Hallo!

On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:17:31 -0400, Craig Daniel wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> 
> wrote: 
> [...]
> > It is often said that inflectionless languages with rigid word order
> > are easier to learn than highly inflected languages with free word
> > order, but I don't know to which degree this is true, and anyway, the
> > Sidhe are not human, so very different things may be easy to them than
> > to us.
> 
> True.
> 
> I was thinking not in terms of ease of learning but rather maximum
> redundancy for ease of use once fully learned.
> 
> On the other hand, folkloric fey tend to be noted for word games,
> which actually pushes it toward something a bit less rigid.

However, I have read several times that the Faerie never get a joke
and understand everything literally.  Their languages may be ones in
which word-play is *impossible* (self-segregating morphology?).

It has also been "observed" that the Faerie speak human languages in
a somewhat formal and old-fashioned way, e.g. the Faerie of today's
England speak like stiff Victorian gentry.  And they *never* speak
local dialect - always book standard.

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:04:56 +0200, Toms Deimonds Barvidis wrote:

> Quoting "Jörg Rhiemeier" <[log in to unmask]>:
> [...]
> > Where's the problem with Quenya?  It is not more difficult than Latin
> (which has more irregularities in its inflections) or Finnish (which has
> more noun cases).  I have seen natlangs which are much "wilder"
> than
> Quenya!
> 
> I don't really know. Probably it's because Quenya sounds more elvish to me. 
> I'm used to Sindarin now (because I've "studied" it and applied some  of
> it's features to my Longrimol).  And yes, I have seen wilder natlangs, 
> too :) 

I concur with you that Sindarin sounds more "down to earth" than Quenya,
which has some "ethereal" quality to it.  Yet, there is nothing in Quenya
where you can say that it cannot occur in a human language.

> > Indeed.  What we see of Sperethiel looks like a run-of-the-mill
> > euroclone, with a phonaesthetic loosely (very loosely) modelled on
> > Celtic languages.  There is no evidence for it being the "most
> > complex language on Earth", nor is there even evidence for the kind
> > of depth we can find in Quenya or Sindarin.
> 
> Would it be possable to put such a depth in only one fifth of  page? :)

Certainly not; but I got the impression that the depth and complexity
talked about was not really there.  But I don't know how much work the
authors actually invested in their conlang.

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:21:38 +0100, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:

> [...]
> So I don't find it far-fetched that an immortal species would also
> experience language change, even if it was slower than normal human language
> change (which is exactly what seems to happen in with Tolkien's Elves).

Indeed.  As the language spoken by a person changes within his life,
a longer lifespan should not rule out language change; all one would
expect is slower change, and that is exactly what we see here.

> Moreover, don't forget that for Tolkien, the difference between Humans and
> Elves wasn't so much physical (Elves and Humans can mate, and the hybrids
> are not suffering from any issues cross-species hybrids often face) as it
> was spiritual (more exactly, it was a difference of *soul fate*, as
> exemplified with the fact that the Half-Elves could choose to take on the
> Human - grow old, die, and have your soul leave Ea entirely -, or the Elvish
> fate - never grow old, and if dying of violent death or "withering", have
> your soul go back to Valinor, to the Halls of Mandos - without them changing
> physically). the few physical differences between Elves and Humans (their
> beauty and lack of ageing) were a *result* of the difference in soul fate,
> rather than a cause.

Right.  Elves and Men are certainly the same species, as they can
interbreed without any problems, and what differences in physique
are there are due to the different fate of the soul.

> In other words, it's not so weird that Tolkien's Elvish languages could
> easily pass up as human languages. His Elves were not really that different
> from Humans, at least physically speaking.

Exactly.  Given that Elves are not even really non-human, one would
expect human languages from them, which is just what is observed.
Any kind of "exolang" which violates human language universals
wholesale would simply not fit them.

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