A Walker Scott's Interview of Me!

Line drawing of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head
and its helper, the Worker Twa'sei

 

        At the end of my interview of A Walker Scott, I mentioned that he was going to interview me in turn, but since he doesn't have a blog or a website, I would post the interview on my Ki'shto'ba blog.  So ... here it is!

 

       To read my interview of A Walker Scott, go here.

 

 You make no secret of your age or your gender, and the science fiction community of today is very inclusive, has many examples of well-respected female authors, and a lot of older authors. But most fans I have known became interested in this genre as a teenager. When you were a teen, science fiction was NOT a high-profile genre, it was almost exclusively a young male fan-base and almost all male authors. When and how did you become interested in science fiction? When did you decide to write in this genre?

       I always say that I got into science fiction through the backdoor of fantasy.  As a teenager, way back in the 1950s, I never read any SF.  I remember reading part of one book when I was 13, and I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on!  In my teens I didn’t even read fantasy; the era was pretty much pre-Tolkien.  I read lots of historical fiction – every Alexandre Dumas novel he ever wrote – Samuel Shellenbarger (The Prince of Foxes) – and I also read a lot of Shakespeare and loved most of the literature we read in school.  And I mustn’t leave out my very favorite, The Prisoner of Zenda.  It may be illustrative to point out that what fascinated me about that book was the fact it was laid in an imaginary country.  (And I refuse to engage in a semantic discussion of what the word “imaginary” means – you’ll know what I’m referring to, Walker!)  After that, I started making up my own imaginary countries and worlds, and dabbling a little in their languages.
       Then I grew up and went to college and got serious.  I really believed that adults didn’t do things like that and this delusion persisted until I read Tolkien at the age of 29.  It was a revelation!  Here was this brilliant scholar who created his own worlds and languages not just as a child but for his entire life!  I immediately wanted to do that, too, so I started writing a version of high fantasy.  The setting was really another world or planet.  This milieu shared the characteristics of Earth, although it had no connection with our planet and was not particularly well defined.  This always bothered me – can I talk about oak or willow trees or the moon when this isn’t really our Earth?
       I also started reading fantasy, and I read it for years.  At that time Ballantine Books had begun republishing a lot of classical fantasy authors, including Evangeline Walton.  Anybody who has read The Termite Queen will recognize the influence she had on me.  I also read writers like Patricia McKillip (The Riddle Master is my favorite thing), Miriam Zimmer Bradley, Terry Brooks, Fritz Leiber (LOVE Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), Michael Moorcock, Ann McCaffery, Roger Zelazny, Katherine Kurtz, Andre Norton, Stephen R. Donaldson, and on and on.
       But I also read Ursula K. LeGuin, C.S. Lewis, Ray Bradbury, Charles Williams, and other authors who bridge the gap between fantasy and science fiction, and who have a more literary style.  I have an academic background in literature, and I’m just beginning to understand what a large influence literary fiction has had on me.
       This means that I’ve never read much of the stock SF writers of earlier times – people like Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke.  Most of those earlier standard authors leave me cold – flat characters and too much emphasis on technology (although I recall liking Asimov’s Foundation Series). 
       In later years I was influenced by a lot of TV science fiction:  Star Trek, particularly The Next Generation; Babylon 5; Farscape; StarGate: SG1; etc.  (I didn’t care much for Battlestar Galactica – too gloomy!  I like a good injection of humor in my scifi!
       I wrote until 1983, making some unsuccessful attempts to publish.  Then family problems forced me to stop writing.  When I started again in the year 2000, things took a different turn.

I first met you sometime back, when you first joined the CONLANG-L mailing list and started posting about your alien languages which you use in your novels. I found your posts interesting enough that I decided to give your stories a try, even though I harbor some fairly strong prejudices against self-published work. Your stories are causing me to rethink some of my opinions, but what made you choose this route for your work?

      

       Yes, it’s not a good idea to condemn all self-published works just because a lot of them aren’t well done or are published prematurely.
       When I started writing again in 2000, I had a lot of pent-up creativity and the stories just poured out without my making any attempt to publish anything.  Then I got bogged down in The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, until I realized that I was probably never going to able to finish it.  I also turned 70 and it hit me that if I didn’t want my books to die with me, I’d better get cracking.  So I whipped The Termite Queen into shape and started querying agents.  After a few months I realized I would definitely be dead before that search bore any fruit.  Self-publishing was just getting big and so I started looking into it.  I decided I had nothing to lose by going that route, since Amazon and other sites like Smashwords make it so easy.  It also helped that I was retired, had an income, and didn’t have to worry about making money from my writing.  By this point, I’m not at all sure I would want to tie myself to a bottom-line publisher who prevents you from doing what you want to do, doesn’t really do much promotion anyway, and hedges your royalties around with all kinds of rules.  It helps that I’m fully qualified to edit my own books, or anybody else’s for that matter.

 

You have mentioned that you are a retired librarian. How does you former career influence your writing?

 

       I think my academic background (a Master’s in English and some additional work toward a PhD) plus my second Masters in Library Science left me with some understanding of how to do research.  However, when I returned to writing in 2000, I discovered what a great research tool the internet is.  I have to confess that while I have the greatest respect for libraries and librarians, I never use libraries these days.  For one thing, I have a lot of arthritis and I no longer drive, so I have no transportation and I can’t lug books around the way I did most of my life.  I was a catalog librarian so I was responsible for subject-indexing the library’s holdings, but I have to say, one or two subject headings per book can’t hold a candle to a good search engine on the internet!  I’m a traitor, alas!

 

I know some people have seemingly been turned off by the idea that these stories are about giant bugs. Obviously the biology of termites does play a role in these stories. The fact that termites, like ants and bees, are social insects plays a part in how you can construct the cultures of the Shshi, and their biology determines some things they can or can't do. But you really do create individual characters, people who just happen to be termites. Why did you choose to use termites rather than some other social insect as the basis for your alien culture?

