An Interview with A Walker Scott, Fellow Conlanger and Nascent Novelist (Part 1)

       When I first started this self-publishing effort, I knew I wanted to get acquainted with other conlangers, since I had constructed a couple of languages for the extraterrestrials in my books to speak. I surmised conlangers would have some interest in what I was doing and I haven’t been disappointed. Through Twitter I discovered the Language Creation Society and proceeded to join. Through those contacts, I met some of the most interesting people on the internet, although only a few of them (like David Peterson, who writes conlangs for TV series, including Game of Thrones) are well-known outside of conlanging and scholarly circles. Recently, in a Facebook discussion, the idea came up of doing an interview with one of my new friends, so I’m pleased to be introducing you to A Walker Scott, one of the most interesting people I’ve met during my self-publishing journey.

 

·    Welcome to my blog, Walker, and thanks for allowing me to interview you. Let me start by asking you to tell us something about yourself – your background, education, and professional life, and something about the places you have lived. I know you read and speak Chinese and taught for a while in Taiwan.

 

       Thanks, Lorinda. Well, I'm afraid this is not incredibly interesting. I hold a Master's in Teaching and have started but never finished a Master's in Linguistics. I taught English conversation to junior high and high school students in Taiwan for three years, and then English Literature and various electives (Yearbook, Logic, ASL) to junior high and high school students here in the US for another three years, before a one-year stint at a junior college. I left teaching due to the unpredictability of paychecks and such. Now I work in a warehouse as a shipping and receiving manager (read: I am a one-man department!)  In the past I have worked as a library supervisor (not a real librarian), a house painter, a nighttime stocking clerk at a grocery store, a customer service rep and various other jobs related to teaching – sometimes three or four simultaneously!

       I have lived nearly my whole life in and around Dallas, TX. But there was a brief stay in the San Luis Valley of Colorado when I was five and the three years in Taiwan about a decade ago.

       My Chinese skills have gotten quite rusty as an hour of attempted conversation last week brought home rather emphatically! I never did reach reading fluency. At my peak, I could read and write about 900 characters, but something like 3000 is needed to read things like newspapers.

 

       · An adjunct question: how did you happen to become proficient in American Sign Language? 

 

       Well, I have been interested in languages since I was really young, so when I got to college and there was a summer intro class on ASL, I took it. Then I took Beginning Sign Language that fall and Intermediate Sign Language that spring. Then I transferred and the university didn't have ASL and didn't accept it for the required foreign language credits, so it was good I had also taken Spanish. I kept up my ASL using it here and there over the years, and then took some Linguistics classes focused on the world's many signed languages. Now I'm interpreting on a weekly basis.

 

·     I’m personally not a professional linguist as you and so many other conlangers are; I’m just a writer and student of literature who dabbles in languages. When did you get interested in constructing languages and why?

       Well, I'm not a professionsal linguist either. I have taken some graduate level classes, but that's FAR from being a professional. I have read quite a lot, and I've been playing with language for decades. I would love to finish a Linguistics degree, but time and money are both somewhat lacking.

       I can actually pinpoint my first foray into conlanging rather precisely. It was about a week before my 12th birthday. My mother was in the hospital because of complications with her pregnancy before the birth of my youngest brother. I was riding my dad's delivery route with him and bored out of my head. I had recently checked several language learning books out of the public library – French, Russian and Esperanto. The idea that someone could just “make” a language was really interesting, so I decided to give it a try. That first language was horrid. I did just about everything wrong. But it started an interest that has lasted over 30 years now.
 

• How many have you written? Give us some examples! I’m particularly interested in that color language! And I believe you’ve constructed a Romance language that is spoken in North Africa in an alternate history of Earth.

       How many have I written? Well, I have done a lot of sketches, some of which might eventually get more attention, but most just languish on my many, many back burners. Let's see ...  How many have I given enough attention to, to be worthy of mention? Well, Gravgaln, Tvern El, B-G-2-3, maybe Alelliawulian counts, Lrahran, Dabiš. Then there are other languages that only exist in measure enough to include a line of dialogue or a few names in the text of a story. Let’s say eight or so, including the Romance language you referenced.

