Snowflake Challenge 11: Favorite Trope

[ysabetwordsmith]

Challenge #11

In your own space, Talk about your favorite trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.




Gosh, I can't pick just one, so here are a few examples.

Alien Sex/Genders
I've been working with this for decades. I like exploring different ways that sex and gender can develop. There are so many options even here. In fanfic, I tend to think of Loki as sex/gender fluid. In original work, see Feathered Nests. For a reference, you can't beat Animal Lives from Humon Comics.

Fish Out of Water
There are whole subgenres that always fall into this category -- every time travel story, every worldhopping story, etc. It can also be done by shifting the character into a different social class, gender, or other environment. This offers two great opportunities: it pushes the protagonist to deal with unfamiliar situations, and it looks at parts of society or environment that are usually normalized to the point of invisibility. Sometimes you really need an outsider to say, "What the actual fuck?" about all the stupid things going on. And every society has some stupid bits, although the proportion does vary. Some just need a little tweaking, some need an M-80 dropped down the pipe. From fanfic, Steve Rogers is "the man out of time." From original work, see The Bear Tunnels.

Interspecies Adoption
This happens in science fiction or fantasy when an orphan is discovered and raised by some other species. A classic example is Mowgli in The Jungle Book, raised by wolves. From fandom, Loki fits here again too; but so do Tony's bots. In original work, see Starfather on my Serial Poetry page. And yes, this is a real thing even on Earth.

Xenolinguistics
This is the study and/or creation of alien and/or invented languages. I love languages in general, so of course this fascinates me. Me, I liked Frodo before liking Frodo was "cool" and I have a couple of the really old Tolkien language references. I built much of the three-part language set for Torn World, but sadly that site isn't active anymore; there might be some still in my Torn World tag. Suzette Haden Elgin used to say that writers would put their characters through any grueling experience, except learning a foreign language. But that's one of my favorites.  Here are some conlang resources.

Comments

[galadhir]

I love most of those as well :) Fish out of Water is a great way to look at everything with fresh eyes, to introduce a character who is seeing it for the first time, but I think so are the others in slightly different ways.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Exactly. I go for tropes that refract the view so you can see things that would otherwise be missed.

[readera]

Fish out of water is one of my favorite tropes too!

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It always offers so many possibilities!

[warriorsavant]

"Suzette Haden Elgin used to say that writers would put their characters through any grueling experience, except learning a foreign language."

Sounds like a very American comment.

I love when writers make stories with different cultures and languages in the same world, especially when "knowing" another language doesn't make you totally fluent in it.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Sounds like a very American comment.<<

True. America likes to pretend it teaches foreign languages while actually sabotaging them, which is both hypocritical and sadistic.

>>I love when writers make stories with different cultures and languages in the same world,<<

I generally do that.

>> especially when "knowing" another language doesn't make you totally fluent in it.<<

That depends on where and how you learn it. People can have several native languages if they grow up in a multicultural environment. As long as they start before puberty and have plenty of exposure, most humans can acquire a new language at or near native level. The window only starts closing around school age, and speeds up at puberty. So learning a language in high school is unnecessarily difficult, whereas learning it in preschool is easy and doesn't even require lessons, only exposure. At least for ordinary humans; a few have a window that never fully closes.

Another of Suzette's interesting tidbits was a way of learning how to read -- though not speak -- a foreign language in a month. Take an article or short story, something really worth reading, and use a dictionary to look up every word you don't know. She said it would take about a month of daily practice to get where you could read fluently. That sounds about right to me, although I'm not sure how well it'd work for an average person.

There's a thumbnail example of how I pattern languages across a world in the population notes for "Build with the Mind" about a worldbuilding class.

Re: Thoughts

[warriorsavant]

The stories w/ ppl speaking diff languages, I was definitely referring to ppl who had had to learn them, and were NOT native-fluency-level speakers.

Have been reading more in French, and looking up words. Although definitely improving, certainly not just a month’s worth of effort.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> The stories w/ ppl speaking diff languages, I was definitely referring to ppl who had had to learn them, and were NOT native-fluency-level speakers. <<

Either getting by with partial knowledge, or actually trying to learn a new language from scratch, make interesting stories. Though admittedly it is very hard to write the latter when you can't rely on two-way conversations to carry information. A character with no knowledge of the local language is not only in deep shit personally but is also hard on the writer. It sure does get you into uncommon territory though, without much competition.

