Star Trek Ferengi Languages by 1995 Timothy Miller, David Salo, and 1995-2017 TV Show Writers and Kim Douglas

A forum for all topics related to constructed languages
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Star Trek Ferengi Languages by 1995 Timothy Miller, David Salo, and 1995-2017 TV Show Writers and Kim Douglas

Post by Bob »

Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

...

David Salo is now famous for doing the Tolkein Languages for "The Lord of the Rings" movies. He's actually a very accomplished scholar of all conlanging besides.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fbclid ... x4xlIv-_-I

...

Here's a post about this that I wrote for one of my facebook groups:

History of Conlangs, Conlang Decipherment, Asemic Writing
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1559372287639844/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1559372 ... 649518534/

November 16, 2018

:o Star Trek should really hire someone to invent, via computer-generation and hand-crafting, vast numbers of invented languages for their fictional universe. Including ones for earth. The most popular conlangers in the business today are David Peterson of Game of Thrones and the female professor of the recent Alpha film. The Avatar film language inventor, I don't think he's been hired for anything lately. Recently, Britton Watkins, huge Vulcan language enthusiast, seems to do almost everything language-related for Star Trek, though. But aside from "star power", they really should hire someone with the necessary talent and experience. Yet "star power" (he did the languages for Game of Thrones, Avatar, etc) really seems to be how Hollywood approaches invented languages as well as actors and other members of creative teams.

;) Then again, the reason why they don't is because it's just too much hassle. Creative teams struggle just to get one or a few lines of an invented language into a film or tv show. Too few people seem to notice. Or do they? Avatar was a success. How did that work? They probably also wonder what's going on.

Here's "the Ferengi language" as either invented or deciphered (?) based on material from the Star Trek tv shows. This is not by me. And it was found by Yuri Mihálik. It's by one Timothy Miller with the help of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie language consultant Professor David Salo of the University of Wisconsin.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fbclid ... x4xlIv-_-I

...

Image

Image

...

I'm working on the Star Trek and Marc Okrand conlangs and languages this week, so I might do a short translation into this language. It's probably going to be something wild but fitting. I'm familiar with the characters and have seen a few episodes, including this one with the casino game.
Last edited by Bob on 19 Aug 2020 00:26, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by sangi39 »

I've removed the most recent post. As a verbatim copy of the text (from https://groups.google.com/forum/?fbclid ... x4xlIv-_-I) linked in the original post of this thread, I don't think it needs to be posted here again (it doesn't add anything to your post, and you're not commenting on Miller's work either, so it's just copying and pasting someone else's work, and honestly, it feels like spam at that point).

On the note of "preservation", I'd suggest keeping a copy of it yourself, possible on an external hard-drive, rather than using another forum to post it. While I understand the desire to preserve it, we're not here to act as an archive for other people's work unless the author wants us to be.

Further, on the note of "easier viewing", the two Facebook links you provided in the original post are for private Facebook groups, which means viewing those posts is restricted to members of those Facebook groups. Some people might want to join to find out what they say, but if you're link effectively goes nowhere, it restricts the access to those posts by people who don't want to join.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

No, I think it's supposed to look like this. It's not that Unicode characters are not showing up or something:

"Always keep your ears open."
/ntgavt ndfyt paag sz^ku/
[n-t@'ga-v@t n-d@'fyt paag s@'z^-ku]
'n-t'gahv't n-d'fuet paag s'zuh-koo'

I don't like Romanizations or transliteration systems like this but Klingon is a bit like this and this has some usage, especially among Native American Languages Studies scholars and language scientists. Someone seriously needs to teach all those people how alphabets and writing systems originally worked.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:02 I've removed the most recent post. As a verbatim copy of the text (from https://groups.google.com/forum/?fbclid ... x4xlIv-_-I) linked in the original post of this thread, I don't think it needs to be posted here again (it doesn't add anything to your post, and you're not commenting on Miller's work either, so it's just copying and pasting someone else's work, and honestly, it feels like spam at that point).

On the note of "preservation", I'd suggest keeping a copy of it yourself, possible on an external hard-drive, rather than using another forum to post it. While I understand the desire to preserve it, we're not here to act as an archive for other people's work unless the author wants us to be.

Further, on the note of "easier viewing", the two Facebook links you provided in the original post are for private Facebook groups, which means viewing those posts is restricted to members of those Facebook groups. Some people might want to join to find out what they say, but if you're link effectively goes nowhere, it restricts the access to those posts by people who don't want to join.
What if that document gets deleted in its current place in facebook groups? I doubt there's many copies of this document elsewhere. The author states in the document that he wants people to post copies of his document in other locations.

Having the links to those groups is necessary because those groups are easy to join and fake accounts are easy to make. If people want to join the groups, the names of them and their links are right there. The easiest way to find a group is by following the link.

Links to posts on private facebook groups are like that. You have to join the group to see them. That's why I link to the group before giving the link to posts in the group.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by sangi39 »

Bob wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:03 No, I think it's supposed to look like this. It's not that Unicode characters are not showing up or something:

"Always keep your ears open."
/ntgavt ndfyt paag sz^ku/
[n-t@'ga-v@t n-d@'fyt paag s@'z^-ku]
'n-t'gahv't n-d'fuet paag s'zuh-koo'

I don't like Romanizations or transliteration systems like this but Klingon is a bit like this and this has some usage, especially among Native American Languages Studies scholars and language scientists. Someone seriously needs to teach all those people how alphabets and writing systems originally worked.
The system used in square brackets is X-SAMPA. It's a keyboard-friendly phonetic transcription method that functions in basically the same way as IPA (we have a conversion tool on the Board that can convert between the two). It was developed in 1995 and has seen relatively widespread use amongst conlangers who either didn't have, or don't have, the tools to quickly type up phonemic or phonetic transcriptions in IPA.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:02 ...
The post is to make people aware of this work. I remember this conlang is quite interesting and maybe based somehow on pseudo-conlang or possible conlang work in the actual tv shows. Plus, David Salo is a very famous conlanger, he works on all the Lord of the Rings movies translating into Tolkein's Languages and expanding them.

I'm working on other Star Trek languages now and thought about this language and wanted to make it more available.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by sangi39 »

Bob wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:05
sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:02 I've removed the most recent post. As a verbatim copy of the text (from https://groups.google.com/forum/?fbclid ... x4xlIv-_-I) linked in the original post of this thread, I don't think it needs to be posted here again (it doesn't add anything to your post, and you're not commenting on Miller's work either, so it's just copying and pasting someone else's work, and honestly, it feels like spam at that point).

On the note of "preservation", I'd suggest keeping a copy of it yourself, possible on an external hard-drive, rather than using another forum to post it. While I understand the desire to preserve it, we're not here to act as an archive for other people's work unless the author wants us to be.

Further, on the note of "easier viewing", the two Facebook links you provided in the original post are for private Facebook groups, which means viewing those posts is restricted to members of those Facebook groups. Some people might want to join to find out what they say, but if you're link effectively goes nowhere, it restricts the access to those posts by people who don't want to join.
What if that document gets deleted in its current place in facebook groups? I doubt there's many copies of this document elsewhere. The author states in the document that he wants people to post copies of his document in other locations.

Having the links to those groups is necessary because those groups are easy to join and fake accounts are easy to make. If people want to join the groups, the names of them and their links are right there. The easiest way to find a group is by following the link.

Links to posts on private facebook groups are like that. You have to join the group to see them. That's why I link to the group before giving the link to posts in the group.
That's why I suggested, as an example, the idea of saving the text on your own independent hard-drive (even just as a word-document on your computer or an external hard-drive). That was the information is saved, in exact for, away from the internet, and, then, regardless of where it's saved online, you personally have a copy of it that you can upload on the sites or groups that you run.

As for the Facebook groups being private, I understand that you have to join them to see the posts. That was my main point of criticism. If you thought the information was relevant enough to share, to a group of people who aren't members of those groups, and, therefore, cannot see that information without joining, it might have been worth, for example, presenting some of that information here directly. Otherwise you're requiring that people join those groups in order to access that information.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by sangi39 »

Bob wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:11
sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:02 ...
The post is to make people aware of this work. I remember this conlang is quite interesting and maybe based somehow on pseudo-conlang or possible conlang work in the actual tv shows. Plus, David Salo is a very famous conlanger, he works on all the Lord of the Rings movies translating into Tolkein's Languages and expanding them.

I'm working on other Star Trek languages now and thought about this language and wanted to make it more available.
Several people (I'd assume most?) on this Board are aware of who David Salo is (he's on a number of conlanging groups on Facebook, and he posts somewhat regularly on some of them). I don't think you've made Ferengi more accessible or available, though. You've posted links to work that's already been done by other people, which is already available for free online (the Google Groups post, for example, is the fifth link down when you search "Ferengi grammar" on Google, so not exactly unavailable).
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:07 ...
I've heard of it. I prefer to make my own transliteration systems for phonetic symbols and then give explanations within the document, making it all self-contained. I've worked out my own ASCII versions of the IPA symbols and used them a few times. Usually, though, I just end up writing about a smaller number of languages and IPA and odd phonetic symbols aren't so much of a thing.