 

       Back in the 1970s, when I was reading all that SF/fantasy, I saw the documentary “Mysterious Castles of Clay,” about the castle-building, fungus-growing African termite.  I was blown away! And I thought what a great foundation these insects would make for creating a species of intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms.  You could extrapolate from termite behavior to intelligent behavior and really come up with an interesting culture.  At that time I had the germ of the idea utilized in The Termite Queen – a off-world expedition brings back a specimen of giant termite and a female linguistic anthropologist thinks she can detect intelligence.  She proceeds to decode the creature’s language even though it is blind and deaf. 
       I retained that idea over the years and when I started to write again, I decided it was time to put it into words.  I also wanted to write positively about giant insects – I was tired of seeing them portrayed as clichéd, evil, apocalyptic monsters.  I know some people will be turned off by the idea of anything insectile, but they shouldn’t be any more than they should be turned off by a slimy cephalopod like an Alelliawulian.  If we ever do make first contact, the ETs aren’t likely to be humanoids.
       As for other social insects, of course it would be possible to do something based on them, but a lot of ant species are carnivorous and very warlike.  And while the lifestyle of bees may be even more complex than termites’, a quintessential attribute is their ability to fly, and really big insects would be too heavy to fly.  Termites are fungivores or eat cellulose, and they are basically peaceful, even though they have powerful soldiers who can fight in defense of the colony (against ants usually).  One last quality that appealed to me: termites are just about the only insect that is (usually) monogamous and where the Queen and King mate for life!

 

The idea of giant termites and retelling the Trojan War or the Twelve Labors of Hercules isn't the sort of thing just anyone thinks of. How did you come up with the idea of retelling Greek myths in a Shshi context?

 

       Blame it on Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys!  I purposely didn’t mention them with the other TV influences because I knew this question was coming!  Those series do exactly the same thing – take myths, twist them around, and adapt them to what is essentially a created world.  In Xena, Julius Caesar is contemporaneous with the Trojan War, for goodness sake! – and yet it’s quite easy to suspend disbelief.  When I was writing the end of The Termite Queen, it hit me that I had a ready-made, bona fide heroic Champion in Ki’shto’ba and I had a ready-made bard in Di’fa’kro’mi.  Why not send them out on a quest across the land – a wandering Champion-knight and its bard companion – and then let them have picaresque adventures along the way?  And the oversized Ki’shto’ba seemed perfect to be Hercules or a variant of him.  So I added a bit of dialogue to the end of TQ to set up that premise.

 

Have you published or written any works not set in the universe where your termites live?

 

       All my early high-fantasy material is laid other-where, and there are a couple of pieces that might be publishable, particularly one that forms a prequel to what I started out with.  Then I switched gears and wrote about a blue world with sorcerers and spirit beings as well as blue humans (this predated Avatar by a lot of years).  I did publish one little piece from this – “The Blessing of Krozem,” a novelette available only on Smashwords (it’s FREE!)  If I ever get a scanner, which may happen when I have to get a new computer, I’ll scan in some more of that early stuff and see if I can do anything with it.
       I’ve written other books not laid on the termite planet.  The first thing I wrote in 2000 was the novella “Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder,” which I don’t believe you’ve read, Walker.  Kaitrin Oliva is a character in that one, about thirty years into the future.  After I invented her for “Monster,” I thought she was the perfect person for the linguistic anthropologist who deciphers the termite language.  

       Then I wrote the impossibly long story, The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, a biography of the starship Captain who makes the first contact with the Krisí’i’aidá (the Bird people).  It’s laid in the 28th century, over 200 years before the time of The Termite Queen.  And I have a number of other books in my head that I want to write.  A must-write is a 7th volume of The Labors of Ki’shto’ba Huge-Head (or rather a sequel to the series).  When you reach v.6, you’ll see why.

 

I know you said you were taking a brief break before releasing the next volume of the Ki'shto'ba series. When do you expect to release the final volume?

 

       I’m working on both final volumes and have pretty much completed everything for v.5 except formatting for publication.  I’m still editing v.6 and have done the front cover, but I still have to do maps and the back cover.  I really hope I’m able to get both published by the end of the year and then start writing the sequel.

 

You mentioned that you wanted to contact other conlangers because you had constructed languages for some of your extraterrestrials, but what made you want to invent languages for your aliens and how did you hit upon the idea since your conlanging predates your contact with the conlanging community?

 

       I’ve always been interested in language.  My mother was a Romance language major in college and she taught Spanish (and English – in small high schools, a foreign language teacher has to teach something else).  Before I even reached kindergarten age, I can remember being fascinated when my mother would spout in Italian the inscription over the Gate of Hell from Dante’s Inferno, as well as the “Prologue” to the Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  Later, when I got so deeply into Dumas, my mother taught me how to pronounce the French.  In college, I took three and a half years of French and two years of German, and I was able to pass my graduate language exams right off when I went to Cornell for my Master’s. 

       Now, to me it only makes sense that if you write about extraterrestrials, they aren’t going to speak English.  A first contact will require much more effort than to simply fall back on a Universal Translator gizmo.  The Termite Queen is based on the premise that somebody has to figure out how the termites speak, and so I wrote their language – what else could I do?  Of course, I had the example of Tolkien – I thought his constructed languages were wonderful – and then there was Klingon.  Those were the only precedents I had, though.  I did have a little contact with another author who writes conlangs, but that person was not at all encouraging, and so the contact fell through.  But learned from that person that the world was full of conlangers!  I never dreamed so many other people were fabricating languages, and pretty much just for the fun of it.
       After I started self-publishing and joined Twitter, one of my early contacts was with Christophe Grandsire Koevets and I believe it was through him that I discovered the Language Creation Society.  I was trying to identify people who might be interested in what I wrote and other conlangers seemed like a good bet.

 

I have read several of your volumes now, (both volumes of The Termite Queen, and I'm working my way through six volumes of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head) and so far I have come across bits of the Shshi language used by the Shum'za and the Da'no'no Shi and some few words of the Nasute languages—all from your termite peoples – and short bits of !Ka<tá – spoken by some of your bird peoples, and Glin Quornaz—the language of your lemur people. How many languages do you have, in at least sketch form? Do you have any that don't relate to this universe?

