Hallo conlangers!

On 17/02/2017 12:07 R A Brown wrote:

> On 17/02/2017 04:59, Logan Kearsley wrote:
>> I recently had occasion to chat with Beth Meacham, who
>> is an executive editor at Tor Books. Feeling that this
>> was a great opportunity to extract wisdom, but aving no
>> idea what to actually ask about, I decided to ask if she
>> had an opinion on conlangs, and it turns she had. Quite
>> a strong one, in fact!
>>
>> Upon further inquiry, she elaborated as follows:
>>
>> 1. That using conlangs in fiction is extremely difficult
>> to do well. This, I think would not be terribly
>> controversial.
>
> Agreed.

Indeed, it is not easy. Especially, it is not easy to do justice to both
readers who are interested in your conlangs and those who aren't ;) But
in all cases, if you are going to make a conlang for your novel and
feature it, make sure the conlang is *good*. A bad conlang can ruin the
story at least for those readers who are aware of such things, while a
good conlang can never hurt, and gives the work more depth.

>> 2. That the single author to have done the best job at
>> at it was C. J. Cherryh. She was not at all impressed
>> with Tolkien, which I thought *would* be a rather
>> controversial opinion.
>
> It is rather.  Methinks she's misunderstood what Tolkien was
> about.

I don't know Cherryh's stance on Tolkien, so I refrain from commenting
on this.

>> 3. That the proper way of using a conlang in a work of
>> literature (we did not discuss films) is to present it
>> in such a way that the reader will naturally come to
>> learn the language over the course of the book,
>
> Why is that "proper"?  Surely it depends very much on the
> purpose of the book.

Absolutely. I tend to be turned off when someone speaks of "the proper
way" in a context like this. There are many ways to feature conlangs in
a work of fiction; which way is best depends on various matters, such as
whether the languages are central to the plot or not, and ultimately on
taste.

>> and that the author must know how language works so as
>> to create a "good" one. Tolkien, while clearly
>> knowledgeable about language and very capable of creating
>> "good" ones,
>>
> Yes, but ...
>
>> just dumps it on the reader and provides appendices at
>> the back if you care to try to learn it. C. J. Cherryh,
>> apparently, employs conlangs in such a way that
>> appendices are not needed.
>
> To say it is just 'dumped', IMO misses the point.  Also
> 1. Strictly speaking Tolkien's appendices are not necessary
> for the story; they are there for those who want further
> information.
> 2. Even with the appendices. one does not get a full
> description of the language.

Right. When I first read _The Lord of the Rings_, I read an edition that
missed the appendices; I nevertheless enjoyed and understood the books,
even if I was curious like mad for the missing appendices. These
appendices, though, while certainly very interesting, do not describe
the languages in detail.

> The point is surely that while Tolkien himself had the Elven
> languages more or less fully worked out, it was never his
> intention to present them in a way that others could learn
> them.  They come in the LotR as part of 'background', so to
> speak.  His primary interest was his conmythology expounded
> in the Silmarillion, whose final revision Tolkien never
> lived to complete.

Tolkien liked to say that he came up with his mythology in order to
create a setting where his languages would be spoken; at other times,
though, he said that his goal was to create a "mythology for England",
though the connection to England was tenuous (Ælfwine's journey) and
eventually fell wholly by the wayside.

I have said several times that if Tolkien had not written _The Lord of
the Rings_ but instead _A Historical Grammar of the Eldarin Languages_,
his conlangs would now probably be considered nothing else than the
eccentric hobby of an Oxford don, and largely forgotten.

Those conlangs which are widely popular are not necessarily the best
ones, but those that are featured in popular novels, films or TV series.
Klingon, which is IMHO quite shoddy as a conlang, is a case in point.
The average reader is *not* a language geek who enjoys reading grammar
sketches!

>> If nothing else, this has certainly moved C. J. Cherryh
>
> From what you report it would seem that CJ Cherryh intended
> to present her conlang(s) in a form that would give readers
> sufficient knowledge to be able to use and speak the
> language.  Tolkien did not intend that.  One may wish that
> he had done so; but to say that one way of doing things is
> "the proper" way seems to me over-dogmatic and IMO simply
> mistaken.

De gustibus not est disputandum. As I said above, there are many ways
(or degrees) to present a conlang to the reader. The least obtrusive is
to just use names from the conlang; this is standard practice in fantasy
and science fiction. Elves and aliens are just not named "John Smith".
The next step is to present short coherent texts, such as the Elven
songs in _The Lord of the Rings_. Some SF stories turn around features
of the fictional language; this can be done *without* showcasing the
language at all, as in Samuel Delany's _Babel-17_ (I doubt that a
language like that could even exist!). You can always add a grammar
sketch and/or a word list in an appendix or (nowadays) on a web site for
those readers who are interested in such background information.

I don't know which way Cherryh presents her conlangs; I haven't read the
books yet.

> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 17/02/2017 10:14, Mark J. Reed wrote:
>> I agree that a fictional language need not be a
>> fully-worked-out conlang, but it yanks me right out of
>> the story when a fake language is internally
>> inconsistent or obviously an English relex.
>
> AMEN!!

I have been planning for a long time to write an essay "How much grammar
do I need?" on this matter, but have been distracted from that by other
projects. The basic idea is that you do not need a full-fledged language
in order to come up with plausible-sounding names, but you at least need
a phonology and some grammar, and better make that such that the
language can be expanded later, if need for more material should arise.
Perhaps you *now* only need a few dozen name, but who can tell you that
you are *not* going to write a poem in that language in a few years? Or
will you want a descendant or otherwise related language for a sequel?
Welcome to diachronic conlanging!

At any rate, relexes, inconsistent conlangs and letter-substitution
ciphers *can* ruin a story!

>> If the language is depicted at all, make enough of it to
>> be plausible.
>
> I agree - and Tolkien IMO certainly does that.

Yes - the consistency and plausibility of Tolkien's conlangs can hardly
be doubted. Even if he never wrote _A Historical Grammar of the Eldarin
Languages_, he certainly worked them out very thoroughly - and knew
*very well* what he was doing!

>> Otherwise I'd rather read stuff like "the reply came
>> back in Ortunian: 'So be it'", and never see any actual
>> Ortunian on the page.
>
> Yep.

Concurred. Especially if you have non-humanoid aliens in your story, it
can be difficult to present their languages in written form.

--
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