So Boskone was fun; it was good to see new and familiar faces. I’m still not entirely comfortable with the interface, but I figure that’ll come, as I get out and about more.
Speaking of getting out and about, Steve and I will be participating in MarsCon (the one based in Minneapolis), which is being held online March 12-14. Here’s your link. Hope to see you there!
Work is going forth on Change State: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number Thirty-Two, which will include original novella “Dead Men Dream,” and reprint “Command Decision.”
In other news, I am in receipt of an electric letter from a reader, stating a need for a Liaden dictionary and language books, in order to “show” Klingon speakers. I can’t actually tell if this is in earnest, so I’ll do my correspondent the honor of assuming that it is.
As I understand the matter, Klingon is actually a language. One can translate one (or several) of Shakespeare’s plays into Klingon, and read it, in Klingon. Like, say, you might translate one of Shakespeare’s plays into Spanish, or German.
I would be personally surprised is there are 50 words in the Liaden “language.” Well, here, count them yourself. Certainly, it has no grammar, or use-rules. That so many people — for my recent correspondent is not the first to suggest, nay, insist on this point — are convinced that Steve and I have developed an entire language which is the equal of Klingon is a tribute to our world-building, and the strength of the characters’ convictions, but really, truly, honestly: There is no Liaden language, except in our shared imagination.
It snowed here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory today, which Trooper and Sprite celebrated thusly:
Nor is there any need to “show” Klingon speakers, and I say this as both a long time Liaden universe fan and the founder of the Klingon Language Institute.
Linguistically, the key innovation of High Liaden is the idea of “mode” — linguistic features that indicate the relative status of speaker and hearer. That both builds on real languages (e.g. Japanese) and establishes Liad as a “mannered society” in the formal sense.
But, as you note — there is no actual Liaden language. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a language in which “I Dare” would be rendered as “Flaran cha’menthi” in any mode. Not that it wouldn’t be fun to try to invent one…
On the other hand, there’s a scene in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” where one of the characters, in answer to a question now forgotten, goes on for SOME PARAGRAPHS in Chinese, which the subtitles rendered as “No.”