Conlangery SPECIAL #2: Too Like the Lightning

Conlangery SPECIAL #2: Too Like the Lightning

Published: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 05:59:02 +0000 \

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Transcript

utterance-id1 [noise] [noise] <unk> like a catch tibet constructed languages and the people who create i'm william [noise] with me today is history and composer author ate up extra coming on the show so after so today it's a little bit different [noise] in may i started seeing references to hate us to like the lightning max quite stoned mentioned joe <unk> arresting i don't know if we call it under review a reaction to the book um shows that are <unk> <unk> yeah that is good i'm sure i'm took a temper so i went off and read it still sort of processing it frankly um and it really only has one reference to what we would recognize as <unk> in it which will get two later but there's so much else about language going on that it's just interesting on its own um there are a lot of congress or also writers so it just seems like if i could get her on to do an interview this might be interesting even if it's a little off our main topic so i have a really hard time describing this book without sounding like i'd been kicked in the head [laughter] so it alternate over to you if you could give a quick overview of what you were trying to do and i also have trouble describing this book but it's an effort to write something that that you know very golden age <unk> fictional future we are five hundred you're wearing the twenty first century as the book takes place earth has flying cars and robots to pick up the trash and interesting cities and a moon base and all of these exciting science fiction of things [noise] but yes golden age science fiction authors tended to interrogate their world with her certain pilot of question generally oriented around heroism the relationship between humanity and technology the potential science later trains questions of trent humanism i wanted to revisit that kind of fun future which isn't written very often with and i am more toward cultural development how languages butter ball <unk> national identity use would've all how religion religious identities word involved would evolved towards uh such a future i was inspired by eighteen century philosophical muscles works like vote tears short story micro make us which in fact <unk> science fiction you which aliens come to your uh when it comes from saturn and others from a star near serious and they come to worth and they're huge and to them humans our time leave specks but they eventually figure out how to communicate and when there is first contact what to talk about is whether or not you can use science to prove the distance of the soul and whether they find a star descartes is corrected whether there is a dual is um or multiple layers to the university you read it and you think boy that's not <unk> and humans to talk about it at first got that scenario these days right but that is a vault overtime so i wanted to interrogate uh golden age future with eighteenth century questions about the nature of society it's artificial constraints uh how it can be engineer or shouldn't be engineer uh and other such things also metaphysics ultimately it's just the way [laughter] um so it's interesting you're talking about the golden age in many ways [noise] at the start at least the book makes me think of a certain uh cyber pumped trumps um and we can get onto this from the concept of the highest in particular where cyber punk imagine that the existence of basically the internet <unk> traditional national boundaries whereas you seem to think that that's gonna take flying cars that move really really fast or certainly uh some kind of transportation and evolution because in a sense if you look right now at our society we have a lot of <unk> communities where the community of people that i identify with and spend most of my time interacting with his spread around distant parts of my own country and the number of other countries that share the same language and a number of the number for other countries where ah english as a common second language and that community is what's shaping me culturally in where i signed my identity rats but it can't be the practical governing body for my life while it's still true that i have to leave at a particular place because i have to be able to commute to work and so do other friends and very frequently all experience elements of that type of sport community being broken apart important nuclear groups of people who had been doing creative projects together ripped apart when one of them gets a job in a far away place okay so let's jump into this one thing that can happen in especially early science fiction is how do you conveyed the idea of a completely different world and one way to do that to come up with words like for a living or cracking or somebody who to describe things that are perfectly commonplace but as a magical sort of daily and sounding words to them or to come up with the sort of grandiose tech speak like sonic screwdriver um what i appreciated and ah your book is we have a lot of his terminology most of the time i could figure out what the history behind them was um and i know that you did a lot of deep world's building before you even started writing this book so i've just picked up a set of a few words maybe we can look at some more where i just wanted to explore your ideas behind them and how you decided on using that word sure and a lot of my ways of thinking about how words developed come from the fact that as a historian i spend a lot of time looking at the history of latin as a