Fantasist's Scroll

The Rosetta Project is really rolling now.

I first read about this in a news story in Wired. Their goal is to create a permanent, or near permanent record of dying languages. Their goal is to preserve at least a thousand of the roughly 7,000 languages on the planet. They expect more than 80% of those languages to die out due to globalization and modernization. What Wired talked about was the method they plan to use for preservation. Somewhat suprisingly, they don’t plan to use a computer-based technology. Rather, they’re going with a low-tech, but durable and easy to use, disk etched with examples of the same text in all 1,000 languages, just like the famous Rosetta Stone that allowed us to dechiper ancient Egyptian. (The text, incidentally, is the first book of the Bible, Genesis.)

But, what interests me the most is the on-line language search engine and the Comparative Word List Generator. With this bad-boy a person can generate lists, or tables, of the translations for the 207 most widely used and important words in language. Now, not every language listed has this table compiled, but the major languages all do and quite a few of the less major languages do, too. In any case, it sure is cool to play with when thinking about creating a language. Shoot, they even have grammars and phonologies and orthographies for hundreds, in some cases thousands, of languages. It’s well worth checking out!

What does a soldier need to know how to say in a foreign language?

It’s an interesting question, I think. I actually hit on it by accident. I was looking for an Arabic phrasebook, just because it’s one of the world’s major languages that I don’t have a phrasebook for yet. While I was searching, I came across a book that was an Iraqi Arabic Phrasebook for Military Personnel. That got me thinking… What do those soldiers need to know when they’re talking to the natives? What kind of questions and answers are expected at check-points? How does one tell an enemy soldier that their surrender has been accepted? Do soldiers make small-talk with the natives? What about intelligence gathering? Or, bribes?
Unfortunately, the book was unavailable, so I couldn’t see what the authors thought military personnel should know. In any case, it sure is something to consider when building a language, a world or culture, or a story about international war.

This is a test of the auto-poster! It’s not real fancy, but it works. And, it let me play with PERL some more. See, I use a PERL script to redirect incoming e-mail to the blog and to send the e-mail. I have to do some goofy things to send the e-mail or it will pick up MIME headers which look all wonky in the blog. But, as I mentioned, this works. Cool.

[ Posted by mail via mail2mt.pl ]

Snow blinks on my screen,
red lights on the router say,
“The end is here… Now.”

Now that I finished Zohar, I’ve started All Tomorrow’s Parties, by William Gibson.

This is a sequel, of sorts, to Idoru. Idoru is about just that, a Japanese pop idol (an “idoru”), who is a completely generated character. She simply doesn’t exist, except for being bits and bytes in RAM. The story is about finding this out, and what’s behind it, and a lot more complicated stuff than that. It is, of course, classic Gibson.
All Tomorrow’s Parties is what happens after all that. My wife told me that it is an engrossing and quick read. So far, she’s right. I fear it will all be over before it registers that I’ve started. Gibson is like that. And, it’s the standard which I use to judge all other literature.

We also have his latest, Pattern Recognition, which looks like it’s a fun one, too. I’ll post something when I start that one. Though, it might be awhile. I have a lot of other stuff to read before I get caught up to that!

Well, I’ve just finished Zohar: The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah edited by Gershom Scholem.

It was an intense book and was frightfully challenging at times. Part of the challenge was due to a lack of cultural relevance. The book makes reference to all kinds of Jewish history and culture without any explanations. It felt as though I were missing huge chunks of important references.
But, that being said, what I was able to grasp was enormous. This book really put a new spin on the Old Testament for me. It made me think about allegory and allusion in a whole new light. The layers and layers of mythic and mystic knowledge that it hints at being concealed in the various Scriptures is both tantalizing and invigorating. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it has left me wanting more.

Right now, I’m reading Zohar: The Book of Splendor: Basic Readings from the Kabbalah edited by Gershom Scholem.

It’s a relatively short book, actually, but fairly challenging. It looks at the Kabbalah in brief and tantalizing detail. As a non-Jew, it’s an interesting look at the more hidden meanings behind Jewish scripture. Though, to be honest, I think there are many Jews who don’t know much about the Kabbalah, much the same way many Christians don’t know much about the Book of Revelations.
The allegorical meanings of seemingly simple verses open whole new worlds of thought for me. The explanation of the creation story in mythic terms reveals whole new vistas of meaning and nuance. And, of equal importance, new ideas for fiction have been stirred!
Creation stories are very important to the invented mythology of a created culture, so new ideas, for me, about Creation spur new ideas for fictional worlds. Imagine, for instance, a fire-based religion who believes that the universe was born out of a great, mystical fire who is the Creator. A cosmic “Big Bang”, as it were. It would make a neat explanation and could generate an interesting culture and religion.

In any case, it’s slow going due to the weight of the content, but it’s all worth it.

Well, I’ve finally updatd the Language Generator.

I added several new base language files. Several of them are mashed together from a couple of different sources to get meta-language base files. Things like several East Asian languages together to form a NeoAsian base. And several of the Near, or Middle, Eastern languages mashed together to form a Middle Eastern base. Of course, I also added an Egyptian file, an Albanian file, a very large Japanese file, a Polish file, and a Turkish file as well.
My favorite, though, is a combonation of Latin and Tsolyani. It makes some really interesting output.

Enjoy!