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Babel-17 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Shinn Trilingual Tetraglot Groupie India gallery.takingitglob Joined 6412 days ago 61 posts - 69 votes  Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Oriya*, SpanishB2 Studies: FrenchB1, Japanese, Irish | Message 1 of 6 08 May 2007 at 3:49am | IP Logged |
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Has anyone read the book Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delaney? It is a science fiction novel with languages as its central theme, more specifically, the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis of languages. It does become trite at times but I'd heartily recommend it to any language lover. Here's an excerpt from it that I quite like:
"ABSTRACT THOUGHTS in a blue room; Nominative, genitive, etative, accusative one, accusative two, ablative, partitive, illative, instructive, abessive, adessive, inessive, essive, allative, translative, comitative. Sixteen cases of the Finnish noun. Odd, some languages get by with only singular and plural. The American Indian languages even failed to distinguish number. Except Sioux, in which there was a plural only for animate objects. The blue room was round and warm and smooth. No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid If there's no word for it, how do you think about it? And, if there isn't the proper form, you don't have the how even if you have the words. Imagine, in Spanish having to assign a sex to every object: dog, table, tree, can-opener. Imagine, in Hungarian, not being able to assign a sex to anything: he, she, it all the same word. Thou art my friend, but you are my king; thus the distinctions of Elizabeth the First's English. But with some oriental languages, which all but dispense with gender and number, you are my friend, you are my parent, and YOU are my priest, and YOU are my king, and YOU are my servant, and YOU are my servant whom I'm going to fire tomorrow if YOU don't watch it, and YOU are my king whose policies I totally disagree with and have sawdust in YOUR head instead of brains, YOUR highness, and YOU may be my friend, but I'm still gonna smack YOU up side the head if YOU ever say that to me again; And who the hell are you anyway . . .?" 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 6 08 May 2007 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
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Pretty interesting novel for us language lovers - thanks for the quote!
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| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 3 of 6 11 May 2007 at 7:42am | IP Logged |
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This post sent me to the library. After this morning, I'll be done with spring classes and be able to devote some time to this book...and to languages. Thank you, Shinn, for the information. By the way, even though I'm SamD, I'm not Samuel Delaney. Edited by SamD on 11 May 2007 at 7:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Shinn Trilingual Tetraglot Groupie India gallery.takingitglob Joined 6412 days ago 61 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Oriya*, SpanishB2 Studies: FrenchB1, Japanese, Irish | Message 4 of 6 12 May 2007 at 7:00am | IP Logged |
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No problem, I'm glad you liked it. I wished there were more direct references to languages and their nature in the book and that the female lead wasn't so terribly annoying but it was written in the 60s after all, can't blame 'em :P It's still a pretty interesting book with some pretty interesting ideas.
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| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6316 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 5 of 6 15 September 2007 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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Are there any other books similar to this that involve languages as a main part?
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| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6333 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 6 of 6 16 September 2007 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
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There's one by Suzette Haden Elgin, its title is Native Tongue, but I still haven't read it, maybe some day. She's a science fiction writer and has created a constructed language called Laadan.
If anyone has read it and finds it interesting it would be good to get his/her two cents. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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