language and after it's of people who are using latin after the classical world medieval renaissance and even modern people to try to figure out how to express in last in news things the didn't exist in the classical era and how just taking the vernacular word and putting an ending on it is always a less successful thing than coming up with <unk> latin word that you can then we purpose for a new way um so how <unk> iron road i eat railroad uh is a very good latin word for a train whereas other less it's comparably unsuccessful ways to create <unk> i had that in mind as my model yeah that was a problem for latin from the get go sort of importing greek philosophical and grammatical basically three times right intellect and i mean that was part of <unk> big success it isn't much discussed is bringing greek into ah greeks log into latin with you know <unk> rather than just boring but <unk> rather them or what lucretia stress where he sort of translator rates the greek into latin grading words that every human has always <unk> [laughter] [laughter] [noise] um so let's start with the big structural should talk about hobbies so uh so in this case this is these large non geographic political groups that are based on identity ah when people are born and grow up it doesn't make sense to have your nationality to turn him by where you happened to be born when they're flying cars which means it perfectly normal to live in the bahamas while you work in tokyo and have lunch in paris while your spouse works in antarctica so people don't necessarily leaves in places have anything to do with our cultural identity some do others don't ah dust instead of citizenship be determined by birth young people grow up and take the adulthood competency exam and after passing it choose which of the different political groups to join based on which ones sit their political philosophy uh actually the origins of the of the word my thought process in this case was alright this word was created in the twenty second century uh during a moment of big political upheaval involving charismatic political leaders who would've introduced this concept of using political rhetoric so i thought what <unk> cool image would be a plausible one for those twenty second century <unk> to use and i've thought of francis bacon similarly of the three insects which she uses in his case to introduce science um he says they're three kinds of scientists other too bad kinds are the <unk> which hordes information the spider with <unk> elaborate ah theories out of its own uh body without any kind of actual <unk> relationship to nature and then the experimental scientist as baking wanted people to be who is the honey bee uh and harvest the fruits of nature and then processing them through the organ of his own body produces something good in useful for mankind this is a fairly vivid image bacon uses it effectively and i saw how it could be replaced in my imagined twenty second century sydney describing the geographic nations and empires that does politicians are criticizing and then praising the new group the <unk> <unk> <unk> it is but one of the things that makes the image more even more successful and i thought more plausible turn you bring use and contact is the bacon is reusing the image from patchwork who is really using this image from seneca who is reusing this image from greek sources who may well have been for using it from sources that we don't have so it's one of these perennial political uh start britain perennial rhetorical images that is so powerful that it instantly makes you understand why the word hi means what it means and once you've heard the metaphor boom you've got it and the word is just comfortable yeah [noise] and it's worth mentioning to people that this book i mean we're talking about these and white men plus resentment ideas um both as you know make them guys but also the excitement is taken very very seriously in the world you've created yes um again interpreted through a world with uh you know flying cars but ah yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a imagined teacher which positive a revival of eighteen century philosophy which explosive lee transforms this future period in the same way that in the renaissance a revival of classical philosophy exclusively transformed that right okay so another interesting concept was that if the <unk> <unk> um and here uh that's actually i think the most frustrating word 'cause there was no way i could communicate clearly in text how it should be pronounced [laughter] i i mean i actually do if you're uh nitpicky linguists use it specifies that the creator of the term it was ethnically japanese and created the term out of the japanese were <unk> um <unk> sort of a place <unk> is the positive prefix and evil show sort of means home but it's a much more philosophically and emotionally powerful word in some sense it means the good to place the place you are comfortable for one and only place in the world where you can fully be yourself this is not a definition that i was able to plop into the book because it's a little and we'll be um but in this case i was against thinking about all right the <unk> which is this new family unit where instead of nuclear families there are groups of friends who live together in a group of four to twelve and raise children together uh that does that left in the twenty second century and it's develops primarily by some scientist so i thought about where those scientists are likely to come from decided this scientist would be japanese and thought well what term with that scientist want to create for something that is replacing the nuclear family and supposed to be better so