Bookmarks - The Professor and the Madman

Sorry for the late post. I came home for the reading week and have run out of premade posts.

The Professor and the Madman is copyright 1998 by Simon Winchester. Published by HarperCollins.

This is what I would call a "creative nonfiction". It is a book based heavily on the story behind the Oxford English Dictionary.

It tells you the embellished facts about the two main contributors to the dictionary, Professor James Murray who headed the campaign for the majority of its run, and Dr. W.C Minor who submitted more than 10,000 entries to the work.

Minor was incarcerated for murder, and Murray was a professor at Oxford.

It tells their stories, using historical truths and backed up data... and filling in the gaps with narrative.

I like the style of this book, it goes back and forth between narrative and laying out pure fact. It makes everything bite sized. It helps that I am interested in language and dictionaries.

All in all a good gateway book to fiction from nonfiction or vice-versa.

Conlanging and you!

Alright, yesterday I explained through examples what a conlang can be at some of its highest peaks. If you're still with me you are likely insane or really bored. Both are acceptable.

You see these examples and think to yourself, hey, I want my own language! It'll be great for my book/my diary/confusing the hell out of teachers/profit/etc.!

While I give little hope to the last one, the others are a yes. Other neat things that can come from it are relieving boredom, procrastination, pure fun, the admiration of your peers(again, little hope), and gaining friends.

So let's get started, you yell. And I jump, because I startle easily.

Where, oh where to start when conlanging. It is different for a lot of people, some like to start with basic syntax, others have a random sketch of an intransitive verb combining with a noun in holy matrimony, still others start with a script, and a lot of people start with a phonology.

Wait, wait, wait. What? Intransi-whoey? Synta-what? Phrenology?

Okay, so I think it would be best to start at the top. Linguistics! Otherwise known as More Than Your Average High School English Class!

If you are groaning already and can't stand the thought of spending time on Grammar, then perhaps this is the wrong past-time. Maybe try cryptology? (Not to be confused with the science of crypts) (I hope to cover codes and ciphers another day, but for now that link should do)

So. Linguistics. Where to begin? Well, you certainly don't need a doctorate in it, but it would sure help. So if you think you can do it, go forth. I can wait.

No?

Okay. You don't need to know a lot of linguistics to start with, just a few basic terms and you should be rolling:

Phonology: Basically the set of sounds possible within a language. English allows "sss" "ch" and "sh", but does not allow "sch" (Unless it is "school" but that is more of a "sk") We also don't allow things like "ts" or "zx"

Morpheme: The smallest linguistic unit (word or word bit) that has definable meaning. Think "un-" "break" "-s" These are pieces we can tear out of other s=words and hold up as having meaning. I can break "break" into "br" and "eak" but neither has independent meaning, so are not morphemes.

Phone: the tiniest definable sound, such as one possible pronunciation of "b"

Phoneme: the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language. So the entirety of possible pronunciations for "b", including "allophones" or sounds that all mean the same thing.

Syntax: The way that all the other things are put together to form coherent thoughts, the rules dictating order of things.

Parts of Speech: Noun, Article, Conjunction and a slew of others, you might want to get re-familiar with these.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): A set of letters based on the Latin alphabet that is intended to be used as a standard representation of all sounds used in spoken language (by anyone, anywhere).

Having at least the ability to know what the symbols are is a great start. Being able to move things back and forth with it is even better.

X-SAMPA: At the most basic, a way to use IPA using ASCII characters. I use it as I find it easier to remember.

Everything else is probably okay to learn as you come across it.

Ugh, that got long quick. Okay, splitting this into two for today.

Other worlds, other languages

Remember how I apologised in advance for that rash of papermaking posts? The ones that never showed up? Yeah, I have a feeling this will be the same way, but just in case, I apologise for a rash of conlang/worlding posts to come.

Now that that is done, and I have a yummy banana ice lolly to eat, I thought I'd do a quick post about what I've been up to these last few days.

I'm a conlanger. Well, I prefer geofictionist...

A whosit? A whatsit?

If you don't already know, lemme throw some definitions at you. Stand still, this shouldn't hurt:

Conlang: A constructed language

Conlanger: A person who makes a constructed language

(Not to be confused with a canlang, or a Canadian language. Those are infinitely more frightening)

Geofiction: fictional worlds, geographic fiction

Geofictionist: A person who makes geographic fiction

Conworld: A constructed world

I'll let you figure out consports, conreligion, etc.

So yes, there, I've admitted to this oh so secret of vices. I know one other person, personally, that does it, along with a slew of internet folks, maybe two or three thousand as an upper guess (compiling all the numbers I know from a few forums and mailing lists, some of which are likely duplicated (like me!)), but I know there must be more lurking in the shadows.

So when you hear constructed language, what should you think of?

Well, think of Na'vi as a current example. The language spoken by the blue cat-people in Avatar? Yup. That's a constructed language. The people making that language hired a professor with a doctorate in linguistics to make a language for the movie. If you want to read more, wiki is a good start: Na'vi Language.

