Linguistics in my chocolate
May. 30th, 2024 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietIt's been a rollercoaster day and a bit of a mess of a spring. I forgot that I tend to get super depressed after coming back from Japan. And I hit the seasonal work anxiety time, so I have not been doing particularly well.
Today life was significantly improved by the conviction of Trump (GET FUCKED, YOU LITTLE SHIT) but also has not been perfect because of workplace drama in which someone tried to basically fuck me over. This is extremely atypical. As in, 10 years in this business no one has tried to pull shit like this on me. So I'm like... almost amused by the gall. I'm also not sure how I'm going to deal with it but I'm trying not to stew, because if my brain goes pitbull on negativity I'm in for a bad time for like 3 days straight minimum.
So I figured I write about something else (you see I almost failed... lol).
I'm a small linguistics nerd. My only claim to expertise is the handful of undergrad classes I took on the subject so long ago I couldn't tell you what any of them taught me, and my active involvement in it nowadays is reading linguistics blogs, coming up with a couple words for my conlang every year, and getting pressed over fantasy linguistics in media. So take my opinions with a grain of salt, but I do tend to seek out media that has something to do with language, and ended up encountering two such things recently. The reviews have been siting in my "to publish" 4thewords file for too long so here they are.
Arrival
When Arrival came out there was all this talk about it having great linguistics and centering the work of a linguist who was learning to communicate with aliens. I was wary of this cause nothing is more ruinous than high expectations, so I didn't go out of my way to watch it, but was kind of out of things to watch during one dinner so I gave it a shot. Many spoilers are below.
I was definitely right to be wary. Yeah, there's like... linguistics as a thing in it, but for the most part because my brain was primed to see a "linguistics" movie I expected some interesting linguistics and there wasn't really. In fact linguistics had very little to do with anything, except that the premise was this wild idea that if you learned to read a writing system that was not produced linearly you would develop the superpower of seeing into the future. So I would much more describe this movie as a timey wimey movie, but I guess you can't really call it that without giving out some of the twist of the plot. The first half of the movie I was annoyed because 1) the linguistics were unsatisfying and sometimes frustrating in the "that's not how that works" way. And the behavior of many of the characters made very little sense to me. For example, if a country believes the aliens are the enemy why would they immediately cut all communication with every other country instead of unite in their attempt an offensive? Either all of mankind is in danger, and there should be as much communication as possible, or the country thinks it can take advantage of the aliens to get an advantage against other countries, in which case why are they amassing an army to blow the ships up?
But about around the last 5th of the movie, after the twist happened, I was able to realign my approach and think of this as a more conceptual piece about time and decisions we might make when we can see into the future, and when I think about the movie from that angle I thought it was interesting and takes some good advantage of the power of sci fi. It just felt like the weird mechanisms it took to get to the actual theme were contorted, and not actually good linguistics at all. I mean the MC pulls off some cheeky "language is subtle sometimes" moves multiple times and then when she has to translate something from an alien language after having been working on it for barely a month or something, immediately translates it into "give weapon" as if she didn't know that translating a word she later admitted was much more ambiguous than "weapons" would make the entire US government go into some sort of a meltdown. And Sapir-Whorf, no matter how strong an effect it may actually have, is not going to give us the power to see into the future if we just learn to read non-linear writing. For one thing, we perceive things in a non-linear way all the time. Ever took in a painting? And even if the writing system were circular, this doesn't take into account that no attention was paid at all to the spoken language, or whether or not the aliens had a spoken language, or whether the primary form of the language in whatever form it did take was also somehow non-linear and free from the confines of time, because (generally) writing is not language and language is not writing, though the two are closely linked.
The other linguistics related thing I tried out recently was Chants of Sennaar. This is a game I had played during a next fest and saw some potential in, so I ended up buying it when it was on sale. It's a language based puzzle game. Basically you climb a tower solving very simple puzzles that are made slightly more difficult by being written in a number of increasingly more complex writing systems that you need to decipher via context. The language stuff is not bad. I thought it was extremely simplistic with the first language, the second was almost exactly the same, the third shook some things up with the word order, the fifth and sixth became difficult mostly by limiting information, and the sixth is basically given to you.