i thought of the japanese were <unk> but the fact that if it got transplanted into an angle phones scientific contact everybody would shorten it so <unk> show becomes bosch uh losing his initial and final now right so sticking with um oh me things there's the kitchen tree which i loved that is not cold anything look to replicate or anything like that nope it's a treats in the kitchen well again i've thought about what sorts of things are in my kitchen and how kitchen things tend to have very comfortable and mundane names otherwise you can't teach syndrome member what they're called and and we like kitchens to be warm comfortable familiar kitchen treat communicated with this thing is <unk> uh so did meet maker fruit ah you know we all know what a bread makers so if you have a meat maker it's instantly clear what that is i never even have to say um and again you know you you can there have been teaching innovations which i've had varying new pushing the boundaries techno names i don't mean imaginary ones i mean <unk> yeah but usually they don't get cold by that people revert back to golfing blender right or fridge yes that's the refrigerator yeah i've got a few more here's these are all going to be bigger ones let's go with the <unk> uh so in this world is since the air is spiritual counselor that's somewhere between a priest and a psychotherapist this society has banned the public practiced the religion and organized religion after a terrible historical incident called the church war uh another name that very clearly communicate real fast [laughter] and uh people are not expected to all be atheists rather people are expected to have in korean curiosity about sociology medicines <unk> weather thing to do or don't exist but to do this all privately and same with me i said that you have a weekly or by league we are monthly meeting with your since there and to debate with that person in a in a uh safe and uh politically closed space uh your ideas in the sense harry's trained in all different branches of the history of theology metaphysics all religions different forms of atheism skepticism et cetera and is supposed to be a neutral into law cater to help you play around with all the ideas of history and develop your own belief system and then everyone has this and this is the only format that see a logical activities legally permitted to take in this society said the terms then say air is introduced to the reader and it's always ah important to think about here introducing a new term is well first baby dropped a couple of times and then by having the narrator actually directly asks a reader and one of his eighteenth century philosophical sides quick so get him all the g. of this where do you believe reader [laughter] uh do you believe that it's ah derived from the non existent latin verbs <unk> [laughter] ah the japanese and say uh turned into an american and we'll sized uh you are suffix vocation ah do you think think that it's the idea of us to say or do substituted with since the idea of being that there is no truth there is only commonsense modern society and then being married or specifies that the creator of the term didn't leave any note of how she creed [laughter] playing around with the fact that all of these different meanings <unk> fine in that term which is one of the things that makes it immediately both comfortable stay comfortable to having a sentence and full of reminders of things <unk> right i i don't know did you read um <unk> i <unk> i haven't read it yet but it's actually on my books yeah yeah but it does the same thing we're words are shifted in slightly subtle ways were deprived know what they mean they seemed kind of familiar they ultimately it might be more surprising that you thought butter still familiar enough to more or less point you in the right direction right and but that was <unk> i mean i reacted to censor much the same way [noise] so now we have a more complicated concept of the steps that i i should be clear to people who are not seeing this is just the words that given twice with a with a <unk> <unk> ah and that's a fun one because it's a couple of hundred pages until we get it definition that gives us any sense of why this is the word for the right road um <unk> uh set set is a kid who's been raised in a strange way sort of surrounded by computers to develop their senses differently and in the case of the children we see actually they're adults by the time we see them to interface with the computer in order to be able to uh organized and uh interface with the <unk> computer database and so they they lie there with a complete full body suit covered the sensors and every square inch of the body ah plus the taste buds and everything else are connected to censors which gives them input so that they can have this <unk> complicated input from the system and this was introduced as a sense that it's a very aggressively modern thing and the fact that that word also fields <unk> modern and yellow just stick and a little bit harsh with the high send in the middle ah helps reinforce the fact that this is an uncomfortable element of the world and contract with box than say are high which are more comfortable newborn right ah and we are immediately introduced to the fact the characters themselves are uncomfortable with this one of the characters was kind of paranoid about it there's a whole political group that wants to band there were riots about banning it and then you wait a long time to hear what it means and i really enjoyed that period between when you meet the word to become you said the word but don't get no what it means in the reader's sort of stopped wondering what it means just accepting