I've got a bunch of Syrian immigrant characters in my Rutledge thread. Most of them speak Arabic plus either French or English, and a perk of moving to Vermont is the number of French speakers there. A few speak some other language(s) -- there's a Kurdish woman too. So it's very different to write someone who is fully fluent vs. partly fluent vs. doesn't even speak Arabic and requires a translation chain. I have one fun scene of a job interview that started with pantomime and spans multiple languages.

>> Have been reading more in French, and looking up words. Although definitely improving, certainly not just a month’s worth of effort.<<

Good practice makes good progress. I appreciate the feedback. I suspected that a month was apt for a language maven but likely not for everyone.

Re: Thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

>>Though admittedly it is very hard to write the latter when you can't rely on two-way conversations to carry information.<<

I have seen...four good examples of this. One was Enemy Mine, the two were written fanfics, one was a comic.

Enemy Mine and one of the fanfics actually had language lessons, and the characters could eventually hold full conversations.

The other fanfic skipped the lessons but only had spoken dialogue when the viewpoint character understood it - so the conversation with the household he was would be missing words or phrases until he was fluent, but he had perfectly intelligible conversation with some passing merchants.

The comic used little flags in the speech bubbles to denote who was speaking what when it was relevant.

And I'm playing with an idea using Bilingual Bonus/Translation Convention somewhere, namely that:
- understandable-to-the-viewpoint character is in English,
- foreign stuff in comprehensible chunks (like language lessons) is in a separate Real Life language, and
- lots of talk in an incomprehensible language will mention that someone is talking and then focus on other noticeable feedback (like their emotions, if they are asking a question, how their body language is in relation to their conversation partner, etc).
(This is based on a combination of real-world experience in multilingual spaces, and the fact that I get tired of stories where the adventurers can always understand everyone.)

There's also a trick where you can - sometimes, but not too often or it gets boring - tell a story from more than one viewpoint, Rashomon-style.

>>So it's very different to write someone who is fully fluent vs. partly fluent vs. doesn't even speak Arabic and requires a translation chain. I have one fun scene of a job interview that started with pantomime and spans multiple languages.<<

The various linguistic shenanigans in that storyline are fairly realistic, in my opinion (...based on my volunteering in a similar environment, but with fewer resources).

Re: Thoughts

[see_also_friend]

The auto-signout foils me again! >:[

Re: Thoughts

[warriorsavant]

I suppose partly depends on innate language ability, and partly how many hours/day you can devote to that practice. I also recall that the more languages you already know, the easier it becomes to learn another one.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Those are all factors. Others include motivation, quality of materials, and whether the new language is related to any language you already know.

Less obvious, is it a language for which a dictionary actually works well? Some like Arabic are notorious for making even native speakers grumble, "Why does this book even exist?" because it is so hard to look up words.

[shipperslist]

I absolutely agree with you on the bots being Tony's adopted children.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

They're not adopted. Tony made them. He is their father. He just used his hands and his brain instead of his dick.

Now, JARVIS has two fathers: Tony Stark and Edwin Jarvis. Tony made JARVIS, but used Edwin as a model. Hence the personality, and likely also part of why JARVIS is more complex than the others.

[see_also_friend]

>>Alien Sex/Genders<<

I'm kind of tired of stories that posit a hermaphroditic species with a gender binary. Seriously, they'd have an entirely different concept of gender than humans.

Even if there was a scenario where they used a gender-binary analogue or borrowed the human concept to interact with us, it would probably be applied in some totally random way - like everyone below a certain height is female, or split by age, or split by social status. "No, I got promoted, now I'm using the other pronoun set!"

...Semi-relevant, there are all these animal stories that deploy a human-Western-civilization approach to life and family. Seriously, according to nature The Lion King should have ended with Nala inheriting and Simba moving to a different pride, the deer in Bambi would have had one-night stands instead of the 'romantic but living separately' plotline, and all the ants in Antz would have been female (and sisters).

Hmmm, a movie about a social insect colony where they are all framed as nuns in a monastic life (including a warrior-nun soldier caste) would be fascinating.

>>Fish Out of Water<<

There should be more "otherworld journey" stories where the protagonist has to spend a bunch of time learning basic social skills. Instead it always seems to be "Modern life, but with candles! and magic!"

>>Xenolinguistics<<

One thing I've noticed is that most conlang guides seem to assume you are making a spoken language. Sign languages have existed for decades, and I found exactly one source that glossed over "you can conlang a sign language" but didn't mention how.

