Impressing Forms about Tongues on my Number-Counter

[athelind]

In a locked post in his journal, a friend of mine observed that science fiction writers often make aliens sound "aboriginal":

People with warp travel and a high tech, computerized society say things like "The day of lightning", "the trial of strength", or "the forbidden land". In short they typically end up sounding like Native Americans, or more accurately, what white people think Native Americans sound like and wrote dialog for in spaghetti westerns.

Speaking a polyglot language like English tends to distort one's perspective. We simply don't notice when we use words and phrases that are pretty much exactly like that.

I mean, on the Day of the Thunder God, I got a call on my hears-far in the middle of watching my sees-far, and had to get in my moves-by-itself to head to The Place Below The City. I traveled on the Road Between Estates to the almost-island, and spoke to One Who Knows The Word Of Water at the All-Together in the High Woods about the Balance of Eating-Away.

Which is exactly the same thing as saying "On Thursday, I got a call on my telephone in the middle of watching television, and had to get in my automobile to head to the suburbs. I traveled on the interstate to the peninsula, and spoke to a hydrological scientist at the University in Palo Alto about the equilibrium of erosion."

And if I spoke Spanish, Greek, or Latin, that sentence would sound as much like the first version as the second.

So, basically, English sounds more "sophisticated" to an Anglophone because it's chock full of foreign words whos meanings we either don't know or don't really hear.

Incidentally, I've never understood the assumption that people in Sci Fi shows were actually supposed to be speaking English. Nobody ever makes that assumption when they're watching something set in, say, 17th Century France or Pharaonic Egypt. On Star Trek, they might be speaking Esperanto, or some kind of interlac of Terran, Vulcan, and other languages. We're just watching a translation into our Primitive 20th-Century Dialect.

Comments

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

I am forced to think of the use of Sino-Japanese compounds in Japanese, which are used nearly the same way that Latin and Greek word derivitives are in English.

Take, for example, the word for telephone, denwa (電話):

電 - DEN - electric(ity)
話 - WA; hana(su) - speak

I think it'd be kind of neat to think of 'a telephone' as 'an electrospeak.'

I also rather like the Japanese equivalent of "Surival of the Fittest," jakuniku-kyoushoku 弱肉強食

弱 - JAKU; yowa(i) - weak
肉 - NIKU - meat
強 - KYOU; tsuyo(i) - strong
食 - SHOKU; tabe(ru) - eat

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's almost poetic. In fact, in both languages, it's a couplet.

Jaku Niku, Kyo Shoku. Elegant.

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

Japanese is full of these wonderful 4-character idioms known as yoji-jukogo 四字熟語.

Some of my favorites are:

umisen-yamasen (海千山千) - "a thousand seas, a thousand mountains" - used in the same way as the English referring to someone as "sly old dog"

isseki-nichou (一石二鳥) - "one stone, two birds" - 'nuff said

kido-airaku (喜怒哀楽) - "happiness, anger, sadness, pleasure" - the gamut of human emotions, plain and simple

juunin-toiro (十人十色) - "ten people, ten colors" - similar to the English "it takes all kinds" or "to each his own"

senzai-ichiguu (千載一遇) - "a thousand years, one meeting" - once in a lifetime

It's very interesting (to me at least) how often some of these parallel expressions and idioms we already have in English.

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Hm. I realize this is going to be terribly stereotypical, since I received it via Japanese manga, but that fits another..urm...translation, of the phrase I've heard. "The flesh of the weak is the food of the strong." *Shrugs* I dunno. I thought it interesting to see the corellation there.

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a perfectly acceptable translation, as well (the set of characters is set up as if it were Chinese, and not an actual Japanese sentence).

The "survival of the fittest" basically comes from the fact that the usage of the phrase is nearly identical between languages.

[toy-dragon.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm not sure if "polyglot distortion", to coin a phrase, is quite on point though (but it's an interesting observation). My thoughts on writers was about their intent. When watching a foreign-langauge film in sub-title, one typically doesn't see a translation style which strips things down to "I saw the metal-bird come from where-the-sun-rises through my see-far" unless the translated prose is attempting to portray something rustic, unrefiined, old, simple, or primitive". For example, the subtitles to an anime set in modern Japan wouldn't use metal-bird for "aeroplane". However, the translated dialog for a fantasy period piece set in 16th century China might call the wacky flying device a clever inventor made the "metal bird".

When portraying things for your native audience, this are basic matters that need to be considered. This is why "The Day of Lighting" can clash so badly IN ENGLISH (including when it is just assumed that the dialog is being translated for the English-speaking viewer) with the culture which has a visible "sophistication" level on par (or supposedly greater than!) the audience. Plus at times, it almost seems to play to certain stereotypes or narrow thinking. An alien culture which has a religion or metaphysical tradition that mirrors "quant" primitive beliefs (such as the ever-popular Native Americans) has their concepts presented in appropriately "simple" language to the ears of the audience. As if the writer is thinking "and here, I'll take advantage of the association between charming primitive belief systems. How clever!"