       Gravgaln is spoken by the Gravgurdan, a race of warriors with some really nasty cultural traits. The grammar is very complicated. The verbs are based on an obscure language from the Solomon Islands. The nouns are inspired by some of the more conservative languages of the Indo-European family and some of the odder members of the Uralic family. You can end up with some really long words, but a two-word sentence in Gravgaln might need 15 words or more to translate it into English.

       Tvern El started out inspired by ASL grammar; I wanted to see how well the grammar of a signed language could be translated to a spoken medium, but pretty soon it acquired influences from Chinese grammar as well as some outright inventions. It is strongly isolating so there are lots of very short words, but the consonant clusters freak people out.

       B-G-2-3 is the color language you mentioned. The Iridians speak by changing the colors and patterns of their skins, much like chameleons or squids, only more sophisticated.  The language looks like some bizarre code when written out, but the letters are colors and the numbers are the patterns in which those colors are manifested.

       The Romance language is called Carrajina and has a whole history and culture attached. It has folk tales, and Scripture passages and recipes and traditions about how to paint your door! I never thought I'd enjoy creating a human language, but once I got started it really took on a life of its own. Someday I may even get around to writing a novel or at least some short stories set in that world. Who knows?

·    So many conlangers write in the abstract – for the sheer love of it, or to investigate the potentialities of language. And some actually write conlangs to be spoken – as auxlangs, or auxiliary languages. What is your view on how a conlang should be utilized? When you began writing conlangs, did you intend to use them in fiction?

       How should a conlang be used? However the creator wants! There is no wrong way to conlang. Some painters use oils, some acrylics, some water colors. Some use badger hair brushes, some a palate knife, some their fingers and some just throw the paint at the canvas. There is no one way to paint, likewise there are many, many ways to go about inventing a language.

       When I first started inventing my first language, I had no thought of using it in fiction, but very quickly my thoughts migrated that direction. I would say most of my conlanging is more or less directed to that goal at present.

·       I believe you’ve written some short fiction that’s been published. Tell us about that.

        Well, actually, the only short fiction I've had published (so far!!) is a science fiction sonnet that appeared in Asimov's. I have written a fair number of short pieces that I should be submitting, but I still find the idea of submitting my work intimidating. However, I am determined to start getting my work out there so, hopefully, I will have more examples soon.

       Though it isn't anything original, only a translation, I do have a translation of the Babel text from Genesis that should be appearing in the next issue of Aequinox.  If you really want to see the Gravgaln language in action, that's the place to look.

 

·     You’re also a conworlder or conculturist – you create worlds. This is also done by many people simply for the joy of it, without any intention of writing stories laid in these worlds. That’s not my practice – I only create worlds if I have a story to tell in that context. What about you?

        Well, I've done both. My alien languages and cultures are meant for storytelling. Carraxa was just an exercise in “what if.”

Coming in a few days:

Part 2 of this interview, in which we learn

all aboutWalker's exterrestrials and read

some sample text from his novel.

Double Topic: Update on Permission Grind; Language in the 30th Century

     "The Termite Queen" has 85 chapters total.  I am seriously considering publishing it in 2 volumes, one three months or so before the other.  Of the 85 chapters, 32 would take up the first volume and 53 the second.  Of the total 85 I have now cleared 65 epigraphs; they are either public domain or I've actually received permission to publish.  That leaves a hard core of 20 (only 4 of which are in the 1st volume), some of which I have requests out on and some of which I'm going to give up on and find a different quotation.  You've no idea how picky these publishers can be!  I'll just give one example.  I've given up on the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer" for the chapter where they launch into space and I've substituted another line from Tagore's "On the Seashore."  The only decent translation of "The Seafarer" that I can find is the Gavin bone version in my medieval literature in translation textbook from college.  It was published in l943, so it's under copyright and it's Oxford UP.  The larger the publisher, the more bureaucratic hoops they make you jump through!  OUP's application form is about a mile long and furthermore it says something like, "Absolutely no permission to publish will be granted unless the book has a publisher."  I assume they mean a traditional professional publisher with a name, an office, etc.  Hoity-toity!  I guess that puts the self-publisher out of the picture!  I'm not going to go through that sort of rigmarole for four lines of poetry!

