On Xenolinguistics and Snow

Guys.  Guys.  I am reporting live from a third-floor window in Ohio, where there are *multiple inches* of snow on the ground.  This is not a drill.

There is snow ON THE SNOWMEN. 
Up is down. Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.

There are many wonders in this foreign land.  In the past three days, I have driven on ice (and not died), attended services at my New Favorite Church (and not not-cried), paid a toll for driving on an Interstate (and felt Eisenhower rolling in his grave), parked on the lawn like a mannerless double-wide Visigoth because I couldn't see the curb for all the leaves, eaten insanely delectable quorn kimchi, gotten from somewhere to somewhere else in less than ten minutes, and experienced firsthand the power and majesty of a well-tuned ukulele.  This kind of thing is liable to happen when you work with a linguist who is smart enough to craft languages for your books, but dumb enough to tell you where he lives (and let you spend a weekend living there too.  Thanks, Jason!)

And y'all, I'm just so geeking out about all the wordomancy we did together.  I love that the fishmen have a human racial slur that translates to "belly button".  I love that Vuchak uses men's speech and Weisei doesn't, and now I know what that sounds like.  I love that ei'Krah now has words for deer-haggis and the drowning song and a "bite the bullet" expression that sounds like AND means "suck your teeth", and even though 95% of my readers will never notice or care, *I* know all those things are there, and someday somebody is going to discover them and love them to pieces.

SPEAKING OF WHICH.

You can't love any of our cool new language stuff until Medicine for the Dead comes out next year, but here is an amazing thing that you can love RIGHT NOW.

You see, there are not one but TWO genius linguists living in this Midwestern house of miracles, and the one who didn't stay up 'til 1AM crafting past-particles with me was in fact freshly returned from the SETI Institute, where she gave a presentation on xenolinguistics.  That is a great, smart, scholarly-sounding term for a thing that we actually know nothing about – namely, alien languages.

But let me tell you: just because we are wallowing in ignorance doesn't mean we can't have a phenomenal conversation about it.  I'd often thought about the Han and Chewie problem – you know, what it would be like to have mutual intelligibility, but lack the anatomy to actually speak the other person's language – but Sheri brings up an even more dire possibility: what if we just don't have the brain-wiring to understand each other at all?  Like, think back to Helen Keller, and how enormously difficult it was for her to first realize that the sensations she experienced with one hand were linked to the signs that Annie Sullivan spelled into the other.  As Sheri says, we need that "oh, that's what we're doing here!" epiphany before we can connect the things/ideas/actions/qualities to the sounds/signs/smells/colors/temporal-disturbances that name them.  The notion that we would have trouble communicating is not a new one to me – but the idea that we might not be capable of realizing that someone is trying to communicate just blows my mind. 

After all, people who can't speak or write or sign in the usual way have been enormously creative in finding ways to communicate with the muggle world.  Think about Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer, or Jason Becker's grid-alphabet, or the book Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote by blinking his left eye.  So many times, we have moved heaven and earth to connect with each other – but none of that can happen until we realize that there is another mind to connect with.  (And now I'm thinking of Odo from Deep Space Nine – an infant shapeshifter whose natural form is a fluid, and who spent years being tortured by a curious, well-intentioned scientist who never realized that the goo in the glass was a sentient life-form.)

Though there is always hope for the next generation.

Anyway, this-all isn't meant to sound as gloomy as it does: after all, anticipating challenges is a great first step to recognizing and overcoming them.  Definitely, definitely check out Sheri's presentation for all the wonder and wisdom that this blog post is so lacking, and stay for the questions afterward.  Should animal communications ever count as language?  When it comes to intelligent life in the universe, is our sample size really n=1?  If it's so cold that wiper blades routinely freeze to their windshields, are humans flaunting God by living here?

I'll work on that last one and get back to you.  Stay warm in the meantime, e-friends – I'm off to go learn how to wear a scarf!

Do you like it?  Does it smell good?  Does it have teeth?

Five Delightful Things

Just what it says on the tin: this list is both self- and writing-centered, and contains up to 78% unrefined enthusiasm byproducts by weight. 

1.  I took my first-ever advance check to the bank this week.  Dollars are happy things!  But I gotta tell you, "I Are Real Writer" vibes are far, far happier.  And the money, in turn, led to

2.  Me posting an ad for an honest-to-God for-real conlanger (that's short for "constructed-language-er", I believe) to create honest-to-God for-real languages for my books - and getting whomped by interested applicants.  I am so, so stoked to finally be doing this.  It's so fun and expensive and makes me feel like a million bucks.  Is this what it's like to get a makeover? 

Speaking of which, mad props to the Language Creation Society and David Peterson in particular, who's taken so much time out of his busy schedule as the reigning Supreme Conlang Overlord to help make my want-ad more than a series of ignorant grunts and squeals.  (Writer-peeps, holler at me if you think you might be in the market for conlang services - I've now got more fantastic contacts than I know what to do with!) 

Yes, I'm breaking the first rule of Fight Club.
I am okay with that.

3.   Write Club 2013 will crown its champion tomorrow, which is going to be great no matter what.  I've already said plenty about why I love this contest, so I'll just add this: I have had more fun over the past four months, met more awesomesweet writers (and CRITIQUERS, good gravy!), and actually-literally-for-real upped my game because of this humble little game - it's unreal.  The book that comes out next year is going to be better because I got to do this.   And I want so badly to bring this action over to DFWcon somehow.  (Check out my latest post, by the way, if you're find yourself flagging: Five Secret Advantages of the Unpublished Writer.)

Look at this cover, you guys.LOOK AT IT.

4.  There are only two weeks left until The Golden City comes out and I get to read it!  Not gonna lie, y'all - I will probably go whole-hog navelgazing bananas about this book in pretty short order.  I am SO EXCITED to see another astonishingly underused historical setting brought to the fantasy aisle, and treated like more than a convenient slapdash shellacking for the plot.  (I've also had the privilege of swapping fishman-fistbumps with the author, and the fact that she's kind of excruciatingly rad doesn't hurt either.)

5.  As God is my witness, I am WRITING AGAIN!  Take that, responsibilities!  The fig of Spain for thee, sleep schedule!  Lick my lemons, adulthood - I'm base-jumping to Narnia and you can't stop me!


You need to have things trying to stop you so that you can get a better sense of how fast you are going as you smash through them.

No, He Really is a Cunning Linguist

Okay, I'm like... six weeks late to the game, but I finally saw Django Unchained last week.

I won't write a whole review here, because the movie's too big and I'm too dumb (I need to see it at least two more times to get even half a grip on it).  Still, I'll get in line behind my hip compadre Matt Borgard in saying, "Loved that it was a movie about slavery that said more than 'Slavery sucks, aren't white people awesome for ending it?'"

But let's scoot over out of the massive shadows of racism and history for a sec.  Let me tell you what was really exceptional and interesting and surprising as hell.  (Spoiler level: mild.)

It's rare enough to get a story with a protagonist who's explicitly multilingual, and rarer still for that ability to be central to the plot.   But I can't remember EVER seeing a bad guy "baddened" by his ignorance of other languages.  

Well, so why is that?  Why is this so unheard-of?

Possibly it's a byproduct of our famed American anti-intellectualism.  After all, science gets you Frankenstein, Godzilla, zombies, super-viruses, the Matrix, Reavers, SkyNet, GladOS, HAL 9000, and Krieger Kleanse.  And whatever learning the heroes need in order to handle up on all that is usually about controlling your powers, using the Force, Eye of the Tiger, the power:responsibility ratio, or some other montage-friendly combination of physical know-how and moral fortitude.  Basically, unless you're tracking down a serial killer or doing night shifts at a magical museum, fancy-pants learnings are a gateway drug to supervillainy.  (So put down the book and go for a jog, Faustus, before you get us all killed.)

Every time somebody does science, somebody else gets a workout.

And possibly it's simpler than that.  Americans skew monolingual (only 20.3% speak a language other than English at home, though of course that doesn't catch multilingual people who default to English), so why would we want heroes who make us feel stupid and inferior? 

Here's what I don't get, though. Even setting aside all explicit fantasy, our heroic canon is full of exotic people with fantastic skills. We thrill to watch secret agents and fighter pilots and unstoppable kung-fu badasses, cops, soldiers, athletes, cowboys, explorers, gangsters, smoldering playboy billionaires, and yes, even the occasional noble attorney or oddball inventor.

So it's not like we're threatened by heroes who are cooler, smarter, or more talented than ourselves.  That's practically a prerequisite.  If we thought it was sexy to speak other languages, the silver screen would be full of people doing exactly that.

Inflect your prepositions for me, baby.  I want your relational noun.

Quick, name three movie characters who speak French.

I got Inspector Clouseau, Pepe le Pew, and Gomez Addams.  For the record, that's an idiot, a skunk, and an Addams.  If you want someone more respectable, you can hit up Le Chiffre or the Merovingian, but then you're over to villainy in pretty short order. 

And if that's what we think of what's widely regarded as a lovely and sophisticated language (which is to say, the mother tongue of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys), what hope can there be for German (Nazis), or Spanish (illegals), or Russian (wacky potato-drunk commies), or Mandarin (sinister industrial commies), or Swahili (wait, where's Swahiland again?)

Is part of the reason our heroes don't speak these languages because we don't respect the people who do?

I don't know.  I do know that it is really, dangerously easy to fall into the "Americans are stupid xenophobic bigots" mindset, where we gnash our teeth and pillory the tabloid-reading, reality-televising, Bieber-beliebing lowest common denominator.  That way lies madness, and yelling at the kids to get off our lawns.

But I would like to find out more about when we lost our reverence for the so-called "classical education", and whether there's any hope for reviving the intellectual sexiness of languages.  (By the way, this is one reason why I'm so jazzed for Russell Connor's Sargasso - danger, mystery, and monsters in the Bermuda Triangle, and one of the leading ladies is a linguist!)

In the meantime, please feel free to add to my list: which of your favorite books and movies have language is a central feature?

--I am simply trying to ascertain -
--Speak English, goddammit!

Yes, Virginia, There is a Navajo Word for "MySpace"

Okay, I have a thesis, which is this: if you want to know what an author is really interested in, look at a terrible book of theirs*, and see what it's filled with.  (It will have been there in good books too, but it's easiest to see in later ones, when the author's built up a track record and some editorial clout and is free to let their fetishes overgrow plot and character.)

FOR EXAMPLE: 

Jean Auel, author of the Earth's Children series.  The lady is over-the-moon about cave paintings.  Her first book in the series is the mega-famous Clan of the Cave Bear.  The last book?  The Land of Painted Caves.  Two stars on Amazon, and guess what folks are mad about.

Terry Goodkind, author of The Sword of Truth series.  Objectivism.  And possibly rape.  But definitely objectivism.  Let's call it John Galt non-con and leave it at that.

Stephenie Meyer, author of... like you don't know.  Look, it's a romance targeted at teen girls, it's not going to NOT feature lavish descriptions of Hunky McHotpants and Smoldering Native of the Beefcake People.  But her white-hot frantic macroing of phrases like "his dazzling pale perfect God-like marble Aryan perfection" gives you a pretty clear picture of what tops her own personal Lickability Index.

*note: this isn't a universal method.  There are plenty of other ways to screw up a book, most of them absolutely well-intentioned, and many authors go their whole careers without taking more than modest sips from the well of self-gratification.

Anyway, so I've decided: twenty years from now, when I'm bloated with egotistical methane and out of ideas, I'd like to go off the rails by indulging in a 500-page linguistic wank-a-thon.  Look, TELL me this isn't cool:

Five Terms From Countryboy79's Archive of Navajo Slang

Girlfriend/Boyfriend - Bich'áayaa íí'áhí  - "the one that sticks up from under his armpit."

Microwave - Bee na'niildóhó - "you warm things up with it."

Days Inn in St. Michael's, AZ - Ba' Dziztiní - "lying down waiting for someone."

Snow Flurry - Ayéhé néiidiníyódí - "the weather that drives the in-laws in."

Movie Theater - Da'níl'íidi - "where they are shown." 

Azee' handéhé - "falling medicine"

There are dozens more on the page (which you will have to visit if you want to know how to say "Burger King"!)  But even from this small sampling, you can see a pattern: notice how all five are nouns, things, but the literal translations are all actions, talking about what the thing does or how it behaves or what it's used for.  You could, if you looked up the language on Wikipedia, find out that it's a remarkably verb-heavy language, with relatively few nouns to speak of - but you don't need a massive encyclopedia article to tell you that, if you've seen even a few examples like these.

So I guess what I'm saying is, what gets me absolutely, gobsmackingly besmitten about languages is that, like an author, they tell you what's important to them - all you have to do is listen long enough.

In every word there sleeps an image.

Vocabulorgy

I don't know if I've said it lately, but I get SO STOKED when I play with words.  I just... I want to dress them up and put them in the Malibu Barbie playset and make them have hot plastic tongue-sex until they pop out a whole passel of cute cuddly slang-babies.

Anyway, here for the fun of it are ten of my favorite Latin words. Let's bring these back, you guys, seriously.

crapularius - for getting rid of a hangover

demurmuro - to grumble through (e.g., a performance)

edento - to knock the teeth out of

effutuere - to wear out through excessive sex

frustulentus - full of crumbs

intervomere - to throw up amongst

pergraecor - to go completely Greek, to have a ball

rasito - to shave regularly

subinvito - to invite unenthusiastically

vapularis - in for a flogging

Substantive post later this week.  It's the last sprint to the manuscript-submitting finish line, and I am tearing up track.

lucubro (v tr) - to compose at night; (v intr) to burn the midnight oil.