 

       Only two of those languages are quite fully developed – Shshi as spoken by the plains peoples and !Ka<tá (I needed more of that for The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars than I did for TQ).  I have material on Northern Nasute (as spoken by Sa’ti’a’i’a’s people), and then there are the Southern Nasute languages and the Y/G (Yo’sho’zei/Gwai’sho’zei) spoken by the Tramontanes – the peoples who live on the coast.  Ju’mu is a Tramontane, one of the Yo’sho’zei (Ancient Ones, equivalent to the Centaurs), and its language is considered the oldest form of Shshi.  I even have some comparative tables with roots.
       I did a much more thorough job on !Ka<tá than on the Shshi languages because I thought it through better instead of simply improvising.  I’ve also done some work on the other two basic languages of Krisí’i’aid (the Bird planet) – Towewa (spoken by the Wéwana, the Stork people) and Gro’at (spoken by the Gro’á’ata, the Grouse people).  I also needed those languages for MWFB. 

       I attempted to model the lemuriform language, Glin Quornaz, on Latin to a degree, i.e., there are four declensions and five cases of nouns, three orders of infinitives, and no set word order.  I’ve never worked out all that in detail – I’ve only done what I would need to write a particular sentence.  As an example, Mae! zokam laziqua rival shima expresses good wishes, can be translated as “May fate sing sweet music to you,” and means literally “To you fate sing music sweet.”  Lazoim is “to sing”; lazoi is “I sing”; and laziqua is present subjunctive
       I’ve done even less work on Poz-até, the language of the monotreme people (the Pozú).  I tried to give it more agglutinative characteristics, although it also has inflections.  For example, the blessing phrase Trant-intusórama means “Trant (the Great Goddess) love you.”  Intu is the infinitive for to love, sora is added to make the 3rd person present subjunctive and ma is objective singular of the second person pronoun.  I also utilized elisions, e.g., yi-inta (I love) becomes yinta.
       In my early writing days, I did a little work on a language called Demran for my first world, and then for my blue world (in “The Blessing of Krozem” and related stories), I got into the language of the Kairam, but it was more a naming language.  I never constructed any grammar beyond a couple of verb tenses, but I did fill up a file box with vocabulary cards.

Your languages exhibit some really interesting, very non-English, features. Where do you get your inspiration for your languages?

       You really think the features are non-English?  One person in the Yahoo Conculture group told me my languages were based too much on English!  Since my non-English language knowledge consists mostly of the Romance languages with a shorter foray into Germanic and some familiarity with Slavic when I was cataloging books, I tend to use elements from what I know of those languages.  But I also try with each language to introduce non-English (or non-standard) elements.  For example, in Shshi I worked out a peculiar word order and a system of linkages (the infamous WingDings), which I’ve always been doubtful about.  Would a people as intellectually unsophisticated as the illiterate Shshi really have an instinctive grammatical sense powerful enough that they would distinguish predicate adjectives from the objects of verbs?  I don’t think I really thought it through sufficiently, but only you linguistic experts would pay close enough attention to quibble.
       With the Birds’ more advanced culture, I figured I could do pretty much what I wanted grammatically.  The interest here is in the musical and tonal elements that fit very well with avian vocal apparatus.  I made it an inflectional language, SVO, adjective following the noun, three types of articles – and everything has number, including the articles (all plurals are formed by prefixing a warble [♫] and possessives and adjectives are made using a trill [♪] so you get all these fun musical notes scattered through!)  The language can’t really be articulated with the human throat.
       I do have a blog that deals only with my languages.  I haven’t added anything to it for maybe a year and a half and some of the posts are not finished, but still there is a lot of information in there.  http://remembrancer.conlang.org

 

 

       Thank you much, Walker, for wanting to interview me!  I've managed to say more about myself than in any other interview I've bee privileged to give!  I hope this post draws some comments, particularly on my languages!  And don't forget to visit my interview of A Walker Scott. http://termitewriter.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-interview-with-walker-scott-fellow_7.html

 

The Valley of Thorns: Publishing Progress, and a Word on Adaptation

      

My rendition of Archbishop Turpin
fighting the black Demon Knight
whose name is Abisme.  My version
 is named Sho'choi'jik'a (Abyss Dweller)

I've just about whipped the third volume of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head into publishing shape.  I done all the peripheral material -- the map (which will be the frontispiece in the paperback), the back of the title page, the Translator's Foreword, the facsimile title page (from where it was first published in the 30th century -- is that a logical contradiction?), a synopsis of v.2 (because this picks up exactly where v.2 leaves off), and a list of characters. 

       For the end matter, I've again included a glossary of words in my termite languages (Shshi language).  I also decided on providing an appendix analyzing the Shkei'akh'zei marching chant word-by-word.  The text includes the chant in the Shshi language, one of the few times I've done that in this series.  Of course, I also put it in English so people who have no interest in conlangs or alien languages in general can simply skip the gobbledegook.

      

       The origin of the chant is interesting.  The first half of The Valley of Thorns retells the Old French epic poem of Roland and Oliver (Chanson de Roland).  It's amazing how easily that story adapts to the termite culture!  When I read the tale in preparation for using it in my series, I was impressed by the repetition of certain lines.  Here are two different translations of them, followed by the Old French:

 

High are the peaks, the valleys shadowful,

Swarthy the rocks, the narrows wonderful.

 

High are the hills and dark the valleys,

Brown are the rocks and dread the defiles.

 

Halt sunt le pui e li val tenebrus,

Les roches bises, les destreiz merveillus.

And in another place in the poem:

 

 High were the peaks and shadowy and grand,

The valleys deep, the rivers swiftly ran.

 

High are the hills and great and dark,

Deep the valleys, and swift the waters.

 

Halt sunt li pui e tenebrus e grant,

Li val parfunt e les ewes curant.

Parenthetically, it's amazing how much easier it is to read the Old French (if you know a little modern French) than to read Old English.  It's obvious that French has changed less and in a purer line.

Anyway, I took those lines and adapted them into a marching chant as the termite army moves down the Valley of Thorns (my rendition of Roncescalles) toward their hated enemy.  Here's how I did it (even preserving the French poetic form of the half-line break):

The peaks are high   and the valley is shadowed.

Holy Nameless One!    Care for us now!

The boulders are dark    and the defile fearsome.

Holy Sky-Mother!    Stay always with us!

 

The mountains are high    and dark and great.

Hater of infidels!    Give to us mighty victory!

The defiles are deep    and the river runs always.

Creatrix of Warriors!    To the enemies, death!

