h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks,I'll check it out. (Sorry, I didn't see your post until now.)I love to hear people in TV episodes and movies speak Klingon,though I can't pronounce it myself.

Hmmm... the entry briefly lists some different types of language, but far more time is spent on languages for entertainment than on anything else. And from the discussion in the thread, I get the impression that this is the category you're most interested in. Personally, I think that focusing the entry just on that topic would make for a more enjoyable entry.

I'm also not sure why you listed "deaf manual alphabets" but not actual sign languages, of which there are many.

What do other people think?

The entry was originally a Power Point presentation for acourse I was doing in 'Learning Technologies in Education' I looked up 'sign language'on the web, and it referred to me many sites.From one,I got many examples of what the site (UK deaf association) referred to as deaf manual alphabets. I used these in the Powerpoint, but I lack the html or Guide ML skills to put them into the entry.
Focusing on languages for entertainment,is a very good idea - thanks!

Well, from a linguistic point of view, manual alphabets aren't actual languages -- they're really more of a substitution code than anything else. Sign language, on the other hand, is actually a language, with it's own syntax and all. Well, several languages, actually, as different countries have different sign languages -- American Sign Language is pretty different from what's used in the British deaf community, it's actually more similar to French Sign Language.

There's also NZ Sign Language... When I was doing my diploma in disabilities, I tried to learn sign - I am ambidextrous (Yes!) and I am possibly because of that, not very good. Finger spelling and manual alphabets are a lot easier!I H C where I used to work, use Makaton...

Hello Della. Do you still have any plans for this entry?

Not soon, I fear... I am doing a course in linguistics, and have to study Elvish in a heap big hurry right now!

Could I suggest then, that you remove the entry from Peer Review for the time being? And then when you have time to work on it again, you can resubmit it?

Certainly! How best to do that? (CVould you, or someone? I have massive access problems and I don't know from minute to minute how long I am on here for... No, really! It's chronic!

If you click on this link it would do the trick:

<./>SubmitReviewForum?action=removethread&rfid=1&h2g2id=857964</.>

That would be the easiest and fastest way. If you're not online long enough for that, I will plead with one of the Italics to remove it for you.


Mikey

I tried the link... it said it worked. Thanks!

Mikey

Hey,Mikey, and everyone who's interested, I was just having a play with this... Years after I said I would. Any comments?

A couple of points.

I don't see the relevence of the name "marc ostrander" after klingon.

according to this site: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/klingon.htm
it was invented by Dr Marc Okrand, a professional linguist. this fits with my memories about it, as does most of the rest of the stuff on that page.

Also, Ido is not "reformed esperanto", but is instead a "modified esperanto". There was a split in the esperanto community back around 1906/1907, between a bunch of linguists who wanted to inprove the language, and a bunch of idealists who wanted to make sure it didn't suffer the same fate as eventually suffered by volapuk.

While the linguists who came up with ido were technically correct that the esperanto language could do with various reforms to improve the language, ido has had the specific problem that the idealists tried to avoid. it is in a fairly constant state of flux, which makes things like dictionaries and grammers very hard to keep up to date, and means that you have to actively keep up to date with the language, or it gets increasingly difficult to understand others.

Esperanto, on the other hand has had a relatively stable dictionary and grammer for many years. This means that dictionaries, grammars and other creative works are actually available for esperanto.

This in turn lead to a rise in the popularity of the language.

The reference to computer languages is largely a red herring, as it is nearly impossible to discuss anything but programming in a computer language due to the incredibly restricted vocabularies involved.

in fact it is worse than this, because most computer languages only cover how something is to be done, and not the higher level of abstraction as to what it is that the how is trying to accomplish.

Artificial languages, either for entertainment or global communication are defined, usually with the intent that they they will be spoken, and are not in possession of too many words and phrases with ambiguous meaning, to make communication and tranfer of ideas less troublesome.

This is of course a disadvantage as well as an advantage, because a lot of creative work in natural languages relies on the ambiguity of meaning of the words and phrases for effect.

However the defined and restricted vocabularies can be a great benefit with artificial languages, because you tend to find dictionaries are written in the core vocabularies of between 800 and 2000 words, making it very easy to go from being able to speak the core vocabularies to having much broader vocabularies.

Also, because they tend to have regular sound to letter mappings, they are very easy to look up what the meaning is for a word you don't know.

this phenomena of having a restricted definition vocabulary is best seen in the longman dictionary of contemporary english, which is specifically designed for students learning the language.

it also results in fewer instances of circular definitions which have a chain of equivalences, but no actual explanation of what the word actually means.

I hope all this helps.

Yes, xyroth, it helps indeed! Thank you for the info, I can't believe I was so silly about Marc Okrand's name...

no problem.

I am also a little sceptical about the 6,000 natural languages figure, as there is a lot of debate about what is a language, and what is a dialect.

I suspect your source is bundling a lot of dialects in with the languages.

I did tackle that very question within the entry, as you'll see...

much better

Thank you, xyroth!