I have never found a good how-to guide for a tactile language, or one that is not speakable by humans. I know they exist - Blissymbols is written-only, and Rikchik is a sign language unpronounceable with a humanoid body - but I haven't seen a good guide to create one.

My best guess is:

1) figure out component parts of the language, i.e. instead of "what sounds does English use?" try "what components does Nonhumanoid use?" (...while keeping in mind that this may involve more than one modality or body parts/senses humanoids lack)

2) Combine components, making sure they are properly perceptible. This is how you will get rules like "have a pause between PULSING-LIGHT-WORDS and FINELY-DETAILED HAND SIGNALS, because otherwise the recipiant cant 'hear' the gestures."

3) start adding fancier features, like grammer.

Also keep in mind:

a) you need to check that all aspects of a language are perceptible to whoever is using it. You can have different 'dialects' that dip into different modalities or methods of communication, but there needs to be a way to communicate for anyone using it.
Note1: see adaptive communication and sign languages used with populations that have a high occurrence of deafblindness.
Note2: A bilingual dialogue may work...but all participants need to be able to perceive their partner's speech somehow.

b) Check similar existing languages for tricks, tips and etiquette. Sign and tactile languages have surprising features that are practically impossible to imagine from scratch, if someone has never used them before. The same would be true of an electroshock-modality, or a colr-morph one, etc.

[cornerofmadness]

Thanks for sharing! Xenolinguistics is fun and I wish I had a better head for it. It would make writing some of my original fiction so much easier.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

If it's the language generation aspect that you find challenging, there is now software -- some of it free on websites -- to do a lot of things that used to need working out by hand. Alternatively, you could team up with someone who likes building languages but doesn't necessarily write about them. This option would also help if you have challenges with working linguistic aspects into a plot.

Re: Thoughts

[cornerofmadness]

Thanks. I did not know that. I think it's my mild dyslexia that plays up when I try working on languages. Both of these options would be a huge help

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Thanks. I did not know that. <<

Some resources on language construction:

https://conlang.org/resources/

http://www.zompist.com/resources/

https://deconstructedconstruction.tumblr.com/conlangresources

A good guide is The Language Construction Kit.

Here is a good vocabulary generator. You need basic understanding of how words are assembled from letters or blends, and some grasp of how letters can be used to encode sets. But it will save you a fuckton of work.

The phonology builder helps construct a set of sounds for your language. It looks like it's using IPA. There is a way to cheat on phonology that I recommend for beginners or anyone who doesn't need to build a conlang from scratch for for aliens. Take the phoneme set from your native language, like English. Drop at least one phoneme and add at least one. There's your set, and it will be easy to grasp for most of your readers, yet clearly different. A lot of related languages use the same or very similar phoneme sets, and some phonemes are ubiquitous (like "m") while others are rare (like the click consonants in Xhosa).

The sound change applier is tremendously helpful if you are doing one of: aging a language through time, making dialects within a single language, or creating a set of related languages. I used this to make the Ancient, Northern, and Southern versions of Torn Tongue (which are actually both, as the latter two are descendants of the first but have different ages). If you are not doing either of those, probably you don't need this tool.

>> I think it's my mild dyslexia that plays up when I try working on languages. <<

Dyslexia sucks. My linguistic coprocessor almost completely eclipses mine in languages, so that I rarely see something like "teh" for "the." But it can't fix numbers scrambling because they are arbitrary, so I'm fucked on math.

However! Constructed languages offer exciting opportunities for you to make it not only easier for yourself, but also your dyslexic readers. Look at the English alphabet and you will see that it contains multiple pairs distinguished only by direction like b/d (horizontal) and d/q (vertical). This is a nightmare for dyslexics. Languages with no consistency of shapes are rarer, but also a nuisance because then they're harder to learn and read. What makes it easy is when you have consistent base shapes (which will be influenced by your script medium, hence why runes are angular because they were carved in wood) that are grouped in sets based on function (e.g. closed shapes for consonants but open shapes for vowels) with distinctive features to minimize confusion.

To design a dyslexic-friendly conlang writing system, study the dyslexic alphabets created for English. This is a small branch of typography, which has a lot of other information that can be very helpful in understanding and compensating for dyslexia.

https://exceptionalindividuals.com/about-us/blog/our-top-10-dyslexia-friendly-fonts/

For instance, Open-Dyslexic has bottom-weighted letters that seem to make them less inclined to "move around."