My biggest gripe about the game is that it has this notebook mechanic, where after you encounter new words, you are given notebook pages where you can just place words in slots next to obvious picture hints. Doing this will confirm that "this glyph means that word" and lock in the English meaning permanently. For one, this undercuts the fun part of the game - trying to understand the language via the context of the puzzles - by practically handing the answer to you. For another, this means that the puzzle design doesn't need to work as hard to make the meaning understandable within that context. When I played the demo I disliked the notebook enough that when I started playing this time I swore to not use it. Up until the fourth language I didn't need to use it at all and all it did was annoy me by constantly opening up every time I encountered a new word. At the fourth level things got a little bit more difficult, because while I had a close approximation of many words, no further information was forthcoming within the game itself to clarify, and with vocabulary you simply need more input to understand, generally. So the notebook in a couple places became something of a necessary cheat if the two places a word appeared did not make it clear exactly what was going on. The game also ties achievements to the notebook and will translate sentences into grammatical English if you've locked all the words in, where things like case are almost completely ignored in the mystery languages and have to be inferred.
My second major gripe is that without the language aspect the puzzles are extremely simple, and sometimes the design of them is a little frustrating. In the instances where I was stuck on a puzzle, every time it was because I either didn't see a room and just ran in circles forever, or tried a mechanic and didn't realize either the answer was just handed to you elsewhere, or in one case a small adjustment hid the answer even though I had effectively tried doing exactly what the game had wanted me to do.
That said, even though those dead moments where I end up traversing large, empty maps kind of suck, the visual and audio vibes of the game is great, and with the notebook being forcibly ignored trying to figure out the languages is kind of fun. Solving the language puzzles, especially without the notebook, were satisfying. I pales to something like the linguistics olympiad, which is just grammar puzzles without the frills, but it made for a decent 4 evenings of entertainment.
I'm always looking for more interesting linguistics related stuff so if anyone has recs I'm very open to them! That includes non-fiction! (I already know about Babel though =x)
And then, because it's Friday somewhere in the world,![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thefridayfive :
1. What are three things you refuse to live without? Taken literally I'm minimalist enough that I like not being to attached to things, but if I had to choose, it would be books, my desktop computer, and my zojirushi rice cooker.
2. What are your three favorite items of clothing? Whatever style of Uniqlo pants I own that I have 5 pairs of. I like my fox print shirt, that was a new thriftstore find. And my ratty gray pullover is starting to become more hole than threadbare but I still wear it three seasons out of four almost daily.
3. What are your three favorite books? Kokoro, then the other two depend on the day. Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is high up there. Count of Montecristo too.
4. What are three things you'd grab if you had to evacuate your house quickly? Small safe, external drive, one of my rarer books.
5. What are your three favorite songs or musical works? Kind of impossible to say. I kind of feel like I don't have many solid favorites for anything. But at this moment the music that immediately comes to mind is Adagio for Strings, Dream Theater: Dance of Eternity, Camo & Krooked - Ruhepuls
Today life was significantly improved by the conviction of Trump (GET FUCKED, YOU LITTLE SHIT) but also has not been perfect because of workplace drama in which someone tried to basically fuck me over. This is extremely atypical. As in, 10 years in this business no one has tried to pull shit like this on me. So I'm like... almost amused by the gall. I'm also not sure how I'm going to deal with it but I'm trying not to stew, because if my brain goes pitbull on negativity I'm in for a bad time for like 3 days straight minimum.
So I figured I write about something else (you see I almost failed... lol).
I'm a small linguistics nerd. My only claim to expertise is the handful of undergrad classes I took on the subject so long ago I couldn't tell you what any of them taught me, and my active involvement in it nowadays is reading linguistics blogs, coming up with a couple words for my conlang every year, and getting pressed over fantasy linguistics in media. So take my opinions with a grain of salt, but I do tend to seek out media that has something to do with language, and ended up encountering two such things recently. The reviews have been siting in my "to publish" 4thewords file for too long so here they are.
