2: Market day has but dawned, and already the wortinga arrive, ha! You are the first, old worting. W: I saw no wortinga before me. H2: You cannot pass. There is a tax on all goods entering the town. W: A tax is what, eh? H2: A tax is money, a fee, an impost. W: But the wortinga have no money. We cannot enter, eh? H2: You can enter, but you must pay, ho. W: I cannot pay without money. H2: It is not a great sum. It is merely a few spuds -- two or three copper unciums -- or for this fine load of skulls and carapaces, perhaps a silver star. W: I have no money at all. H2: We shall take one skull of your load, for the tax, ho. If you do not wish to pay, we cannot let you enter. W: But I must have paint, and cloth, and netting, and glue, and brass and iron nails, and other things of iron, and I wish also to have spices grown from plants from far-off -- what you call Euphrosyne, whence the wortinga came. H2: Oh, there will be enough left. W: Then, I will pay. ******* H3: Old worting! I hurried through my morning meal, knowing that you would be early. The younger wortinga sleep late, eh? W: They linger before departing, heh. ... You slay your offspring, eh? H3: No, we rear them all. Of course we have far fewer than you. ... A fine lot of bones. I shall take them all. Give me the list of things you wish to purchase. ... I will return shortly. ******* W: Your parents plant you in what manner, eh? H4: So, the old worting speaks like a man-kin. Our fathers plant us in our mothers, ha! No, no. Our fathers do not plant us. W: Your parents do not slay you, eh? H4: Slay us, ha! Yes, my father slew me last night -- see my eye! Our fathers do not slay us, indeed. W: How then are you planted, eh? H4: We are not planted, ha! Our parents do not plant us. We are not wortinga, to kill and sell our children. W: How then are you reared, if you are not planted, eh? H4: We grow, ha! We grow without being planted! We are not like you! ******* W: I thank you, sir, for your consideration, huh. H3: Eat well, huh. ******* H5: Hey, old worting. W: Yo. H5: You speak of killing children. You kill your children, eh? W: Yes, heh. Every four weeks I must slay my hatchlings and plant them. Some will grow and thrive. Most will not. H5: We have heard that this is the case with the wortinga. But you kill man-kin children too, eh? W: No, heh. It is the task of each parent to slay its own offspring. H5: Three days ago a man-kin child disappeared. Some say she was taken by the beasts of the forest. But some now say that she was killed by the wortinga. W: I do not understand why they say that. H5: Because your questions have made them suspicious. Again we ask: the wortinga slay the offspring of the man-kin, eh? W: I have not done such a thing. I do not know if other wortinga might have done so. But I think it very unlikely. A worting would slay a man-kin offspring for what reason, eh? H5: Perhaps a mistake, thinking the child needed to be planted. Very well, old worting, you may go. Your curiosity nearly got you in trouble, but it was perhaps understandable. We find your ways incomprehensible also. ******** H6: Hey, old worting, ha! W: Yo. H6: So it is true that wortinga kill their children. W: Yes, so that we may plant them. H6: You would plant them for what reason, seeing that your are animals and not plants, eh? H7: No, Divvis, they are really just walking plants. H6: That is true, Garhelt, eh? You are the teacher, you know about wortinga. H7: I know but little; little is known. I believe that wortinga partake of the characteristics both of plants and of animals. It is certain that they plant their offspring, of whom only a few grow. These develop roots and leaves, and when they are ripe, the leaves and roots wither and the worting walks away. In the meantime, the parents talk to them and thus partially educate them. H8: A quieter method of raising children than yours, Gilly, ha! H9: But they can be both plant and animal, eh? H7: Their ancestors came from Euphrosyne millions of years ago, where things are not as they are here. Their name itself suggests that they are both: worting. 'Wort' is a plant, and the ending suggests a living being. Plant-thing. ******* H10: Old Worting, ha! Old Worting! Come at once! Danger, ha! W: I come! What danger, eh? H10: Old worting, you have in your house any human children, eh? Any of our offspring? W: No, heh. I have no offspring of the man-kin. H10: And you have slain none? W: I have slain none, heh. You ask for what reason, eh? H10: Another of our children is missing, ha! And the fools have said that a worting has slain them, because of your questions on market day. Even now they are coming here to search the village of the wortinga. W: The wortinga have no village. Each lives apart. Free-foot offspring of the man-kin die constantly from the attacks of the predators of the forest, eh? They are slain when they are old enough to leave the house and go beyond the town palisade. H10: Yes, heh, and our younger -- what you would call our hatchlings -- also. But the fools will not listen; now they blame you all for every death this octron [256 years]. W: So many, ha! No, the wortinga lay, and slay, and hatch, and train, only their own offspring! Nor can we sell skulls and carapaces of any others. If we could, it would not be moral. H10: I believe you, old worting. I have dealt with you most of my life; my father began to buy from you when I was a -- a free-foot. [Ed. note: the worting life stages are hatchling, rootling, free-foot, adolescent, adult, senescent.] But I cannot be responsible for the fears of fools. All I can suggest is that you do not resist. Let them enter your house, let them search everywhere. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban. From: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com (John Cowan) Subject: "Thoroughly Useless Conlangs" allusion Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1993 11:35:21 -0500 (EST) Since nobody took me up on this one, I will tell all. The conlang alluded to is Tsolyani, by M.A.R. Barker. The phrase "Thoroughly Useless Conlangs" parodies the magical item of Tekumel called the "Thoroughly Useful Eye", by which all other magical Eyes could be recharged. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban. Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 09:25:23 EST From: j.guy@trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) Subject: Physical limitations to speech What? Two people in this group already unable to produce a lingual trilled R? Do you realize that this explains the French and German uvular R's, and the replacement of apico-alveolar R by a uvular R in the language of Hiw, Torres Islands, Vanuatu? That is a very important piece of information, I should think. It brings to my mind two distantly related memories. 