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There are 8 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Re: McGuffey Readers and animals From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2. Re: McGuffey Readers and animals From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3. Ventricular phonation From: william drewery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4. Re: McGuffey Readers and animals From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5. Re: Ventricular phonation From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 6. TECH: Sound Change program From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7. Re: TECH: Sound Change program From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 8. Re: TECH: Sound Change program From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:33:30 -0800 From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and animals On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 10:41:46PM +0100, Carsten Becker wrote: > Hey! > > So I downloaded the first McGuffey Reader and skimmed a bit > through it. What gave me headache is that there are > frequently mentioned everyday animals. Since the Ayeri are > supposed to live on another planet, there are of course no > dogs, cats, duck(ling)s and such per se. But I don't know > enough about Biology and I can't draw well enough to make > up own animals of the respective kinds. Should I simply > make up words for these animals then? Should I mangle their > Latin name or their German or their English name? [...] > I guess I should really make up names for animals and say > that they're quite similar to ours. What did you others do > in this case? [...] I have the same problem in Ebisédian and Tatari Faran. Ebisédian, first of all, is set in a completely different universe, and the only thing in common with the earth there is that the Ebisédi are human. Everything else is radically different. Which means that in translating animal names, I have to *really* improvise. But, different universe or not, the common problem in both Ebisédian and Tatari Faran is culture-clash. Tatari Faran is spoken on Earth, but some aspects of san faran culture are incompatible with how things are depicted in the Reader. For example, they don't have such things as pet dogs that children play with. The closest they have is the packs of guard wolves they keep---but you'd hardly let a child play with one of those wolves. There aren't any domestic dogs in Fara---there may be the odd coyote but you don't let children play with them, just as you would rather children not play in fox holes. And then there's the pet *cats*... in Fara, there are only wild cats and lynxes. Lynxes are significantly more vicious than your typical housecat, and stockier too. Again, not the type of animal you'd have your children cuddle up with. As for ducks... these are *food* for the san faran. When they see a duck in a pond, their reaction is not "oh how cute", but "look! Dinner!" Now, you might think that's rather barbaric, but the san faran would call us modern, supposedly-cultured people, equally barbaric, especially for eating cattle and other farm-raised animals. In Fara, it is considered vulgar to eat a domestically-raised animal. Meat is a delicacy deserved only if you *hunt* the animal. Raising an animal and then killing it for food is as repulsive to the san faran as eating your own children. Now some kinds of birds *are* kept as pets... but confining them in cages is regarded as cruel and inhumane. So you can just imagine the contradiction that arises in that lesson where a girl is playing with her pet bird with a cage in the background---the symbol of cruelty to animals---and the text claims that she loves the bird very much. And I've not gotten to the part about hats and caps yet. In Fara, nobody except clowns and fools wears hats. Respectable men wear turbans, and respectable women wear shawls. :-) The word for 'helmet' itself is derogatory and jocial when used in that sense. The problem with the McGuffey Reader is that it is rather culturally biased. But you really don't have a choice---what else would you write about in a Reader for children, if not culturally-specific things such as dogs and cats for pets? Some culture, somewhere, would have some taboo against just about anything you might write about. If you take away these things there'd be nothing left to write about. Nothing interesting, at least. I much prefer to adapt the idea of the Readers and re-write it as appropriate for the san faran, than to insist on only translating culturally-neutral, whitewashed boring prose. The adaptation approach also has its linguistic merits: the structure of the Readers, from what I can tell so far, is that words are slowly introduced and then repeated often for reinforcement. Well, the problem is that this requires one to choose the simplest, most frequently used set of words to begin with. Such frequent words as "have" or "can" are used in idiomatic ways only possible in English. Even such constructs as "a girl on a horse" and "a frog on a rock" are translated differently in Tatari Faran: to literally translate "on a horse" gives the rather ridiculous idea of somebody standing on the head of a horse, or someone lying limp across a horse (whatever that means). You don't get "on" a horse; you *ride* a horse. Similarly, you don't "have" anything; you *own* things or *carry* things. Also, you don't "run at" things; you *chase* things. Running is running, and chasing is chasing. English conflates the two in a single verb, but you can't do that in Tatari Faran. So the result