In his dreams, the lecture hall was full, words flowing like a brisk, swirling windstorm. Students whispered, the instructor delivered jokes and information and meandering asides, never mind that his thin Korean frame marked him as an outsider to the cluster of milk-faced students whose hair shone in yellows and reds, with few of the darker hues of brown, and none of the instructor's midnight-black.
In her dreams, the train clacked pleasantly as two women struck up a conversation over very different types of crochet, one held all in the dominant hand, the ball of thread tucked securely in a pocket in deference to the crowded car, while the other used a tidy, two-handed pattern to keep track of both yarn and project, the fine wool becoming a gossamer cloud beneath nimble fingers. They stumbled a bit, needing some specialized words which neither had, but a little careful description in the sturdy, brisk common language soon had them comparing favorite patterns and decidedly unfavorite problems in their shared hobby.
In his dreams, the cluster of children, having met only a few minutes before, watched each other, searching for commonalities in their dark hair and dark skin, clustering even amongst themselves by criteria which could mean family resemblances, or simply tribal ones. The instructor held out a bowl of familiar fruits, and began the lesson without using any of the children's native languages. At the end of the first lesson, the children were clustered by the number of siblings they had, jumbled and diverse as brightly-colored buttons in a jar.
In her dreams, the raging travel-headache had eased only after she'd nearly slept the clock around. She'd expected that, but not the desperate homesickness a swirl of white on red had brought, the colors and backdrop of a soda logo rendered incomprehensible in the native print. It took three hours to work her way carefully on foot from the hotel to a bookstore, but dotted among the hundreds of people she'd passed were a handful standing out like beacons to help her along with their gestures and encouraging smiles and pantomimed directions. Tucked among the travel books was a single, slim volume, offering the hope of a common tongue.
In the ethereal synchronicity born of human thoughts and hopes, Novial dreamed. Esperanto had napped, but never truly slumbered, and the infant Na'vi scampered unsteadily between its cousins' realms, flitting from Interlingua to the diverse cluster of more than a dozen sibling-tongues created by Tolkein.
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Do Languages Dream?
Date: 2015-01-18 06:16 pm (UTC)In his dreams, the lecture hall was full, words flowing like a brisk, swirling windstorm. Students whispered, the instructor delivered jokes and information and meandering asides, never mind that his thin Korean frame marked him as an outsider to the cluster of milk-faced students whose hair shone in yellows and reds, with few of the darker hues of brown, and none of the instructor's midnight-black.
In her dreams, the train clacked pleasantly as two women struck up a conversation over very different types of crochet, one held all in the dominant hand, the ball of thread tucked securely in a pocket in deference to the crowded car, while the other used a tidy, two-handed pattern to keep track of both yarn and project, the fine wool becoming a gossamer cloud beneath nimble fingers. They stumbled a bit, needing some specialized words which neither had, but a little careful description in the sturdy, brisk common language soon had them comparing favorite patterns and decidedly unfavorite problems in their shared hobby.
In his dreams, the cluster of children, having met only a few minutes before, watched each other, searching for commonalities in their dark hair and dark skin, clustering even amongst themselves by criteria which could mean family resemblances, or simply tribal ones. The instructor held out a bowl of familiar fruits, and began the lesson without using any of the children's native languages. At the end of the first lesson, the children were clustered by the number of siblings they had, jumbled and diverse as brightly-colored buttons in a jar.
In her dreams, the raging travel-headache had eased only after she'd nearly slept the clock around. She'd expected that, but not the desperate homesickness a swirl of white on red had brought, the colors and backdrop of a soda logo rendered incomprehensible in the native print. It took three hours to work her way carefully on foot from the hotel to a bookstore, but dotted among the hundreds of people she'd passed were a handful standing out like beacons to help her along with their gestures and encouraging smiles and pantomimed directions. Tucked among the travel books was a single, slim volume, offering the hope of a common tongue.
In the ethereal synchronicity born of human thoughts and hopes, Novial dreamed. Esperanto had napped, but never truly slumbered, and the infant Na'vi scampered unsteadily between its cousins' realms, flitting from Interlingua to the diverse cluster of more than a dozen sibling-tongues created by Tolkein.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Novial