     Then on some of the ones where I have only one quotation by an author, I'm going to find something else.  It'll take a little work, but there are hundred of years worth of great authors in the public domain.  On the one quotation from the "Aeneid," (where Aeneas follows the Sybil into the underworld, used for the chapter where Kaitrin follows the Shshi Seer into the termite fortress for the first time), I'm going to use the John Dryden translation.  It isn't quite as direct as the modern Rolfe Humphries, but nobody can fault Dryden for being a bad poet.  I'm going to take the two "Odyssey" quotations from the Harvard Classics through Bartleby.  And I have one quotation from the "Iliad" where I still have to ferret out an older translation.  Some of the modern poets I'm also going to replace - Ezra Pound, e.g.  I think his copyright situation is confused and I'm afraid to tackle it.  And the two from Auden - I haven't made up my mind about those yet.  I sure do like the quotes that I picked.

     So you can see I still have a good bit of work to do.

     Now, a word about the English language in the 30th century.  This question was asked of me by somebody who read "Monster."  Why do I spell names so peculiarly?  Was it to suggest that this is a time in the distant future?  Well, that's more or less it.  The thing is, obviously the English language is going to change a lot over the next 800-1000 years.  Think how much it's changed since the 14th century, when Chaucer wrote.  And 300 years before that, it didn't even resemble modern day English.  But I'm not enough of a linguistic scholar to foresee how English might be spoken and written in the 30th century, and even if I could construct something, writing in it would be absurd, because nobody would be able to understand what I was writing.  So I have to write in 20th-21st century English.  (The only book I know - there are probably more - where an author tries to write in a future English is "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban, published 1980.  It's laid in a post-Apocalytical Britain, where mankind is just beginning to reinvent technology, starting unfortunately with gun powder.  I was fascinated with that book!)

     So I thought, how could I suggest that the language has changed?  One way is to alter spelling of place names.  So Washington becomes Washinten and Oklahoma has shrunk to Okloh and Ann Arbor is Anarber and London is Lunden.  Texas is Teyhas.  Africa is Afrik.  Etc.  I do the same with author's names in some cases.  Shakespeare becomes Shaksper (that's not so far-fetched because the name wasn't spelled consistently in his lifetime.  Wikipeda gives a dozen or so spellings, including Shaksper).  As for names of languages, English is now Inj (in the 28th century it was Inge), Greek is Griek, etc.  It's King Ather, not King Arthur.  You get the idea.

     And then I also use folk etymology a lot.  That's a situation where people take a word that makes no sense to them and turn it into something they can understand.  A classic example is the Purgatoire River in Colorado.  It became the Picketwire.  So the extinct Komodo dragon has become the commando dragon.  One of my favorites:  Arizona had become Aridzone.  And the Lagrange points - the places at certain angles between the Earth and the Moon or the Earth and the Sun where objects will stay put and be unaffected by gravity - have become the Longrange points. 

     I believe the meanings will be perfectly clear to the reader, who can't expect everything to be "normal" in a book laid so far in the future.  But in a way I'm glad I'm self-publishing, because I won't have to contend with a copy editor who keeps changing my spellings!

More on the Language of the Shshi

       I've mentioned that the Shshi speak by  transmitting electromagnetic signals between their antennae, which contain nodes that act as receivers and transmitters and are connected to  special centers in their brains that decode the signals.  Therefore, no sound structure is involved in their language.  Kaitrin merely assigns random syllables to certain waveforms on the spectrograph and the pronunciation is no different from her native English.  This enables her to pronounce the language aloud so her transmission device can project the appropriate EM signals.  As Kwi'ga'ga'tei the Seer, who serves as her principal informant, realizes with much wonder, "The Star-Beings keep their antennae in a magic box!"