that that's harsh uncomfortable were represents disheartening comfortable thing uh until when he finally here from the leader of a group of uh psycho texan amok researchers that uh it means a stacked set set in place set of what the uh number criteria are when you evaluate this person on uh the library that his personality test uh and that it means that this is a person who is incapable of psychological development that from the beginning a scientist sat down to say we want to develop a mind which is going to have exactly this pattern of behaviors and then luck that mind in place so that no change of environment or experience can affect a set set yup uh and when we finally get that definition it's both unexpected and scary because we'd gotten used to this term as a thing that was a little bit uncomfortable but we weren't quite sure why and then when it's pulled back and you really see it it's sort of scarier in a different way than you expect yeah cook [noise] why [laughter] the process i went through so for me at least that was a success [laughter] um yeah i mean i've already read or has a different experience but i describe the goal and if that was about your experience exactly it's like oh when they started you know i forget the you start splitting up those numbers i'm like oh well i pay a lot of attention to tiny details of how you react emotionally differently to words on a page that contain patients apostrophe uh special characters cetera okay well that that takes us on tour a really interesting part so the book is near rated by microsoft yeah and if she is a uh a number of things he is a <unk> uh service or right which is a convict who's been sentenced to a life of permanent permanent uh public service so that he travels around every day doing odd jobs for anybody who asks him too and then gets food in return and it can have no other private property so that's interesting ah another interesting thing useful to be a reader is having microsoft has been married or is that he knows lots of language yes he is me to go out [laughter] actually knew but one thing that you do is when the people are speaking japanese hey you use the conventions of japanese punctuation wrecked or the same thing with spanish suddenly oh dear inverted punctuation and started this question yes um which is a way of consistently reminding the reader when we were skiing dialogue which is not an english because the text is presented english but the characters are actually not speaking english and by having the punctuation and all of the dialogue match the way that that languages punctuated whether it's french with the angle <unk> uh or some other means uh later in book too there's gonna be german and when they're speaking <unk> or caffeine [laughter] wonderful [laughter] english and that gives me the reader a constant reminder of the fact that this is being translated being filtered by the narrator and also that we are not in an angle from space i'm very aware of the fact both that the majority of my readers at this point are ankle phone 'cause they're reading it in english but even wants to <unk> translated science fiction as the <unk> is is very ferociously anger owned dominated genre and i'm there for ian oh john where where people are quite accustomed to reading about features where everyone just speaks english and there's not even any explanation of fish tanks are wearing <unk> come to dominate everything and i wanted in this world where english is in fact it universal language every one in this world speak english but there are lots of spaces in which english using used origin welcome the private just course of people from the japanese nation stress or people from the human it's time to speak spanish with each other are considered in this society to be private um linguistic spaces and invading those is culturally uncomfortable and to boot ah so i wanted to be able to have that visual reminder in the form of punctuation for the reader of hey you know this isn't a future in which english as a race to all of them language is the other languages and fair here they are here are these non english spaces and b. u. reader are violating the two booze of this society by having access to this translated material right if you were from the future you would be feeling uncomfortable right now ah how do you feel about imagine your future where that would be the case it's a funny you're talking about the angle of phone or english centrist is a move centres of whatever of a lot of sites which would i know that uh for a while in the fifties sixties and moved into the seventies italian science fiction writers had english sounding <unk> names mhm and they were just pretended this translation <unk> from some american <unk> that's interesting um among other things that are polite private in personal in this world is uh gender presentation and how our narrator messes with us constantly at the same day that if they're using them to refer to an an specify singular gender is generalized completely um in the future and it doesn't matter if you know someone's uh gender you simply use they regard it was uh and and it's been interesting because when i started writing this book they use some say in that form ah the singular they is i often call it was much ray over in english i finished the first drafted this book almost ten years ago so uh and it's been fantastic watching how rapidly that practice has spread from being on much derive did ah slang to being something that journals and so on our accepting and encouraging and that newspapers are beginning to employ as english is newly derived gender neutral singular form so uh the leader who actually ended up reading