 

Di'fa'kro'mi comments:
 

        "This went on endlessly and without variation, with the Lieutenants declaiming the forelines and their phalanxes responding with the supplications.  The repetitions contained just enough variety to be confusing, but I could not detect that any Warrior ever made an error in the words it was primed to recite.  When the terrain allowed, they moved in rhythm with the words, a step forward on each half-line.  I was soon falling asleep on my feet, but strangely the litany seemed to speed up the advance and keep everyone moving as one.  I wondered if some separate part of their Warrior-minds remained alert enough to respond in the event of a surprise attack.  I asked who had composed this recitation and my marching companion said it was simply a traditional war prayer, so old that no one any longer remembered its origin.  I found it impressive, but after half a morning of it, I thought I would lose my sanity!"
 

       I would like to print the Shshi version here, but I don't think the WingDings will display on in some browsers, especially Macs, and I haven't yet set up the text using the substitute syllables, so that will have to wait.

       Anyway, I think I'm about ready to begin formatting for publication.  I hope to get it done at least within two months.  If I can, I want to publish the Kindle, Smashwords, and print versions on the same day.  Stay tuned!

 

Conlanging for Beginners: Some Things to Avoid

       This is an addendum to the previous post. I wanted to discuss some bad practices and give some examples from a couple of my favorite TV science fiction series, as well as from a book I'm currently reading.  I'll put my summary first this time:

 

Summary

• Don't gratuitously insert strange symbols or non-standard uses of Roman characters into your language in order to make it seem more alien or fantastic.
• Always be aware that your language is not written natively in the Roman alphabet!
• Try to devise names that carry weight.
• Don't use words that suggest English words, even if that meaning is appropriate to the character.

        Here is an example of the first item above.  "We were taken into the presence of Ckatr F'ik the Xppelt of Ji'ma."  Your reader will not know how to pronounce these words.  You the author  may pronounce Ckatr as "Kahter" and Xppelt as "Ekspelt," but nobody else will know that.  They may interpret the words as Chahter and Zippelt. Better to spell as phonetically as possibly for English speakers (or for whatever language is native to the people who will most likely read your book). Simply write "Kahter" (The "c" has no function, and if you put "Kater" it's going to get pronounced like the English word "cater"); and to write "Ekspelt." (And why did you double the "p" if there was no reason?  And you turned "x" into a syllable of its own.  English speakers see an "x" as a consonant and they pronounce it "ks" or possibly "z.") 

       Of course, the best thing to do is to work out your phonology first, as I said in the previous post.  Then you can be consistent in your phonetic usage.  It may not look as "alien," but it will be more convincing.

       Keep the language as simple and unadorned as possible.  Let's consider the words F'ik and Ji'ma in the paragraphs above.  What is the purpose of the apostrophes?  In one case the marking comes before the vowel and in the other, after.  An apostrophe is sometimes used as the symbol for a glottal stop.  Did you intend for a glottal stop to fall in those words?  Probably not, because many readers will not know it's a glottal stop.  Are you using it to show something is omitted, as in English "it's" or "they're"?   That would be OK, but again you need to make rules. 
       I would suspect those apostrophes were inserted as another attempt to try to make the word look more "alien." So now you decide to change the spelling to Fiik and Jiima.  In that case how do you want the words to be pronounced?  Fee-eek? Or perhaps you intend the double i to represent the "i" sound in "like."  But nobody will know that, either.

       Now, if you've looked at my conlangs, you're going to say, "But you use lots of apostrophes, and you use a lot of strange, unpronounceable characters as well!"  That's certainly true, and I've been questioned for it, but I need to clarify what I said above: if apostrophes or any other characters have a function to play in your conlang, then they're OK.  In !Ka<tá (the Bird language), I use apostrophes to separate vowels, so the reader knows to pronounce them individually and not as a diphthong. Thus, if I wanted the words "fee-eek" and "jee-eema," I would spell them "fi'ik" and "ji'ima."  A word pronounced like English "like" would be spelled "laik" because when I wrote out my phonology I settled on the spelling "ai" for that diphthong.  But if I spelled the word "la'ik" it would be pronounced "lah-eek." There would never be a word spelled "fiik" because I have never assigned a pronunciation to the vowel combination "ii."

       As for some of the other strange characters in !Ka<tá, such as !, <, ^, and ♫, they represent sounds that aren't present in English, or indeed in any Earth language.  I don't have a lot of !Ka<tá in The Termite Queen and what does occur is largely for effect, I confess.  But what you do find there is constructed on some carefully worked-out rules.  If I ever get to the point in The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars where the avians become speaking characters, I will include an appendix with a summation of those rules.  Right now you can find information here.

 

       Always remember that your language is not written in the English alphabet!  It has its own writing system, whether you create it or not. It could be alphabetical or it could be syllabograms or it could be ideograms, but it's not written in any form present on Earth.  An alphabet symbolizes sounds and so is the most flexible.  Syllabograms represent syllables, which would be combinations of consonants and vowels.  This sort of system produces more characters.  Logograms represent words; this requires even more characters.  Ideograms represent ideas. 

       If your language has an alphabet, you write what is called a transliteration; you make a direct correlation between the sounds represented in the alien alphabet and the same or similar sounds in English.  An alien "b" sound is represented by an English "b," and so fourth.  The sound "ks"could be transliterated as "x," but if your book were to be read by a Spanish speaker, she might interpret it as "h."  That's why I avoid "x" and use "ks," and keep "h" for the normal English aspirate represented by the letter "h."  The "j" and "g" create similar problems.  I always stick to an English sound system, so I use "j" for the initial sound of "jar" and "gem."  I never use "g" except for the initial sound of "give."   
       !Ka<tá is written in an alphabet and so I transcribe it using a transliteration scheme.  The waveforms of Shshi are comparable to syllabograms; Shshi has no vowels or consonants, which are phenomena of vocal speech.  Shshi also has no written form (in the early stages of my stories).  Putting this sort of language into Roman characters is called romanization, not transliteration.  Kaitrin transcribed the language as arbitarily assigned English syllables separated by vertical lines. 