is that the current Tatari Faran translation of the McGuffey Readers kinda defeats the whole purpose, in that it does not make sense culturally (the idea of children playing with wolves is rather ridiculous), and many different words are introduced all at once to substitute for the same English verb, and the Review sections contain new words because the English version uses existing words in a way that requires a different word in Tatari Faran. In the end, I just decided to leave the current translation as a "literal foreign text" rather than to try to correct these flaws. One of these days I should do a better, more liberal adaptation of the McGuffey Readers into Tatari Faran, one that makes sense culturally and follows the spirit, not the letter, of the Readers. T -- Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:06:32 -0800 From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and animals Carsten wrote: << What gave me headache is that there are frequently mentioned everyday animals. Since the Ayeri are supposed to live on another planet, there are of course no dogs, cats, duck(ling)s and such per se. >> Depends on what your goal is. If your goal is simply to show off sentence structure, that it doesn't really matter what animals are in the pictures. You can call them all "blings" (or whatever the equivalent of a nonce word is in Ayeri). If your goal is to introduce people to the culture or vocabulary, then just don't use the McGuffey Reader. One that you came up with on your own would definitely be more suited to your language, and would probably be much, much better (I don't think much of the McGuffey Reader). What I always did was I use a TY book for a similar language. So, for example, Kamakawi is a language that's supposed to be spoken on an island in a clime not at all unlike that of Hawai'i, so what I've been doing is working through a TY Hawaiian book (not that series--I have several different ones), and doing all the exercises in both Hawaiian and Kamakawi. This way I both learn Hawaiian and flesh out the vocabulary of Kamakawi. Plus, I never have to worry about clashes (well, except for concepts/words/animals that were introduced to Hawaii from the mainland). Of course, if your culture is too different, you won't be able to find a TY book that's similar, but maybe something will be close. On a different issue... Teoh wrote: << As for ducks... these are *food* for the san faran. When they see a duck in a pond, their reaction is not "oh how cute", but "look! Dinner!" Now, you might think that's rather barbaric, but the san faran would call us modern, supposedly-cultured people, equally barbaric, especially for eating cattle and other farm-raised animals. >> <opinion> What, so cows can't be cute in our culture? Or chickens? This is just like my girlfriend's family, who are all vegetarian. They like to make fun of me by saying, "Hey, look, there's a cow. Doesn't it make you hungry?" NO! I don't look at a cow and think "food", even though I eat beef, and I don't think I would think that about an animal I had to hunt, either. </opinion> -David ******************************************************************* "sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze." "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." -Jim Morrison http://dedalvs.free.fr/ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:26:39 -0800 From: william drewery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Ventricular phonation Is ventricular phonation the same as creaky-voice? If not, just what is it? and is it possible to produce a distinct fricative using the ventricular folds? --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! [This message contained attachments] ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:34:57 -0800 From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and animals On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 04:06:32PM -0800, David J. Peterson wrote: [...] > Teoh wrote: > << > As for ducks... these are *food* for the san faran. When they see a > duck in a pond, their reaction is not "oh how cute", but "look! > Dinner!" Now, you might think that's rather barbaric, but the san > faran would call us modern, supposedly-cultured people, equally > barbaric, especially for eating cattle and other farm-raised animals. > >> > > <opinion> > What, so cows can't be cute in our culture? Or chickens? This is > just like my girlfriend's family, who are all vegetarian. They like > to make fun of me by saying, "Hey, look, there's a cow. Doesn't > it make you hungry?" NO! I don't look at a cow and think "food", > even though I eat beef, and I don't think I would think that about > an animal I had to hunt, either. [...] Ah, but the san faran think of hunted meat as a delicacy, you see. Their normal diet is mostly vegetarian, but meat is a treat. So when they see ducks in a pond, a very likely reaction would be "look, ducks! Let's hunt them for a snack!", or "let's catch them and bring them home for the kids' dinner!". Not exactly the same thing as when we beef eaters look at cows, you see. Their reaction is more comparable with, as a random example, when bubble tea lovers see a bubble tea shop, or when coffee lovers see a Tim Horton's (or Starbucks for the 'Merrycans), or when (most) children see a candy store. I think we lack that kind of reaction about cattle because we aren't directly involved in the slaughtering and preparation of the meat, and the meat itself isn't something out of the ordinary so there's nothing to be excited about. It's rather different with the san faran, in that meat is a special treat for them, like candy is to (most) children. The only sense they'd consider ducks 'cute' is in the sense of 'how delicious it would be', in the same way a child's fascination for candy isn't to admire and pet it, but to eat it. T -- "Uhh, I'm still not here." -- KD, while "away" on ICQ. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:34:43 +0100 From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Ventricular phonation --- william drewery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is ventricular phonation the same as creaky-voice? > If not, just what is it? and is it possible to > produce a distinct fricative using the ventricular > folds? Ventricular folds? I'm imagining a language whose speakers are constantly spurting blood everywhere, thanks to the use of their ventricles as a point of articulation :)... ___________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 250MB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 6 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:17:02 -0500 From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: TECH: Sound Change program As an assignment for a programming course I'm taking, I'm building a program to read a sound change list and a corpus, and output the corpus as modified by the sound changes. Once it's written, I'm going to release the source to this list, and maybe other places. What features would you most like to see in your ideal sound change program? Right now, I'm thinking the sound change list will be applied in the order as found in the file, with entries in the familiar format: from > to / environment such as: d > t / _ # In addition I will recognise labels like: 1500: to mark the (idealised) year a set of sound changes takes place. There will be a slider to set the output to any such labelled year. The corpus, sound changes, and output will be UTF-8 files. All other ideas appreciated, for any facet of the design. Thanks, Paul ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 17:50:37 -0800 From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program Paul wrote: << from > to / environment such as: d > t / _ # >> First, it's great to hear you're undertaking this tack. Right on! I actually have something that does exactly this, and the *most* annoying thing about it is that only A > B / C_D is understood. So, a quick example. Let's say a language has the stops p, b, t, d, k, g and q. Now let's say you have a rule that reads as follows: C[-cont] > [+cont] / V_V The program I have doesn't understand: (1) features (2) variables So in order to get this to work, you have to input the following (assuming a five vowel language): p > f / a_a p > f / a_e p > f / a_i p > f / a_o p > f / a_u p > f / e_a ...and on, and on, and on, for *every* stop. The list grows enormous! And lord help you if you want to modify the rule slightly some time in the future. So, if your program could understand user-designed variables (e.g., it understands that "a, e, i, o and u" are V if you say so), and *maybe* features (that might be too hard), or at least have a way to deal with features, that would be a significant improvement. -David ******************************************************************* "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a." "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." -Jim Morrison http://dedalvs.free.fr/ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 8 Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 21:22:22 -0500 From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:50:37 -0500, David J. Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Paul wrote: > << > from > to / environment > > such as: > > d > t / _ # > >> > > First, it's great to hear you're undertaking this tack. Right on! Woo! > I actually have something that does exactly this, and the *most* > annoying thing about it is that only A > B / C_D is understood. [snip example of annoyingness] > So, if your program could understand user-designed variables (e.g., > it understands that "a, e, i, o and u" are V if you say so), and *maybe* > features (that might be too hard), or at least have a way to deal with > features, that would be a significant improvement. Well, the language has pattern matching using fairly traditional [] notation, so I could do p > b / [aeiou]_[aeiou] with very few problems, if any. The problem with named variables, and features for that matter, is that they (may) change from one stage of the language to the next. I'd need another file with (e.g.) 1066: V=aeiou 1300: V=aeiouy Also, I'd need some kind of escape mechanism to distinguish named variables from text, since it's plausible that the user would want to use some horrible language like Klingon (or indeed CXS), where upper and lower case can mix within plain text. I've thought about using $ before variables, to keep in step with several programming and scripting languages, but $ is used in environments for "morpheme boundary", and it would be a shame to have to use $$ there. Features, similarwise. if I used [aeiou] notation for variables, I'd need some other mechanism for marking features, and a file that looks something like 1066: t=[+stop][+alveolar][-voice] Okay, I'm thinking on my feet here... Make the sound-change file reader multi-pass. First pass, gobble up all the [features] and re-mark with some other character, like `feature' or something. Second pass, take all the (variables) and rewrite them in [regex notation]. Hmm... Thinking is occuring... Ack! Another notation I want to write down before I forget it: 1066: C[voice] +=bdgj -=ptkc Paul ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------