So you want to speak Parseltongue?

[izmeina]

Oh Izzie hasn't learnt it yet but this is just the place for Do it yourself serpents
After all, why should geeks have all the fun?

Comments

thank you !

[cat-irix.livejournal.com]

This reference is very cool ! So concise and yet complete... I can't afford the luxury of making my own conlang right now, but the moment I could, it would be the starting point.

I just wonder - do all the people who design an alien language, start with designing the mating customs of the creatures who speak it ? :P (I totally believe that the language can't be invented separately from the culture and biology of its speakers, and I'd like them to have more than 2 genders, so the language would have 3 or more, reflecting this situation)

Re: thank you !

[izmeina.livejournal.com]

Found the link among some of the comments to a recent Conlang post. You know what LJ is like - two days later - lost in a sea of stuff and you can never find it again. Now Izzie snatches stuff she likes straight away before it finds its way to the black hole of Cyberia.
Izzie agrees with your views about language developing as part of a package along with culture but wonders why a language even needs genders at all -or more than one. Izzie's idea is to have pronouns that serve as optional extras but it would be only necessary to use them when it matters - ie talking about family relationships and squishy slinking in the grass etc.
But I guess it is a bit like plurals - we take them for granted and find it hard to imagine not knowing whether there is one or more of something and it is rather a revelation to discover languages where they do not really exist at all (Chinese for instance)
Ever noticed to that in most European languages the 'male' gender seems to be considered normal and standard and the 'female' the deviant?
Iz suspects that Parseltongue might have four genders - one for each house. No need to guess which one is considered the 'greatest gender of all' ;)

by the way

[cat-irix.livejournal.com]

btw have you seen this ? Klingon rap :D somebody actually wrote and recorded an .mp3 song in Klingon :D (now with the translation ! ) these guys are awesome :)

[cat-irix.livejournal.com]

IMHO adding the genders to the language makes it more complicated and also more "natural-looking" - which may be a disadvantage if you intend it to be actually useful (such as Esperanto) but an advantage for languages meant for fictional universes, and also just for fun ! But in fact, I'd like genders to be a little more logical than in the European languages. For example, let's say my universe has creatures of 4 genders, corresponding to the 4 elements (fire, air, water and earth) according to their natural habitats, and let's say that the fire creatures are red, small and intelligent, and the earth creatures are brown, big and stupid. (it's just for the sake of an example). So every object or concept in the language which can be related to 2 or more of the fire qualities and to 1 or less of the earth qualities (for example, something red, big and intelligent, or red, small and stupid, or brown, small and intelligent) will have a good chance of having the fire gender. So the genders are kind of descriptive :)

In fact I thought about a language which would be a parallel of a computer language Intercal - which is, basically, the weirdest and insanely twisted computer language in existence, but strangely enough, it *is* possible to write working programs in it. But of course such an exercise should be only done by an experienced conlanger who already is familiar with the "proper" ways of building a language.

Gender Bender

[izmeina.livejournal.com]

A most amusing concept of genders Iz remembered lurking as a link in the evil Department of Mysteries. There are of course a few grey areas (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Eevans/cs655/readings/purity.html) but the idea is so cool and is just like something that Lucius Malfoy would have brewed up in his basement.

Re: Gender Bender

[cat-irix.livejournal.com]

Yay ! I've seen this article before, and I find it simply BRILLIANT ! :) Political correctness is a funny thing :P