I want to see some warp travelling aliens who have computers and proccessed food, and also practice an equivalent to something like druidism, paganism, or wicca. Including the captain of the ship making a spell for good luck so the warp core doesn't breach!

[waywind.livejournal.com]

"I want to see some warp travelling aliens who have computers and proccessed food, and also practice an equivalent to something like druidism, paganism, or wicca. Including the captain of the ship making a spell for good luck so the warp core doesn't breach!"

Gee, I wonder why you wish that. ;)

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I want to see some warp travelling aliens who have computers and proccessed food, and also practice an equivalent to something like druidism, paganism, or wicca. Including the captain of the ship making a spell for good luck so the warp core doesn't breach!

...and it actually works!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course it actually works. In Star Trek every religion has tangible proof except mainstream 20th Century faiths.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I actually recall a scene in Babylon 5 when Delenn and co. are meeting the Drakh for the first time and communication comes in- not in Interlac, but in Minbari- with the whole scene presented in English just as if it had been dubbed for us. Of course, the fact that the Drakh- in a supposed first-contact situation- already speak Minbari is cause for some concern...

There's also the Doctor Who approach- the TARDIS adjusts your neural centers so you speak and hear all local languages as if they were your own, transparently. This came up in the Tom Baker era. Sarah Jane Smith was the companion if I recall correctly, so we're talking mid-'70s. Kind of like a Babelfish without the fish.

As for languages spoken by others... If it's made obvious that translation is being done on the part of the speaker and the result is stilted and awkward English, I always presume that they're circumlocuting in a language not their own- Deus knows I've done that enough times in Spanish. But indeed, Earth languages are riddled with words that are constructed from words that describe what things do- "windshield" in Spanish is "parabrisas", or literally "thing that stops breezes". Constructing new words that way makes more sense in some languages than others...

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Exactly, pretty much. Given how confusing our language is, and how it's becoming more and more prominent about the world (although that's not exactly a good point, in my opinion), others are having to adapt to our words and try to fit them into their own languages. And since our language, as all do, is constantly evolving, we're never going to have a pure 'set' that everyone is going to have. We have stereotypes within our own language after all: inner-city, valley girl, l33t...but getting onto the point in movies that are set in previous eras, it does strike me as funny that the main characters may be in Renaissance France, and while every one of the main characters is speaking English (and often with British accents), the minor characters around them may be speaking all manner of different languages. Why should it be so different for them? I dunno. It was an excellent point that was made, however.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Have you ever seen that parody of Secret Army, 'Allo, 'Allo?....the French all talk in French accents, the English agent disguised as a Gendarme talks fractured English ("Good Moaning") the Germans all talk funny Hun ("Heil Hitler!""clop!")and the British airmen talk silly ass Enlish ("Helleauh!")

Given Esperanto in space, the only person I recall trying to learn it was Arnold J (Iron Balls) Rimmer BSC SSC....
says it all really

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

My apologies, but I have not. And I didn't mean to sound as if I was stereotyping all movies set in such places. Truthfully, I got it from that Cinderella remake starring Drew Barrymore. If you watch it, you'll likely understand how I saw things.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Heck, don't apologise...
I haven't seen Drew Barrymore, but one never knows....

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

Yeah... well, it is rather more likely that people in the Trek universe would be speaking something similar to 20th century English, because the basic words of the language don't change as fast as they once did. I think that's because of literacy. Written language tends to freeze in place somewhat.

Consider that Chaucer died in 1400. Shakespeare was writing his plays around 1600. It's been 400 years since Shakespeare, yet we can still pretty much understand his English. Chaucer's, on the other hand, is a foreign language even though it's only half again as old. That speaks to the language changing less in recent years than it once did.

But the reason the People of the Future speak 20th Century language is the same reason Enterprise has those magical "universal translators," not to mention transporters, warp drive, faster-than-light radio, and all the rest of it. It's all because of plot necessity. Yeah, they could have spent 20 minutes of each show landing an 1100-foot starship on the planet's surface, spent thirty or forty years of ship's time travelling from one star to the next, or had everyone aboard jabbering in some 24th Century Cityspeek of polyglot English- Spanish- Chinese- Japanese, a' la Blade Runner. But if they did stuff like that they'd have to spend the whole episode getting everything set up and furnishing translations for the viewers, and the hour would be up just when Kirk set foot on the planet to go meet the Alien Babe of the Week. Wouldn't make for good ratings.

[twentythoughts.livejournal.com]

"He say you brade runner!"

