161. THE VIEW FROM THE TOWER OF BABEL by un’Americana a Venezia

Per Konrad Lorenz il linguaggio crea una comunanza del sapere e quindi del volere mai prima esistita. Oltre agli aspetti semantici, il linguaggio scandaglia la mente umana attraverso il potere misterioso dei suoni. Un’Americana a Venezia esplora in maniera suggestiva questo cosmo (RR)

World Language Map

According to the Book of Genesis, in the beginning there was only one language.  Before then, I assume, humanoids could read each other's minds, in much the same way that our pets can read ours.  Then that one language became many.  The reason why is not clear.  Genesis leaves us with the unfinished Tower of Babel and all the babblers scattered.  At the Venice Biennale, I once saw an exhibit by an artist who showed that the design of the parrot brain is virtually the same as ours.  Over untold millennia, however, our brains kept evolving to the point where they can elaborate information like a computer.  We keep building upon what we learn at a tender age, something the smart parrot can't do, at least not vocally.  Most people speak one language fluently along with a dialect and slang.  Many people are bilingual, meaning that they automatically count, pray, dream, and curse in two languages.  Then there are the Swiss who often speak Italian as well as French and German.  People with acrobatic brains, a group which includes linguists, sometimes acquire many languages.  These impressive minds are called polyglots.  No one can say how many natural languages have evolved.  In Africa today, about 2,000 languages are spoken.  Among the world's linguists, there is a clever group called conlangers.  Conlangers are into conlangs.  What, you ask, are CONLANGS?  Conlang is short for “constructed language,” also known as planned or artificial language.  Of this new type of human language, there may be well over a thousand officially registered and ready to be mastered by those who care to study their phonetics, grammar, and lexicons.  Perhaps the most spoken of all conlangs is Esperanto (“he who hopes”) which was created in the 1880’s by Lazaro Ludoviko Zamenhof (1859-1917) who had honestly hoped to revolutionize planetary relations.  In the nearby Republic of San Marino there is a university which utilizes Esperanto exclusively, the Akademia Internacia de la Sciencoj.  Meanwhile, there are three basic types of conlangs:  1) Engineered languages, which include philosophical, experimental, and logical languages (loglangs) such as Lojban and Loglan; 2) Auxiliary languages (auxlangs) like Esperanto, whose purpose is to improve world communication; and 3) Artistic languages (artlangs) which are devised to create an aesthetic effect.  Artlangs include secret languages, mystical languages, fiction languages (ficlangs), game languages, etc.  Anthony Burgess invented a primitive artlang, Ulam, for the trio of early men who went in search of fire eighty-thousand years ago in Annaud’s prehistoric adventure film, “La Guerre du Feu” (1981).  Everyone was secretly thrilled by the crude primordial sounds they made.  Burgess also invented an Anglo-Russian slang called Nadsat for his book A Clockwork Orange, destined to become a Kubrick film.  A well-received artlang, the kind that can be learned and spoken, is Mark Okrand's Klingon from "Star Trek."  Okrand also created Dig Adlantisag for the 2001 Disney film "Atlantis:  The Lost Empire."  Very popular among conlangers are J.R.R. Tolkien's versions of Elvish found in his famous trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.   George Orwell invented a ficlang for Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak, "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year."  That definition, found in the book, is a clear demonstration that under an all-controlling, nightmarish system, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds true:  The language one speaks influences the way one thinks.  Hence, conlangs often turn out to be "thought experiments" meant, for example, to simplify thought (Toki Pona), or even to encourage feminism (Làadan).  This busy blog, meanwhile, will have featured a handful of songs from various points on the globe whose lyrics come from the realm of invented language, including Iceland's Sigur Ròs' "Hopelandic" and Na'vi, the artlang developed by Paul Frommer for James Cameron's "Avatar."  If you wish to listen to, create, or learn a conlang, you can easily do so on the web.  Visit the Language Creation Society's website, or simply research "conlangs" or the names of any of the conlangs mentioned here.  Something will come up.  There is no end to it.  Which is probably why the Tower of Babel was and never will be finished.  Incidentally, do you think that parrots have any idea of what they're missing?            UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA