We want to know more about the languages in Poul Anderson's universes:
Diomedean,
Anglic;
Eriau;
Planha;
Lunarian;
Temporal, especially the tenses;
Exaltationist.
Apparently, some Star Trek fans emulate Tolkien. See the Klingon Language Institute here.
A living artificial language is Esperanto.
Sila kaj mi lernis la lingvon sed ni ne parolis gin flue.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think we can say a few things about the Anglic of the Terran Empire in Dominic Flandry's time. First, Sandra Miesel suggested in one of her essays that it was a simplified form of our English. Second, it must have included many loan words from some alien, non human languages. Third, Flandry mentioned in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS how he had read, in TRANSLATION Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument." Which means English had changed enough that EBB's poems and the works of other writers we can still easily read needed to be translated.
And of course we both know of how Stirling had a passionate fan of the works of JRR Tolkien speaking Elvish and having her followers in the "Dunedain Rangers" she founded doing the same in his Change books. And fully developing and expanding as much as possible this invented language into a real, practical, and functioning tongue.
And the Klingon Language Institute is new to me!
Sean
Sean,
I had forgotten the elaboration of Elvish in the Emberverse, even down to the Sword informing its bearer of aspects of the language that no one had thought of!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I should have mentioned how Artos' Sword did that! And how a "Dunadan" Ranger would follow the High King to take notes about these aspects of Elvish.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
There's a bit in the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country about Klingons being very fond of Shakespeare; one of them even tells Captain Kirk that you can't fully understand Shakespeare until you've read him "in the original Klingon." Another Klingon character really, really likes inserting Shakespearean quotes into his remarks (his last words before being blown up are, "To be or not to be..."), and on occasion does so in Klingon rather than English. He was played by Christopher Plummer. When he met the man who'd developed the Klingon words for those quotes, Plummer joked, "I understand you're here to teach me some Shakespeare."
For the record, Plummer has played such Shakespearean roles as Henry V, Hamlet, Benedick, Mercutio, and Macbeth ... and that's not a comprehensive list.
David,
The phrase, "...the undiscovered country..." is from HAMLET, of course, and that play has been translated into Klingon.
Paul.
Kaor, DAVID!
Thanks for your interesting and amusing remarks! Alas, I was never a fan of STAR TREK. And I see how I've missed such subtleties as the Klingons being sop fond of Shakespeare.
And of course we see Nicholas van Rijn translating/adapting a very well known bit from Shakespeare in THE MAN WHO COUNTS. When the Lannachska needed encouraging in a moment of despondency.
Sean
That bit with Shakespeare in the "original Klingon" is an adaptation from an old joke about a German saying that "unser Shakespeare" can only be fully appreciated in the original German. He was very, very popular in 19th century Germany and they adopted a rather proprietary attitude towards him which English-speakers found amusing.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Ha, ha!!! And, perhaps a spin off of this joke was the idea I read somewhere that translations of Shakespeare into modern German were more READABLE than the Elizabethan English of his time is to many modern English readers. That is, after more than 400 after the Bard's death, the English he used is becoming increasingly strange to us.
Sean
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