this book this year when it came out it's actually very different from the reader i imagine too when i started it who i expected to be much more uncomfortable with they being employed in that way uh so that's been interesting ah i remember when i first started at it there were a number of things for example had a had a render himself herself when using vase that i couldn't find any of an example of anywhere i had to decide for myself ah jeeze themselves as the construction right right with used them sell for themselves ah right ah but but the narrator then of course is very inconsistent about this which is to say the society you stay but the narrator in narration uses <unk> so the dialogue all has day but the narrator always <unk> according to his own scheme that has nothing to do with biology and the way that most people would consider using <unk> exactly and then also independent of people's preferences because microsoft didn't go ask all of these people really checked or pronoun would you like to have microphones assigned to be based on my <unk> personal idiosyncratic notions of what gender beans which microsoft is reconstructing uh my <unk> as far from understanding the way we use he she as a random test is from correctly reconstructing the rent is right right that's an interesting what yeah no it is a good interesting watching the record i mean they seem they or gender neutral days would use for centuries it's just not widely suddenly we need something other than he or she and there it is ready to fill in a row um without having you know to make anything new yes so it went from rare and dried it's too very common and discuss to but not intense but not to ride it uh in the course between when i wrote the book and when it's coming up right [laughter] yeah there's deer future science fiction always has to deal with the <unk> in the course of writing history <unk> issue although the problem i have had more is that people keep asking me did ex thing reflect x. political situation and i'll say no x. political situation did not exist yet that's fine that's another already happened you know <unk> to begin lighting meant a little bit oh one of the things that most common language will recognize as their product and lightning is ah a media for a while for rational language schemes things like real <unk> real character um i think like that's head ideas um i don't know how many <unk> um had notions about no rational language um how much did you look at those without much work its way into the book and <unk> just in terms of historical picking the background i looked at those a little bit but i think that those are not likely to be elements of the and lightened when things get reflect <unk> they're sort of one of the ones that at least effective because we've become so aware of how organic the evolution of languages and we've had so many unsuccessful attempt tech creating artificial languages for on 'til has such a very interesting story that was not what <unk> those people for doing other things but it but it hasn't become the universal languages imagine beat uh even when i sat down to think about the sonic neil hurston because one of the political groups in this speech they revived form of latin um when i sat down to develop that i thought at first well wouldn't stay simplify let wouldn't say get rid of a couple of <unk> and have three instead of five um and collapse together a couple of comfort conjugation says that they would be fewer forms and i started sitting down to do that but immediately thought except that the first generation is trying to speak of this revival latin are gonna be classic stuff's we're going to constantly be reading right extent <unk> influence it and so in common words that you would use in every day and age i bet those terms or just those er irregular firms are just gonna come back again in the organic with it a regular <unk> tend to cling to things so in the end despite the fact that i worked at a very elaborate linguistics so simplified latin i use to very little of it in my latin in the tank because they're the only about and we see i didn't tear that closely but that looks like good good sorority of latin because of the vote the personality of the speaker there's one table and the latin into hardcover oh no it'd be fixed in the paper [laughter] it's interesting i i paid a lot of attention to the latin and here you get my history of latin missed getting out of it because when people are speaking latin dialogue to each other face to face someone who's a member of the latin speaking political groups looking at that i've thought a lot about what happened with medieval which is just say people in a practical friends who are just trying to communicate with each other you know language which is not a comfortable native language tend to use very simple vocabulary simple sentence structure and preferential use the constructions that <unk> that resemble the constructions in their own for <unk> for example latin has is silly in different ways to express book <unk> [laughter] yeah and i remember as a latin students learning all of them and one of them is a quota claws and the code clauses just you say quota trees because and then you say the thing you are going to say and it's much easier than the others because it's the same structures used in my native vernacular now when i first went to relieve a lot and i noticed that they always use <unk> [laughter] spreads because they had exactly the reaction that i middle school latin student had of hey this one is easy because it feels like mine and so the latin dialogue that i write for the modern latin speakers is not grow magically simplified in the sense of