       If writing were invented by a native speaker of such a non-vocalized language, it couldn't have an alphabet, which by definition images sounds.  It would have to employ pictographs or ideograms or syllabograms or logograms.  Now, I'll tell you a secret -- in a later trilogy which I have not yet mentioned on this blog (entitled "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head"), Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer (the fortress's Bard) invents writing.  At the very beginning of the first volume, he is in his old age and he is dictating the memoirs of his adventures with Ki'shto'ba to a scribe.  He rambles on a bit about how he invented writing.  I'm inserting a section of this as a separate page entitled "Shshi Writing."  It will also give the reader an amusing glimpse of what the Shshi are really like.

Ever Notice How the Whole Universe Speaks English?

     THIS POST IS PART OF THE

OLD-POST RESURRECTION HOP!

It's one of my earliest and I think it deserves more than 7 views!

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years, ever since I first encountered the Universal Translator in the original StarTrek.  This was way back when the series first appeared, before most of the people reading this were even born.  Of course, that was long before the kind of computers we have today, but even now I can't find the concept credible.  The translator microbes in Farscape are a little more acceptable given the really far-out milieu of the series, but even that has certain problems.  There is no way around it -- when we make finally first contact, Earthers and ETs are going to have to buckle down and learn each other's language!  (I fully understand that the convention of universal English speakers is required on a TV series; otherwise we would be watching a whole year's worth of grammatical exchanges --"Today we're going to learn how the Slime Mold people construct the present perfect tense and later we'll get into uses of the subjunctive."  Boy, would that bomb!) 

     So that's part of my purpose in writing The Termite Queen (certainly not the whole purpose or even the chief): to show what might really happen in a first contact.  The situation is complicated here by the fact that the alien language is not vocal.  Termites don't have vocal organs and they're totally deaf.  I could have made the language pheromonal, the way Bernard Werber does in his Les Fourmis, but I wanted a real verbal language that had words corresponding to English words, so I devised the radio wave idea, producing a spectrographic or bioelectric language.  Evolution can produce some pretty strange adaptations.

     Since the Shshi have no concept of sound waves (although they can feel vibrations), there is no way for them to learn human language, so it's incumbent on my linguistic anthropologist to learn theirs.  (Also, since two of their Castes are blind -- only the Alates have eyes -- the concept of writing has never occurred to them.)   The language exists only in transliterated form and so pronunciation is not an issue -- it's just like English, although Kaitrin Oliva, being fluent in Spanish, tends to roll the r's slightly   Several chapters are devoted to the process of learning to communicate with the Shshi. To me, this process is fascinating and I hope it will be so to at least the conlangers out there!  People who aren't interested can simply skim through those parts and focus on the many other aspects of the book.

     Now, three other alien races play a part in The Termite Queen, because the novel is laid in the 30th century, when Earth belongs to a Confederation of Four Planets.  One of the main supporting characters in the novel is from the planet Krisí’i’aid, on which intelligent life evolved from birds.  Prf. Tió’otu A'a'ma, who is a human-sized eagle, is the only off-worlder ever to hold a full Professorship in a terrestrial university.  He speaks excellent English, but his native language is !Ka<tá, a language far more complex than Shshi and one I've worked out in even greater detail, mainly for a different novel (which, alas, may never be publishable).  The eagles have the vocal apparatus of songbirds, so their language has tonal characteristics and utilizes warbles, trills, whistles, chirps, coughs, and clicks.  It is totally unpronounceable by the human throat.  For example, suffixing a warble (transliterated as ♫) makes a plural.  This language is not used extensively in The Termite Queen and I generally don't translate it when I do.  Here are a couple of examples:

Chitú<^ ♫po·atré ♫Wéwana♪] (An insult meaning "A pair of stork-heads!")  

kheda<tri’e hi kukh^maw’ez (To make the gizzard happy; would correspond to "from the bottom of my heart.")

     I'll get into !Ka<tá a lot more at a later time.

     Anyway, my point is, in Termitewriter's universe, English (or Inj, as it is called in the 30th century) is spoken natively only by Earthers!