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

[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!

[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.

[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.