Arrival
When Arrival came out there was all this talk about it having great linguistics and centering the work of a linguist who was learning to communicate with aliens. I was wary of this cause nothing is more ruinous than high expectations, so I didn't go out of my way to watch it, but was kind of out of things to watch during one dinner so I gave it a shot. Many spoilers are below.
I was definitely right to be wary. Yeah, there's like... linguistics as a thing in it, but for the most part because my brain was primed to see a "linguistics" movie I expected some interesting linguistics and there wasn't really. In fact linguistics had very little to do with anything, except that the premise was this wild idea that if you learned to read a writing system that was not produced linearly you would develop the superpower of seeing into the future. So I would much more describe this movie as a timey wimey movie, but I guess you can't really call it that without giving out some of the twist of the plot. The first half of the movie I was annoyed because 1) the linguistics were unsatisfying and sometimes frustrating in the "that's not how that works" way. And the behavior of many of the characters made very little sense to me. For example, if a country believes the aliens are the enemy why would they immediately cut all communication with every other country instead of unite in their attempt an offensive? Either all of mankind is in danger, and there should be as much communication as possible, or the country thinks it can take advantage of the aliens to get an advantage against other countries, in which case why are they amassing an army to blow the ships up?
But about around the last 5th of the movie, after the twist happened, I was able to realign my approach and think of this as a more conceptual piece about time and decisions we might make when we can see into the future, and when I think about the movie from that angle I thought it was interesting and takes some good advantage of the power of sci fi. It just felt like the weird mechanisms it took to get to the actual theme were contorted, and not actually good linguistics at all. I mean the MC pulls off some cheeky "language is subtle sometimes" moves multiple times and then when she has to translate something from an alien language after having been working on it for barely a month or something, immediately translates it into "give weapon" as if she didn't know that translating a word she later admitted was much more ambiguous than "weapons" would make the entire US government go into some sort of a meltdown. And Sapir-Whorf, no matter how strong an effect it may actually have, is not going to give us the power to see into the future if we just learn to read non-linear writing. For one thing, we perceive things in a non-linear way all the time. Ever took in a painting? And even if the writing system were circular, this doesn't take into account that no attention was paid at all to the spoken language, or whether or not the aliens had a spoken language, or whether the primary form of the language in whatever form it did take was also somehow non-linear and free from the confines of time, because (generally) writing is not language and language is not writing, though the two are closely linked.
The other linguistics related thing I tried out recently was Chants of Sennaar. This is a game I had played during a next fest and saw some potential in, so I ended up buying it when it was on sale. It's a language based puzzle game. Basically you climb a tower solving very simple puzzles that are made slightly more difficult by being written in a number of increasingly more complex writing systems that you need to decipher via context. The language stuff is not bad. I thought it was extremely simplistic with the first language, the second was almost exactly the same, the third shook some things up with the word order, the fifth and sixth became difficult mostly by limiting information, and the sixth is basically given to you.
My biggest gripe about the game is that it has this notebook mechanic, where after you encounter new words, you are given notebook pages where you can just place words in slots next to obvious picture hints. Doing this will confirm that "this glyph means that word" and lock in the English meaning permanently. For one, this undercuts the fun part of the game - trying to understand the language via the context of the puzzles - by practically handing the answer to you. For another, this means that the puzzle design doesn't need to work as hard to make the meaning understandable within that context. When I played the demo I disliked the notebook enough that when I started playing this time I swore to not use it. Up until the fourth language I didn't need to use it at all and all it did was annoy me by constantly opening up every time I encountered a new word. At the fourth level things got a little bit more difficult, because while I had a close approximation of many words, no further information was forthcoming within the game itself to clarify, and with vocabulary you simply need more input to understand, generally. So the notebook in a couple places became something of a necessary cheat if the two places a word appeared did not make it clear exactly what was going on. The game also ties achievements to the notebook and will translate sentences into grammatical English if you've locked all the words in, where things like case are almost completely ignored in the mystery languages and have to be inferred.