Dyslexie has heavier bottoms, unique shapes, and longer stems.

Dyslexic Logic is a semi-serif font, so it's mostly sans serif but uses a few serifs to distinguish between similar letters. This is the type of dyslexic font that I like best.

Gill Dyslexic and Mono Dyslexic are more bottom-weighted fonts. Mono looks like it's using mono instead of proportional spacing.

Lexia Readable uses a slightly different approach. Some letters are distinguished by tiny gaps, others by whether a stem is straight or slightly bent. These are good tricks for conlangs.

People argue endlessly over whether such fonts help or not, which is ridiculous. Just show a bunch of fonts to a dyslexic person and ask if any of them are easier to read. For some folks the answer is an overwhelming "Yes!" For others it doesn't seem to make much if any difference.

So to handle the issue of dyslexia and conlangs, first you need to understand how your particular dyslexia causes your reading to glitch, and then understand what your options are in terms of building a conlang and its writing system. How your dyslexia works will tell you which things are difficult and should be avoided vs. which things make it easier for you to get by. Nobody else can tell you that, although reading about common theories of how dyslexia works and the problems it causes may help you think of what to look for.

Writing systems can make dyslexia a miserable handicap (if they have a lot of symmetrical letters) or negligible (no letters, no need to spell anything). The broad groups are alphabets, syllabaries, and logographies. Alphabets rely most on spelling, syllabaries less, and logographies not at all because it's one symbol per word. The drawback of logographies is that you need a bazillion symbols that everyone has to memorize -- but for a dyslexic, that is often easier than trying to puzzle out letters that move in relation to each other. So for instance, some people who are all but illiterate in English may find that Chinese is much easier to read.

Also, I think it would be awesome to have a dyslexic-friendly conlang and associated society with its stories, created by a dyslexic person. That seems ready-made for swag like buttons, coffee cups, or T-shirts. If you decide to go this route, let me know so I can boost the signal. My audience would probably love it too.


Regarding the possibility of collaboration: Some folks both create conlangs and write in or about them, like me. But others just like to make them, and either don't intend to write about them or never quite get around to it. This can make them feel guilty, even though it's totally fine to make a model language as a hobby unto itself, like building a ship in a bottle. Anyhow, some of the "make but don't write" folks like to watch for collaboration opportunities, as in a worldbuilding or shared world team project. If you look for places where conlang fans are congretating, you can then throw out ideas and possibly find someone who would enjoy teaming up with you.

>> Both of these options would be a huge help <<

Yay! I'm happy I could give you new ideas to explore.

Re: Thoughts

[cornerofmadness]

Thanks so very much for all of this. I appreciate it. (yeah bdqp are nightmares) Don't get me started on math. I can handle written language but math is much harder ...and I have a minor in it. It was a struggle.

I need to go make a file folder for all these resources. Thanks muchly.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Thanks so very much for all of this. I appreciate it. <<

*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service.

>> (yeah bdqp are nightmares) <<

Could be worse, could be Tengwar. It's beautiful, it's logical, but the letters are so similar that it's a fucking nightmare to read. >_<

>>Don't get me started on math. I can handle written language but math is much harder ...and I have a minor in it. It was a struggle.<<

Impressive. The most I managed was teaching one math class, but that was the geometry of stone circles. I suck slightly less at geometry.

>>I need to go make a file folder for all these resources. Thanks muchly.<<

:D

Re: Thoughts

[(Anonymous)]

I am not dyslexic, and Tengwar letters still look hard to distinguish. (Note: I cannot read Tengwar.)

Re: Thoughts

[see_also_friend]

Why does this thing keep randomly signing me out? :/

Re: Thoughts

[see_also_friend]

Not sure how helpful this idea will be but... technically it should be possible to invent a language without a writing system, though it would help to have some way of recording it, like a tape recorder. And I am not sure how feasible it would be - the languages I can think of all had at least two people, before expanding, sometimes quite rapidly.

Also, is your conlang going to be spoken, signed, touch-based, something else, or some combination of the above? Most verbal languages have a writing system, but other kinds aare recorded in different ways:

- Blissymbols has pictures and no words: https://www.omniglot.com/writing/blissymbolics.htm

- Sign languages are often recorded with photos, videos, or drawings. While there are writing systems, they haven't really caught on (but are cool to look at).

