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Well done, Duckie.

I've a better spellchecked version with the quote tags and the phonetic analysis at the beginning cleaned up, if anyone wants to link me to where I'm supposed to be dropping my... "scholarship"?

Also, note that some languages do survive without verb tense indicated at all- Pidgins, and I'd guess a few tribal hunter gatherer languages- I've no confirmation, and am too lazy to look it up, but if Pirahã can get away with no numbers, and some Papan langauges with no colours but light and dark, I can see a present-only language... for a primitive people who didn't need to talk about time due to their lifestyle*.

[*There are no primitive languages, in the pejorative sense, that racist canard (that Sanskirt, Latin, and Greek were the epitome of complexity and perfection, and that all natives speak simple analytic pidgin-like languages) is laughable once you see anything that comes out of the linguistic hellholes that are the americas. I'm just saying that without a need or ability to talk about the past, it'll never develop- for example, the Romans did not have words for minutes or seconds, because they couldn't measure them. Since discovering that Pirahã exists, I won't out of hand disbelieve in a language lacking any concept]

Duckie wrote:Also, note that some languages do survive without verb tense indicated at all- Pidgins, and I'd guess a few tribal hunter gatherer languages- I've no confirmation, and am too lazy to look it up, but if Pirahã can get away with no numbers, and some Papan langauges with no colours but light and dark, I can see a present-only language... for a primitive people who didn't need to talk about time due to their lifestyle*.

I'm aware that there's pretty "crazy" languages compared to what most of us consider "standard concepts". It's just that the idea that a people who developed all the way to interstellar travel never really saw a need for talking about the past or future seems bizarre.

charlemagne wrote:

Duckie wrote:Also, note that some languages do survive without verb tense indicated at all- Pidgins, and I'd guess a few tribal hunter gatherer languages- I've no confirmation, and am too lazy to look it up, but if Pirahã can get away with no numbers, and some Papan langauges with no colours but light and dark, I can see a present-only language... for a primitive people who didn't need to talk about time due to their lifestyle*.

I'm aware that there's pretty "crazy" languages compared to what most of us consider "standard concepts". It's just that the idea that a people who developed all the way to interstellar travel never really saw a need for talking about the past or future seems bizarre.

Well, I'm not too sure on chinese- I'm no expert, but I have looked it up and I believe tense indication is optional in chinese. However, they have words for past tense (no future, future is rolled into present unless you explicitly specify a time like "2 days from now").

The objectionable part about Traviss's thing isn't that they don't use time if it's clear from context (that's plenty grammatical in a lot of languages) or that they have analytic particles, but her assertation that they didn't need them until they wanted to translate the concept from other languages or speak to other persons. Even Chinese needs past tense and time markers for when it's not clear.

The only time a language hasn't needed a word and made up a new one for a distinct grammatical feature which then becomes obligatory that I know of is gender in japanese, and I'm not too sure the story I'm about to tell is even true. Kanojo (she) in Japanese was invented to better translate western novels where pronoun use would be ambiguous with a gender-neutral pronoun (Kare, which now means he), and is now the universal for women.

Duckie wrote:

charlemagne wrote:

Duckie wrote:Also, note that some languages do survive without verb tense indicated at all- Pidgins, and I'd guess a few tribal hunter gatherer languages- I've no confirmation, and am too lazy to look it up, but if Pirahã can get away with no numbers, and some Papan langauges with no colours but light and dark, I can see a present-only language... for a primitive people who didn't need to talk about time due to their lifestyle*.

I'm aware that there's pretty "crazy" languages compared to what most of us consider "standard concepts". It's just that the idea that a people who developed all the way to interstellar travel never really saw a need for talking about the past or future seems bizarre.

Well, I'm not too sure on chinese- I'm no expert, but I have looked it up and I believe tense indication is optional in chinese. However, they have words for past tense (no future, future is rolled into present unless you explicitly specify a time like "2 days from now").

The objectionable part about Traviss's thing isn't that they don't use time if it's clear from context (that's plenty grammatical in a lot of languages) or that they have analytic particles, but her assertation that they didn't need them until they wanted to translate the concept from other languages or speak to other persons. Even Chinese needs past tense and time markers for when it's not clear.

The only time a language hasn't needed a word and made up a new one for a distinct grammatical feature which then becomes obligatory that I know of is gender in japanese, and I'm not too sure the story I'm about to tell is even true. Kanojo (she) in Japanese was invented to better translate western novels where pronoun use would be ambiguous with a gender-neutral pronoun (Kare, which now means he), and is now the universal for women.