dropping <unk> dropping verb forms but did is simplified in the sense of always preferential using ankles phone or occasionally german of phone uh word order and uh language and construction and when there were more than one way in latin to express something preferential e. expressing it in the simplest way and the way that most resembles english as a result of that being that uh that latin the test i ran suppose i would show it to friends who had never studied latin but had studied a romance language and if they could all get the gist of those sentences we're saying without knowing like rice but there is a dead one character who speaks of very bizarre lee different uh much more classes sizing land with rare vocabulary with constructions that existed enlightened that do not in any way resemble english or other modern for knack hitler's and when i showed that two people who had studied other romance languages they could understand everyone else's latin but couldn't really get a word of his life and when i showed it to latin it they could pretty effortlessly understand the others but had to get out of the dictionary [laughter] because <unk> areas so strange [laughter] uh and that was intentional unfair i was also thinking of <unk> which just like medieval latin is not a spoken language to anyone is actually communicating with other humans in each classical latin is a language for people to talk to each other and write to each other and medieval latin is a form of <unk> which you record things for posterity or for official purposes or for a certain forms of spineless indication renaissance letting it sort of a performance language yeah which is a humanistic showing off their elaborate knowledge of language using vocabulary constructions much more secure and much more uh uh choose then anything cicero would've ever said on the street oriental ration or to anyone if classical latin is walking renaissance latin is doing it elaborate um gymnastics routine [laughter] yes [laughter] describe it i <unk> i tried to read some of the the sort of feel that in poetry from the renaissance it could be a little taxing yeah it is and and sometimes i i have friends who are high school and teachers and sometimes i send them truly choice <unk> uh renaissance latin sentences to use to punish students who've been [laughter] good good um uh and so the the difference between the two latins spoken the latin spoken by ordinary latin speakers and the latin spoke about this one very bizarre character right how communicate them <unk> bizarre and it says it's character in a way that gets across to latin because they see how it is languages but also gets across the non latin it's because they see how different it is from his uh from ordinary latin and spoken by other people which is kind of trouble to anybody who's ever studied even a semester spanish or french so how did you decide to have the <unk> latin i mean the first of all it's interesting to find the base and suddenly attracted to find them as a full <unk> yes that's i'm like okay i mean that makes sense unemployment sort of thing i did see anyone screaming about dealing with all the description that i gave up the way the mason sketch formed is there's a period of chaos everything is falling apart people are scared and there's this miss practically urban legend <unk> super powerful thing right lots of scared people who don't have anywhere else to go because churches are becoming scary the church work turning to something else and go and show up on the basis front doorstep in her like you're a giant political now or are you tonight joined you and races or like uh sure we are now um and and then intelligent printed political leaders organized at four so it's sort of sucks up all of the people who are left over from all of the other things who are drawn together by this knit and the reason for revising latin is like the reason for reviving all their other <unk> arcane icing practices like having their capitol building be a huge cigarettes right um which is that the uh the trappings of antiquities <unk> the ability to claim that you go back for a millennia the ability to feel as if you have a secret private access to this secret private spores is the charisma that that brings this groups together when it first four so latin functions there much as it did in the middle ages as being the language of permanent <unk> each his own and uh privileged accents and so people are excited by the idea of oh i can joined the elite group and i can learn the language of privilege to access and then we can add are privileged conversations in that group so for example when i describe the narrator microsoft who is translating i love this dialog i'd have various languages he's very uncomfortable with translating last yeah i remember that yeah and he leaves much of latin <unk> uh because he's too uncomfortable violating <unk> private ah language uh to be comfortable rendering it in english shorts propaganda the use of latin is propaganda and it's pretty much as it has been propaganda in many other <unk> chunks of human history since it stopped being the road and just the appeal of antiquity mhm something that you can claim was lasted for millennia seems to have a certain draw is well right even if if it's not the case yeah yeah and there are so many examples of things being done or celebrated or respected or men are rated or they are because people thought that they had antiquities whether they did or not right yeah that's interesting [noise] [noise] so we covered everything on my list was there anything in a particular about language and and your process of writing this book and the remaining three isn't to come yes