It sounds like the sort of thing David Salo would do, though. Timothy Miller might have done it, though. So now I would have to look up X-Sampa to access this conlang? Wow, that's the opposite of accessibility. Then again, maybe I should write out a copy of the X-Sampa characters just in case. My thing is writing systems, after all. You think I'd be intrigued. But I've been boring myself with alphabets the last 4 years and 6 months especially.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:18
I don't think you've made Ferengi more accessible or available, though. You've posted links to work that's already been done by other people, which is already available for free online (the Google Groups post, for example, is the fifth link down when you search "Ferengi grammar" on Google, so not exactly unavailable).
Well, can I still make this thread or do I have to add some sort of further commentary beyond what I've already said?

Among the Star Trek conlangs, this is quite a major one. It's probably better done than Klingon or Vulcan, in ways. Because of the importance of Klingon and David Salo to the history of conlanging, I was hoping to do a thread about this language and then try to make people more aware of it.

I'm amazed anyone has responded to this thread. It's an important conlang but there's not a lot of interest in conlangs from books, movies, or tv, especially the more obscure ones.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by sangi39 »

Bob wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:18
sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:07 ...
I've heard of it. I prefer to make my own transliteration systems for phonetic symbols and then give explanations within the document, making it all self-contained. I've worked out my own ASCII versions of the IPA symbols and used them a few times. Usually, though, I just end up writing about a smaller number of languages and IPA and odd phonetic symbols aren't so much of a thing.

It sounds like the sort of thing David Salo would do, though. Timothy Miller might have done it, though. So now I would have to look up X-Sampa to access this conlang? Wow, that's the opposite of accessibility. Then again, maybe I should write out a copy of the X-Sampa characters just in case. My thing is writing systems, after all. You think I'd be intrigued. But I've been boring myself with alphabets the last 4 years and 6 months especially.
I'm sorry, but... what? X-SAMPA, as well as IPA (which X-SAMPA is also used as an input for, similar to how pinyin is used as an input for writing Chinese characters when texting or typing, rather than having one big keyboard), and they're both in fairly common use as international phonetic transcription methods. How is that any less accessible than the system of transcription method you would develop, which people would most likely come across after already learning X-SAMPA/IPA? You just go to Wikipedia right now, find articles on IPA and X-SAMPA, and most discussions of phonetics will mention one or both of them. So why not use a pre-existing system if your goal is wider availability?
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:07 ...
Look, there's so much commentary even in the original post. I've said something significant about the language. If anyone wants to add anything, now they can. Probably no one will. But that's not the point. I remember it as being a notable Star Trek conlang.

On a similar note, a few months ago they had the conlanger Trent Pehrson make a Romulan language or something like that for one of the episodes of the newest Star Trek tv series. It's called Star Trek: Recovery or something like that. But he hasn't told anyone how it works and no one has documented, deciphered, or expanded it yet. Give it 10 years, someone will show up. Ain't gonna be me again, though, I tell you what. I had enough of that.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by sangi39 »

Bob wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:23
sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:18
I don't think you've made Ferengi more accessible or available, though. You've posted links to work that's already been done by other people, which is already available for free online (the Google Groups post, for example, is the fifth link down when you search "Ferengi grammar" on Google, so not exactly unavailable).
Well, can I still make this thread or do I have to add some sort of further commentary beyond what I've already said?

Among the Star Trek conlangs, this is quite a major one. It's probably better done than Klingon or Vulcan, in ways. Because of the importance of Klingon and David Salo to the history of conlanging, I was hoping to do a thread about this language and then try to make people more aware of it.

I'm amazed anyone has responded to this thread. It's an important conlang but there's not a lot of interest in conlangs from books, movies, or tv, especially the more obscure ones.
I wouldn't mind seeing a thread on the Ferengi language, but it'd be cool to see some actual commentary on it that actually goes into some detail regarding the language, rather than copying and pasting someone else's work with no extra detail or discussion.

Like, what do you actually think is cool about the language? What makes it interesting to you besides the fact that it was on Star Trek and that it has some connection to David Salo? What do you think makes it a "well-made" conlang (given how infrequently it actually appeared on ST:TNG and ENT)? Or is something to do with its place within conlanging in general? In that case, what, to you, makes it important?
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by sangi39 »

Bob wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:30
sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:07 ...
Look, there's so much commentary even in the original post. I've said something significant about the language. If anyone wants to add anything, now they can. Probably no one will. But that's not the point. I remember it as being a notable Star Trek conlang.