Past and present tenses do not exist in the Chinese language. I find that the Chinese language has always treated tenses as something that is useless, and any person who is reading the sentence or listening to someone speak can immediately understand if the sentence is talking about the past or the present.

It's one reason why I have such a huge trouble with past and present tenses whenever I am typing things out in English.

hmm, are you sure? There's no future or past marker that can be used that is time generic but implies 'before now' or 'after now'? Like, english 'later' for future?

Let's go eat vs Let's go eat later.

I admit that does change things if Chinese doesn't have any tense marking for nonspecific time measurements, so I'd have to retract that point of my criticism.

Duckie wrote:hmm, are you sure? There's no future or past marker that can be used that is time generic but implies 'before now' or 'after now'? Like, english 'later' for future?

Let's go eat vs Let's go eat later.

I admit that does change things if Chinese doesn't have any tense marking for nonspecific time measurements, so I'd have to retract that point of my criticism.

There is marker for time. The word later can be translated into Chinese as "Dai Hui".

However, Chinese language does not have a distinction in regards to sentences like " We ate at the restaurant" and " we are eating at the restaurant".

Both sentences can use phrase " Wo men zai can guan chi". Although you could tell time by taking into account of how the question is being asked.

If the question is, where did you ate, then you already know that you are asking for something that has already occurred. Whereas if the question is where are you eating, then you are asking for something that is happening in the present.

You can choose to include the word 'now' into your sentence, but that is an optional choice.

There is a problem in saying Chinese doesn't have past or future tenses. The structure of the language means grammatically, there can be past and future tenses. Just no worded tenses.

For example, we are going to eat later, the words 去吃 and 在吃 is a form of future tense compared to verb.

There isn't anything as elegant as eat, ate or eating, but the use of additional words would be equivalent to the addition of more syllables here.

Perhaps a split is in order for the language tangent. A place where more people can see it that might make use of the info. Fanfics or OffTopic?

When I made a (not that) big language thing once, it was sent to Testing

Duckie wrote:The objectionable part about Traviss's thing isn't that they don't use time if it's clear from context (that's plenty grammatical in a lot of languages) or that they have analytic particles, but her assertation that they didn't need them until they wanted to translate the concept from other languages or speak to other persons. Even Chinese needs past tense and time markers for when it's not clear.

Is it possible the Mandalorians are actually bumbling morons, who care little for the difference between a present bumble and a bumble gone by, because, like children, they're only interested in what's going on right now? This could tie into my clone madness hypothesis. Unless we'd want to say that the whole language is also the work of the insane imagination of a broken mind (who only knew one language)...

charlemagne wrote:I'm aware that there's pretty "crazy" languages compared to what most of us consider "standard concepts". It's just that the idea that a people who developed all the way to interstellar travel never really saw a need for talking about the past or future seems bizarre.

It's worse than that. Traviss supposes the Mandalorians to be insanely competent military badasses; even if Traviss had never existed we'd have the Mandalorians as reasonably competent fighters.

Now, I ask you, how is any culture supposed to display military competence if it cannot communicate the idea of the passage of time? If it cannot distinguish "We attack after the artillery barrage" from "We attack before the artillery barrage?" If it has no concept corresponding to "synchronize your watches on mine, we move out at 0630?" Wait, what's a watch? What's 0630? I don't understand!

That's a recipe for endless military disasters in any group too large or dispersed for one chief to keep an eye on all the individual warriors and beat them into doing things on time.

Simon_Jester wrote: Now, I ask you, how is any culture supposed to display military competence if it cannot communicate the idea of the passage of time? If it cannot distinguish "We attack after the artillery barrage" from "We attack before the artillery barrage?" If it has no concept corresponding to "synchronize your watches on mine, we move out at 0630?" Wait, what's a watch? What's 0630? I don't understand!

That's a recipe for endless military disasters in any group too large or dispersed for one chief to keep an eye on all the individual warriors and beat them into doing things on time.

The idea is that Mandalorian doesn't use past, future tenses. Reorient the grammar and its perfectly plausible.

You know, I suspect Huttese would hold up better as a conlang. It only has a few phrases obviously derived from English, at least, and ones that make sense as loanwords (Jeedai mind trick!)

PainRack wrote:The idea is that Mandalorian doesn't use past, future tenses. Reorient the grammar and its perfectly plausible.

OK, sorry. You're right. As long as they have time-words in general ("before," "after," "at 0630 military time,") you could probably get away with it.

