In the Land of INVENTED LANGUAGES (34 page)

Ambiguity, or fuzziness of meaning, is not a
flaw
of natural language but a
feature
that gives it flexibility and that, for whatever reason, suits our minds and the way we think. Likewise, the fact that languages depend on arbitrary convention or cultural habit is not a flaw but a feature that allows us to rein in the fuzziness by establishing agreed-upon meanings at different levels of precision. Language needs its “flaws” in order to do the enormous range of things we use it for.

But what about irregularity? All those exceptions to the rules? Does language really need that? Probably not. But it comes about as a natural by-product of convention. Languages like Esperanto have an advantage in that they are built from preexisting conventions—the general language habits of speakers of European languages. Esperanto itself does particularly well because it developed its own culture and community, and therefore has better-defined conventions for what words mean and how they should be used. But at the same time, it has sacrificed some of the perfect regularity that it was intended to have. For example, the accusative -
n
ending used to mark the object of a verb is in the process of being lost. Speakers often leave it out—and joke about what a
pain it is to remember to use it—and one study found that even native speakers don't use it all that consistently, even when the language of their home country has an accusative marker. But they always use it when they say
saluton
, “hello,” or
dankon
, “thanks.” Those words were originally formed as the objects of verbs (as in “I wish you greetings” or “I give you thanks”); now they are just set phrases that happen to have an -
n
ending. But they are used so often, and their forms are so established by habit, or convention, that they are immune from the erosion of the grammatical marker they express.

Some of the irregularities in natural languages came about in a similar way. At one stage in the history of English, the past tenses of verbs were marked by a regular vowel change process; instead of “help/helped,” we had “help/holp.” Over time, -
ed
became the preferred way to mark the past tense, and eventually the past tense of most verbs was formed by adding -
ed.
But the old pattern was preserved in verbs like “eat/ate,” “give/gave,” “take/ took,” “get/got”—verbs that are used very often, and so are more entrenched as a linguistic habit (the
very
frequently used “was/ were” is a holdover from an even older pattern). They became irregular because the world changed around them.

Nobody means for words to become irregular. Some things are well reinforced by the habits of the language users, and other things give way to change. One day someone comes along and asks, “Hey, why doesn't this one fit the pattern?” and the answer has to be, “Well, 'cause that's the way we say it.” One day, newcomers to Esperanto may ask the same thing about
saluton
and
dankon
. They will also probably want to know why people say
stas
for “is” (a shortened pronunciation that many young Esperanto speakers use today) instead of
estas, or ĝis
for “goodbye” (the colloquial rendering of
ĝis la revido
, “until we see each other again”).

They already have to just learn the idiomatic meanings of certain expressions like
ne jukas min
(it doesn't itch me—“I don't care”) and
jam temp' esta
’ (a reference to a line of an old Zamenhof poem that modern speakers use—instead of the proper
jam la tempo estas
—to mean “the time has come”), and many other phrases you can't figure out with a dictionary or list of affixes alone. Esperanto is still pretty regular, and still pretty easy to learn, but it's governed by the way people use it—not by some perfect mathematical system or universal standard of meaning. Our languages have inconsistencies and irregularities because they are run by us, and not by some perfect rule book or grand philosophy. I don't know about you, but the story of invented languages only convinces me that I wouldn't have it any other way.

The transmission of customs and conventions, linguistic or otherwise, from one generation to the next is never perfect. Over multiple generations, any sign, symbol, or picture that once conveyed meaning may become completely unrecognizable. This is a problem that was addressed by the semiotician Thomas Sebeok when, in the early 1980s, he was asked by the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation to prepare a report on how best to encode a warning message on sites where nuclear waste had been buried. To ensure the safety of future generations, the message had to be interpretable for ten thousand years. He recommended extreme redundancy of encoding: the message should be printed in all known languages; there should be pictures, icons, and other relevant symbols; repositories around the world should store technical messages written in mathematical formulas (or perhaps, he suggests, in something like Lincos, Freudenthal's self-teaching logical language). But even all of this redundancy, he noted, might prove worthless in ten thousand years.

The best way to make sure the message would get through to
the future, he proposed, was to include a second “metamessage,” with a “plea and a warning” that every 250 years or so the information (including the “metamessage” itself) be re-encoded into whatever languages, symbols, and unknown-as-of-yet communicative devices were current at that time. Still the possibility would exist that the people of the future would ignore the plea, or forget to comply, so as added insurance he suggests the creation of a sort of folklore, perpetuated through rituals and legends, that would promote the development of a superstition or taboo about the dangerous sites. An “atomic priesthood,” a group of scientists entrusted with the true reasons for the danger, “would be charged with the added responsibility of seeing to it that our behest, as embodied in the cumulative sequence of metamessages, is to be heeded … with perhaps the veiled threat that to ignore the mandate would be tantamount to inviting some sort of supernatural retribution.” Even if the “priesthood” should forget the original reason for its existence, it is hoped that whatever kind of entity it should evolve into would maintain some sort of authority and sense of responsibility toward passing on the folklore.

According to Sebeok's analysis, the best chance for transmitting meaning ten thousand years into the future was not to find some optimal, stable, universal way to encode that meaning, because there is none. Meaning resides not in the symbol or the image or the language in which it is encoded but in the society that interprets it. New generations are born, societies change, and, with them, the interpretation of meaning. The best shot we had at getting our message across was to try to influence the society of the future—either by entreating it to adapt the encoding of the message to its times or by planting an aura of danger in a broad social tradition.