 

       Now for some real-world examples of bad practice.  I'll start with the book I'm reading: Mary Doria Russell's two volumes, The Sparrow and The Children of God.  I don't know how fully the author constructed the two languages of the planet Rakhat (Ruanja and K'san), but I do know that her apostrophe use is not totally clear.  I can't tell whether she had a system or not.  One of the peoples is named the Jana'ata, which appears to use my method of separating vowels with apostrophes.  However, the name of one of the main Jana'ata characters, Supaari, doesn't contain an apostrophe between the two a's.  Does this mean that perhaps the word is pronounced "Supari"?  Or perhaps the doubled "aa" gives the vowel a different sound, making it Supawri or Supeiri.  Personally, I pronounce it "Supa'ari" when I read it, but there's no way to tell what the author intended.  Similarly, I don't know why K'san has an apostrophe. "Ksan" would be pronounced exactly the same way.

       Another thing she does is to render the Ruanja word for Jana'ata as "djanada."  My question here is why spell the sound of English "j" two different ways?  It appears to me she does that simply to make the Ruanja form appear different.

       On the whole, though, I have no quarrel with Mary Doria Russell's naming language.  It works well in context and doesn't distract.   The same cannot be said for some of the gobbledegook that turned up in the TV series, Stargate: SG1.

      

       Now, I'm a big fan of that series -- I viewed it a number of times because it was rerun at a time of day when I wanted to sit down and watch something while I ate supper.  I consider it a most imperfect series that was highly entertaining even so, because it constantly pokes fun at itself.  One time I saw one of those programs where the producers and directors and cast discuss a series, and the producers said one of the hardest jobs they had was to come up with the alien languages.  And it shows.  They definitely could have used the services of the Language Creation Society!

       Here are two examples: the words "Goa'uld" and "Teal'c."  The first is the parasitic race that winds itself around peoples' brainstems and takes control of them.  If you have a villainous race, you should give it a name with a punch. Goa'uld has no punch; it's hard to enunciate and gets mispronounced all the time in the series, mostly as Goold. And if the apostrophe is meant to separate vowels, then you need one between the "o" and the "a" as well.

       But "Teal'c" is even worse.  This is the name of the powerful Jaffa warrior, a sometimes sinister and always intimidating presence.  And yet he's given a name that sounds like a little bell tinkling!  It's pronounced "Teelk," which is also hard to say, so it becomes "Tilk" a lot of the time, rhyming with "milk."  And what in the world is the apostrophe doing between the "l" and the "c"? It doesn't replace a vowel -- they never say "Teelik" or such.  Talk about giving a big, strong, formidable character a weak, ridiculous name!  I can't imagine what those writers were thinking ! 
       Just imagine if Darth Vader had been named Tink Ellia!  Would that have intimidated anybody?  That sort of character needs a name with strong, dark vowels that can be bellowed!  "Teal'c" can't even be pronounced without drawing your lips back in a smile!

       Goa'uld also has a word "kree."  The online dictionary of the language cited at the end of this post gives the meaning thus: "a military order. Loosely translated as attention, listen up, concentrate. Also appears to mean attack, retreat, move out, fall back, fire, cease fire, attention, stand down, etc."  They are constantly bellowing: "Jaffa! Kree!"  I can remember one episode where somebody asks Daniel Jackson what "kree" means, and he says, "Just about anything," and that certainly seems to be the case!  Stick it in front of any other word and it seems to create the imperative form.

 

       You could say that Goa'uld suggests the word "ghoul."  That's what I thought when I first heard it.  But that brings me to another thing to avoid in constructing a naming language.

       Don't model your words on some English word even if you feel that meaning fits the character.  My examples here are from Farscape, a much more ambitious and well-thought-out series and one of my favorites.  The heroine is named Aeryn Sun.  Remember, she is an alien from a distant galaxy, and she's not a delicate character, especially in the beginning.  But she gets named this romantic-sounding English name (Erin), with the spelling changed to make it seem far, far away.  Of course, you don't how it's spelled when you're watching the series.  "Sun" gets pronounced different ways -- sometimes like the English word "sun" and sometimes with the vowel in "book" or as "soon." 

       Similarly, the beautiful blue priestess had the exotic name of Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan, but "Zhaan" is pronounced simply "Zan."  It was a long time before I knew how it was supposed to be spelled.  Why spell it "Zhaan" if you're not going to pronounce it "zhahn" or "zha-an"? 

       Aeryn belongs to a race called the Sebaceans.  I found this one particularly strange.  Before I knew how it was spelled, I visualized it as "Sebatian" because I couldn't imagine how any writer would want to suggest that a sebaceous gland had formed the basis for a people's name! 

       The name of "Scorpius" of course suggests scorpion, which certainly fits the character.  Rygel was obviously inspired by the constellation Rigel, which I can overlook.  But nevertheless I would prefer to see a writer of a naming language avoid suggesting English or Earth meanings in their alien words. After all, you're not in Kansas any more!

 

       Here are a couple of references if anyone is interested in learning more about the names and languages in Stargate: SG1 and Farscape:

http://www.stargate-sg1-solutions.com/wiki/Goa'uld_Language

http://farscape.wikia.com/wiki/index.php?search=Language&fulltext=Search

  

 

Conlanging for Beginners: Building a Naming Language for Your Fantasy Novel

[Follow this up with an addendum: Conlanging for Beginners, Some Things to Avoid]       

As a member of the Language Creation Society and of the Yahoo conculture forum, I've been discussing world-building and conlang-building lately.  I've also joined the forum at the excellent website Mythic Scribes, which is subtitled "The Art of Fantasy Storytelling."  They have many resources available, including a thread on building conlangs for your book.  Since I've composed two conlangs and several naming languages for my writings, I thought a post drawing upon my own experiences as a beginner might help out other beginners.

       First, let me stress that you don't need to be a professor of linguistics to write a conlang.  A lot of the members of the LCS are just that; they know every subtlety of language and they know  the lingo.  They're so learned that they can be a little intimidating, I'll confess.  I'm not a professional linguist, but I have studied Spanish, French, and German (French is the one I pursued the most deeply) and when I was cataloging books as a librarian, I dabbled in several other languages, including Russian, other Slavic languages, and Swedish (catalog librarians have to be able to handle any language -- there are manuals to help you do this).  I also investigated Hebrew a little bit at one point.  I've always been fascinated by languages and syntax.  If you find these subjects tedious and you never took a beginning language in high school and you barely squeaked through high school English and can't remember a thing about its structure, you may not be very successful at writing conlangs.  It's possible to get somebody else to write one for you if you're serious.
 