On a similar note, a few months ago they had the conlanger Trent Pehrson make a Romulan language or something like that for one of the episodes of the newest Star Trek tv series. It's called Star Trek: Recovery or something like that. But he hasn't told anyone how it works and no one has documented, deciphered, or expanded it yet. Give it 10 years, someone will show up. Ain't gonna be me again, though, I tell you what. I had enough of that.
I'm not sure how critical this will come across as but your commentary essentially boiled down to "here's a conlang that appeared on a famous TV series, and it's been associated with some famous conlangers, and I think they should get some famous conlanger/s to work on it more, because it's famous".

To me that's not exactly a lot of commentary on the language itself. That's just wanting more of it, which is fair enough. We all want that. I'd love to see some more use of Vulcan in the series (it is criminally underused given the prevalence of the species within the extant media), and when Klingon became the almost default language for Klingons on-screen in ST:D, I was thrilled (honestly, didn't like the series, but couldn't fault them on that decision).

As for Romulan, it was expanded on for Star Trek: Picard, which aired last year on Amazon Prime in the UK, and I think Netflix in the US(?). As with Klingon in ST:D, it did see wider use, but not nearly to the same extent, and from what I can tell, you are far from the only person looking into it (it's been discussed a few times on Reddit, and Memory Alpha has a collection of words and phrases from across canon, which was updated nearly on a per episode basis last year).
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

Bob wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:46 ...
Oh, never mind, I think you misunderstand me.

( Also, don't get me started on writing systems because this is what I study and I'll just talk and talk about them and most people will not be able to follow what I'm saying. )

It's just easier when I'm writing scholarship to make up some digraph or such to represent whatever IPA symbol and then say somewhere what it is.

For example, instead of looking up the Unicode symbol, I'll write kx for voiceless uvular fricative and the immediately afterward say what it is. Of if I do that enough, maybe I'll put it at the end.

I've been reading academic writings for years and years and I don't think any of them was ever written in X-Sampa. Maybe I've seen conlangs use it but it might have been years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA

It's nice looking but it's not as easy to type as something like kh or kc or shr.

Voiced velar fricative is G in X-Sampa. Hmm.

I don't like it because I just don't like using capital letters to make new phonetic symbols. I like everything in one case, usually upper case for contrast with lower case glosses in English. I like a transliteration or transcription system that flows like when you type English. People used to writing in European languages might like to use all those diacritics but it's never been my style.

But I'm very into all that sort of thing, especially the more historic ones like what you see with Native American languages. The last 4 years I even did a project on the Latin / English spelling systems of the Indian languages around Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth Colonies. Which has been too indulgent for me but I did it anyway and deserve a place in history for it. See, I study writing systems but especially the 50 known logographic ones. So I should not be doing so much outside of that topic because it's been very time-consuming and my work is very pioneering and precarious, even difficult or impossible to duplicate or re-trace. And very important for human history and prehistory.

Egyptology has a transliteration system like that for Egyptian which I don't like. It's called "Computer". I can't imagine typing up Middle Egyptian and going JwT-f Is ThIs.w SiT . But I have lower tolerance for that sort of thing, I've studied spelling systems and writing systems a lot.
[/quote]
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

sangi39 wrote: 04 Aug 2020 03:44 I'm not sure how critical this will come across as but your commentary essentially boiled down to "here's a conlang that appeared on a famous TV series, and it's been associated with some famous conlangers, and I think they should get some famous conlanger/s to work on it more, because it's famous".
Oh, okay. Well, I'm busy now and actually been feeding older threads by me on new quick Klingon translations I'm coming out with this week and on-going multiple-month huge Atlantean translations that'll be online in a month or so.

I just reviewed the grammar and lore and everything of the Mark Gardner Vulcan language, though. I don't know if I'll get to this Ferengi. Maybe I should, just to cover bases. They were fun characters in the tv show. They're fairly thinly-veiled stereotypes, though. Notwithstanding.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

This would be good to use as a text to translate into Ferengi but I want something more moving and classic than quotes from the tv series.

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition - Complete List*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvFYBkesqGU
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

Here's a nice song for the study of the Ferengi language, considering the above image and its episode. The episode was memorable to me because I'm very into Women's Studies.

Frank Sinatra - Luck Be A Lady (Lyrics)Frank Sinatra - Luck Be A Lady (Lyrics), 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUddYld-J1w
jimydog000
greek
greek
Posts: 583
Joined: 19 Mar 2016 04:14
Location: Australia

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by jimydog000 »

Wow, it looks completely different to what you hear in Little Green Men and the Enterprise episode I'm watching now. I just assumed the showrunners made it up.

