Hobby Guilt

[bloodyrosemccoy]

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I have been remiss in conlanging this summer. I could offer all sorts of excuses, but the truth is that I just haven’t been able to get into it. It’s one of those slumps where you just don’t do much.

 

Not that I haven’t done anything. I made about three new signs for the orlys’ main language,* and I have been seriously thinking about starting a language for arhods. So far, work on that has taken a strenuous, two-step process:

 

1. Sneak into a corner at work when there is absolutely nothing left to do and nobody to look busy for, and scribble down a couple of phonemes and phonological rules on a scrap of receipt paper with a ballpoint pen.
2. Lose the scrap of paper.

So I have not made a lot of headway in it. I haven’t even checked out any conlanging sites this summer, haven’t perused any fascinating natural language descriptions, haven’t scanned Omniglot. I have considered a few outlandish ideas for communications systems, but that hasn’t gotten far, either.

 

And then, wouldn’t you know it, I wander back onto a community for a minute and discover that not even conlangers are free from that unique form of Intarweb Drama.**

 

And I thought I was weird.

 

Right then. Back from the sordid recesses of the small community of creative linguists, and on to my own.  Gods dammit, I’ve got ergatives and free word orders and a mess of weird media for communication, and I need to do something with them.  Maybe I'll look into this BPAL everyone's always on about, because I know you won't believe it but I could use some study into various scents and chemistry for one project.***  Because seriously, I may not have delved into it, but I've got some ideas.

 

 

*Allow me to rant again. It always annoys me that in science fiction and fantasy they assume that an entire species or an entire planet gets along with one damn language. Just like how it is with humans on Earth, you know. So I always qualify a language I make for a certain group of aliens with some explanation that it’s their planet’s/species more common language, or a language for the people in a nation on the southern continent, or the trolls from the north mountains. Nobody pays attention to the lessons of King John Ronald, except in the rule that all conlangs, especially elven ones, have to sound vaguely Welsh or Finnish.

 

**I love Intarweb Drama. It’s such a small, venomous drama, full of mystery and intrigue—is anyone who they say they are?  No matter who they are, what are their motives? What makes a troll do what they do? It’s perfect for soap operatic voyeurism.

***So much for my claim that conlanging is a nice cheap hobby.


EDIT: Here is the link to the Livejournal explanation of the scandal.

Comments

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Hey, Haven has at least four standard languages, and bunches of dialects, and obscure tongues from odd tribes. And the southern ocean hunters have a form of sign language, because silent communication between the boats is necessary.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Your stories, I assume? (Sorry. I don't always pay attention ...)

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Haven's my private playground world, for my own entertainmaent. I agree with you that having a single language across an entire world/species is very silly.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Neat! It's fun to have a universe to play with. Mine has a very fairy tale feel ~ not in content, but in the way things wrap up for people. The way I think a universe SHOULD go. (Charles Dickens did the same thing! Don't you judge me! ;) )

I was just telling a friend on here how I figure if there were a god, the closest god could relate to would be an author, with us in the author's stories. Because that would explain some of the fucked-up shit that happens ~ I love all my characters, but I can do some dreadful things to them. And so when something happens in my universe ~ an astonishing coincidence or poetic justice ~ I just say "I'M GOD HERE HAHAHA!"

Although that's not ALWAYS the case. Sometimes those damn people in my head do unexpected things. You know how they are.

And I'm very glad you have a sign language in there. There need to be more of those.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Have you read Fool on the Hill? Because if you haven't, you must.

Also, Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea people have different languages, which is one of the many reasons why she is a goddess.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Haven is all full of cliches and sillinesses, being a relic from my first attempts at storytelling, and it's not really fit for any kind of publication. So it is the repository for my idle moments of what-if and moments of worldbuilding that are purely to keep me amused. It serves very well for that, and somewhat to my surprise, is a fairly complex and detailed world these days.

A friend of mine and I regularly make jokes about our lives as though we are characters in somebody's cosmic RPG. ("Roll your dex." "Crap! Crit fail!" " ... Okay, the bag of noodles in your hands rips exactly the wrong way, and the noodles go flying all over the kitchen. You'll be finding them in corners and under stuff for days.")

Characters are strange creatures, aren't they? They do what they want, sometimes whether or not you like it. Authorhood is something of a socially acceptable form of craziness, or something.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

No, but one of these days I'll look into it. (So many books, so little time ...)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Sometimes you pay attention when very few other people do.