there are three <unk> three more to come for total although i've just sent off the copy it at a book too and the draft of books three is also don't i'm working on before yeah not too long to eight <unk> it's funny i i love the latin then i love i love the different realistic linguistic elements i would say that's the hardest for me when i'm sitting down in front of <unk> linguistic element of the book other than trying to write j. e. d. d. made since dialogue [laughter] we'll in forever be the hardest thing um other than that the hardest thing to do is utopian you speak oh yeah you <unk> are this uh they staring and future wisdom oriented group that uh it's another one of the highest uh they're the ones who run the moon base they're working on terror forming mars they um they're very aloof <unk> distance from other groups for at least that's what they're described how they were these long coat that have computer processing that transform the image of us on the other side someone utopian walks by in front of a building you see what that building would look like if it was in space or if it's a different utopian if it was an intern ruin or if it's a different utopian if it were a frog or whatever um so they're very fun they're very <unk> they're the most science fiction alone because of the world in many ways and they beat uh kind of very into english refrigerated for an else's by everyone else's you speak in which they use a lot of words for normal english words with different meanings with science fiction and fantastic we to what those different meanings are so that uh if a utopian is trying to tell you to stay calm utopia it'll tell you to stay vulcan oh it sure doesn't make any sense until you think about it besides fictional context and then you can figure now and that is actually very difficult every time i sit down to <unk> started like i think for a long time about what words and phrases with science fictional endorphin tactical indoor missile logical weight that <unk> utopian would perhaps naturally using the course of the <unk> and uh that's hard using using english weirdly right for me is harder than either creating new <unk> out of logical cultural development or using foreign languages and it <unk> really easy to actually trip over into the ridiculous for that's not where you're attending exactly because you really need it to feel natural yeah yeah that's interesting it sounds like uh for the state of affairs most speeded college for you know twenty years mm [laughter] sounds like to be a utopian requires a <unk> a pretty good pretty large back knowledge is well no because they're growing up with each other so they're learning the words you know when when one of them is using that word that person has it necessarily ever steam star trek yeah every day the usage of that word in that sense from other people uh and it's amazing how quickly children will develop a pigeon right right [noise] one of my sources in working on this book and thinking about that language was working this book was time that i've spent in florence at an international research institute they're run by harvard called the <unk> and there were fellow there from i think nineteen different countries and by chance the year i was their ads are a graduate student now i was there as a as a fellow uh almost everybody had kit uh i didn't but almost everybody had kids so there was this little warm [laughter] and they were italian and chinese and french and australian and german and spanish and within a month they had invented this language that was a hybrid of all of these words that they taught each other 'cause they were all little enough that they were learning words constantly and they didn't even really think about the fact that those words were in one language bucket or another language pockets and it was incredible watching this pigeon involve that fast which i'm sure none of them could speak any more because they left at the end of the year right uh and and such things are fragile um but in that sense i see the utopias passing the usage on not because they're all incredibly versed in all of science fiction and make a logical material but because somebody going to the <unk> and people started moving in together it's really weird english we spoken everybody else's english whether that person is sit back and ah or roman is the same english and this is intended is a huge help show that there's a cultural split between utopia and everyone else in the way you know particular way that there is in between any of the other groups yeah interesting well thank you so much for coming on our unusual little pop test here to talk about language pleasure linguistic and so that's a bummer too like the lightning came up in may i recommend it it's fun um your next looking i was in february yeah seven seven surrenders it was originally going to come out in december but they delayed it because they're trying to rush out a paperback of the first first apparently the sales were unexpectedly good okay good [noise] that's the best possible [noise] good good and i'm going to say because like bugs you for listening to con learning i find are are causing sherman oaks con library dot com supports the show on perjure on yahoo dot com online you can also follow up on baseball quarter <unk> on popcorn now all of those fine online or <unk> or seniors reduced <unk> went on strike was designed <unk> [noise]

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  1. Conlangery Podcast
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  10. Too Like the Lightning

Conlangery Podcast/Conlangery SPECIAL 2 Too Like the Lightning (last edited 2017-09-10 08:05:02 by TranscriBot)