Though language inventors may have set their sights on issues
a little more immediate than the ten-thousand-year communication problem, too many of them have made the mistake of believing that if they just worked hard enough, they could come up with a language that would transcend society. But it is society that creates meaning, and therefore language. The best hope a language inventor has for the survival of his or her project is to find a group of people who will use it, and then hand it over and let them ruin its perfection.

Though there have been successes in the story of invented languages, they have been qualified ones. Some languages have gotten attention or praise or even communities of speakers, but none of them have fulfilled their original missions. We still don't have a worldwide international auxiliary language or a proven cure for all the supposed inadequacies of language. And so ambitious inventor types are still working on it. Every year still sees a few more proposals for a new world language, an improved Esperanto, or a perfect system of mathematical concept formation. I recently purchased a book, self-published by John Yench in 2003, on Idirl, “a universal language for all mankind, with none of the inconsistencies and awkward irregularities of existing natural languages, a self-consistent language where a word's sequence of sounds alone tell you its meaning, without needing a dictionary.” Mr. Yench is a bit behind the times in his method of spreading the word about his language. These days, language inventors no longer scrape together their savings in order to print books and mail them out to the libraries and government offices of the world. Instead, they set up Web sites. The language inventors, like most everyone else, have taken their ideas and their products to the Internet.

And, like most everyone else, they are able to find some kind of audience this way. Well-established languages like Esperanto and Lojban, by providing forums where people can use and learn
the languages without having to travel or wait for feedback, have attracted a good number of converts every year, and even old projects like Volapük, Ido, and Interlingua have picked up some new life online. But so much easy access to information about so many projects makes the competition that much fiercer. As many languages as there are on the Web, there are more angry flame wars and long manifestos about why this language is more logical, more systematic, more international, more likely to be adopted by the UN, less biased toward Europeans, less difficult to learn, less ambiguous, less likely to be abused by politicians …

All this fighting stems from the illusion that people choose to learn a language for rational reasons, that they are looking for the language that has the most useful features, the best agenda. But no one is out there comparison shopping for an artificial language. They find what they like, and there's no accounting for taste. There are Esperanto types, and there are Lojban types, and there are even a few proudly defiant Volapük types.

As it turns out, it is possible for an invented language to succeed even if it has no useful features at all. One of the most successful languages of the current era is neither free from irregularities nor easy to learn. It has no mission: it wasn't intended to unite mankind or improve the mind or even be spoken by people in the real world. But it suited the personal taste of a certain group of people so well that as soon as they saw it, they fell in love, clamored for more, and formed a community that brought it to life.

And so we come back to the story of Klingon.

The Go-To
Linguist

W
hen the Klingons first appeared on the original
Star Trek
television show, which ended in 1969, they were little more than grunting belligerents in greasepaint. They developed their trademark ridged foreheads for the first Star Trek movie in 1979, but it wasn't until the second incarnation of the television series,
Star Trek: The Next Generation
, which began in 1987, that Klingons were portrayed as complex members of a richly articulated alien culture.

In that series and subsequent
Star Trek
movies, audiences learned that Klingons are rough, crude, loyal, violent, and honorable—a sort of Viking-Spartan-samurai motorcycle gang. They eat
qagh
(live serpent worms), drink strong alcohol, and sleep on hard surfaces. They have a rite of passage (a youth is ceremoniously beaten with something called a
painstik
) and
a creation myth (the first Klingon and his mate destroyed the gods who created them and burned down the heavens). Cursing is an esteemed art form, one of the most offensive insults being “
Hab SoSlI' Quch
” (Your mother has a smooth forehead). Their mating practices involve the hurling of heavy objects and often result in injury. They are fond of reciting their numerous proverbs, which express their values: “
quv Hutlh HoHbogh tlhIngan 'ach qabDaj 'angbe'bogh
” (The Klingon who kills without showing his face has no honor); “
Dubotchugh yIpummoH
” (If it is in your way, knock it down); “
bIjatlh 'e'yImev, yItlhutlh
” (Stop talking and drink!); and my personal favorite, “
bortaS nIvqu' 'oH bortaS'e'
” (Revenge is the best revenge).

Klingon is indeed difficult to pronounce, but at least it uses phonetic spelling—once you know what sound each letter represents, you can pronounce any Klingon word. The vowels are easy—a as in “father,”
e
as in “ten,” I as in “give,”
o
as in “phone,”
u
as in “tune.” The consonants are more difficult. The
H
is pronounced as the “ch” sound in Yiddish words like “chutzpah” or the German exclamation
ach
! The Klingon D is pronounced as someone from India might pronounce a
d
—place the tip of your tongue at the middle of the roof of your mouth rather than the ridge behind your teeth. The
S
is similar to the English “sh,” but also with the tongue tip at the roof of the mouth. If you say the word
SoD
(flood) properly, it will feel bunched up and sluggish in your mouth. The
q
is pronounced like a
k
but farther back in the throat, as if you are choking. The
Q
is pronounced like the
q
, but more forcefully. If you're the adventurous type, try saying the word for the verb “to mutiny”—
qIQ
. If some saliva flies out, great job. If your lunch flies out, try again later.