NecronLord wrote:You know, I suspect Huttese would hold up better as a conlang. It only has a few phrases obviously derived from English, at least, and ones that make sense as loanwords (Jeedai mind trick!)

Why do you think this? Its grammar could be just as englishlike since we know nothing about it, and its phonology clearly is (no special attention was paid to it, so anything Lucas wrote would be English.). Similarly, you are incorrect- it has several quote obviously fakeenglish words in it (Slimo).

I'd bet it would have all the problems of mando'a, albeit without the pretentiousness.

Duckie wrote:Why do you think this?

Mostly because it's "random" sounds with no thought given, in the films. Which is probably rather less accurately english. Though actually, more thought seems to be given to it as it goes on, becoming more english-like. I was thinking more of Greedo's scene - which I'm fairly certain don't have an English phonology; Lucas didn't write that, he just wrote the captions, and left the noises up to the sound department, consequently at times it diverges into clicks (though I suppose that might just be the Rodian accent or something) though the placement of proper nouns like 'Jabba' and 'Han' does imply an English grammar to it. Admittedly, looking at Return of the Jedi, there's a depressingly increased amount of English in it.

Similarly, Jabba sounds substantially less human than he does in RotJ in Episode IV (Ironically, that was 90s ADR, so there doesn't seem to be any actual reason behind it) for my money. Though it does have 'crispa Greedo' in there.

Even though 'poodoo' at least isn't actually 'poo' much to my surprise, but 'fodder.'

Well that was just awesome there Duckie. Had I liquid in my mouth I probably would have done a spit take at the 'like removing u from Japanese' bit. Of course, from the sounds of it one almost wonders if Traviss wouldn't revel in some of the things pointed out because they make the Mandos more 'traditional and down to earth' via their lack of sophistication. Yeah... just yeah...

Anyway, I think it would be awesome if you extended this little essay into something more general about the stupidity of most sci fi and fantasy languages where they badly abuse linguistics via unthinking hackishness. The fact that so many only speak English, or 'a language of merchants, explorers, imperialists and other such pirates' compounds this fact. However, despite the fact that I have absolutely no capacity for linguistics myself, I must say when laid out like you did the topic is fascinating and a sort of 'Tips and tricks, dos and don'ts' essay for speculative fiction writers would be immensely useful.

NecronLord wrote:

Duckie wrote:Why do you think this?

Mostly because it's "random" sounds with no thought given, in the films. Which is probably rather less accurately english. Though actually, more thought seems to be given to it as it goes on, becoming more english-like. I was thinking more of Greedo's scene - which I'm fairly certain don't have an English phonology; Lucas didn't write that, he just wrote the captions, and left the noises up to the sound department, consequently at times it diverges into clicks (though I suppose that might just be the Rodian accent or something) though the placement of proper nouns like 'Jabba' and 'Han' does imply an English grammar to it. Admittedly, looking at Return of the Jedi, there's a depressingly increased amount of English in it.

Similarly, Jabba sounds substantially less human than he does in RotJ in Episode IV (Ironically, that was 90s ADR, so there doesn't seem to be any actual reason behind it) for my money. Though it does have 'crispa Greedo' in there.

Even though 'poodoo' at least isn't actually 'poo' much to my surprise, but 'fodder.'

If I'm not mistaken, Greedo speaks Quechua.

The Huttese in ROTJ was originally in English on stage, then Burtt just transposed some "alien" sounds onto it, syllable for syllable, to match the lip motion.

Only when Burtt wrote the Galactic Phrase Handbook in conjunction with Phantom Menace that they made a concerted effort to streamline the spelling of the words and pronounciation from both Greedo's language and the Huttese in ROTJ.

Wing Commander MAD wrote:Woohoo, maybe now we'll get back to Mandolorians that are cool, but aren't wanky, and more like how they were portrayed pre-Traviss(going off of some pre PT and and Knights of the Old Republic descriptions). I can only hope we get somone to retcon her crazy shit out of existance. Maybe then I can say that I like Boba Fett and find Mandolorians interesting without that awful after taste in my mouth that resulted from me learning of Traviss and her work here.

P.S.: I still think I like the Bounty Hunter Wars portrayal of Boba Fett best.

I have to agree with you on all fronts but I absolutely hated the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy. K.W. Jeter had many good ideas but his writing was a bore. I once had a talk with a Treky friend of mine and supposedly Jeter did some sub-par Star Trek books as well.

Ummmm...yeah. Locking.