And Bob, can I criticise the way you start these threads? I would rather know what I'm looking at and some general information about the language, rather than Facebook group links. For instance in your Atlantean thread you fail to mention it's from a Disney movie, I'd seen it as a kid and later as a teenager, but I did not recognise the title of the film until I looked it up.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: Star Trek Ferengi Language by Timothy Miller and David Salo from 1995

Post by Bob »

jimydog000 wrote: 05 Aug 2020 14:21 Wow, it looks completely different to what you hear in Little Green Men and the Enterprise episode I'm watching now. I just assumed the showrunners made it up.

And Bob, can I criticise the way you start these threads? I would rather know what I'm looking at and some general information about the language, rather than Facebook group links. For instance in your Atlantean thread you fail to mention it's from a Disney movie, I'd seen it as a kid and later as a teenager, but I did not recognise the title of the film until I looked it up.
Oh, thank-you on both counts. Yeah, I'm trying but I already had the Atlantean thread set up on the new Zompist Bboard and they kicked me out for totally inane reasons. Which they've done to me once or twice before in the past, at about 5 year intervals, probably because Zompist doesn't like or get younger people and lacks a linguistics degree and resents that I have a BA Linguistics. I also specialize in conlangs from books, movies, and tv, which he and most of the other members seem to hate because they make their own conlangs. And it's for sure some international and regional cultural mismatch. Most of the members are clearly from the USA or UK, CIS White Middle-Aged Men. This sort of thing is hard to explain. You know, on the major polyglot facebook groups, we got all kinds of people from all over the world, so I'm not used to what is apparently a bunch of USA and UK men who don't have much idea about how things go in the rest of the world or outside of their seemingly oft-frequented conlanging website.

I also sense on the group a lack of humor and tolerance for people trying to express themselves and being misunderstood. At one point, I wrote this long joke about how on facebook groups everyone praises me but everyone somehow took it very literally. I thought it was funny, over the top, and charming but my audience somehow read it seriously, probably because of innate ageism and general lack of experience with the facebook group side of facebook. In fact, it was unusual how it was often that admins or members on the new Zompist Bboard would take whatever I said literally or not read into things or not take hints or read what I wrote in the worst possible light. And you know what that all is a sign of, in scholarly communities. Usually if people are reading whatever you write in the worst possible light, on the internet, or at a job, they're making excuses to get rid of you and they're huge liars. Though sometimes it seems they didn't carefully read what you wrote due to not giving it the time. But it's usually easy to guess which one is going on from past experience and circumstances. Despite all the talk about the internet being a tone-deaf forum.

I don't know. But I've read about the world's online and offline video game communities and I suspect a cultural overlap with conlangers. And also with miniature gaming and role-playing communities, though that one is more apparent.

You would think, though, considering how rare the hobby is, that they would be more welcoming to (minority) outsiders. But no. And there's lots of facebook group echo chambers like that without much cultural sensitivity or financial diversity, so I'm familiar with the premise. Some political parties are built around this premise, worldwide. Fortunately, the UN is not and everyone knows they've got a strong army to back up their cheery peace-keeping mission. Cough.

So it's amazing I'm continuing with posting about conlangs, this time around. But I'm quite shaken considering all the time and money I've put into private research.

When I make the threads, I just try my best to set it up. One thing I notice about the internet in general is that most of the people I interact with are on it a lot. Me, not so much. So I just can't respond to everybody, in general, and otherwise am rushed and often not so composed while composing. I have to tip-toe around about this because people online easily take offense at and easily misunderstand that some other people in the world aren't on the internet that much or are hella busy in ways they're not even familiar with.

I think I started the Atlantean language thread by linking to the Zompist Bboard thread which set it all up quite nicely from the beginning. But take in mind that I don't especially like the language and that I've been studying it on and off since 2006 and most of what I ever do is give its general premise since no on has heard of it and people have hardly even heard of Klingon.

...

Yeah, I've seen "Little Green Men" also. So it's totally different from that one, huh? Alright, well, good to know. There's apparently not a lot of serious, skilled interest in conlangs or especially in conlangs based on or from Star Trek. I see talent floating around but apparently it's focused on merely writing grammars of conlangs, but no sizeable translations! ha, without more direct reference to fiction in popular books, tv, and movies. So it's like the art film scene, they like art films without realizing that most people don't watch art films and they're being frivolous snobs. There is a real and dangerous uselessness to not taking into account what's on the budget and within the reach of most of the world. But that's not going to stop the lemmings. So I play along, when I have to. I try, anyway. I'm not going to meet anyone more than half way. I just don't have the time for that sort of nonsense. And most people do not and therein lies the problem.
Last edited by Bob on 05 Aug 2020 18:36, edited 2 times in total.
Post Reply