1. My late colleague Don Laycock (of Complete Enochian Dictionary fame) had a wife who could rotate her tongue blade 90 degrees and ...well, what would you call a fricative produced like that? Her mother had the same strange ability. Don used to hypothesize: "Suppose there was a tribe where they all could stand their tongues on side, what sort of phonology would their language develop?" 2. My mother could touch the tip of her nose with her tongue (she had a perfectly normal nose). She used a strange trilled R, the strangeness of which she was aware of ("je roule trop les r"), but which is not uncommon in her region of origin (the Sarthe departement, in Normandy). I had no notion of linguistics then, and cannot tell you what trill it precisely was. I suspect it might have been lingual and uvular at once, but it is impossible to tell, for I cannot reproduce such a sound: I can touch the back of my teeth with the tip of my tongue, and my uvula with the root at once, but I cannot trill both tongue tip and root. Lack of coordination, it seems. From lock60!gvls1!ctr.columbia.edu!shoulson (Mark Shoulson) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 08:56:36 -0500 Subject: Physical limitations to speech I think I'll avoid sci.lang for the nonce; I haven't had it in me to brave netnews in a while, and I can do without the crackpots. >Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 09:25:23 EST >From: j.guy@trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) >It brings to my mind two distantly related memories. >1. My late colleague Don Laycock (of Complete Enochian >Dictionary fame) had a wife who could rotate her >tongue blade 90 degrees and ...well, what would you call >a fricative produced like that? Her mother had the same >strange ability. Don used to hypothesize: "Suppose there >was a tribe where they all could stand their tongues on >side, what sort of phonology would their language develop?" I personally can also stand my tongue on edge, and with the help of the rest of my mouth, turn it completely upside-down. I can also fold my tongue into a W shape (viewed from the front), as well as roll it (which is a much more common ability). I suppose I can get an interesting liquid sound from a rotated tongue, sounding much like an l, but I can also do a good imitation of it without rotation. Similar things hold true for the sounds I can make through my W tongue, including a whistle. I can generally do some bizarre things with my body, including my tongue, and wouldn't be surprised if there were some sound I could make that couldn't easily be duplicated by someone else, but I suspect that for the most part the sounds could be approximated very closely (not so with that %!$**! lingual trill). (P.S. My mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, siblings, and much of my mother's family can also do the W thing.) >2. My mother could touch the tip of her nose with her >tongue (she had a perfectly normal nose). She used a >strange trilled R, the strangeness of which she was >aware of ("je roule trop les r"), but which is not uncommon >in her region of origin (the Sarthe departement, in Normandy). >I had no notion of linguistics then, and cannot tell you >what trill it precisely was. I suspect it might have >been lingual and uvular at once, but it is impossible to >tell, for I cannot reproduce such a sound: I can touch >the back of my teeth with the tip of my tongue, and my >uvula with the root at once, but I cannot trill both >tongue tip and root. Lack of coordination, it seems. My mother can touch her tongue to her nose also, but I never heard a trill like that from her! I'll ask her. Sounds most intriguing. I used to (and still do) suspect that part of my problem with the trill came from when I was learning Hebrew in nursery school. My teacher had a fine accent, and I *think* she trilled her r's with her tongue, but either because I couldn't reproduce it or simply because I was too little to tell the difference, I assumed it was a uvular trill, which I did rather well. I've heard that people in languages with trilled r's who can't trill often fall back on uvular trills, which sounds a little odd to me; I'd stick with a single-flap r, but then again, that doesn't cut the mustard in all languages. ~mark Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 01:37:20 +1100 From: Robin F Gaskell Subject: "Cinerala" extract Dear Friends, I decided that I should share with you an extract from "Cinerala", the latest of the children's stories I have rendered into Glosa. Unlike a theoretical dissertation, this is more like `teaching by example.' I don't know if this really is the sort of thing expected on Conlang, but here is an example of Glosa in use. My plan is to build up a stable of children's stories, in Glosa, to form a kind of "Glosa Primer" of unchallenging reading that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. If there are requests for the remainder of the story, I will post it, in full, on Conlang: needless to say this is not a boring translation of the standard story but a retelling of it with added insights into the action of the plot. #> Cinderella has just woken up on the morning after the ball. Now read on ... Qod un extra norma somni-pikto fe pa habe, u-la nokti. Fe pa memo vide u magika vice-matri; qi pa kausa plu muta per un undu de fe baci. Cinerala pa vide fe-auto, habe epi fe plu maxi dekora vesti, ge-sed intra u grandi vagona du ki ad u grandi-kore. Fe klei pa pikto fe-auto kore ko plu kali andra. U somni-pikto pa sembla ta reali; fe pa memo: fe pa pote olface id. Intra fe somni-pikto, fe klei pa kredi: fe pa kore ko un An-prince! Glosa, being designed to handle scientific discussion, does so with ease, so I chose to follow the oft asked question, "Yes, but how does it handle creative writing?" The trouble with science is the proliferation of terminology - something two impoverished genii, living in a garret, cannot possibly keep up with. I took the easy way out and went for the popular vote, by retelling, with a twist, stories that are already widely known. "Tri Ursus" an "Pusi Rubi Toga" are also complete, now. So, if you would really like to find out more about Goldilocks, or what really happened in the woods - with the wolf - I will happily furnish the information, under plain wrapper, of course. If necessary, I will furnish a parallel translation, into English, of the above Cinerala extract. Cheers, Robin