On the Road again

Getting ready to take off for California this afternoon - I head for San Francisco, ETA Monday AM, then a week in Sonoma, helping some amazing teenagers discover their inherent greatness.

After hopefully seeing some friends & family in the bay area on Monday, will then wend my way down to San Diego the next day for a Thursday visit to SDCC 2009. If you have questions or want to reach me, you can send short text messages (140 chars) to 8016523423@vtext.com. If anyone (above and beyond the ones I already know about) who is anywhere close to my route is itching to get together for some haggis or Mogg knows what else, ping me.

Humor!

Just added some more humor to my website: http://tinyurl.com/OCHDistHumor.

How much is too much?

1 r teh geexx0r. I admit it. Yet there are times when I look at something going on in a slice of fandom and shake my head - even as I, in the same moment, secretly wish I had the time to be that deeply involved. One old example is from 1994 (ancient history!):

"A Bible-translation group at the University of Minnesota has split over the correct way to translate the Bible into Klingon. Language instructor Glen Proechel is working on a paraphrased New Testament, while rival linguist Dr. Lawrence Schoen and others are working on a literal translation of the entire Bible. The problem lies in the cultural differences; for example, Klingon has no words for concepts such as "mercy and "compassion." Proechel feels that reinterpreting the Bible in concepts understandable to the Klingons is more useful, while Schoen says "You don't mess around with the Bible." The translations are being done from Greek, and other original languages."

I started thinking about this again when I re-watched "Attack of the Clones". I happen to think that the Geonosian Language is one of the more interesting fantasy languages represented in film - the concept of a language produced by a double set of mandibles with chitinous clicks and buzzes, and so lovingly crafted by the sound wizards, is intriguing - but remember, too, that I spent a career as a linguist, so I have an excuse.

This page does about as complete analysis of the tiny fragment of speech available as anyone could do - phat props to the webmaster; the only gripe I have is that the phonetic representation could stand improvement. (behold, the inner geek ascending).

"Let the executions begin!" is transcribed as "[Horn] bey [click] oh zee barote hundit." Now, the author of the site freely admits that this is a transcription by ear, so no disrespect intended whatsoever. It's just that one can come a lot closer using IPA.

I posted a little sample analysis over at Wookeepedia in the "Petranaki Arena" article, saying in effect,

Most of the sounds can be represented using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), with the addition of tones.

/rrrʛɨ!ɔhibarohwundɛ/ is a closer transcription:

[horn] is actually a long voiced alveolar trill /r/ (with a chitinous overtone not found in any human language), followed by

/ʛ/ - a uvular voiced implosive (the sound you hear in Goofy's "G-hyuk!")

/ɨ/ - a close central unrounded vowel, similar to the Romanian "î" (Close to the sound often heard when someone steps in dog hqiz on the street)

/!/ - a (post)alveolar click, and then the remainder of the sentence, /ɔhibarohwundɛ/.

You see, I'm not immune to excessess of geekitude, either.

Writer's Block: Lights Out

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The great Eastern Seaboard blackout of 1965. Even though I was living in Manhattan, I was in Connecticut at the time, and we thought it was just a local event. The next day, however, as the magnitude of the outage became generally known through news broadcasts and such, the stories I heard - including the fact that it was caused by a single human error - made it just as memorable as if I had been in the city myself.