HOUSE as pictures / a video: https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101//pages-signs/h/house.htm

HOUSE in written sign languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si5s#/media/File:Brief_Comparison_of_ASL_Writing_Systems.jpg
Note: I think signwriting looks easiest to understand, but Si5s might be easiest to understand and write by hand

- Rikchick is a conlang sign language for a non-humanoid alien species: https://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/rikchik.htm

- Protactile sign language doesn't actually have a way to 'write' it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iGNSfwq5A4

- Solresol can be 'written' as musical notes or colors.

Re: Thoughts

[see_also_friend]

Oops, forgot the Solresol link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solresol

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Not sure how helpful this idea will be but... technically it should be possible to invent a language without a writing system, though it would help to have some way of recording it, like a tape recorder. And I am not sure how feasible it would be - the languages I can think of all had at least two people, before expanding, sometimes quite rapidly.<<

Most conlangs do not have their own writing system, but are simply written in whatever their creator commonly uses. It's a kludge, but it's easier than making up a new writing system.

Less often, there are conlangs that actually aren't written down -- they exist only in the creator's thoughts and speech. These are usually small tidbits made up by storytellers. Anything longer usually needs to be written down in order for modern folks to remember it. Other methods of recording are possible but I haven't seen folks using those much for conlangs.

>> - Sign languages are often recorded with photos, videos, or drawings. While there are writing systems, they haven't really caught on (but are cool to look at).<<

The old Hand Talk dictionary for Plains Indian Sign is pretty good, and still used. It's done in line drawings of people, rather than symbols, though.

>> Rikchick is a conlang sign language for a non-humanoid alien species <<

That is sooo cool! :D

I have seen a number of extremely alien languages described, but it's rare for someone to try and work out the actual details of it.

Re: Thoughts

[see_also_friend]

>>Most conlangs do not have their own writing system, but are simply written in whatever their creator commonly uses. It's a kludge, but it's easier than making up a new writing system.<<

The inspiration for this comment comes from some of my language-learning attempts; namely that most of the reputable sources tell you to Learn The Alphabet. Which...doesn't actually help much if I need to learn how to say thank-you and hello in something with a difficult alphabet.

So I cheat. I get a native speaker to say the word, repeat it until they smile and nod at me, and write down the phonetics for that in my notebook.

And I've done the same thing in reverse - asked someone to listen to me and write it down phonetically in their alphabet next to the English-in-Latin-script writing.

That is a much quicker way to teach someone how to say stuff like "where bathroom?" "turn left," "I-allergy milk," "I talk little Na'vi," and so on. Then the person can communicate, and you can expand on writing as needed.

>>Other methods of recording are possible but I haven't seen folks using those much for conlangs.<<

Memory would be one, like the Norse sagas or Greek epics. And rhyming or song. There is also MovemntWriting and Dancewriting.

Most of the other ones I can think of are more abstract mnemonic devices than actual writing - I know I've used doodles and pictograms (not for conlangs though).

>>It's done in line drawings of people, rather than symbols, though.<<

I have some ASL books that do this. And I traced some of the pictures onto cards to help me learn. (I should get back to practicing that...)

>>That is sooo cool! :D <<

^.^

>>I have seen a number of extremely alien languages described, but it's rare for someone to try and work out the actual details of it.<<

I would like to see more information on how to do it. I think the closest I've managed (for nonhuman-person body language, not an actual conlang) is to infodump a lot of communication data from similar animal species into my brian, and then sort out what makes sense where by bodyplan / culture / gender / status / emotional state / etc.

I've dabbled in trying to figure out other possible nonhumanoid conlangs, but no luck so far.

[acelightning73]

Conlangs (constructed languages) have been part of fiction since Tolkien invented Elvish (which was why he wrote LOTR, to show of his linguistic skills). And Star Trek has Klingon.

[lilfluff]

I'm not sure if Aliens and Linguists was quoting Elgin or just making a similar observation but I recall that book having a similar comment along with a list of ways science fiction and fantasy authors would avoid having characters have to deal with language.

And back in 2013 I wrote a flash fic titled Precedent that involved interspecies adoption that opens with an alien telling a pair of police officers, "If I may cite Peabody vs New York, 1959, this matter has already been decided." As well as a follow up Precedent Part Two that opened with, "Century old cartoons it turned out don't form precedent in the courtroom." Definitely a trope I like as well.