My second major gripe is that without the language aspect the puzzles are extremely simple, and sometimes the design of them is a little frustrating. In the instances where I was stuck on a puzzle, every time it was because I either didn't see a room and just ran in circles forever, or tried a mechanic and didn't realize either the answer was just handed to you elsewhere, or in one case a small adjustment hid the answer even though I had effectively tried doing exactly what the game had wanted me to do.
That said, even though those dead moments where I end up traversing large, empty maps kind of suck, the visual and audio vibes of the game is great, and with the notebook being forcibly ignored trying to figure out the languages is kind of fun. Solving the language puzzles, especially without the notebook, were satisfying. I pales to something like the linguistics olympiad, which is just grammar puzzles without the frills, but it made for a decent 4 evenings of entertainment.
I'm always looking for more interesting linguistics related stuff so if anyone has recs I'm very open to them! That includes non-fiction! (I already know about Babel though =x)
And then, because it's Friday somewhere in the world,
thefridayfive : 1. What are three things you refuse to live without? Taken literally I'm minimalist enough that I like not being to attached to things, but if I had to choose, it would be books, my desktop computer, and my zojirushi rice cooker.
2. What are your three favorite items of clothing? Whatever style of Uniqlo pants I own that I have 5 pairs of. I like my fox print shirt, that was a new thriftstore find. And my ratty gray pullover is starting to become more hole than threadbare but I still wear it three seasons out of four almost daily.
3. What are your three favorite books? Kokoro, then the other two depend on the day. Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is high up there. Count of Montecristo too.
4. What are three things you'd grab if you had to evacuate your house quickly? Small safe, external drive, one of my rarer books.
5. What are your three favorite songs or musical works? Kind of impossible to say. I kind of feel like I don't have many solid favorites for anything. But at this moment the music that immediately comes to mind is Adagio for Strings, Dream Theater: Dance of Eternity, Camo & Krooked - Ruhepuls
no subject
Date: 2024-05-31 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-31 09:23 pm (UTC)Thankfully my job is completely secure. The issue is more one of someone trying to go behind my back on a business deal. But I think things are going to resolve alright.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-01 06:40 am (UTC)I haven't played Sethian but it looks interesting https://gqul.itch.io/sethian
no subject
Date: 2024-06-02 06:13 pm (UTC)Heaven's Vault is on my to-play list! In fact, when I first checked out Chants of Sennaar my first reaction was that they had played Heaven's Vault and lifted a lot of the language part of the design.
Sethian looks very intriguing. Especially since they specifically say they avoided the more simplistic one-to-one word replacement, which Chants almost was.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-03 02:09 am (UTC)Linguistics stuff is funnn. I wish I had more suggestions because I do love reading and watching stuff about linguistics, but for a non-fiction rec: Man Made Language by Dale Spender. I read the version from 1980, which was very good, but I think there's an up to date version on her website? It's about patriarchy and the history of English linguistics and stuff. Very good.
I don't know if you've read any of C.J. Cherryh's work, but her Foreigner series is a reverse first contact science fiction series focused on cross-cultural linguistics (and politics): the protagonist is a sort of ambassador/interpreter (or as he starts out, a dictionary writer for humans of the alien language). It's not a perfect series, but it's a lot of fun in many ways. Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison's "Doctrine of Labyrinths" and "The Chronicles of Osreth" also focuses a lot on fantasy language, and DoL does a bit with cross-cultural language interpretation.
"Cyclopedia Exotica" is a fantasy encyclopedia about a world with cyclopes and although it's more... I guess fantasy anthropology based, there's a lot of focus on labels and self-presentation, and it sort of has a linguistics vibe in vague terms?
There's also a radio play from "Doctor Who" featuring the Sixth Doctor called "...ish". It's a very fascinating production in that it really only functions as a radio play, because there's really no way to visually show what's going on and it's all about comprehension of language and sounds in particular.
I think we already talked about this before but if you haven't read the Simon Snow series, that one's also got some neat linguistics stuff in it.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-19 02:21 am (UTC)I've read a little bit of Cherryh and enjoyed it so I'll look her up too!
I didn't occur to me to look at the Simon Snow series in terms of linguistics, but it definitely qualifies!