       However, if all you need is a naming language (a minimal conlang that consists simply of sounds thrown together, without contructing any syntax), you can still manage to do that convincingly.  Let's assume you're setting out to write a fantasy laid in an imaginary world where nobody ever heard of English.  You may have several different countries and several different peoples.  These peoples probably speak different languages, but you can have them all speak a common language -- a language of diplomacy, say -- in which case you can just render everything in English and be done with it. 
       But even then, you will have many names that remain in the languages of those countries.  You need names for the countries themselves and their citizens, for some of their cities, and for other places like rivers or mountain ranges.  You might also find yourself needing names of foods and flowers and minerals and gods and philosophical concepts. You can just unsystematically make up nonsense words for these, or you can try to systematically diffentiate the several languages of your countries.
       One way to do this is to make up a system of phonology for each language.  Just some notes will serve (I'm avoiding the International Phonetic Alphabet here):  Let's say the country of Talasu speaks Talasian.  So you decide that what makes the language different is that it has no voiced fricatives. 
       What is a voiced fricative, you say?  In a voiced consonant the vocal cords vibrate, in an unvoiced consonant, the vocal cords do not vibrate.  Here is a list of voiced fricatives in English (with examples): v (as in van), th (as in then), z (as in zip), zh (as in pleasure).  The corresponding unvoiced fricatives are f (as in fan), th (as in thin), s (as in sip), and sh (as in pressure).   Say them out loud and you'll hear and feel the difference.
       Thus you would be able to milk a little comedy by making a name (e.g., Zazavi) in a language that uses voiced fricatives.  A native of Talasu would pronounce the word "Sasafi" and might get teased about it, or he might be discriminated against because his speech patterns reveal where he comes from, thus becoming a shibboleth.
       From the rules, you know that the word "Talasian" will not be pronounced "Talazhian" but "Talassian."  But this introduces another point.  If you make the language "Talasian," you are making use of an English suffix -ian, which we use frequently in words like Italian, Indian, Canadian, Australian, etc.  Suffixes and prefixes like -ian  or -ed or un- are called morphemes (an indivisible basic particle, a building block for a word).
       Your imaginary people would never build their words using English morphemes, so you might want to call your language Talasunta (where the suffix -nta means "speech" or "language.")  Or you could call it Nis-Talashu (where "nis" means "language" and "Talashu" is a genitive case, thus making the word mean "Language of Talasu."  In your other countries' languages, if you needed a genitive case, you would construct it differently. 
       For my purposes here, I'll call the language "Talasunta."
       I find I can't write even about a naming language without getting into some minor linguistic terminology. But I hope you get my point -- set a few phonetic rules, make them vary among your languages, and don't use any morphemes (basic word particles) that are found in English.

       Now, I'll confess -- I have usually violated the rule of devising the phonology first!  I've always just thrown a bunch of sounds together to start with.  And I've gotten in trouble, too.  When I started writing "The Termite Queen," I had to name my dying termite right off (see sample chapters 1 and 2 on my other blog, Ruminations of a Remembrancer.) because the first line in the book is "My name is ... "  So I blithely thought, "What would be a good name?  I know!  Ti'shra!"  And I wrote "My name is Ti'shra." Then when I got to working out the details of the language, I thought, "So what does 'Ti'shra' mean?  I know!  Sweet Flowers!  Lovely!  Perfect name for this harmless little creature who gets abducted by aliens!" 
       But then I thought, "So 'flowers' is plural.  What element of the name makes it plural?  I know!  In the Shshi language, prefixing sh- makes a plural, just like with the word 'Shshi.'  You have one Shi, two Shshi."  And I stuck myself with that system.  Unfortunately, in English the combination of sh plus certain consonants doesn't occur and so leads to difficulties of pronunciation.  When we get the Shshi word "shza'zei|" for example, which means "little ones," you're likely to spit all over your computer trying to pronounce it!   Other tough combinations are sh+f, sh+d, sh+h, sh+j ... you get my point. 
       So another rule is, try to think about the consequences of a rule before you set it in stone!

       Names often mean something, like my "Ti'shra," and all words derive from older roots, so you have to decide -- do my names of people, provinces, cities, mountains, rivers, etc., have meanings apart from themselves?  If so, you need to decide how the component parts fit together.  Maybe the country of Talasu has a range of mountains called the Black Jaws (obviously you're going to make something sinister happen there!)  "Jaw" becomes "frago," "black" is "nat."  You decide that in Talasunta, the adjectives follow the modified word, as in French or Spanish, so your mountain range becomes the "Fragonat." 
       At that point you should begin making a vocabulary list -- extremely important, because there is no way you can remember every word you've used, and as your book gets longer and you create more words, you'll never be able to find them again.
      You should also write out every decision you make regarding syntax, like the rules for placement of adjectives, for how to construct plurals and genitive case, etc. 

       What if you want the people in your world to sometimes speak privately, not using the common language?  You want someone to overhear a few phrases in Talasunta.  You can construct just a few rules and usually you can come up with something that will work.  That's what I did in the beginning with !Ka<tá, the Bird language spoken by my Prf. A'a'ma, the avian alien that plays such an important role in "The Termite Queen."  Mostly what I constructed were expletives (birds apparently curse a lot!) but there are some full sentences, too.   In Chapter 2, he says, "Prf. Jerardo ali ♫hi ♫ko’ó∙wa gi !i po∙atré]” and Kaitrin humorously upbraids him, "Tió’otu!  That’s not nice!  But what’s going on?  You surely didn’t go to all the trouble to contact me just to make fun of one of our colleagues.”
        I don't tell the reader of the book what Prf. A'a'ma's insult meant, but I'll reveal it here: "Prf. Jerardo has dung beetles in his head."  When I first wrote the book, I decided on the English of what I wanted him to say and then I just cooked up some words that sounded like birds might twitter them -- I had done nothing on the phonology yet.  I did come up with some non-English sounds and some characters to represent them, like ∙, which is a cough, and ♫, which is a warble and, as a prefix, makes words plural.  
       But this remark did require devising a third person singular present tense form of the verb "to have."  In English, "to have" is an irregular verb.  Most languages have some irregular verbs, but I decided that in !Ka<tá, "to have, to possess" is regular.  I don't remember whether at that point I decided on a form for the infinitive, which would be "khe'ali."  I think I just  said, "OK, 'ali' sounds good for 'he has'" and went from there. 
       But again, I kept careful notes on what I'd done -- I made a little table of verb forms and started by filling in the 3rd person singular masculine present tense.  At first I had just two or three entries, but later it grew to include all possible forms and tenses and aspects and moods ...  So I stress again, keep records on all grammatical decisions! 