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

If you were to hear someone from Shakespeare's time performing one of his plays, you not only would not recognize the play, you probably wouldn't recognize that it was English. The language has shifted significantly since that time, in particular the vowels. The introduction of some heavy German accents to the British upper crust in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has something to do with this. "Loves" used to rhyme with "hooves", for example. That's why so many older poems no longer seem to rhyme to the modern ear; they were written before the language shift occurred.

In terms of WRITTEN language, you're absolutely right. It changes less in highly literate societies than it does in mostly oral ones. Just in the last thirty years, though, our language has shifted considerably. For example:
1) My working-class British grandmother used the word "shall" regularly. I can't remember the last time I used it in speech, unless I was actively trying to be old-fashioned.
2) A whole generation of verbs and adverbs is now considered anathema in polite speech: jewed, gypped, and niggardly, for example, are no longer permissible, yet my other grandmother and even my parents used them often enough that I knew what they meant. (I'm only 29.)
3) Double negatives are becoming the norm, though most teachers still correct them. I challenge you to find a popular song lyric in the last ten years that uses "any more." You won't; they all say "no more", which is grammatically atrocious in most of the contexts where I hear it, but most people never notice.
4) I could go into all the changes that came about as a result of the women's lib movement, but I'm sure you're already familiar with those. Will our children even understand terms like "stewardess" or "waiter"? I'm not sure, because I am teaching my daughter "server" for both, and that's what she'll get in school, too.

Last point - the next time you watch a black-and-white movie from the thirties or forties, listen really carefully to the conversations. The words sound very similar to how we would say them today, but they are not identical. There are turns of phrase that are out of use, there's a crispness to pronunciation that is lacking now, and the intonation, the rise and fall of the sentences, is totally different. We still understand them, but I have it on good authority that someone learning my southern-Ontario dialect of English when they come here as an adult has difficulty understanding those movies. The dialect has shifted enough to require a shift in our listening habits. Native speakers make this shift with no trouble; second-language speakers have to work at it.

Can you tell historical linguistics is a pet hobby of mine? :)

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Now, that last point surprises me greatly. My assumption (and the prediction of a few SF authors who actually bothered to give it thought) was that the proliferation of recorded media would provide the same kind of anchor to spoken language that widespread literacy had for written language.

Honestly, it's kind of cool that it doesn't. I wonder if languages controlled by central Acadamies, like French, show less linguistic drift?

I HAVE heard that, in the Untidy States, at least, regional accents have started to become less distinct than they used to be because of broadcast media. I've heard a bit of that -- few US-ians of my generation or younger have incomprehensible accents anymore, and people tend to lose their accents (or slip more easily into new ones) when they move to different regions of the country than they once did.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

There are fewer regional accents now than there were fifty years ago, because of broadcast media; that's true. But try the experiment of listening to a thirties radio show, and see if you can hear the linguistic differences. They are there. I think the changes in accent would have been much more pronounced without broadcast media than they were with it, but that doesn't mean there was no change.

I think that broadcast media has slowed the rate of linguistic change in terms of accents. It has also, as you mention, leveled the playing field so that there are fewer accents to deal with. But, and this almost negates the other two, it has sped up the introduction of new, specialized, loan or slang words into the language. Twenty years ago, "access" was a noun. "Yada yada" was something you heard in certain neighbourhoods of NYC. "I ain't got no more" was bad grammar on at least two levels. You get my drift.

Ten years ago, there was a clear dividing line between print and broadcast media. Then the internet became a force, and all of a sudden, we're seeing linguistic change in the written language at a rate that hasn't happened in centuries. At the moment, it's confined to the young or undereducated users, but it's there and it will become a force for change over the next two decades. I predict that written English as we know it will have changed considerably in a hundred years, much the way it did between Chaucer and Shakespeare, because of the influence of the Internet and the linguistic shift that it is creating.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I just realized I forgot one important point.

Both Shakespeare and Chaucer were writing what they considered phonetic English; that is, the spellings mimicked how the words were pronounced. However, Shakespeare was writing at a time of great literary achievement. The Renaissance saw a huge jump in literacy, mostly due to the advent of the printing press, the rising middle class, and the rise of Protestantism. As a result, the language was codified to reflect pronunciations that Shakespeare considered normal. Until then, the written language had kept pace with the spoken in terms of change; after him, though the spoken language continued to evolve nearly as fast as before until the 20th century, the written language became more static.

An excellent example of this actually comes from French. Someone reading a document written in Norman French at the beginning of the twelfth century would have little trouble equating the words to modern French. A document in English from the same period is a foreign language. That's because French had already been codified by the twelfth century. The language as it is spoken today bears no phonetic resemblance whatsoever to the spellings, because the spoken language has been evolving for at least eight centuries since the written language became basically static.