Want something a bit less current, but still alien? Reach only so far as Star Trek. The Klingons of that series have their own language which has become a major player in the field of conlangs. The language wasn't really intended, they mostly used nonsense "words" to get a feel of an alien tongue. But leave it to Trekkies to blow that up and out. Klingon is now a full fledged language with speakers around the world. You could even take classes at some point (This may still occur?) I unfortunately never really got into Star Trek, so my info is a bit dusty. However I have studied Klingon in a cursory manner, as it has structures similar to my conlang. You want to learn more, try the Klingon Language Institute.

So we want less current, but not alien. How about Tolkien? There's a reason that the secret vice quip was linked.

Tolkien made Elvish, and it seems that one reason he made the Lord of the Rings was to not seem crazy when putting forth the language. Neat, mm? Now Elvish I know as much of as anyone who never read the series (don't shoot!), but there are certainly a lot of resources about for it. So why don't we just direct you to the wiki, and you can put the knives down: Elvish Languages.

One more, then I swear I'll move on.

Esperanto. No, that's not some Spanish cowboy. It's a language developed by L. L. Zamenhof (Quite the mouthful, mm?) and his goal with this language was to have Esperanto be a politically neutral language spoken everywhere, allowing people of different nationalities to make an equal play towards peace.

A lofty goal.

And while it never reached that height (they don't teach you Esperanto in international business courses!) it is still the most widely spoken auxiliary language. There are 10,000 to two million fluent speakers, some of which are native speakers (that is, Esperanto is, or is one of, their first languages) Pretty big for something some guy just made up! Though, it has been around a while, the first book about it was published in 1887.

There is obviously tons of material about Esperanto out there, so I'mma leave you with just a Google search for Esperanto.

Now that you know a little bit about conlangs, I thought maybe I could share some information about how to go about making one, but I've kinda run out of space, plus you've probably wandered on to thinking about your dinner plans. That's okay, I ran out of ice lolly a paragraph and a half in, and I'm thinking about food too.

So I think I'll say:

ĝis la revido,

Qapla'

Mára mesta

kìyevame

or goodbye, in Esperanto, Klingon, Elvish and Na'vi respectively.

The art of paper making

So some of you may know that I'm a crafty geek, and enjoy fibre arts the most.

How many of you have thought about paper making before? It is a fibre art too! Just, different fibre.

I got into making paper maybe five years and a house ago. Set up a vat, blender and screen in our basement laundry room and churned the stuff out for a few months. Then school, cold weather and depression put a kibosh on it.

Oh, and moving to a house that doesn't have a drain in the floor of the basement. And had a fully carpeted basement for a time.

So I slowly ditched all the made up pulp, cleaned the vat, stored the screen and pressing boards, ditched the old cloths.

I made journals for all my teachers in grade ten, cards, backings for poems and neat art paper. Even a box to hold 105 tiny paper stars (about 5mm or .20in across) for a very special person.

After stopping I got into writing, geofiction, conlanging, reading, crochet, knitting, spinning, weaving, braiding, sewing and more all over again. (The first three were more prevalent for the first two years while I dealt with the aforementioned depression.) So I'm happy I stopped, it opened the door to a lot of other things I had ignored.

Fast forward to about a month ago. First year of college was ending, and I was looking forward to a summer of boredom, work and boredom.

So I thought, hey, paper!

Well, that and I was thinking about things I could add to an Etsy shop or similar, and dying/spinning wool seemed to expensive/time consuming for a start up. (Plus I'm not sure I would be able to give up the things I made >.>) Then I remembered the paper, and how so many people fawned over it and wanted things made from it, and thought it would be a good idea.

So I tore the old screen off and got a new, tighter one. Found and washed my old vat. Spent days trying to find a second hand blender, and eventually my mum said I could use the house one. If she ever wants one, she'll get another. (She barely used this one. A nice new blender for me!)

The furnace room was stripped of carpeting last year after the oil spill. (Torn up by a friend and I), so I do most of the work there (Until I can convince mum to tear up the disgusting carpet in the laundry room.) I've made two posts of sheets in the last three or four days, and will probably pull another today (Though I may experiment with some other fibres. I never got too far into the experimental last time.)

I hope to make some pulp out of old blue jeans and dryer lint soon. Maybe next summer try out some plant fibres. (Probably have to wait longer than that. I'll be done school then. Looking for permanent employment and housing...) You will probably soon get sick of the flurry of paper-making posts I feel are to come. Pictures too, hopefully!

I hope to make gift/greeting cards, some finer stationary, envelopes, boxes... Things are looking crafty around here.

So tell me, intrepid reader, what kind of crafts do you do?

Tumblr

So I made a Tumblr. Have to say, not that much of a fan, I still find the basic blog set-up more versatile. But it is a convenient link faver thing with the widgit I have.

Between Tumblr and Vi.Sualize.Us I ca nsave those links and images I find useful. So yay.

EDUCATION

Have some documentaries, I don't feel like writing anything witty, I'm learning about dogfighting in the EU:

Documentaries this a-way!

-- Some of them appear to be down.

Magnified Curiosities

Ever wonder what a needle and thread or a used q-tip looks like under extreme magnification?

Neither have I, but I was still quite interested to see these images from SlightlyWarped.

What do you think this is?

Take a look!