       Now I'll construct an example of Talasunta: The hero hides behind the curtain and he overhears two men talking in that language, which he doesn't understand.  You could just write, "so the Prince rushed off to find the Ambassador, who spoke Talasunta, and repeated the words as near as he was able.  The Ambassador was horrified at what he heard ... "
        But it would be much better this way: "The Prince overheard two men speaking in Talasunta, but all he could catch was "Asolya dimerumu chinsa."  A few moments later, he was consulting the Ambassador, who spoke the native tongue.  And the diplomat was horrified.  "He said, 'We plan to kill her at dawn'!"  That enhances the realism of the story.
       In this language, the subject pronoun is suffixed to the root of the verb, so "asolu" means "to plan" and "asolya" means "we plan."  Infinitives end in -u, so "dimeru"  is "to kill" and "mu" is the objective case of the third person feminine pronoun, which is suffixed to the full infinitive.  "Chin" means "dawn" and the suffix "-sa" is a postposition (the language doesn't have prepositions) meaning "at the time of."
       As you can see, if a conlang, even just a naming language, is done right, there are multifold complications!  But you know what?  Writing a conlang is the most fun of anything in the world, for anybody to whom language is fascinating and not a tedious bore!  Actually, I got quite interested in Talasunta while I was writing this, but conlangs can be very time-consuming, and so I don't think you'll ever learn any more about that language!

 

Summation of How to Write a Naming Language

• Set up a system of speech sounds (phonology) for each of your languages in order to differentiate them.
• Never use any morphemes (basic word particles) that are taken directly from in English, or for that matter from any other Earth language. That is, you could use the syllable, but it can't have the same meaning as it does in Earth languages.
• Try to think about the consequences of a decision before you make it (and that's harder than it sounds!) But this is important, because going back and changing a whole language structure is almost impossible.
• As you construct words, make a vocabulary list, preferably in two directions, Talasunta to English and English to Talasunta.
• Keep careful records of rules of syntax, so you won't put adjectives after nouns on p.6 and before nouns on p.300.  (And parenthetically, don't use the same grammatical structure for all your languages.)
• And if you can work it out, use syntax that resembles English or other Earth languages as little as possible (that's one of the tougher rules to follow, unless you're more familiar than I am with all the languages of the Earth). 

       When I started this, I had intended to talk about the naming language in "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder," but I got sidetracked.  Maybe I'll write about that in a later post!


 

The Problem of Good and Evil in the Culture of the Shshi

      The Yahoo group on conculture exists to discuss the imaginary cultures devised mostly by those who also write constructed languages.  In a recent exchange, the administrator of the group asked the following questions:  "How do our various cultures -- especially the non-human ones, and also especially the non-terran ones -- view this Problem of Evil? Or do they even recognise it as a principle? Or do they see Good as the Problem...?  Also, is Evil a "real thing" or a by-product of cultural evolution in a people?"  I thought this question was interesting enough for me to write a blog post on how my Shshi (intelligent lifeforms evolved from termites) view these problems.

 

       There are among the Shshi many different species with much in common but also with different histories and cultural backgrounds.  The plains Shshi, comprising the Shum'za (or Little Heads) and the Da'no'no Shshi (or Very Large Shshi), view evil as the absence or negation of good.  This is reflected in the language.  In the Shshi language (the language of all the plains peoples) the word for "good" is thel| (noun) while "evil" is wei'thel| (noun, signifying "not good.")  wei'thel| is a strong word; there is a word of weaker implication, a'thel| (adj.), which can be translated as "bad, improperly or poorly done," etc., as in "He made a bad mistake" or "He build a bad wall."
       The point is, the plains Shshi, who are a later evolutionary product and who live in an expansive, open-skyed land with treeless vistas, maintained an optimistic, perhaps somewhat naive view of evil.  Good is the thing that is real and evil is the absence of good, the failure to project that quality.  Good is innate and to fail to be good is considered unnatural.  Thus the patently evil villain Mo'gri'ta'tu becomes known in lore as the Unnatural Alate and the traitorous Commander Hi'ta'fu becomes the Unnatural Warrior. (These are characters in "The Termite Queen.")
       In later volumes of "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head" series, we get a different view of evil.  There is a character named Krai'zei, an older Worker-Helper to a Warrior who joins the quest (both these characters first appear in "The Storm-Wing"). 
       Krai'zei is a member of an ancient race, the same race as the Warrior Ju'mu whom we meet in "The War of the Stolen Mother."  They are called the Yo'sho'zei -- the Old Ones -- and in fact play the role of the Centaurs in Greek myth.  (Ju'mu embodies one of the functions of Cheiron, that of teacher of Warriors.)  The Yo'sho'zei are a dwindling race and have been forced into a small area of the southern coast, a land of dense vegetation and rugged, rocky outcroppings and caves.  Time has taught them to be pessimists.  For them evil is innate, something that lives deep within the soul of everyone.  They call it the "Old Absolute."  Good is the conquest of this evil within ourselves.
       Linguistically speaking, the Yo'sho'zei language is much closer to the original archaic Shshi speech than the speech of the Shum'za or the Da'no'no Shshi is.  Thus, ses'de| is the base word, meaning both "evil" and also "cursed" and "fated."  It derives from the archaic root *sesk, which yields both ses'de| (evil) and ei'ses| which means "to destine or put a fate upon." The root is still seen in the Shum'za language in sasko|, sask'zei|, and tha'sask| (to curse or damn; a cursed person; the imprecation "far-curse!")
       In Yo'sho'zei "good" is ses’wa’de|, i.e. evil + not + the noun affix.  So this reflects the exact opposite of the Plains Shshi's view.
       There is considerable discussion of these concepts in the later volumes of the "Labors" series.  I wanted to quote some examples here, but I decided they would act as a spoiler for a very important part of the plot, so I guess you'll just have to wait and read the books after they're published!
       Then I did find one passage that I could quote without giving away too much.  It occurs in Volume Five, where Di'fa'kro'mi and Ki'shto'ba are talkng with the venerable and learned Yo'sho'zei Alate Vai'zei'a'parn (who embodies the half of Cheiron that is a scholarly healer).  They even discuss some of the points I made above:

