From: bsulliv@a.cs.okstate.edu (SULLIVAN BRIAN JOS)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Yet More on Languages in SF&F
Date: 16 Oct 92 01:05:43 GMT
Organization: Oklahoma State University, Computer Science, Stillwater

>- Every language has its linguistic quirks, and those tell us a lot less
>about the culture than we'd like to believe.  Science fiction authors are
>forever coming up with lines like "their language contains twenty terms
>for 'betray'", as though that means anything.  What does it tell us about
>*our* culture that we have a one-syllable word that means "man who
>entertains people by biting off the heads of live chickens"?  Very little.

I disagree.  I've studied several languages (including German, Spanish,
and Japanese).  Some very interesting observations concerning Japanese
in comparison to English crop up.

When a word is long, it's not used as much.  Shorter words are more common.
Any long word that is used often enough will be shortened (television is used
quite often, and it becomes T.V., two syllables compared to four; automobile
and horseless carriage and any other synonym are now almost always car other
than when used formally).

In English, the pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they are all one syllable
as are (am,are,is,were,have); we use these very commonly.

In Japanese, the pronouns are much longer.  wa-ta-shi, a-na-ta, a-na-ta-ga-ta
for just a few.  They don't use them, they can remain longer and use the short
words for more commonly needed concepts.  In Japanese, if I want to say that I
can speak it, I'd say "nihongo ga dekimasu" (Can Japanese) and leave out the 'I'
that would be required in English.

The people that use swear words use them often; they are generally one syllable
(ass,hell,f*ck), not complex words.  I think the number and variety of these
words says something about a culture.

The variety of words that define narrow subclasses also says something about
a culture.  We say PC, IBM, Mac, Amiga, TI, XT, AT, PS/2, and we all visualize
subclasses of microcomputers; a culture without computers would not have these
subclasses (nor would they have Coke, Pepsi, RC, nor 7-Up, Sprite, Slice).
You may not think off-hand that these brand labels are other words for the
generic product, but they actually are just subclasses of the item.  (I use
Kleenex for any generic tissue paper, and back in Illinois I used Coke to mean
any type of pop/soda/carbonated-beverage; the subclasses can be brought back
up.)

Yet we don't have twenty words for corn or such; it's not important to our
culture and our language to define specific subclasses of it for daily
conversation.  However, we are still governed by the weather and have many
words for water in its different states; water, steam, ice, sleet, snow, hail,
dew, mist, condensation, frost and H2O just mean specific subclasses of water--
from our language you can imply that these subclasses are still important to
us.  In Japanese, you can't say "hot water", but rather have to use a single
concept meaning hot-water--it's important to the Japanese culture to make that
distinction commonly.

In some cases, old imperatives of a language hold on when their meaning is
lost, but if a people forget the old uses, they would build complex concepts
to describe what their ancestors described simply with a subclass.  Did
ancient wooden ships have many subclasses which were vital to all that dealt
with them?  Probably, but we just call them wooden ships in most cases.

(In regards to the size of vocabulary, a greater vocabulary size is very
useful when both parties have the greater vocabulary.  If I say junket (sp)
and you know that it's an ancient Chinese ship, then we've saved time in
communication.  It doesn't necessarily relate to a greater intelligence,
but it does allow ideas to be formed more quickly and specifically.)

I think science fiction can reasonably state that when an alien culture has
more words/shorter words for concepts that those concepts do give a clue
to the culture.

I haven't posted to this conference before, but there's my two cents.