       Ki’shto’ba frequently conversed with Vai’zei’a’parn, either alone or in the company of other Yo’sho’zei or some of us Companions.  At times when I was present, we often discussed topics that are not usually of interest to Warriors, like the nature of evil, considered by the Yo’sho’zei to be an all-pervasive reality – the Old Absolute, who wove itself out of a web of darkness before Creation started, behind the back of ta’ta’wa’tze| [Yo'sho'zei word for The-Highest-Mother-who-Has-No-Name] where she could not see it.  It grew until she felt the pain of it pressing against her ovipositor; by then it was so strong that she could not uncreate it or remove it from the fabric of her new-made world.  So she gave her children the power to overcome it in their souls if they had the will, but the struggle was fated to be both arduous and unending, and not always successful. 

And Ki’shto’ba said, “Our people’s beliefs are different – is this not correct, Di’fa’kro’mi?  Evil was never a force separate from the Highest-Mother-Who-Is-Nameless.  She made the world and the First Created to be good, but because she did not make them permanent or complete, they were flawed, and so, while the soul is essentially good, it is also flawed.  Therefore, evil occurs simply because we are not as good as we have the power to be.  It has no existence in itself.”

I agreed that this was an accurate description.  “It is even reflected in our language,” I said.  “In my speech, we have thel| and wei’thel|, which mean in At’ein’zei ‘good’ and ‘not-good,’ whereas the Tramontane words – ses’de| and  ses’wa’de| – mean ‘evil’ and ‘evil-not.’”

Then Ki’shto’ba said, “That is why I failed.  I do not believe I was arrogant, but I never thought of myself as other than good and I did not realize I had to work at staying that way.  I did not recognize the presence of evil in myself.”

“You have concluded then,” said Vai’zei’a’parn, “that the Yo’sho’zei way of regarding the world is the right one?”

“I cannot say,” said Ki’shto’ba.  “I only know what I have discovered to be true for myself.  ... "

 

Now would be a good time to go out and buy a copy of "The War of the Stolen Mother" and get a jump on the series before more volumes appear!   

Calling All Anthropologists, Entomologists, Mythologists, Folklorists, and Linguists!

       This post is a piece of shameless self-promotion!  It's about the type of reader whom I would like to attract -- who I believe would appreciate my writing and enjoy it most.  This reader could be any of the above, as well as non-experts who nevertheless have a curiosity or a passion about those subjects.  Or, in fact, it could be anybody whose interest is piqued by the unusual or the thought-provoking.

       My books vary in their emphasis. The anthropology angle is obvious in the two volumes of "The Termite Queen"; my heroine is an anthropologist, and first-contact situations require an anthropologist's touch.  Anthropology is the central focus in "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder."  The plot deals with what can happens when an anthropological investigation goes seriously awry.  The books in the series "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head" are less directly anthropological because they are laid among the extraterrestrial termite race itself and include only peripheral interraction with those meddlesome Star-Beings.  They are more a venture into constructed culture.

       Entomology plays no role in "Monster," but obviously none of the other books could have been written without a study of insects.  The lead male character in "Termite Queen" is an entomologist and the extraterrestrials are giant termites, who have evolved intelligence but still retain many of the imperatives of social insect behavior.  I do have the attention of one leading termite expert, Dr. Timothy G. Myles, who wrote that great University of Toronto website about termites, which is now only available in the Internet Archive.  Dr. Myles really likes my books!  He wrote a 5-star review of "Termite Queen," v.1, at Amazon under the appellation of "Termite Tim."

       When I first started to use Twitter, I tried to attract the attention of anthropologists and entomologists, and I have periodically attempted the same since then, especially with the entomology.  I have never gotten one follow from an anthropologist, and almost nothing from entomology tweeps, except for @BeesinArt, which is very nice about retweeting.  I've also had slight interaction with @AboutInsects, and a few others that I can't recall right now.  But I can't say that any of this has ever gotten me a sale.

       Can it be that anthropologists and entomologists don't read SF or fantasy?  I can't believe that's true of all of them!  Well, all I can say is, they don't know what they're missing! 

       Then there are the mythology people, folklorists, etc.  I can't imagine that people interested in Greek myth or any myth, for that matter, or in epic tales (because later volumes retell certain medieval stories -- it's not all Greek) -- that these people wouldn't be intrigued by retellings of their favorite subjects in such an original  milieu.  Hercules as a giant termite!  The Trojan War fought between termite fortresses!  Achilles a mighty Warrior who is immature, bellicose, and unpredictable, with a secret flaw (doesn't sound so far from the original, does it?)  Hecuba a termite Queen!  Priam an unnaturally warlike King!  Cassandra a mad Alate Seer!  The role of Odysseus played by an audacious trickster Worker!  Aeneas carrying on his back, not his father, but a young King destined to be the founder of a new fortress, just as Aeneas is purported in some myths to be the founder of Rome!  How could anybody interested in myth resist that?  It's so much fun -- it was fun to write, and it will be fun to read!

       Furthermore, while "Termite Queen" doesn't retell a myth directly, one of the great myths of our culture is touched on obliquely in the conclusion of the tale.

       Last but certainly not least, there are the linguists, particularly those who are concerned with conlangs and concultures.  "The Termite Queen" is predicated on a conlang -- Kaitrin Oliva has to write one in order to conceptualize the non-vocal language of the termites.  And that language plays a continuing role in the "Labors" series, with Shshi words often utilized in the text (frequently with explanatory notes).  I have quite a few contacts already in this linguistic area and I hope to build more.

       So maybe this post will attract some attention -- maybe somebody will search the terms in its title and find it and think, Huh, that sounds interesting -- I think I'll have a go at one of her books.  If so, you can read sample chapters of "Stolen Mother" on this blog, or go to Ruminations of a Remembrancer to read chapters of "Termite Queen."  The Amazon link is another place to go - the "Look Inside" function has now been activated on all the books.  And Smashwords has sample downloads on "Monster" and on both volumes of "Termite Queen." 

       Happy reading!  I hope you will enjoy my books as much as I enjoyed writing them!